Mooswa & Others of the Boundaries

THE CARING FOR THE BOY

Whatever Rod's intentions might have been about following on after François, their carrying out was utterly destroyed by the terrific blizzard which started that night. All the next day, and the night after, no living thing stirred from its nest or burrow.

Whisky-Jack cowered in the lee-side shelter of the roof; and inside, Roderick listened to the howling and sobbing of the storm-demons that rocked the rude Shack like a cradle. Even through the moss-chinked, mud-plastered log-cracks the fine steel-dust of the ice-hard snow drove. It was like emery in its minute fierceness.

Spirit voices called to Rod from the moaning Forest; his imagination pictured the weird storm-sounds as the voice of his friend pleading for help. Many times he threw the big wooden door-bar from its place, and peered out into the dark as the angry wind pushed against him with fretful swing. Each time he was sure he heard his Comrade's voice, or the howl of train-dogs; but there was nothing; only the blinding, driving, frozen hail-fine and sharp-cutting as the grit of a sandstone. Once he thought the call of a rifle struck on his ear-it was the crash of an uprooted tree, almost deadened by the torturing wind-noises.

The cold crept into his marrow. All night he kept the fire going, and by dawn his supply of wood had dwindled to nothing; he must have more, or perish. Just outside in the yard François had left a pile of dry Poplar. Almost choked by the snow-powdered air, Rod laboured with his axe to cut enough for the day. At intervals he worked, from time to time thawing out his numbed muscles by the fire-place. "One trip more," he muttered, throwing down an armful in the Shack, "and I'll have enough to last until to-morrow-by that time the storm will have ceased, I hope."

But on that last short journey a terrible thing happened. Blinded by the white-veil of blizzard Rod swayed as he brought the axe down, and the sharp steel buried in his moccasined foot. "O God!" The Boy cried, in despairing agony. He hobbled into the Shack, threw the wooden bar into place, tore up a cotton shirt, and from the crude medicine knowledge he had acquired from François, soaked a plug of tobacco, separated the leaves, and putting them next the cut, bound the torn cloth tightly about his foot.

That night the storm still raged, and his wound brought a delirium pain which made his fancies even more realistic. Whisky-Jack heard him moaning and talking to strange people.

Next morning a cold sun came up on a still, tired atmosphere. The fierce blizzard had sucked all life out of the air: the Spruces' long arms, worn out with swaying and battling, hung asleep in the dead calm: a whisper might have been heard a mile away.

At the first glint of light Jack spread his wings, and, travelling fast to the home of Black Fox, told of Rod's helpless condition. "Before it was the hunger-death that threatened; now the frost-sleep will come surely, for he cannot walk, only crawl on his hands and knees like a Bear-Cub," said Jay Bird, with a world of pity in his voice.

"Call Mooswa and Carcajou," cried the Red Widow, "The Boy is in their keeping."

When Wolverine had come he said: "There is still a piece of Fat-eating cached, if I can find it under this mountain of white-fur that covers the breast of The Boundaries."

"That is well, good Comrade," declared Black King; "but how shall we get it to the hands of our Man-Cub?"

"Place it in the bowl of my horns," said Mooswa, "and I will lay it at his door."

"Yet the Fat-eating may be on one side of the wooden gate, and The Boy starve on the other," remarked Whisky-Jack, thoughtfully.

"I will knock with my horns, and The Boy will open the gate thinking it is François."

"Even with a full stomach he may perish from the frost-death," continued Jack; "for now he cannot cut wood for his chimney-though the fire still lives, for I saw its blue breath above the roof as I came away."

"Call Umisk," ordered Black King; "he is a wood-cutter."

"Excellent, excellent!" sneezed Carcajou, in a wheezy voice, for the blizzard had set a cold on his lungs. "If Chisel-tooth will cut fire-wood I'll drop it down the chimney, and The Boy may yet be kept alive until François returns. Come with me, Daddy Long-legs," he continued, addressing Mooswa, "and we'll have a look for that cached Fat-eating in this wilderness of white-frosted water."

