Part 5

Beyond Rainy Pass we drop into the canyon of Happy River, and here we have our famous moose-hunt. Soon after we enter the gorge we come upon its tracks--a big bull-moose. We have already traveled nearly thirty miles to-day, and are anxious to make the roadhouse twelve or fifteen miles further on; and now, here comes this big, blundering beast to poke our trail full of deep holes and excite our dogs. He is running ahead of us. The snow is five or six feet deep and he goes in almost to his back at every step. The walls of the canyon are sheer and he cannot escape up its side. The river turns and winds, and here and there are little patches of level ground, thick with large spruce trees.

For three miles we do not catch sight of the moose, but our dogs show that he is on ahead. In spite of my lame back I have to struggle on in front of them and bat "Leader" in the face with my cap, Breeze standing on the brake to keep them from running away. The moose tracks fill our trail for a while, smashing it all to pieces, then veer sideways to a little patch of woods, and the dogs go pell-mell in the moose track, burying our sled out of sight in the deep snow. Then we have to haul them around and lift the sled on the track again, and try to get them along the trail.

Three miles down the river we catch sight of the big moose, and the dogs go wild. "Sheep," who has been disposed to malinger, is the worst of the lot. He forgets all his maladies and weariness and dashes forward, but "Leader" will not leave the track and swings along as best he can, except when the moose is in full sight. Then I have to bat him in the face to keep the team in bounds. Our bells are tingling, our dogs barking and we are shouting. It is a fearsome thing to the bull-moose, this animated machine that is charging down the river at him. So on he struggles through the deep snow, spoiling our trail and filling my companion's mind with blasphemous thoughts which occasionally break out in expression, in spite of his respect for my "cloth."

Four miles of this moose-hunt, with the big brute growing more tired and we more anxious to pass him. Instead of our hunting the moose he is haunting us. At last, around a little point of woods, we see him lying down in the middle of the river right ahead of us. The dogs break bounds and almost upset me as they dash down the trail with Breeze standing on the brake and yelling "Whoa!" The weary bull-moose staggers to his feet again and makes the edge of the woods, but there lies down again.

The trail veers right up to him. I run ahead and take "Leader" and "Ring," one in each hand, and Breeze does the same with "Teddy" and "Sheep." "Moose" is more tractable and we can control him with our voices. We drag the dogs bodily with the sled behind, pass the big brute, his long face not a rod from us, and then, setting "Leader" on the trail again, we urge them down five miles further to "Happy River Roadhouse." That was _one_ hunt in which I was glad to lose the game.

Four hundred miles from our starting point we put up at the "Pioneer Roadhouse" in the little town of Knik at the head of Cook's Inlet. This was one of half a dozen small towns around Knik Arm and Turn-again Arm, the two prongs of Cook's Inlet. These towns had been in existence for fifteen or twenty years, with gold-miners and their families living there; and yet, here at Knik, I preached the first sermon that had ever been preached in a region larger than the state of Pennsylvania! This visit led to the establishment of a number of missions in that region, which is now traversed by the new Government railroad. The towns of Anchorage and Matanuska have sprung into existence and a thriving population of railroad builders, coal miners, gold miners, farmers and men of other trades and professions has settled there.

I left Iditarod on March fifth. I swung into Seward at nine o'clock on the morning of March twenty-eighth and was heartily greeted and entertained by Rev. L. S. Pedersen, pastor of the Methodist Church. He was a photographer as well as a preacher, and took the picture of my arrival. In spite of their hard work, my dogs were fatter and fuller of "pep" than when we started.

I fairly cried when I bade my team good-bye at Seward, taking each beautiful head in my arms and talking to them all. They seemed to feel the parting as keenly as I, for there was a general chorus of mournful howls as I turned away. I never saw my splendid dogs again, for the man who engaged to take them back to Iditarod failed to keep to his bargain, and I had to give them to the man who cared for and fed them at Susitna. I shall never find another team like them.

Notwithstanding the heaviness of the trail, the bitter struggles over mountains and through deep snows, not to mention the pains of lumbago, I look back upon that trip and other trips like it with joyful recollection and longing to repeat the experience. I would rather take a trip through that beautiful wilderness, with my dogs, than travel luxuriously around the world on palatial steamboats. There is more fun in dog-mushing.

