McClure's Magazine/Volume 28/Number 6/The Haste of Joe Saarin

BY

W. A. FRASER

HIS is a story of how, on 13th of August, a White Man does not know everything.

It was all in that land of spruce forest and moss-covered, ribboned by rivers that rush many miles an hour over cataract beds, and jewel-set with sapphire lakes, and lakes sometimes of emerald; and of its animate life, the patrician Cree Indian and the conglomerate Breed harassed forever and ever the trumpet-voiced moose and the velvet-coated bear and the caribou—the wood-caribou whose head is rigged like a ship, all spars and yards; even his snow-shovel in front being like the bowsprit of a delicate yacht.

In this wondrous land, even ten times more wondrous than the quick memory of this little story, was the happening to the wise White Man.

A thousand and three hundred miles toward the Arctic from Winnipeg, the Athabasca River meets the Pelican, and the two have a little trouble over the matter. They bubble and boil among the boulders that once were shirt studs in the bosom of some glacier or iceberg; and the disturbance is called Pelican Rapid.

Mere also is Lake Wapiscaw Portage, which has nothing whatever to do with this story, except that I was there with three adherents when Louis Larue came drifting down the jade-green bosom of old Athabasca.

The atmospheric illusions of a northern river are not for the mastering of a White Man. It is a simple science of twenty years' tuition to know, half-a-mile away, whether a log or a large York boat comes one's way.

That day of Larue's coming, the afternoon sun smote something that rested on the river's breast two points up.

"It's a York boat," I promptly exclaimed. "It will be the Hudson Bay outfit for Fort Wapiscaw."

Sutherland, who was all Indian but his name, answered: "By goss! dat's funny York boat; she's birch bark."

"Dat's Peterborough canoe," declared Lemoine.

Then the optical sleight-of-hand proceeded. It was as though I looked through a reversed telescope. As the something came nearer, it grew smaller; until, touching the bank at my tent, it was a Peterborough canoe, in which sat Louis Larue, Joe Savarin, an Indian, and one of my men from the Saskatchewan.

The tale was soon told. On the Saskatchewan was dire trouble; I was needed with excessive promptitude, John, the man in charge there, had things at sixes and sevens, which make up the bad luck number of thirteen.

My man had come across country to Lac la Biche; there hiring Larue to bring him down in the canoe.

But also was I needed just where I was for a few days; so I told the canoe men to eat, drink, and rest.

Now, there is nobody in the world so difficult to understand as a half-breed—not even a zebra is more incomprehensible. To be told to rest a couple of days, under full pay, in the usual order of things should have been like a gift from the gods; but Joe Savarin's square black face grew sullen with discontent.

Louis was steersman, which is being captain, and the converse was with him. They must go back at once, he said.

I intimated that what they must do, and what they would do, would be affairs of divers results,—they would camp there till I was ready to go. This ultimatum was really somewhat tentative, for if they had pulled out for Lac la Biche, I might have failed in detaining them.

An Indian or a Breed is not much given to words, except when he is making a speech at a tea dance, or is very drunk; so Louis shrugged his shoulders, in tribute to his French ancestry, and in his dark face hung a heavy scowl that was altogether of his Indian extraction.

Having practically locked them up, out of diplomacy I was kind to the prisoners. Fat pork and bannock were ever at their elbow, to the end that they might forget their discontent. They were made to smoke and drink tea until their eyesight failed; but still, once an hour, Larue came to me with questions of the start. Each time he brought a different tale of the wherefore of their haste—the water was falling; La Biche River was running dry—they would never get back; his nets were in the water at Lac la Biche and would rot. Memory fails to chronicle the arguments he invented with recurrent versatility. I think Savarin helped him.

Had he but told the true reason, it might have been different; but, in equity, a Breed can no more understand a White Man than a White Man understands a Breed.

1 started with them in two days, leaving the man who had come from Saskatchewan. Once under way, they were no more desirous of speed than was I; a man who is needed in two places at once loves not the midway.

Savarin and the Indian leapt to the collars of the tracking-line as greyhounds might have cast from the leash with eyes enamored of a flitting hare.

