but held together until in the darkness she floated beyond our ken.
Trouble of our own awaits us. With no one noting, an adventurous scow, with all her precious cargo, has pulled loose from her moorings. By the time the Cree watchman discovers that the "Go-Quick-Her" has taken the bit in her teeth, the runaway with tail-sweep set has turned the next corner of the Athabasca. Great excitement! Billy Loutit and Emile Fosseneuve borrow the Police canoe and go in chase. It is such a rough bit of water that we hold our breaths, for a false stroke means death to both; but that false stroke does not come. Billy Loutit knows this river as we know the borders and shrubs in our garden-bed.
This accident causes everyone to look grave. The Edmonton value of the cargo is over two thousand dollars, but it is a loss that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. These wrecked goods, gaily sailing down the Athabasca, cannot be duplicated at some convenient grocery around the corner.
We have learned that any untoward happening means a half day's delay. Philip Atkinson calls me to one side to suggest that it would be a "clear waste" to leave behind the eggs of "that duck's nest I showed you the day we came." Atkinson is a half-breed with a Hercules-build who looks forty-five and owns up to sixty. He and I chatted over the mallard eggs and my collection of wild flowers, he respecting the preservative art and I in full awe of that art gastronomic of his which gulps the Mallards-in-embryo, sans fourchette, sans salt, sans ceremony.
They are an interesting study, these half-breeds; it means much to each on which side of the English Channel his father had birth. When a Frenchman marries an Indian woman he reverts to her scale of civilization; when a Scot takes a native to wife he draws her up to his. Our crew live at Lac la Biche and were engaged last winter for their season's work at from twenty to forty dollars a month, with board and moccasins. They walked a hundred miles to Athabasca Landing to connect with their summer's job, and the absolute certainty of regular meals just now appeals. They get three meals a day going with the current, and four while tracking back, with meals thrown in when anything unusual happens or a moose is killed. One cannot help wondering how that elastic term "the law of heredity" works out with these people, cut off from the lives their fathers led and from the free woods-life of the pre-civilization Indian.
Philip, duck-stuffed but untroubled by "that full feeling after eating," lights his pipe and looks back through the years. "My father belonged to The Company, my mother was an Ojibway from the Lake of the Woods country. My father went back to the Old Country when I was seven, leaving me to an uncle to be educated, and I don't know 'B' from a bull's foot. He put me to work on the woodpile from morning till night. When my father came back after twelve years and found me ignorant, he cried like a baby. I have no education, but," with a contemplative puff, "I have friends wherever I go." Philip is good to look at and he is a linguist, speaking Cree, French, and excellent English with a delightful Scotch accent. He is an ardent admirer of the H.B. Company. "They always kept their word with a man, and when they had done with him, returned him without cost to his old home." Philip and his two sons were the first to shoot the Grand Rapids, and he tells us that this stretch of the Athabasca River has been used only twenty years. Before that time people from the North reached Winnipeg by the Clearwater. Philip is a Loyalist. During the half-breed rebellion of 1885 he carried dispatches to Middleton and Otter, going seventy-five miles one day on foot. He had his horse, "a draught-horse as black as a crow," taken from him twice, got through the lines and stole another, and tells proudly how for his deed of valor he was presented with an Assomption belt.
At last we are off, keeping sharp look-out for the lost scow. Buffalo River, where we pull up for the night, is a recognized camping-place. The men know where to put their hands on old-time tent-poles, the boys dig out shin-bones of the moose—the relics of some former feast—which they gnaw as a puppy mumbles an old bone.
Another manifestation of gas is here. It bubbles up on the shore and through the water at the boat's bow, and as we strike a match the whole surface flames like the brandy on a Christmas plum-pudding. On the opposite side of the river are "lobsticks," a new word to us and a new thing. To stand as a living totem-pole, the Indians select on a striking promontory a tall spruce and from a section of the trunk lop all the branches except two, which are left as wings. If the lobstick is to stand a monument to a certain man or party, the names of those to be honored are written in Cree on an attached slab. We were to notice lobsticks from point to point along the rest of our journey, some of them indicating good hunting-grounds or fishing-places back from the shore, but most of them memorials of happenings on the river.
The Little Buffalo carries to the Athabasca its noisy current between two high escarpments, and on the shelf leading back from the banks of the main stream is a far-reaching plateau of splendidly-fertile land. In the scow next us the two young Crees who are preparing the food for our evening "meat-su" carry on a religious controversy as they slice the sow-belly. We gather that one has been taken into the Protestant fold and that the other follows the priests. Duncan Tremblé comes down and cuffs them both soundly, putting an end to the argument with, "It's all the same as the other, just like the Hudson's Bay Company and the free trader. Each one tells you his goods is the best and the other is nee-moy-yuh mee-wah-sin (no good). It's that way with the God-goods of the white men. Each church tells you that his is the best, but they all come down to us in the same scow, both the priest and the missionary."
Next morning we are all keyed-up for the rapids, and about six miles down we encounter the Brulé, the first one, and take it square in mid-channel. We ship a little water, but pass through it all too soon, for the compelling grandeur of the Brulé grips one. The river here is held between vertical walls of the reddest of red sandstone against which the lush greenery makes a striking contrast. Twenty miles below is the Boiler Rapid. It got its name not from its churning water but because the boiler of the steamer Wrigley was lost here and still remains at the bottom of the basin. The walls of this rapid are as clear-cut as if wrought into smoothness by mallet and chisel. The tar-soaked sands appear off and on all the way to McMurray. Next comes the Long Rapid (Kawkinwalk Abowstick), which we run close to its right bank.
From the distance sounds the ominous roar of the Big Cascade. At quarter past four we reach the head of the swirling fall. The underlying cause of the Big Cascade is a limestone ledge which cuts the channel diagonally and makes ugly-looking water. We plan to run the rapid one boat at a time. The crews are doubled. Our steersman is alert, expectant, and as agile as a cat, his black hair switching in the wind. Sitting in the centre of the scow, as we do, the sensation is very different to that which one experiences in running rapids in a canoe. Then it is all swiftness and dexterity, for your craft is light, and, in expert hands, easily dirigible with one clever turn of the wrist. With a ten-ton scow the conditions change and you feel correspondingly more helpless.
The great rapid stretches from shore to shore and the drop is sheer. With much excitement, the bowsman points out the channel that seems to him the safe one. No one speaks, and the big awkward craft is brought up for the jump. It is an elephant drawing his feet together to take a water-fence. For all we own in the world we wouldn't be anywhere but just where we sit. If it is going to be our last minute, well, Kismet! let it come. At least it will not be a tame way of going out. For the life of me I cannot forbear a cry of exultation. Then there is the feeling below one's feet which you experienced when you were a kiddie lying flat on your stomach coasting down a side-hill and your little red sled struck a stone. We, too, have struck something, but do not stop to ask what the obstruction is.
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