V

LOUIE PAUL AND THE HOOTZ

"Oh, 'e's bad feller, dat hootz," exclaimed Louie Paul, our half-breed Stickeen young man, the blood of his French father sparkling in his eyes and gesturing in his hands and shoulders. "'E's devil, 'im. Dat's no swear--dat's truf. Bad spirit got him, sure. _Quonsum sallix_ (Always mad). 'E no savvy scare, no savvy love, no savvy die. 'E's devil, dat's all."

Louie's handsome face and coal-black eyes were alive with excitement, as he danced about his big bundle of _tseek_ (black bear) skins, which he had just brought into Stevens' store at Fort Wrangell, and was unwrapping, preparatory to bartering. His outburst of language was called out by a question of mine. I had been noticing with surprise that among the great numbers of black bear skins that were being brought into the Wrangell stores daily by the Indians, were none of the big brown bear--the _hootz_. I knew these brown bears to be very plentiful up the Stickeen and Iskoot Rivers where Louie had been hunting. At this season (it was in early May) both species of bears, having wakened from their long winter's sleep, were roaming the banks of the streams restlessly day and night, making up in their fierce activity for their six months of torpor. Their coats were at their best--long, silky, glistening, thick and soft. The skins of the black bear Louie had brought were prime. They were more than black. Their ebony surfaces shone and sparkled, beneath our handling, like black diamonds.

I knew that the skins of the hootz would be equally beautiful and twice as large as those of the tseek. They would not be tawny at this season, but a rich, velvety brown, the color of the Irish setter's coat. In my canoe trips and steamboat voyages up the Stickeen I had seen more brown bears than black, standing boldly out on the bank to watch the sputtering steamboat, or grubbing for roots and worms in the green patches up the mountain slopes.

"Why don't you shoot the big bears?" I asked Louie. "I saw four in a bunch the other day. Don't you see any in your hunting trips?"

"Oh, yes," he confessed, "me plenty see hootz. All time me see heem. Yestaday me see tree--big fellers; stand up, all same man."

"What's the matter, then?" I pressed him. "Are you afraid of them?"

"Yes, you bet you boots, I scare of heem. I no shame scare about hootz. S'pose I big fool, I no scare; I shoot heem.--You never see me again no mo'."

Louie Paul had two claims to special distinction. First, he was a very expert and successful bear hunter; and, second, he was the husband of the star pupil of Mrs. McFarland's Home for Girls,--Tilly, the handsomest and brightest of the girls whom we had rescued from the vileness, squalor and sin of heathen life, and were training to be examples and teachers of Christian civilization to their tribe.

I had taken Louie and Tilly the preceding fall and established them at Tongas, one hundred miles south of Wrangell, outfitting Tilly with school books, Bibles, Sunday-school supplies, etc., and paying her a salary as teacher to that wild tribe. Louie's task was to keep up the fires for the school, and to cook for his wife and supply her needs. He had stayed at home faithfully during the winter, procuring the venison, ducks, geese, fish, clams, crabs, and other articles of food they needed, and making himself useful around the branch mission, even occasionally leading in prayer, and exhorting the people. But the trapper's "call of the wild" sounded in the early spring--a call he could not resist. So here he was, having left Tilly to cook her own meals and make her own fires, while he explored the streams, bayous and lakes in his small canoe, pursuing the elusive plantigrades.

The natives of Alaska at that time were handicapped in their hunting by an order of the Government which forbade the Indians to own or use breech-loading guns. This order was enforced among our peaceful Alaska natives, who had never had a serious trouble with the whites, while the Sioux, Apaches and Nez Perces, who were often on the war-path, had all the Winchester, Henry and Enfield rifles they wanted.

The natives of Alaska at that time--the early eighties--had only breech-loading, smooth-bore Hudson Bay muskets; and their round bullets had not much penetrating power. They were all right for deer, but you might fill a hootz full of those big, round balls and he would still have strength to tear you to pieces.

"The more you pester them big bear with them old-fashioned smooth-bores," said one of the old white hunters at Fort Wrangell, "the madder he gits."

Louie Paul looked so much more like a white man than like an Indian, and talked English so fluently, that I had persuaded the collector of customs--the only civil officer we had in that region--to permit me to lend Louie my new 45-75 Winchester repeating rifle. The repeater was a hard-shooting, accurate gun, chambering twelve cartridges in the magazine--the most efficient rifle made at that time. Louie was a fine shot, and the possession of this rifle gave him a great superiority over all the other Indian bear-hunters. He made more money in his three or four weeks of hunting in the spring than Tilly earned by her winter's teaching.