The Athabasca was low, long points of rock-cobbled bottom running out far from shore. In the stern, Larue, paddle in hand, sweeping the canoe the full length of the tracking-line out to the proper depth, ate into our progress. It was slow going; much strain for the headway gained.

I had seen canoe trackers race against each other, but never had I been in at such eagerness. Savarin was tireless,—a wolf that tracked hour after hour a wounded buck. When he should have eaten, he lighted a pipe and, holding it between his strong teeth, pushed on; when he must eat, because even determined energy must have food, there was a quick frying of pork, a minute for a smoke, the tea-pail emptied in great draughts, and then on again.

Crouched in the canoe, I cared not; it was his energy, his muscles, his way of going. Larue sat silent and heavy-faced, his fierce black eyes watching every rock, every eddy, every treacherous pool.

At Red Stone Rapid he passed the paddle to me and, leaping to the bank, put his broad, massive shoulder to the tracking-line.

How the canoe quivered like something that struggled for life, as the many thousand tons of water clutched at its tissue sides and reared an angry mane at its smiting prow! Demons of great strength grasped my paddle, twisting until tense muscles tore apart in many places.

Sometimes the mastery was with the flood, and the men on the bank, hanging in the leather collars, were pulled in their footing; then the tried craft, swept back from the greater velocity, would ease a little, and the trackers would regain the inches they had lost.

Three times we battled with the narrow gate that was the point of struggle. The third time, inch by inch, we crept through the blue stream that was a wedge between the rock points. And when we had passed, the thin-shelled craft floated in serene content in a bend of quiescent water, as though there were nothing in all that land but peace.

Somehow I had an abnegating thought of incompetence as Larue crept back to the canoe. Perhaps the three silent, coffee-colored men were accrediting the two failures to the inexperience of the moneas; the very term "moneas," applied to the Whites, meant, literally, "greenhorns."

All day, through the vast solitude, tabulating our progress by river points, we struggled. The sun sank behind the terraced shale-bank of the river, fluttering ribbons of gold from between giant spruce and poplar as it fled. A chill rose up from the mountain water until I shivered; but still Savarin, head down, tireless-legged, swung on in the leading collar of the tracking-line.

At last, when the night gloom hung over our shoulders like the black cloth of a camera, Larue cried: "Ho, boy! Chasqua! Campez ici!" The collar slipped from Savarin's shoulder, and Buckshot the Indian, reached the canoe to shore, hand over hand on the line. Larue had given his brief order in three languages—English, Cree, and French.

Soon we basked in a luxurious prodigality of blazing dry poplar. This and a blanket were all that distinguished us from the for-est animals. I slept. In three minutes, it may have been less, Larue touched me on the shoulder, saying: "Grub pile ready, sir."

By a necromancy of time, it was five in the morning.

Savarin, insatiable of exertion, was assimilating large quantities of pork and bannock. He was touched with a devil of attainment: but for Larue and the darkness, I fancy he would have gone on tracking all the previous night.

Again we took up the warfare with old Athabasca. The victory of the previous day had been thirty-five miles; now again the fight was on.

How deceptive the slope of graveled points! Time and again I marveled at the useless wide detour of Larue's sweep, but always to be rebroken of my vain conceit. Sometimes from the canoe I saw the narrow margin of an inch between us and the rock; sometimes we touched the underlying bar; but always onward.

The second day was a replica of the first. But we camped in an earthy night-dream of the Happy Hunting Ground. Under three giant spruces, whose dropping needles had cushioned the earth till it was a gentle bed of silk-like wire, we spread our blankets. Then we ate. It was not an evening meal, it was simply a matter of needed food. And after, almost in silence, there was a pipe.

I watched Savarin curiously as I smoked. Apart from the camp-fire he crouched, like a large wolf, looking into the southern sky. Along his gaze, high hung, was a bright star.

Questioning Larue with my eyes, I nodded toward the man of silent meditation.

Louis swept at the star beacon with his full hand and whispered: "Lac la Biche." I understood—indeed, I had surmised it. Just beneath the twinkling mark lay the home of Savarin; and in his face was the dull hunger of unconquerable longing. What was it? Which one of the many tales had a birthright of truth? In my own mind had been evolved a solution born of knowledge of these forest dwellers. In all the world there is not their equal for gambling. Probably some other, favored of the chance-god, had stripped Savarin at the guessing game; now, with the trip-wage, he would retrieve his lost fortune. It must be that.

