Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  Veasy dumped the fur at the door and moved on to the barn with the horses. A small shack where we do most of our skinning in winter was only thirty yards away, a fire laid in its stove only awaiting a match. But now those few yards were so many leagues.

  So I dragged the sack of muskrats across the kitchen floor, spilling them out on Lillian’s shiny waxed floor. In balmier moments this might have evoked a storm of protest from Lillian, who didn’t like having her floor mussed up like that. But not tonight. I thought, “She’s a good kid. She knows when to scold and when not to.”

  I dropped into a chair by the stove and began pulling off my overshoes. They were frozen to the felts within. So yanking overshoe and felt off together, I next began peeling my woollen socks. Frozen to my—well, almost so.

  As the heat of the stove began seeping into my body, all coherent thought began fleeing my mind. I shed my sodden underwear and began pulling on the dry underclothes Lillian had laid out for me. I gazed stupidly down at the muskrats.

  “Worth their weight in gold?” I blurted out.

  “What’s that you’re mumbling about?” spoke up Lillian from among her pots and pans. But it didn’t really matter, and I was too tired to answer if it did.

  Chapter 24

  The wind was from the north when we first became aware of the fire. Lillian was the first to detect the presence of smoke on the air. She’d been trowelling a flower bed, fixing the earth ready for the seed, sifting it through her fingers to make it friable. The sun was just at the setting, and Veasy and I were indoors, patching up a fishnet that had got snagged when last we dipped for squawfish. We both glanced sharply up when Lillian came running through the door, face streaked with samples of mother earth.

  “Smoke!” she said tensely. “I can smell smoke.”

  At mention of that dread word, smoke—for we were all rightly scared to death of forest fires—I heaved out through the door and stood there smelling the air. Lillian was right; there was a forest fire burning. But where? A glance into the north told me. There, a dense pall of smoke was riding above the forest. To the north of us, but how many miles to the north? And why this early in spring? Too early yet for thundershowers, so we couldn’t blame it on lightning. In June or perhaps July, when we could expect electrical storms, but not this early, on the fourteenth day of May.

  I tried to soothe Lillian’s fears, and some of my own too, by telling her, “I doubt whether it will run very far now. Woods aren’t quite dry enough yet for a fire to hit full stride. It will likely go out before getting a chance to do much damage.”

  To the west of us, far to the west, there was seldom a year went by but that somewhere the woods were on fire. In that country, the Indians of the Aniham reservation cut hay for their cattle and horses on a scatter of wild hay meadows that dotted the jack pine forests like raisins in a pudding. Some say that the Indians have been setting the forests on fire ever since there have been Indians and forests. Others say no, it was the white man who taught them the habit. Still, it is an acknowledged fact by all who hunt meat in the forests that it is far simpler to see and kill a moose or a deer in timber that is lifeless and without underbrush than in timber that is green. Then too, deciduous growth will quickly take root when the conifers have been temporarily destroyed. And aspen, willow and alder are prime moose and deer browse.

  But nowhere yet has any forest fire resulted in establishing permanent pasture for big game animals that rely upon deciduous plants for their food. Eventually the conifers will return, and when they do, so dense will be their young growth that one could not see either moose or deer among them should any be there, and of course they won’t be there. For when the conifers do return, there will be no room among them for any shrub or plant that would please the taste of moose or deer.

  And so the torch is set to the forest again! Lay low the thickets of second-growth fir and pine, destroy the windfalls that clutter them! Then any hunter, Indian or white, can rein his horse through the clearings and shoot his moose or deer without coming out of the saddle.

  Seldom a year has passed since first we came to the watershed that some large tract of forest far to the west has not been ablaze. For the only answer to fire, if used as a means of creating moose or deer browse, is more fire. There is no other agency that can keep the conifers in check.

