The Walrus Hunters: A Romance of the Realms of Ice

The anxious father had strode on in advance of the Eskimo party, but Cheenbuk had followed. He hung back a little from feelings of delicacy as they neared the old home, and was much moved when he saw irrepressible tears flowing from the eyes of Adolay.

“Have enemies been in the camp?” he asked, when they had contemplated the scene for some minutes in silence.

“No; enemies have not been here,” answered the Indian. “There is no blood on the ground; no sign of a struggle. The tent-poles are not thrown down; the ashes of the fires have not been scattered. This would not have been so if there had been a fight. Keep up heart, Adolay!” he added, turning to the weeping girl; “no evil can have come to our people, for they have left of their own will for a new camp; but I am perplexed, for this is the best place in all the Dogrib lands for a village, and we had lived long here in contentment.”

“But if that be so, there must be good reason for their having left,” suggested Cheenbuk.

“Good reason—yes, the men-of-the-woods never act without good reason.”

“My father may be perplexed about reasons,” continued the Eskimo, “but surely he will have no difficulty in finding his people, for are not the men-of-the-woods good at following up a trail?”

“Truly you say what is true. It will be easy to find and follow the trail of a whole tribe,” returned Nazinred, with a smile. “But it is disappointing to find that they have forsaken the old place, and it may be many days before we find them.”

“Father!” exclaimed Adolay at this point, a bright look overspreading her features, “mother must have left some sign on a piece of bark, as I did at Waruskeek.”

“I had expected as much,” said the Indian, looking round the camp, “and I had thought to find it here.”

“Not here,” returned the girl, with a soft laugh; “you don’t know mother as well as I do! There is a tree, under the shade of which she and I used to work when the days were long. If there is a message anywhere, it is there.”

She bounded away as she spoke, like a fawn, and in a few minutes returned with a piece of bark in her hand.

“Here it is, father. I knew it would be there. Let us sit down now and make it out.”

Sitting down beside the cold hearth of the old home, father and child began to spell out Isquay’s letter, while Cheenbuk looked on in admiring silence and listened.

The letter bore a strong family likeness to that which had formerly been written—or drawn—by Adolay at Waruskeek, showing clearly whence the girl had derived her talent.

“The hand at the top points the way clear enough,” said the Indian, “but were you careful to observe the direction before you moved it?”

“Of course I was, father. I’m not a baby now,” returned the girl, with a laugh and a glance at Cheenbuk.

“That you certainly are not!” thought the Eskimo, with a look of open admiration.

“It pointed there,” she continued, extending her hand in a north-westerly direction.

“The Ukon River flows there,” returned Nazinred thoughtfully, as he traced the various parts of the letter with his forefinger.

“Is that river better than the Greygoose one?” asked Cheenbuk.

“No. It is as good—not better,” replied the Indian, in an absent mood. “Adolay, this piece of bark carries some strange news. Here we have the whole tribe starting off for the Ukon with all their tents, provisions, and everything in sledges. So they left in the cold season—”

“Yes, father,” interrupted Adolay, knitting her pretty brows as she earnestly scanned the letter, “but don’t you see the line of geese flying over the tree-tops? That shows that it was at the beginning of the warm time.”

“Adolay is the worthy daughter of a Dogrib chief!” said Nazinred, patting the girl’s shoulder.

“I hope she’ll be the worthy wife of an Eskimo youth some day,” thought Cheenbuk, but, as usual, he said nothing.

“And look here, father,” continued Adolay,—“what do they mean by having all their snow-shoes slung on their guns instead of on their feet?”

“It means that the snow was very soft, beginning to melt, and it was easier to tramp through it without snow-shoes than with them. I hope they have been careful, for there is great danger in crossing lakes and rivers at such a time of the year.”

“No fear of danger,” said Adolay, with a laugh, “when Magadar leads the way. Don’t you see him there in front? Mother knows how to draw faces—only his nose is too long.”

“That is to show that he is the guide,” observed Nazinred. “Did you not do the very same thing yourself when you made Cheenbuk’s nose far too long—for the same purpose?”