"I should think you would not be afraid of a brown bear when you have my Winchester," I urged. "You could put half a dozen balls clean through him before he could get to you."

Louie shook his curly head doubtfully. "Mebby so; mebby not."

Then his face lit up with a broad grin. "Mebby so I be lak Buck. You hear about Buck an' Kokaekish?"

"No," I replied, scenting a story. "What about them?"

I knew both these men. Kokaekish was a fine old Indian, the father of one of our best boys, whose Christian name was Louis Kellogg, but whose Indian name was Kokaek. The name, Kokaekish, means "Kokaek's Father," illustrating the curious custom of the Thlingets of naming parents after their children.

"Buck" was a French Canadian, Alex Choquette--a white man who had married a Stickeen woman and had been adopted into the tribe. He had seemingly become in heart and life an Indian, talking the language of his tribe, thinking their thoughts and pursuing their customs. How thoroughly he had become Indianized was evidenced by the language of Shustaak--the old heathen chief who had adopted Buck. "Wuck," he said, "delate siwash. Yacka tolo konaway nesika kopa klemenhoot." (Buck is a genuine Indian. He can beat all the rest of us lying.)

True to this definition of him, Buck had built his log house--a combined dwelling-house, hotel and store--thirty miles up the Stickeen River, opposite the Great Glacier, right on the boundary line between Alaska and British Columbia. Here he sold blankets, guns, groceries and whiskey to the white miners and to the Indians. When the Canadian authorities attempted to arrest him for his illicit traffic he claimed to be on the American side. When the Alaska custom officers went after him, he was a Canadian. Thus for years he had carried on his crooked business and escaped punishment.

"You know Buck," Louie began, "he worse siwash dan anybody; but he alltam make fun odder Injun. One day Kokaekish come Buck store, buy powder.

"'Where you come?' Buck say.

"'Iskoot,' say Kokaekish, 'make dry dog salmon. Now too many hootz, me come back.'

"Buck laugh. 'Eehya-a-ah! You _shawat-too_ (woman-heart); you coward! What for you 'fraid hootz? S'pose me, I shootem all.' Buck much laugh.

"Kokaekish, he shame. He head hang down, so. Buck more laugh. Bimeby Kokaekish say, 'Buck, you strong heart. You want killem hootz?'

"Buck big bluff. 'Sure' he say. 'You show me hootz, me shootem quick.'

"'All light, come along. Me showem you hootz now.' Kokaekish go he canoe.

"Buck shame for back out. He get Winchester, all same you rifle. 'Where you go?'

"'No far. Ict tintin, nesika clap.' (One hour, we find.)

"Dey go up Iskoot, mebby tree mile. Fin' leetle stream. Plenty humpback an' dog salmon dere. Flap, flap, splash in shallow place. All roun' de grass all flat--plenty tail, fin, bone. Buck look. He scare, but shame go back. Leetle hill dere by de creek. Plenty bush. Kokaekish an' Buck go up; sit down; wait. Pitty soon sitkum polakly (half night--twilight), Kokaekish ketch Buck arm. Whisper, 'Hootz come.'

"Buck look. Bear all same house--delate hya-a-as! (very big), come down creek. Swing slow an' lazy. Go in water; slap out big salmon on bank pitty near two man; go an' eatem.

"Kokaekish whisper, 'Why you no shootem, Buck? You brave man! You much want killem hootz. Shootem quick!'

"Buck scare stiff. 'Sh-sh-sh! you ol' fool!' he say. He toof clap all same medicine-man rattle; water come out on he face; he shake like Cottonwood leaf.

"Kokaekish laugh. 'More hootz come,' he say. Nodder big bear come; growl, gr-r-r! go fishin'. Den she-bear an' two leetle feller come. Mamma ketch salmon; leetle bear play; run up-hill mos' on top man. Nodder bear come. _Six Hootz_; ketch salmon; scrap; one chase nodder; play.

"Buck not quite die. He lie flat down. He's finger count he's bead; he play Maly; he shake.

"Kokaekish much laugh. He rub it in. 'You brave man, Buck. You white man--no scare nuttin'. You want see hootz. Me fin' heem. Why you no shootem?'

"Bimeby delate polakly (quite dark). All hootz go leetle way up creek. Kokaekish shake Buck. 'Mebby so, you no want more hootz, we go now.' Dey walk han' an' foot--all same dog. Buck fo'get he's rifle. Dey fin' canoe; paddle quick Buck house.