After a tiresome search they found the bacon that had been hidden by the little hunchback. Mooswa carried it to the Shack, dropping it at the door, against which there was a great drifted snow-bank; then he rubbed his horns gently up and down the boards.

"Is that you, François?" cried a voice that trembled with gladness, from inside the Shack. There was a fumbling at the door, and the next instant it was pulled open.

Mooswa almost cried at sight of the pain-pinched, ghost-like face that confronted him, and The Boy recoiled with a look of dismay-the huge head frightened him. Then catching sight of the bacon, he looked from it to the Bull-Moose questioningly; all at once an idea came to him.

"You are hungry too, Mr. Moose, are you?" for he remembered stories of severe storms having driven deer and other wild animals to the haunts of Man for food. Evidently the smell of bacon had attracted the Moose; but where in the world had it come from? Had it been left by some chance on the roof, and knocked off by the strong blizzard wind? That seemed a likely solution. The Moose was so unafraid, too-it was curious! He reached out and pulled in the bacon-it was like the manna shower.

"Poor old Chap!" he said, stretching out a hand and patting the big fat nose timidly; "you've come to a bad place for food. There's nothing here you can eat."

Mooswa stuck out his rough tongue, and caressed the wrist. Rod scratched the Bull's forehead in return, and they were friends.

The big eyes of Mooswa wandered about the bare pathetic interior. It was a poor enough place for a crippled Boy-but what could be done. "I wish I could speak to him," he thought, rubbing his massive face against the flannel shirt reassuringly. Then he turned and walked solemnly through the little clearing, and disappeared in the thick wood.

The bacon put new heart in Roderick.

A rational explanation of this advent of the pork appeared to be that it had fallen from the roof; but all through that night of distress The Boy had muttered broken little prayers, just as he had done for years at his mother's knee, and whether it had actually fallen from the roof or from the skies was not the real issue, for he was convinced that it had come in answer to his prayers.

The pain crept up his leg, up his back, and, as the hours dragged on, the dreary, lonesome hours, it mounted to his brain, and the queer fancies of approaching delirium carried him to a fairy land peopled by unreal things. He had just sanity enough to keep the chimney fire going, but his little pile of wood dwindled until the last stick was placed on the coals. When in the afternoon Carcajou dropped three billets that Umisk had cut down the chimney, Roderick laughed. He was a King in delirium-land, and when he wanted anything all he had to do was pray, and the angels would send it.

Sometimes the sticks of wood rolled out on the floor as they clattered down-these The Boy put to one side.

"I suppose the angels won't come in the night," he whispered; then laughed. It was a grotesque idea, but the fire was kept blazing.

He had no rational thought of eating; when he felt hunger-pains he fried a little of the bacon and ate it. Sometimes he made a batter of flour and water, cooking the mixture in a frying-pan over the fire-turning out an almost impossible kind of pancake.

"He acts like Wapoos in the early Spring," Whisky-Jack told Mooswa: "laughs, and whistles, and cries, and sobs; but he eats, which is a good thing, and is also warm. I never thought that crop-eared Hunchback, Carcajou, had goodness enough in him to do anything for anybody."

"He's like yourself, Whisky-Jack, a bit of a th-sharp-tongued fellow, I mean" (thief, he was going to say, but checked himself just in time), "and full of queer tricks, but good-hearted enough when a Comrade is in trouble. How long will the Fat-eating, which is the food of you Meat-eaters, last The Boy?" Mooswa asked.

"Perhaps three days."

"Also, is it good food for the sick-is it not too strong? When I am not well there are certain plants that agree with me, and others I cannot touch."

"Fish would be better," declared Jack, with the air of a consulting physician.

"I thought so," said Mooswa. "The smell of that bacon at the door almost turned my stomach. If the Man-Cub could only eat sweet Birch-tips, or dried Moose-flower-it's delicious when well preserved under deep snow. Even unrotted moss would be better for him than that evil-scented Meat."

