Ungava Bob.

by Dillon Wallace.

I

HOW BOB GOT HIS "TRAIL"

It was an evening in early September twenty years ago. The sun was just setting in a radiance of glory behind the dark spruce forest that hid the great unknown, unexplored Labrador wilderness which stretched away a thousand miles to the rocky sh.o.r.es of Hudson's Bay and the bleak desolation of Ungava. With their back to the forest and the setting sun, drawn up in martial line stood the eight or ten whitewashed log buildings of the Hudson's Bay Company Post, just as they had stood for a hundred years, and just as they stand to-day, looking out upon the wide waters of Eskimo Bay, which now, reflecting the glow of the setting sun, shone red and sparkling like a sea of rubies.

On a clearing to the eastward of the post between the woods and water was an irregular cl.u.s.ter of deerskin wigwams, around which loitered dark-hued Indians puffing quietly at their pipes, while Indian women bent over kettles steaming at open fires, cooking the evening meal, and little Indian boys with bows shot harmless arrows at soaring gulls overhead, and laughed joyously at their sport as each arrow fell short of its mark. Big wolf dogs skulked here and there, looking for bits of refuse, snapping and snarling ill-temperedly at each other.

A group of stalwart, swarthy-faced men, dressed in the garb of northern hunters--light-coloured moleskin trousers tucked into the tops of long-legged sealskin moccasins, short jackets and peakless caps--stood before the post kitchen or lounged upon the rough board walk which extended the full length of the reservation in front of the servants' quarters and storehouses. They were watching a small sailboat that, half a mile out upon the red flood, was bowling in before a smart breeze, and trying to make out its single occupant.

Finally some one spoke.

"'Tis Bob Gray from Wolf Bight, for that's sure Bob's punt."

"Yes," said another, "'tis sure Bob."

Their curiosity satisfied, all but two strolled into the kitchen, where supper had been announced.

Douglas Campbell, the older of the two that remained, was a short, stockily built man with a heavy, full, silver-white beard, and skin tanned dark as an Indian's by the winds and storms of more than sixty years. A pair of kindly blue eyes beneath s.h.a.ggy white eyebrows gave his face an appearance at once of strength and gentleness, and an erect bearing and well-poised head stamped him a leader and a man of importance.

The other was a tall, wiry, half-breed Indian, with high cheek bones and small, black, shifting eyes that were set very close together and imparted to the man a look of craftiness and cunning. He was known as "Micmac John," but said his real name was John Sharp. He had drifted to the coast a couple of years before on a fishing schooner from Newfoundland, whence he had come from Nova Scotia. From the coast he had made his way the hundred and fifty miles to the head of Eskimo Bay, and there took up the life of a trapper. Rumour had it that he had committed murder at home and had run away to escape the penalty; but this rumour was unverified, and there was no means of learning the truth of it. Since his arrival here the hunters had lost, now and again, martens and foxes from their traps, and it was whispered that Micmac John was responsible for their disappearance. Nevertheless, without any tangible evidence that he had stolen them, he was treated with kindness, though he had made no real friends amongst the natives.

When the last of the men had closed the kitchen door behind him, Micmac John approached Douglas, who had been standing somewhat apart, evidently lost in his thoughts as he watched the approaching boat, and asked:

"Have ye decided about the Big Hill trail, sir?"

"Yes, John."

"And am I to hunt it this year, sir?"

"No, John, I can't let ye have un. I told Bob Gray th' day I'd let him hunt un. Bob's a smart lad, and I wants t' give he th' chance."

Micmac John cast a malicious glance at old Douglas. Then with an a.s.sumed indifference, and shrug of his shoulders as he started to walk away, remarked:

"All right if you've made yer mind up, but you'll be sorry fer it."

Douglas turned fiercely upon him.

"What mean you, man? Be that a threat? Speak now!"

"I make no threats, but boys can't hunt, and he'll bring ye no fur.

Ye'll get nothin' fer yer pains. Ye'll be sorry fer it."

"Well," said Douglas as Micmac John walked away to join the others in the kitchen, "I've promised th' lad, an' what I promises I does, an'

I'll stand by it."

Bob Gray, sitting at the tiller of his little punt, _The Rover_, was very happy--happy because the world was so beautiful, happy because he lived, and especially happy because of the great good fortune that had come to him this day when Douglas Campbell granted his request to let him hunt the Big Hill trail, with its two hundred good marten and fox traps.

It had been a year of misfortune for the Grays. The previous winter when Bob's father started out upon his trapping trail a wolverine persistently and systematically followed him, destroying almost every fox and marten that he had caught. All known methods to catch or kill the animal were resorted to, but with the cunning that its prehistoric ancestors had handed down to it, it avoided every pitfall. The fox is a poor bungler compared with the wolverine. The result of all this was that Richard Gray had no fur in the spring with which to pay his debt at the trading store.