"Now all Injun put shame on Buck face. 'Hey, Buck, you want shootem hootz? You white man; you brave; no scare nuttin'. How many hootz you kill?' Buck delate shame. Mos' keel hese'f. Mebby so, I lak dat."

"No, Louie," I replied when we had done laughing, "you are not like Buck. You would keep your nerve, and at least account for some of the brown bears."

"Well," he ventured doubtfully, "dis Winshesser mighty fine gun. I t'ink I try hootz nex' tam."

A week afterwards Louie came to my house in great excitement. He knocked repeatedly before I could get to the door.

"Mista Yuy," he almost shouted, "you come see my hootz skin. My firs'; my las' too."

I went with him to the store where several fine black bear skins were displayed to an admiring group of whites and natives. With them was an enormous brown bear skin, the largest I had ever seen. The fur was beautiful--rich in color, thick and glossy; but it was bloody and badly mussed. Turning it over I saw that the skin was full of holes--fairly riddled. I counted seventeen perforations. The larger and more ragged of the holes marked the exit of the balls that had ranged clear through the bear.

"Why, Louie," I exclaimed, "what did you mean by spoiling this fine skin? It is like a sieve. You have taken away more than half its value by shooting it up like that."

Louie danced about like a monkey--head, hands, feet, his whole body gesturing, his voice rising higher and louder as he went on with his story.

"You lissen me! I see dis big feller stan' up all same man. Open place; no big tree. Maybe hunner ya'd. I say me, 'Louie, you betta draw good bead dis tam. You shoot heem straight troo de heart, keel heem dead fust shot.'

"I shoot; he fall down. Klosh tumtum (good heart), me. I put de gun on shoul'er. Den I look. I 'stonish. De hootz, he git up queek; he come straight fo' me. I shoot queek; he fall down; he git up; he come for me. I shoot; I shoot; I shoot; he fall down; he fall down; he git up; he come for me. You betcha boots I hit heem ev'y tam. I scare to miss. I forgit how many catridge. I shoot; I shoot; I say, 'Dat's de las'; now he git me; dat's de las'; now he git me.'

"I git awful scare. I t'ink, 'Tilly widow now fo' sure. Nobody git wood fo' her no mo'.'--Dat bear git close--right here! He jus' goin' grab me. I mos' fall down; I so scare. I try once mo'. I put my gun agains' he's head. I shoot; he fall down; he don' git up no mo'. My las' catridge. I put ten ball t'rough heem. _No-mo'-hootz-fo'-me!_"

VI

OLD SNOOK AND THE COW

In the early missionary days at Fort Wrangell I had to be a little of everything to those grown-up, naughty, forest-wise but world-foolish children of the islands whom we called Thlingets and Hydas. I had to be carpenter, and show them how to build better houses. I had to be undertaker, and teach them to make coffins and bury their dead decently. I had to be farmer, showing them how to raise turnips, potatoes, cabbage and peas. Once I gave a package of turnip seed to an old Indian woman. Towards the close of the season I went to see her garden. I found that she had dug a big hole and put all the turnip seed in it. You can imagine the result.

Among other things, I had to be doctor and surgeon to those people. I had never taken a course at a medical school and knew very little about medicine or surgery. But I had books and studied them and did the best I could. The hardest surgical cases I had were the result of little love-taps by old Mr. Hootz, the big brown bear. This bear is almost identical, except in color, with _ursus horribilis_, the grizzly--he is as large and ferocious and as hard to kill. Farther west in Alaska he has the true grizzly color and is called the silver-tip; but in Southeastern Alaska he is a rich brown, the female being much lighter in color than the male.

Once the Indians brought to me a man who had been foolish enough to shoot a hootz with his smooth-bore musket. The bear charged on the Indian, gave him one tap with his paw and went away. The poor man presented a horrible appearance. One eye was torn out, the skin of one side of his face torn loose and hanging down on his shoulder, the cheek laid entirely open. I did my best for him, washed his awful wound, replaced the skin on his face and took many stitches; but I couldn't make a pretty man of him.

Another Indian was hunting in the spring when he came across a little brown cub, and thought he would have a fine pet. He had just caught the little fellow and was trying to hush its cries, when suddenly the mother-bear came on him like an avalanche and he was knocked senseless. When he came to, hours afterwards, he was unable to move. The bear had torn off much of his scalp with the first blow, and then had bitten and chewed him from head to foot, injuring his spine, so that he could never walk again. I dressed twenty-one wounds which the angry she-bear had given him.