The pipe emptied, drugged by the balsam breath of the guardian spruce, I attained to Nirvana. It was a night of oblivion, a brief, sweet resting in the toilless Paradise of the Buddhists.

There was a faint gray light when Larue's voice, soft in its Cree schooling, summoned me back from Nirvana.

From the river a chill mist-cloud crept up the bank, rendering the hot tea a vintage of delight.

"Marse!" and forward to the making of La Biche River that day.

At the first spell, I spoke of two conditions which should be reversed. Savarin was most undoubtedly close to shatterment—the pace was a killer of high degree; while I, pinned between the thwarts of the cedar craft, was like unto a bird-cage in a coat pocket. To say that I was cramped was like speaking of a luxurious relaxation of muscle. I had lockjaw—paralysis; even my eyes were weary, gazing over the sun-mirrored water.

So I begged Larue to entice Savarin into the canoe; I would play train-dog on the tracking-line.

He was horrified. An Ogama, also a government official, could not track with a Nichie; besides, they were in a hurry.

His look—and a Breed has a supercilious stare down to a fine art—plainly intimated that it was no time for amateurish experiments.

Perhaps I was unwise in referring to Savarin's palpable condition; it may be that, out of revenge, he said something to Buckshot.

At any rate, I achieved to the collar, with the Indian in lead on the line.

Gaily enough we essayed the upward way of the seven-mile current—perhaps in the rapids it ran a hundred; I think it did.

Buckshot had a new motive in life. Next to unlimited firewater, there is nothing so great in delight to an Indian as the "doing up" of a paleface.

Buckshot had the stride of a giraffe. He seemed to rest in the collar; when it was smooth going, I verily believe he slept as we traveled. But the two days' strain of Savarin's fierce striving handicapped him almost back to my class.

After a time we came to a long reach of red willows. Perhaps there was a tracking path through this on the eyebrows of the river bank—I even think that at times my feet did strike it; but for the most part I was skidded over the shrubbery like a trailed coat by the taut line that came to me from the Indian's shoulders.

If Buckshot knew that he was toting anything but the canoe, he gave no sign: head down, the gable of his shoulders thrown forward, and long arms pendulous in their swing, he strode. When the willows were too thick for traverse, he walked in the water. So did I. I would have given dollars for the lead, but pride of race forbade me remonstrance.

Savarin had relapsed into somewhat of content. We were still making good time, which was everything.

Once, as we circled a quick sweep of bank wherein there was quiet water, the line was slack to our going; it sizz-zipped through the waters as though we pulled a net of many fishes. Buckshot, perhaps, had an eye in the back of his head; certainly he did not turn his face half an inch to accomplish the vile trick which he put upon me.

Softly going till a strain reached into his leather collar, he suddenly raced forward, and the tracking-line, snapping taut to the canoe like a fiddle-string, yanked me from the river bank as though I had been a trout on a fish-hook. But Buckshot's onward course dragged me from the water as easily as it had pulled me in; and as we were in a great hurry, I said nothing about this little side issue.

The Indian did not even smile, which was aggravating; his heavy face suffered a transient expression of hurt surprise to pass over it, as though he disapproved of my delaying the progress.

At four o'clock we were opposite La Biche River. We had made ninety miles in three days against the impetuous river.

Crossing over, the gods of fate threw the dice once in my favor. A twist in the wind clutched Buckshot's hat and, flaunting it for a hundred yards, threw it to the swift waters of the Athabasca. I laughed; even Savarin, I fancy, smiled; for Buckshot gave a wolflike howl of dismay. However, we were in a hurry, and the hat could keep right on to Grand Rapids for all we cared.

At the mouth of La Biche, Larue's son was waiting with a wagon. Larue père had arranged this transport when leaving home, owing to the low water in La Biche River. He had said nothing of it to me; an Indian loves the extra card up his sleeve. The boy was barren of food. He had expected his father back two days before and, in the waiting, having nothing else to do, had eaten everything. There was a family of Indians camped there; of course, they had helped him. A marked peculiarity of a small Indian party is, that they never have anything to eat in the tepee.