Then came the greatest misfortune of all. Emily, Bob's little sister, ventured too far out upon a cliff one day to pluck a vagrant wild flower that had found lodgment in a crevice, and in reaching for it, slipped to the rocks below. Bob heard her scream as she fell, and ran to her a.s.sistance. He found her lying there, quite still and white, clutching the precious blossom, and at first he thought she was dead.

He took her in his arms and carried her tenderly to the cabin. After a while she opened her eyes and came back to consciousness, but she had never walked since. Everything was done for the child that could be done. Every man and woman in the Bay offered a.s.sistance and suggestions, and every one of them tried a remedy; but no relief came.

All the time things kept going from bad to worse with Richard Gray.

Few seals came in the bay that year and he had no fat to trade at the post. The salmon fishing was a flat failure.

As the weeks went on and Emily showed no improvement Douglas Campbell came over to Wolf Bight with the suggestion,

"Take th' maid t' th' mail boat doctor. He'll sure fix she up." And then they took her--Bob and his mother--ninety miles down the bay to the nearest port of call of the coastal mail boat, while the father remained at home to watch his salmon nets. Here they waited until finally the steamer came and the doctor examined Emily.

"There's nothing I can do for her," he said. "You'll have to send her to St. Johns to the hospital. They'll fix her all right there with a little operation."

"An' how much will that cost?" asked Mrs. Gray.

"Oh," he replied, "not over fifty dollars--fifty dollars will cover it."

"An' if she don't go?"

"She'll never get well." Then, as a dismissal of the subject, the doctor, turning to Bob, asked: "Well, youngster, what's the outlook for fur next season?"

"We hopes there'll be some, sir."

"Get some silver foxes. Good silvers are worth five hundred dollars cash in St. Johns."

The mail boat steamed away with the doctor, and Bob and his mother, with Emily made as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, turned homeward.

It was hard to realize that Emily would never be well again, that she would never romp over the rocks with Bob in the summer or ride with him on the sledge when he took the dogs to haul wood in the winter.

There would be no more merry laughter as she played about the cabin.

This was before the days when the mission doctors with their ships and hospitals came to the Labrador to give back life to the sick and dying of the coast. Fifty dollars was more money than any man of the bay save Douglas Campbell had ever seen, and to expect to get such a sum was quite hopeless, for in those days the hunters were always in debt to the company, and all they ever received for their labours were the actual necessities of life, and not always these.

Emily was the only cheerful one now of the three. When she saw her mother crying, she took her hand and stroked it, and said: "Mother, dear, don't be cryin' now. 'Tis not so bad. If G.o.d wants that I get well He'll make me well. An' I wants to stay home with you an' see you an' father an' Bob, an' I'd be _dreadful_ homesick to go off so far."

Emily and Bob had always been great chums and the blow to him seemed almost more than he could bear. His heart lay in his bosom like a stone. At first he could not think, but finally he found himself repeating what the doctor had said about silver foxes,--"five hundred dollars cash." This was more money than he could imagine, but he knew it was a great deal. The company gave sixty dollars _in trade_ for the finest silver foxes. That was supposed a liberal price--but five hundred dollars in _cash_!

He looked longingly towards the blue hills that held their heads against the distant sky line. Behind those hills was a great wilderness rich in foxes and martens--but no man of the coast had ever dared to venture far within it. It was the land of the dreaded Nascaupees, the savage red men of the North, who it was said would torture to a horrible death any who came upon their domain.

The Mountaineer Indians who visited the bay regularly and camped in summer near the post, told many tales of the treachery of their northern neighbours, and warned the trappers that they had already blazed their trails as far inland as it was safe for them to go. Any hunter encroaching upon the Nascaupee territory, they insisted, would surely be slaughtered.

Bob had often heard this warning, and did not forget it now; but in spite of it he felt that circ.u.mstances demanded risks, and for Emily's sake he was willing to take them. If he could only get traps, _he_ would make the venture, with his parents' consent, and blaze a new trail there, for it would be sure to yield a rich reward. But to get traps needed money or credit, and he had neither.

Then he remembered that Douglas Campbell had said one day that he would not go to the hills again if he could get a hunter to take the Big Hill trail to hunt on shares. That was an inspiration. He would ask Douglas to let him hunt it on the usual basis--two-thirds of the fur caught to belong to the hunter and one-third to the owner. With this thought Bob's spirits rose.

"'Twill be fine--'twill be a grand chance," said he to himself, "an Douglas lets me hunt un, an father lets me go."

He decided to speak to Douglas first, for if Douglas was agreeable to the plan his parents would give their consent more readily. Otherwise they might withhold it, for the trail was dangerously close to the forbidden grounds of the Nascaupees, and anyway it was a risky undertaking for a boy--one that many of the experienced trappers would shrink from.