  Conifers will always come back, providing there is sufficient soil for a tiny seed to take root in. Without topsoil, little of anything will grow. And then the land is barren, unable to provide food for any cloven-footed animal. That’s how it is with countless thousands of acres of forest far to the west of us. So often has the country been fired there that now almost all of its topsoil has been scorched and burned until only gravel and rock are left.

  Now no tree, deciduous or conifer, grows there with the exception of the odd, almost leafless, stunted aspen. One could ride a saddle horse among the charred windfalls that litter the underfoot and see a bull moose or buck deer at a distance of almost a mile. But there are no moose or deer out in those burned-over acres. There is neither shelter and food nor moisture for any game animal. Fire has taken all.

  The floor of the forest was still fairly moist when we first saw the smoke. But three weeks had gone since the last of the snow melted, and the days had been cloudy. No flame could lick far into the forests so long as their underfoot was moist. So we dismissed all thought of fire from our minds, believing it could do us no harm.

  But sometimes a flame once kindled is stubborn about becoming altogether extinguished. Especially one that has been born in the virgin forests. It might lie dormant and unseen, smouldering slowly away within the punky wood of some rotting windfall, or entirely under ground level, feeding on the roots of a tree that has died upright yet stubbornly refuses to go down. It will sometimes smoulder with scarce a wisp of smoke to show that there is any fire there at all.

  May was about gone, and the smoke that had been in the north forgotten, when the clouds went away from the sky, allowing the sun to glare down on the forest as it lifted and stooped from horizon to horizon. And the wind came down from the west, a keen wind that, if cool and pleasant against the skin, drove little puffs of dust ahead of it when it touched a naked game trail.

  And with the wind came the smoke once more. Though barely noticeable at first, soon it was pluming up into the sky to the north. Uneasiness began needling my mind. Ever since coming to the woods to live, I have dreaded the advent of forest fire. Even when the fires were ablaze far to the west, many miles away, I would climb the high timbered hill whose spine is but a mile from the house, and from its top focus my binoculars on that country to the west, trying to track the path of the fire and wondering if a sudden shift in wind would drive the flames toward the head-waters of Meldrum Creek and so onto our trapline. All trappers dread the possibility of fires burning their traplines, for after the flames have gone there is little left in the burned-over area for carnivorous fur-bearers to track down and kill. A forest fire brings death.

  Now, with the northern skyline darkened by smoke, I suggested to Veasy, “How about you saddling up a horse and riding to the top of the hill for a look?”

  Two hours later he was back, his face set in serious mould. “The whole country around Devil’s Lake is on fire,” he said sombrely. Then with a shake of the head that suggested much: “The wind is carrying it this way, toward Meldrum Lake.”

  Devil’s Lake bordered the northern reaches of our trapline. There the country was littered by boulders and scarred by almost impassable ravines. Long fingers of forbidding muskeg thrust out from the lake and into the forest, like fingers from a hand. The lake itself stank like a cess-pool of decomposing vegetation and slimy alkali mud. It was these evil characteristics of the land about it that gave the lake its name.

  As the crow flies, about seven miles of fir and jack pine forest lay between the south end of Devil’s Lake and the north end of Meldrum. The woods between were criss-crossed with moose and deer paths, yet none were wi
de enough to balk the fire when a brisk west wind was egging it along. Falling trees acted as a bridge that enabled fire to cross a trail.

  Supper was eaten when Veasy saddled up his horse and rode to the top of the hill again. It was dusking when he got back. At sundown the wind had calmed down a little, and without wind or encouragement from the sun the fire would mark time through the night and not resume its march until bright of day in the morning.

  “We’d better wrangle the horses first thing in the morning,” I told Veasy, “and follow the east shoreline of Meldrum Lake to where those traps are hanging at the north end. If fire hits either one of those spruce trees, the traps will be ruined.”