The Bird laughed, "He, he, he! fancy the Man-Cub chewing a great cud of mushy grass. Now Fish, as I have said, would be just the thing; there's nothing lies so sweet on one's stomach, unless it's Butter. Warm Roostings! but I wish that cat-faced Pisew had been hanged before he found my cache."

"Jack," continued Moose, "you might ask Nekik or Sakwasew to catch a Fish for The Boy; they are all bound by the promise to help take care of him."

"All right," said Jay. "Otter might do it, for he's a generous Chap, but Sakwasew is a greedy little snip, I think. I never knew a Mink yet that wasn't selfish."

"I don't know how long we shall have to look after this Man-Cub," Mooswa said, when he, and Rof, and Black King talked the matter over that evening. "François is a good Trapper, we all know that to our sorrow, and he likes The Boy, for he was years with his Father, the Factor, as servant to the Company, but still he's a Breed, and if there's any fire-water at The Landing it is hard to say when he may get back; besides, the breath of the mountain that shrivelled us all for two days may have got into his heart."

"My Pack hunts for three days in the far Boundaries," muttered Blue Wolf.

"Why?" asked the King, sharply.

"In three days I will tell Your Majesty," answered Rof, shutting his jaws with a snap.

"Well, well," exclaimed Black Fox, "in the Year of Starvation there is no preserve. We hunt where we find, and eat where we catch; and only the Kit-law and the Cub-law, and the Seventh Year Law of the Wapoos is binding."

Blue Wolf disappeared for three days; and for three days Umisk cut wood for The Boy, and Carcajou dropped it down the chimney. Mooswa went every day and rubbed his horns against the door. The coming of his Moose friend was also a part of the angel care the wounded boy had dreamed into his life. His eager joy at even this companionship was pitiable; but it was something to look forward to-something to pull him back out of the deeper levels of delirium-world.

Nekik, the Otter, caught a fish, at Mooswa's request, and Carcajou dropped it down the chimney.

"It will burn," objected Umisk, who was cutting wood.

"Then The Boy will find it with his nose," answered Carcajou.

After that Roderick asked the angels to bring him fish-it was better than bacon. They were queer angels, Nekik and Carcajou, but the sick lad got a fish every day.

On the third day Blue Wolf returned. "I found one of the Men-kind down the river," he announced to Mooswa and Black Fox; "he is trapping alone, I think."

"Well," queried Black King, "what of that?" for he did not quite understand.

"If we could get him to The Boy I thought it might be well," answered Blue Wolf.

"Ah! I see," cried the King. "That's why the Pack hunted for three days in the far Boundaries."

Wolf growled a deprecating objection.

"How far away is he?" asked Mooswa.

"Six hours of the Chase-lope," answered Blue Wolf.

"I could bring him, even as I led François away when you were not desirous of his company, Your Majesty," said the Moose.

"It's a dangerous game," muttered Black Fox. "I don't like it-one can't judge the strike of their Firesticks; and you're such a big mark-like the side of a Man's Shack."

"I saw The Boy's leg to-day," continued Mooswa, "and it's bigger, with this wound-poison, than my nose. Unless he gets help soon, he will die."

"François should be back in a day or two," declared the King.

"François is a Breed," asserted Mooswa; "and days are like the little sticks the Breed-men use when they play cards-something to gamble with."

"The Pack could be ready if the Man pressed too close as you led him to our Man-Cub," suggested Rof.

"I do not fear him the first day," continued Mooswa; "Man's speed is always the same and I can judge of it; it is the second day, when I am tired from the deep snow, that a little rest, too long drawn out, or a misjudged circle with one of the followers travelling wide of my trail, that may cause me to come within reach of their Firestick."

"Well, you might not reach Red Stone Brook in one day," asserted Blue Wolf; "so perchance you may need help the second. You'll find the Man just below Big Rapids."