Also, our commissariat was depleted. Larue had provisioned us to the making of La Biche River, expecting supplies there.

However, the main thing was to press forward, because of the fifty-seven reasons Larue had given me at Pelican. So the canoe was loaded upside down on the wagon, and, marshaled like a body-guard to it, we started.

I have noticed this in the Northland, that it always rains when one has nothing to eat; the hungrier one is, the harder it rains. Of course, in winter this is changed to snow.

Larue's son wasn't hungry at all, therefore he was voluble. Perhaps he thought I needed cheering up. At any rate, he turned the driving reins over to his father and strode at my side.

If a Breed discourses of civilization, his tale is garnished with graphic recitals of wild drinking bouts; of fights with the town dwellers; of feminine conquests; that's the limit. Young Larue had wandered far in these many fields of adventure, and nothing on earth except a shot-gun would have checked his narrative.

We traveled fair into the black wall of the night. At times it seemed as though we swam through the atmosphere, it rained so. But traveling with a canoe diagonally across a wagon, through a spruce forest, in the night, has its eventual limitation; otherwise I fancy we should have kept right on until Lac la Biche, fifty miles away, was reached.

We lay down under the rain and let it rain. What mattered it? it couldn't wet us; we were living rivers—little lakes on foot. In candor I may admit that I did crawl under the wagon with its canoe roof.

Toward morning the rain ceased, but it was only a trick of the elements; they knew what they were about. As we proceeded the trees, the bushes, the grass, were watering cans; at each tap of the wagon wheel, at each brush of the canoe, at every breath of wind, the water splashed on us joyously, eagerly.

The onward progress would have proved monotonous had it not been for a smiling bit of muskeg we essayed. It lay so smooth and fair, that I believe Larue, with all his forest knowledge, went at it too eagerly—it was something to be clear of the forever-and ever trees. At any rate, half way across the wagon commenced to disappear; the horses were swimming in black mud. The extrication, in brief, was a matter of strategy. The ever-present rope and chain were in the wagon—Larue fils had not been able to eat them. The vehicle salvaged from the Slough of Despond, we took up our pilgrimage.

Toward evening we swung out to an open prairie—an outspread Gobelin tapestry of illimitability, flower-spangled till it was a field of cloth of gold.

As I rode beside Larue the driver, a strange figure came undulatingly across the scarlet vista. Like a Castilian don he was, sitting his high-spirited horse like a statue.

"It's Ladouceur, the free-trader," volunteered Larue.

The horseman reined in his steed our wagon; through his stirrups moccasins of exquisite workmanship.

That night we camped with him. His hospitality was large; and his little wife, Marie, had the glory of cleanliness in her soul. The genial grace of her sweet smile claimed us as brothers.

When we left in the morning, I had acquired the moccasins.

It was sixteen miles to Lac la Biche. A mile short of the Post, Savarin, who had been riding, for the road was good now, dropped to earth and, jumping a fence, started at a lope across the fields.

Larue, nodding his head sideways, volunteered an explanation; "Joe, he's live for dat house. S'pose me he's for big hurry see hees Ileetle boy, he's plenty silk."

We were rising a hill. At the top, looking down over a prairie valley, I saw an emerald-bordered jewel of blue,—Lac la Biche.

Nestling on its southern side, the Hudson Bay Fort gleamed white in the strong sunlight like a thing of marble.

To the right, high on the hill, was a huge Catholic mission.

Suddenly a wail, like the night cry of a she-wolf, came up the winding trail. Next, we could see a stripling line of Breeds and Indians toiling with bowed heads up the hill. "What is it it?" I asked Larue, as we met them.

"Dat's Joe Savarin's old wife," he answered. "Hees little boy he's die for sure two days. Dese fell's dey's bury him. By Goss! I'se sorry for poor Joe. He's fond for dat leetle boy. By Goss! I'se sorry."

He turned his massive head away from me toward the horses. It dropped. And we went down the hill to the little white fort that rested beside the sapphire lake.

That was why Savarin had thrust so eagerly at the river trail; while I, not understanding, had judged him as white men are prone to judge the Indian.

For always will the memory of the haste of Savarin linger as a rebuke.