  When first we came to the creek, we only had some four dozen assorted traps, and some of these weren’t much good, what with their springs having lost tension and one thing or another. Now we boasted all of six hundred. We had number 0’s for weasel, number 1’s for muskrat, 2’s for mink, fox and fisher, and 3’s and 4’s for lynx, timber wolf and otter. In recent years I had invested over a thousand hard-won dollars in such a large collection of traps, for now that Veasy was running his traplines too, we had so much more country to cover, many more traps needed to cover it.

  Many of the traps hanging in the spruces at the end of the lake were number 4’s, costing me forty dollars a dozen. There were several smaller sizes too. On any large trapline the traps are seldom toted back to the cabin when they are picked up from their cubbies. Instead they are collected in bunches and hung beneath spruce trees, there to remain until trapping season comes around again.

  “How many traps are there up there anyway?” Veasy wanted to know.

  I went to my desk and took out a well-thumbed ledger, and riffled through the pages until I came to the one that accounted for the present whereabouts of all our traps. When traps are scattered over a trapline thus, in bunches of a dozen here, another dozen there, it is easy to forget just where they are cached unless some written record is kept of them.

  “We’ve got four and one-half dozen,” I announced, “hanging under those two trees.”

  By morning the lake at the house was almost hidden by low-lying smoke. The smoke had settled overnight and now clung to every fold in the ground. Horses, too, are mortally scared of forest fire, and this morning ours out in the pasture were as nervous as week-old moose calves, and almost as elusive too. Even Lillian’s pot-bellied mare whom we could most always walk up to and catch showed us a clean pair of heels now. Around and around the pasture they galloped, keeping well away from the corral whenever they neared its wings. But finally Veasy was able to corner the old mare in a V of the fence and slip the halter over her head. And when she was led into the corral the rest trailed in behind her.

  But it was closer to 11 A.M. than ten when we climbed into the saddles. And the sun had been astir for five or six hours now, and the wind was again briskly from the west. And the smoke had gone up from the folds in the ground and was now umbrellaing the hilltops.

  Lillian was at the barn when we saddled up the horses, a bit of worry in her eyes. “Be careful,” she murmured, as if she didn’t want to say the words but somehow felt she had to. If there was one thing in the woods that Lillian was really frightened of, that thing was fire. She knew how fast a fire can run when it is burning in heavy spruce timber. She knew, for instance, that it can outpace a man afoot. And she’d seen snowshoe rabbits cremated in their tracks, and spruce hens and ruffed grouse limping along without a wing feather to fly with, and porcupines cowering down in treetops with fire spitting flame a few feet below. And she knew that many a wilderness cabin has gone up in smoke when flames jumped the clearing on which it sat.

  “We’ll be careful,” I promised. “But there’s nothing at all to worry about. Just the traps, that’s all. We’ll be back in a couple of hours.” And to give added assurance, I said, “The fire will never get here. The beaver ponds will stop it cold in its tracks before it does that.” That was our only hope. Still, I couldn’t be sure.

  Our horses had to swim at the crossing where the creek came out of Meldrum Lake. Below the lake a couple of hundred yards, the beavers had dammed the creek, backing the water up to the lake itself. I glanced downstream to the beaver dam, upstream to the lake. Then shot a glance over my shoulder toward home, and thought, “Thank God for the beavers!”

  Clear of the water we put the horses to a swift lope. If the fire reached the other end of Meldrum Lake before us, our traps would be lost.

  “Wonder who started this one?” Veasy said suddenly, half to himself.

  “Some damn fool,” I retorted. “Someone firing a ten- or fifteen-acre meadow maybe. Whites, I figure, not Indians.” For there were no Indians in the near vicinity of the country where the fire had started.

  “Why doesn’t the Forestry Department do something about it?” Veasy was in a mood for arguing. “Why doesn’t the Forestry Department catch a few of those maniacs that are forever dropping matches in the meadows and let them light their matches in a penitentiary cell instead of here in these woods?”

  “What can they do?” Veasy’s thoughts had often crossed my own mind, to be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulder. “How often have you or I actually seen anyone starting these fires? Never. And we’re in the woods all the time. If folk living off the country haven’t got brains enough to keep the forests green, there isn’t much any government department can do about it.”