"I'll start to-night," said Mooswa, "for The Boy must get help from his own kind soon. He is sick of the wounded leg-also of a half-filled stomach; but then there is another illness that neither I nor any of us can understand. Perhaps it is of that thing the Factor said Men had and would sell for the evil fire-water-the soul. One time the eyes of The Boy are all right, even as yours, Rof, or mine, seeing the things that are; and then a look comes in them that is like the darkening of a purple Moose-flower when the sunlight is suddenly chased away by a cloud. Then this Boy, that is a Man-Cub, talks to his Mother, and his Sister, and calls to the things he names Angels, up on the roof; though I know not what they may be, because it is only little humpbacked Carcajou dropping wood down the chimney. Yes, that's what it must be," Mooswa continued, reflectively, "the sickness of this Soul-thing the Men-kind have, for The Boy laughs, and cries, and his eyes blaze, and look soft like one's young, and flood with tears, and glare hot and dry. Yes, he must have help from his own kind, for we know not of this thing.

"With good fortune I may lead this Man to him by the coming of darkness the first day; if not, then Blue Wolf will stand guard on my trail the second."

"Yes, even the first day, also, will I be near," asserted Rof.

FRANÇOIS AT THE LANDING

As Mooswa tramped down the wide roadbed of frozen river, François, up at The Landing, was doing very much as the Bull Moose had feared.

He had weathered the blizzard, lying huddled up with his dogs in the shelter of a cut-bank, not daring to stir even for food till the fury of the icy blast had passed. He had even come to The Landing with a full resolve to go back immediately after he had secured his outfit; alas! for the carrying out of it, he was but an easily influenced Half-breed. At The Landing were several of his own kind down from Little Slave Lake with the first kill of Winter fur. With these the possession of money or goods always meant an opportunity for gambling.

François had a "debt credit" at the Hudson's Bay Company's store equal to the value of his needs; any Trapper who has kept his slate clean in the Company's accounts can usually get credit for a small outfit.

When the Half-breed had completed his purchase, the Factor tossed him a large plug of smoking tobacco, which was the usual terminal act of a deal in goods in any of the Company's posts.

François filled his pipe, sat down by the hot box-stove with its roaring fire of dry Poplar-wood, and smoked, and spat, and dilated upon the severity of the blizzard, and regaled the other occupants of the Trading Post with stories of Wolverine's depredations. Suddenly he ceased speaking, held the pipe in his hand hesitatingly, and straightened his head up in a listening attitude. The deep, sonorous, monotonous "tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum" of a gambling outfit's drum-music came sleepily to his acute listening ear. It was like a blast from the huntsman's horn to a fox-hound; it tingled in his blood, and sent a longing creeping through his veins.

"There goes that Nichie outfit from Slave Lake again," cried the Factor, angrily. "They've gambled for three nights; if the police were here I'd have a stop put to it."

François tried to close his ears to the coaxing, throbbing, skin-covered tambourine the gambling party's music-maker was hammering that still, frosty night; but his hearing only became acuter, for it centred more and more on the thing he was trying to keep from his mind. Even the "Huh, huh! – huh, huh! – huh, huh! – huh, huh!" of the half-dozen Indians who sat about a blazing camp-fire, and rocked their bodies and swayed their arms in rhythmic time, came to him with malevolent fascination.

"I t'ink me I go sleep," François said, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and putting it in his bead-worked deerskin fire-bag.

"You'd better pull out sharp in the morning," commanded the Factor; "young McGregor will be running short of grub before you get back."

"I roun' up ever' t'ing to-night," returned François, "an' hit de trail firs' t'ing in de mornin', soor. I make me de S'ack in t'ree day."

Outside, the "Tum-tum" called to him; the "Huh, huh!" pleaded with him like the voice of a siren. He would go and sit by their fire just for a little, the Breed reasoned-not play! for more than once he had been stripped to his very shirt when luck set against him. True, other times he had accumulated furs, and dogs, and guns, even the caribou-skin coats, and Cow-boy hats-fine valuable hats worth ten dollars a piece, – when fortune smiled and he had guessed unerringly in which hand his opponent-player had hidden the cartridge shell, or whatever other token they used.

