CHAPTER XIX.
THE INDIAN DEVIL.
My companion and I were sitting late one afternoon at a beaver lake, waiting for the sun to get near the tree tops before pushing our canoe into the lake to watch for beaver. They generally break water near the lodge about sundown and swim along shore to cut their food, and one has usually a chance of a shot.
All at once we heard back in the bush a cracking and breaking of branches, readily understood as done by a large animal running through the underbrush at a high rate of speed. The noises came nearer and nearer, a little off to our right, and I grasped my double-barreled gun which lay beside me and waited events.
A few moments after we saw a large caribou break cover about one hundred yards to the right and spring into the lake. But what was that black object clinging to his neck? Surely some animal!
The caribou struck out as fast as it could swim, heading for the further shore, and we jumped into our canoe and gave pursuit. The keen eyes of the animal on the caribou's neck having detected us, it relinquished its hold, dropped off into the water and turned for the shore the caribou had left.
The canoe was immediately headed to cut off his retreat, and when within proper distance I shot it with one barrel and left it there dead on the surface of the lake, while we continued on our chase.
This diversion had taken our attention from the caribou, but now, when we had resumed the chase, we found the animal was getting through the water very slowly, and as we were paddling in its wake, we perceived the water at each side of the canoe was bloody. By the time we reached the caribou it was dead.
On examination we found the jugular vein had been cut by the fierce animal on its back, and it had bled to death, fleeing with what strength it had to the last drop of the poor thing's blood.
We threw a string over its horns and towed it back to the portage, picking up in passing our floating black animal, which proved to be a very large wolverine, carcajo or Indian devil, the beast going under all of these names with hunters and traders.
The carcajo, when he loads for deer, goes down to one of their runways, or on a road leading to a salt lick. He climbs a tree and gets out on some branch overhanging the track. Here he flattens himself out and waits. Yes, he is a record waiter. He can give points to even the girl who is waiting and watching.
Time is no object to him; his inwards may be shriveling up for want of food, but there he remains. Once he has taken up that position nothing but a deer will make him show the least sign of life. He is to all intents a part of the tree limb, and the knowledge that all things "come to him who waits" is strongly fixed in his devil brain.
The deer passes, he drops on to him like a rock. Should he strike too far back, his cruel claws grip his way up toward the neck, and there he settles himself, a fixture, and cuts away at the large veins till the poor deer bleeds to death.
As soon as the deer feels this foreign weight on his back the cruel teeth cutting into him, he at once runs into and through the thickest part of the forest trying to rub the incubus off his back. But the carcajo has the tenacity of the bulldog, and his own skin would be ripped and lacerated before he would let go his hold.
The deer, realizing this mad rush through the bush is useless, makes for the nearest water in the hope that this will rid him of his enemy. But vain hope, the wolverine is there to stop, and only opens his jaws when the deer is dead, or, as in my instance, through fear for his personal safety.
Our beaver hunt was spoilt for that night, so we moved back on the trail and camped. There we passed our time drying the deer's meat and skinning the Indian devil.
* * *
The amount of destructiveness contained in a full grown wolverine, or, as he is sometimes called, carcajo and Indian devil, is something past belief to any one who has not lived in the country in which they resort. The tales told by hunters and lumbermen of the doings of this strong and able beast would fill pages. Some of these, like fish stories, may be seasoned by a pinch of salt, therefore I will only jot down a few that I experienced personally in my trapping days.
Hunger cannot always be adduced as a reason for their thieving propensities, inasmuch as they will steal martens, rabbits and partridges out of traps and snares when they are full to repletion just out of pure cussedness, as it were, to make the owner of the traps and snares to use unseeming language.
When once a wolverine gets on a line of deadfalls the trapper has either to abandon his traps and seek new fields, or kill the mischievous animal, for even should the line be ten miles long the Indian Devil will destroy or put out of order each trap to the very end. Their favorite plan is to tear out the back of the trap. If they find a marten caught and they are not hungry, they will carry it off at right angles to the trail and bury it in the snow, or climb a tree and deposit it on a cross branch. I have found no fewer than three martens when visiting my trap road a day after the wolverine had passed.
Once when chum and I were off for a couple of nights from our main camp, on our return we missed a toboggan from in front of the shanty door. This was passing strange as no Indians were in the vicinity, nor had passed our way. Hunt as we did in every conceivable place did not produce the missing sled. It was only two years after when camping in the same place and felling a dry spruce for firewood that the toboggan and tree came to earth together. The mystery was solved, a wolverine had drawn it up in the top branches of the tree and left it.
I remember a laughable occurrence that took place once. Chum and I had a small log shanty on the edge of a big lake. This was our headquarters. Radiating from the shanty we had lines of traps to the four points of the compass and we often slept out a night, visiting and cleaning out the traps. Each used to take a line end, each slept for that night solitary in the wilds.
On our return from one of our trips we met on the edge of the clearing and when we got to our shanty we noticed things looked strange and yet we could not tell for a moment what it was. On opening the door things looked stranger still, for on the floor was a mixture of mostly all our belongings, flour, matches, moccasins, tobacco, soap and numerous other things and sifted over all was ashes.
One would think a hurricane had come down the chimney and blown everything loose, but we knew better. Some animal must have done this devastation and we could call that animal by his right name by reading his work. Yes, a wolverine had been there and we fell to calling him some appropriate names and as we went along, we invented other names which our cuss vocabulary did not possess.
During a momentary lull in our burst of passion, we heard a slight scratching under the table and there we found the worker of all the mischief. A blow of the axe finished him then and there and he was pulled out into the light. Our surprise was great to find most of the hair on his head singed off and he was blind in both eyes. Then we set to work to read the signs how it happened.
We found by our deduction that in the first place he had clambored up on to the roof and from there had entered by the wide mouthed chimney. Once in the shanty he had set to work to examine and investigate everything about, each in turn to be cast from him on the floor.
The very last thing to attract his attention was my chum's powder horn. It was one of those old-fashioned cow horns with a plug in the small end. There was at the time nearly half a pound of gun powder in it. With this bright and shining article "carajou" started to clambor up and out thru the chimney.
Alas! he held the butt end upwards. By dryness, I suppose, the plug dropped out and a fine stream of powder found its way to the center of our fireplace where a few coals must have yet kept fire. A flame shot up, an explosion followed, and down came the frightened, blinded beast. No doubt from agony and fear he crawled under the table where we found him and put an end to his misery.
Their legs are very strong and muscular and I have known them to break out of even a No. 4 Newhouse. When they will take bait a pretty sure way to get them is by "setting a gun," but this is dangerous work as some stranger might pass that way, and even to the person setting the gun, great care must be used.
As they are very seldom famished and therefore will not take bait, about the only thing for the trapper to do is to give him the "right of way," and the hunter to move to some other part of the country for a month or so. We call them the Indian Devil because he inhabits the Indian country, but the Indians themselves call them "Bad Dog," this being the lowest and meanest name their language supplies.