But the greatest example of the strength and ferocity of the hootz of which I ever knew was afforded by the adventure of an Irishman--a gold-prospector, whom we called Big Mike. He was a giant in stature--over six feet, broad and stalwart, physically the king of the Cassiar miners. He was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky fellow, a typical gold-prospector, making money very fast at times and spending it just as fast. Like the most of the miners of the Cassiar region (which was reached by traveling by steamboat from Victoria to Fort Wrangell, then by canoe or river steamboat up the Stickeen River a hundred and fifty miles, then across country by pack-train from one hundred to two hundred miles, according to the location of the "diggings"), Mike made Fort Wrangell his stopping place to and from the Cassiar, sometimes wintering there.

One day Dave Flannery, another Irishman, whose Stickeen wife was a member of my mission, came hurriedly up to my house.

"I wish you'd come down and see Big Mike," he said; "he's hurrt bad."

I found Mike in one of the miners' shanties on the beach, lying on a bed, entirely helpless. He could only use his arms, his legs being paralyzed. This was the story he told me:

"Me an' me partner, Steve," he began, "has been prospectin' up the Iskoot." (A tributary of the Stickeen which runs into it about twenty-five miles from its mouth.) "Ye know the Iskoot--a domd bad river--little flat islands thick as spots on a burrd-dog--th' river swift an' shaller--lots av quick-sands an' rocks everywhere--th' shores an' th' islands all matted thick wid trays an' underbrush--big fallen trays lyin' across one anodher an' odher trays growin' out av thim--an' alders, willows, divil-clubs and salmon-berry bushes thicker'n hair on a cat.

"Well, me an' Steve set up our tint by a trickle av cold water in a side gulch, an' thought to spind th' sayson prospectin'. Th' thickets an' brush has scared off prospectors, an' it's new counthry. A wake ago Oi made up me pack for four or five days' prospectin'--blankets, fly tint, an' some grub, wid gold-pan, pick, shovel an' coffee-pot on top.

"Afther an hour o' harrd worrk Oi'd got mebby half a moil from camp, when Oi come to Sathan's own pile o' logs an' brush, stuck up ev'ry-which-way, wid bushes an' divil-clubs atween. Ye cuddn't see a yarrd. Oi tackled it as well as Oi cud wid me pack, an' got onto th' top log. Th' brush wuz that thick Oi cuddn't see pwhat wuz undher me. Oi tuk hold av a limb an' swung down into th' bushes. But before I touched th' groun'--gr-r-r--woof! somethin' of fur an' iron was all over an' aroun' me; me breath was squshed out o' me; somethin' was tearin' the cords out o' me neck an' shouldher, an' me back was bruk intoirly.

"Oi've some repitation as a sthrong man, an' Oi've niver met th' man Oi cuddent down in a fair wrassle; but this thing thut had me didn't play fair. He tuk a foul hold o' me when Oi wasn't lookin', an' niver guv me a chanst to break ut. Whin Oi swung down me left arrum wuz straight up, aholt av th' limb, an' the right wan wuz steadyin' me pack. Th' brute pinned that fast, an' Oi cud no more move it than a baby cud lift a ton.

"When Oi got me sinses gathered togither, an' knowed Oi wuz in the clutches av a bear, me dandher riz an' Oi thought av me knoif. 'Twas in a scabbard on me roight hip, an' that han' was hild toight agin me pack. Me blankets saved me ribs from bein' all stove in.

"Oi tried to twist aroun' an' git me knoif wid me lift han', but it was loik a mouse thryin' to pry off th' paws av a cat. Me fate wuz aff th' groun' an' Oi had no purchase. At las' Oi got ahold av th' handle av th' knoif. Jist as Oi felt me sinses lavin' me Oi got th' knoif an' begun to dig it wid all me strent into th' bear's belly, workin' upwards an' thryin' fer his heart. Thin ev'rythin' wint black.

"Whin Oi come to th' sun was hoigh. Ut must o' bin tree hours Oi laid there sinseless. Oi throied to git up, but me legs wuz dead. Oi cud pull mesilf up a little wid me arrms, an' there Oi saw fur th' furrst toim th' baste thut bruk me. He wuz lyin' besoid me, stone dead. 'Twas all th' joy Oi had.