"Huh-huh! François! Huh, Boy-Welcome!" went round the circle of squatting figures when the Half-breed stood amongst them. The musician stopped beating his instrument; solemnly each player and onlooker held out a hand and gave François one sharp jerk of greeting. Two rows of men sat facing each other, a big blanket over their knees; room was made for the new arrival.

"S'pose I not gamble to-night me," said François, hesitatingly.

They laughed in astonishment-doubtingly.

"S'pose you 'fraid you lose, Man-who-saves-his-money," cried a Saltaux Indian, disdainfully.

Now a Breed or an Indian must not be accused of being afraid of anything; if he be, and submit to it, he is undone for all time. Half their bravery is due to this same moral cowardice. François hesitated, and the others, ignoring him, drew the blanket over their knees; the player secreted the tokens, and drawing forth his hands crossed his arms, always waving them in rhythmic time to the tum-tum. Then the Man-who-guesses in the opposite party indicated with his fingers where he thought the tokens were hidden.

It wasn't in human blood to stand out against this thing-not generations of gambler blood, and François cried, half fiercely: "Make room, Brothers! We'll see who's afraid."

That was the beginning. In the end, which came toward daylight, François had neither grub-stake, nor rifle, nor train-dogs. Time after time he took in exchange for some asset a little bundle of Red-willow counter sticks; time after time the little sticks, some long and some short, dwindled until they were all gone. The evil fate that had been his down at the trapping stuck to him in gambling.

Broken, and half numbed by loss of sleep and a sense of impending disaster, brought on by his despoiled condition, François crawled off to a friend's tepee, laid down like a train-dog, and fell asleep.

MOOSWA BRINGS HELP TO THE BOY

Mile after mile Mooswa cut from the head-trail with his easy-swinging rack, the strong crust of frozen snow giving his great limbs free play.

The open bed of the river held just such a run as he liked: no tree branches to catch his huge horns, no fallen tree giving cover to a stalking Panther or strange Wolf Pack; and, as if to make his trip perfect, he was running up a North Wind. He was like a telegraph operator sitting at his clicking instrument with the wires telling him everything.

"A brother Moose crossed here, just a hundred yards ahead," the Wind whispered one time. "Wh-f-f-f-! it was a Bull, too," the scent-wind told his delicate nostrils. "Ugh-wh-e-e-e-f-f-! Sikak has crossed the trail here, and killed the strongest scent left by any other-disgusting little brute!" This message Mooswa took from the wind, and repeated to himself. For a mile his nostrils were simply stricken dumb by the foul odour; his nose told him nothing of other affairs.

Then for a matter of ten miles there was but the sweet breath of Spruce as the wind filtered through a long point covered with it. "Line clear," the frosty air signalled, as Mooswa, taking a straight course for the merging of dark green and river-white, raced eagerly.

At the "Second Rapid," where the float-ice had grounded on rock-boulders in the Autumn closing-time, the river bosom humped like a corduroy road. "I must remember this spot on my coming back," Mooswa muttered, as he picked his way more slowly over the troubled ice-road. "Here I can make a big run if enemies are close," he added as a stretch of many miles reached away, level as a mill pond.

"Wolves! the Gray Hunters! the Murder Brothers who go in packs!" he said, as his quick-feeling nose picked their presence from the North Wind. "Not Rof's Pack," he continued, sampling the scent a little finer-"Strangers!" and he watched warily, cocking his ears forward for a warning whimper.

"Huh! they're busy!" for as he flashed over their cross-trail there arose the fainter odour of Caribou. "Safe journey, cousin," he muttered, "and confusion to the Throat-cutters. It's the Meat-eating, the Blood-drinking," he philosophized, "that breeds all the enmity in the Boundaries. There are Grasses, and Leaves, and Flowers enough for all, and no encroachment, if we'd only stick to it; but eating one's Comrades is what makes the trouble."