Adolay laughed heartily at this, and Cheenbuk joined her, feeling his nose at the same time, as if to make sure that its handsome proportions were not changed.

“And look—look, father!” resumed the girl, growing excited over the letter; “that is your friend Mozwa! I feel sure of it by the shape of his legs. Who could mistake his legs? Nobody is like mother. She does legs as well as faces. But what is that on his wife’s back—not a new baby, surely?”

“Why not, my child?”

“Poor man!” sighed Adolay. “He had enough to provide for before.”

“Poor woman!” thought Cheenbuk, but he maintained a discreet silence.

Of course it was decided to follow up the trail of the tribe without delay. As Nazinred had surmised, it was easily found and not difficult to follow. That night, however, the party encamped round the hearths of the deserted village.

Chapter Thirty Two.

An Unexpected Meeting

The brief summer had fled, and autumn, with its bright sunshine and invigorating frosts, had returned to the Far North, when one day, during that short delightful period styled the Indian summer, our friend MacSweenie and his inseparable henchman Mowat sauntered down to the beach in front of the new fort.

“Iss it here the canoe wass lyin’, Tonal’?”

“Ay, yonder it is, just beyond the palin’, bottom up.”

“Man, this iss fine weather—whatever.”

“It is that,” replied Mowat, who could hardly have replied otherwise, for the fact did not admit of a doubt.

There was an intense brilliancy yet a hazy softness in the air, which was particularly exhilarating. Trumpeting wild-geese, piping plover, the whistling wings of wild-ducks, and the notes of other innumerable feathered tribes, large and small, were filling the woods and swamps with the music of autumnal revelry, as they winged their way to southern lands. Every view was beautiful; all the sounds were cheerful. An absolute calm prevailed, so that the lake-like expanse in front of the fort formed a perfect mirror in which the cliffs and brilliant foliage of the opposite banks were clearly reflected.

“We will go down to the bend o’ the ruver,” said MacSweenie, as they launched their canoe, “an’ hide in the bushes there. It iss a grand spote for birds to fly over, an’ there’s plenty o’ ducks an’ geese, so we may count on soon gettin’ enough to fill the larder to overflow.”

“Ay, there’s plenty o’ birds,” remarked Mowat, with the absent air of a man whose mind is running on some other theme.

MacSweenie was a keen sportsman, and dearly loved a day with his gun. As a boy, on his own Highland hills, he had been addicted to sporting a good deal without the formality of a licence, and the absolute freedom from conventional trammels in the wild North was a source of much gratulation to him. Perhaps he enjoyed his outings all the more that he was a stern disciplinarian—so deeply impressed with a sense of duty that he would neither allow himself nor his men to indulge in sport of any kind until business had been thoroughly disposed of.

“It hes often seemed to me,” he said, steering towards the bend of the river above referred to, “that ceevilisation was a sort o’ mistake. Did ye ever think o’ that, Tonal’?”

“I can’t say that I ever did. But if it is a mistake, it’s a very successful one—to judge from the way it has spread.”

“That iss true, Tonal’, an’ more’s the peety. I cannot but think that man was meant to be a huntin’ animal, and to get his victuals in that way. What for wass he gifted wi’ the power to hunt, if it wass not so? An’ think what enjoyment he hes in the chase until ceevilisation takes all the speerit out o’ him. H’m! It never took the speerit out o’ me, whatever.”

“Maybe there wasn’t enough o’ ceevilisation in the place where you was brought up,” suggested the interpreter.

“Ha! ye hev me there, Tonal’,” returned the trader, with a short laugh. “Weel, I must admit that ye’re not far wrong. The muddle o’ the Grampians iss but a wildish place, an’ it wass there my father had his sheep-farm an’ that I first made the acquaintance o’ the muir-cock an’ the grouse. O man! but there’s no place like the Heeland hills after a’, though the wild-woods here iss not that bad. Tonal’, man, catch hold o’ that bush an’ draw close in to the bank. There’s a flock comin’, an’ they’re fleein’ low.”