PAGE 7
A Man, A Famine, And A Heathen Boy
by
Again, when they were all hungrier, he went among them with complaining words. “If the white man’s Great Spirit can do all things, let him give Oshondonto and the Athabascas food.”
The missionary did not know of Silver Tassel’s foolish words, but he saw the downcast face of Knife-in-the-Wind, the sullen looks of the people; and he unpacked the box he had reserved jealously for the darkest days that might come. For meal after meal he divided these delicacies among them–morsels of biscuit, and tinned meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes meanwhile were turned again and again to the storm raging without, as it had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent. If it would but slacken, a boat could go out to the nets set in the lake near by some days before, when the sun of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets had been set the storm had raged. On the day when the last morsel of meat and biscuit had been given away the storm had not abated, and he saw with misgiving the gloomy, stolid faces of the Indians round him. One man, two children, and three women had died in a fortnight. He dreaded to think what might happen, his heart ached at the looks of gaunt suffering in the faces of all; he saw, for the first time, how black and bitter Knife-in-the-Wind looked as Silver Tassel whispered to him.
With the color all gone from his cheeks, he left the post and made his way to the edge of the lake where his canoe was kept. Making it ready for the launch, he came back to the fort. Assembling the Indians, who had watched his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him.
No one replied. He pleaded–for the sake of the women and children.
Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. “Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a fool’s journey–does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?”
Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit fled; he reproached them.
Silver Tassel spoke up loudly: “Let Oshondonto’s Great Spirit carry him to the nets alone, and back again with fish for the heathen the Great Chief died to save.”
“You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know well that one man can’t handle the boat and the nets also. Is there no one of you–?”
A figure shot forward from a corner. “I will go with Oshondonto,” came the voice of Wingo, the waif of the Crees.
The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt on the tribe. Then suddenly it softened, and he said to the lad, “We will go together, Wingo.”
Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through the rough wind to the shore, launched the canoe on the tossing lake, and paddled away through the tempest.
* * * * *
The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat, the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near and far…. The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo steadying the canoe–a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of joy from the lips of the waif–a cry that pierced the storm and brought back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore…. The quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water…. Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven near and nearer shore…. The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round clinging–clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue…. At last a rope thrown, a drowning man’s wrists wound round it, his teeth set in it–and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being carried to the mikonaree’s hut and laid upon two beds, one on either side of the small room, as the red sun goes slowly down…. The two still bodies on bearskins in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians flying from the face of death…. The two alone in the light of the flickering fire; the many gone to feast on fish, the price of lives.