  The smoke was thickening now. We were halfway up the lake, drawing away from pine and fir timber into heavier growths of spruce. Our horses were lathered with sweat, and it was use of quirt on rump rather than kindness in the voice that urged the horses on. They were unwilling to face that smoke.

  Now we could hear the crackle of burning spruces and occasional crash of a tree that had died in a matter of seconds. The timber grass was on fire to the right of the game trail our horses followed, and running along its edge, seeking a spot to cross, seeking a smouldering tree lying across the trail.

  We were now almost within sight of the end of the lake, dodging stands of flaming spruce and neck reining our horses through aspen and willow thickets close to the shore. To our right a hundred yards was a litter of blowdowns, either felled by wind or fire of other years. On three sides the windfalls were surrounded by spruces that were losing their greenness and becoming gaunt spars even as we looked toward them.

  Suddenly from among the litter of windfalls a form took shape out of the smoke, so still and lifeless that surely it was only my imagination that made me swear it was a moose. Yet a moose it was, an old cow with hair graying and rusting at the withers.

  But why did the cow stand so still? Why was she there at all, what with the spruce trees on fire from toe to crown and spewing flaming brands all around her?

  Then I knew why the old cow stood there. “Judas Priest!” I cried aloud. “She’s got little ones in the windfalls!”

  Veasy leaped out of the saddle. He quickly hitched his horse to a tree and muttered, “We’ve got to get them out of there.”

  The .303 Ross rifle was in its scabbard between my stirrup leathers, and I thoughtfully fondled its butt. “How? That’s an old cow, and she’s raised plenty of calves in her time. We’d have to put a bullet through her head before we could lay a hand on those calves. Better the loss of two lives than three. The cow will live to see another day, but the calves are goners already.”

  I knew just what Veasy was thinking. Go into the windfalls, hoist the newly born twin calves across the saddle and pack them down to water’s edge beyond reach of the flames. That’s what Veasy had in mind. But he was reckoning without the old cow. She’d never allow us to lay a hand on the calves; she’d charge if we tried to do that. And there was no sense in shooting her and trying to save the calves. Without the mother they’d die anyway.

  “Judas Priest!” I sang out again. And keeping a watchful eye on the cow I urged my horse a little closer to the windfalls.

  The calves—about a day old, I reckoned,
all legs and awkwardness— were lying side by side by a blowdown, necks stretched flush with the ground. “Aiya!” I shouted at the top of my voice. “Get!” And the twins raised their heads, staggered to their feet, took a few hesitant steps toward their mother and then went down in a heap.

  A flaming spruce began swaying on its roots. Its top leaned slowly toward the windfalls. The tree hesitated, as if unable to stand properly yet unwilling to go down. There were no needles left on it now, and the branches themselves were spitting livid fire. A shudder wracked the tree and then, unable to live any longer, it crashed to earth and died.

  The top of the tree fell within a half-dozen feet of the twins. But neither moved. Head and necks on the ground, liquid eyes fixed on the smouldering tree, they lay there.

  The tree continued to burn, throwing a molten heat. The stink of scorched hair and flesh came to my nostrils.

  “Judas Priest!” My hand dragged to the butt of my rifle. I pulled the gun and bolted home a shell. “It’s better this way, son,” I murmured quietly to Veasy. I lifted in the stirrups and brought the gun to my shoulder. Its sights moved onto a calf. And I squeezed the trigger once, and I squeezed the trigger twice, and you could scarcely hear the shots for the awful roar of the fire. And the twins twitched a little and then became limp and still, crimson founts of blood gushing from their foreheads.

  But the delay cost us our traps. The trees in which they were hanging were burning as we came in sight of them. Nothing could go near those trees. And the traps were a cherry red, and the temper would be gone from their steel, and they’d never be of use to us again.