Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/180

172 he succeeded in safely conveying to Quebec the hide and horns of the mammoth stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender tobaugan, heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among these were displayed the broad antlers of the moose of my affections, whose skin served as a tarpaulin for the remainder of the baggage, round which it was snugly tucked in with thongs of kindred material.

We halted on a broad ledge of rock by the western verge of the bay of the Falls, glad of an opportunity of enjoying my independence to the last, unfettered by the conventionalities for which I was beginning to be imbued with a savage contempt. Here we set up a primitive kitchen-range, and, having feasted upon cutlets of the caribou, scientifically treated by a skewer process with which Zach was familiar, we lounged like "lazy shepherds" in the sun, and the eye of the Indian flashed as I produced from the folds of my sash a leather-covered flask which did not look as if it was meant to contain water. During the weeks of the chase I had been very careful to conceal this treasure from Zach, knowing how helpless an Indian becomes under the influence of the "fire-water"; and as I had had a pull at it myself only two or three times, under circumstances of unusual adversity and hardship, there still remained in it a very respectable allowance for two, from which I subtracted a liberal measure, handing over the balance to Zach, who gulped down the skiltiwauboh with a fiendish grin and a subsequent inhuman grunt. As I lit my pipe after this satisfactory arrangement, the roar of the mighty Montmorency, whirling down its turbulent perpendicular flood behind a half-drawn curtain of green and azure ice, sounded like exquisite music to my ears, and I looked towards Quebec and blinked at its fire-flashing tin spires and house-tops burning through the coppery morning fog, until my mind's eye became telescopic, and my thoughts, unsentimental though I be, reverted to civilized society and its agréments, and particularly to a certain steep-roofed cottage situated on a suburban road, in the boudoirs of which I liked to imagine one pined for my return. If memory has its pleasures, has it not also its glimpses of regret?—and who can say that the former compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on the veranda,—the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert-flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,—unutterably graceful in the thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,—Zosime MacGillivray, perfect type and model of the style and beauty of the brulée. She was the only child of a retired trader of the old North-West Fur Company and his Indian wife; had been partly educated in England; possessed rather more than the then average Colonial allowance of accomplishments; and was, altogether, so much in harmony with my roving forest-inclinations, that I sometimes thought, half seriously, how pleasant and respectable it would be to have one such at the head of one's camp-equipage, and how much nicer a companion she would be on a hunt than that disreputable old scoundrel, Zach Hiver.

"Pack the tobaugan, Zach! The sun will come out strong by and by, and the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to the Citadel. Up, there! lève-toi, cochon!" shouted I, in the elegant terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,—at the same time administering to him a kick that produced a thud and a grunt, as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to