Part 9

“No, no,” laughed Louis. “I did nothing. Askimé knew you had never driven before, and so he played you a trick. He is a wise dog, Askimé, but he deserves a beating.”

The leader of the team was a hardy, swift, intelligent beast, almost pure Eskimo, as his name indicated. The other dogs were of more mixed breed. Both had sharp muzzles and thick, straight hair, brown with white spots on one, dark wolf-gray on the other. Louis was proud of the husky, whom he had raised from puppyhood. Nevertheless he picked up his whip and started towards Askimé.

Walter, his flash of anger past, intervened. “No, don’t thrash him. He was just having a little fun. He has taken the conceit out of me, but I’ll get even with him yet. I’ll learn to drive those dogs and make them behave.”

Louis was still grinning. “Truly you will learn,” he hastened to say, “and—well—perhaps,” his grin broadened, “I might have told you more before you tried this first time. Next time it will go better.”

It did go better next time, and before the winter was over, Walter could handle the dogs satisfactorily, though they never obeyed him as well as their real master.

The snow remained, and the buffalo did not return to the neighborhood of Pembina. Winter had set in in earnest, but Walter was used to cold winters and the Brabant cabin was snug and comfortable. Even the bitter winds that swept the prairie could not find an entrance between the well chinked logs.

The Swiss lad cherished the hope of spending Christmas with the Periers. He planned to go to the Selkirk settlement with a dog train that expected to leave Fort Daer December twenty-first or twenty-second, but he was disappointed. A hard snowstorm, a genuine blizzard, with a high wind out of the north, prevented the sleds from getting away, and he was forced to remain in Pembina.

On Christmas morning he went with the Brabant family to Father Dumoulin’s mission. There was no Protestant church in Pembina, he liked and respected Father Dumoulin, and he did not want to hurt Mrs. Brabant and Louis by refusing to go with them. The boy was surprised to see how crowded the mission chapel was with the Canadians and _bois brulés_, men, women, and children. Very reverently and devoutly the rough, half savage hunters and voyageurs joined in the service and listened to the priest’s words.

The rest of the day the simple, light-hearted people of Pembina celebrated in a very different fashion, feasting, dancing, gaming, and drinking. Gambling and fondness for liquor were the besetting sins of the half-breeds as well as of the Indians, though Father Dumoulin was trying hard to teach them to restrain these passions.

Walter had come to know the rough, wild, but generous and hospitable _bois brulés_ well. He could not decline all their invitations to join in the merrymaking. Moreover he was young, and homesick, and he wanted to share in the festivities. He went with Louis and Neil MacKay to several of the cabins during the afternoon and early evening, where the three ate as much as they could manage of the food pressed upon them. The gaming was carried on principally by the older men, the younger ones preferring to dance. With a little diplomacy, drinking could be avoided without giving offence. Louis and Neil, as well as Walter, had been brought up to be temperate. They did not hesitate to take part in the dancing.

Never had Walter seen such lively, agile jigging as some of the lithe, muscular, swarthy skinned half-breeds were capable of. Men and women were arrayed in their best, and the dark, smoke-blackened cabins were alive with the gay colors of striped shirts and calico dresses, fringed sashes, gaudy shawls, silk and cotton kerchiefs, ribbons, and Indian beadwork.

After dancing until they were weary, the three boys slipped away early, before the fun grew too fast and furious. Walter found it good to be out in the clean, cold air again, away from the heat and smoke and heavy odors of the tightly closed cabins.

The night was a beautiful one, clear and windless. To the north and northeast, from horizon to zenith, wavering, flashing bands and masses of light flooded the sky. Parting with Neil, Louis and Walter trudged through the snow towards the Brabant cabin. Both were absorbed in watching the aurora borealis, the ever changing rays and columns and spreading masses of white, green, and pale pink light, fading out in one spot only to flash up in another, in constant motion and never alike for two moments in succession. But when he turned from the beauty of the night to enter the cabin, there swept over Walter, in a great wave, the homesickness he had been holding at arms’ length all day. He thought of the Christmas of a year ago in Switzerland, and he was heartsick for the mountains and valleys and forests of his native land,—so different from these flat, monotonous prairies,—heartsick for his own people and their speech and ways. What kind of a Christmas had this been for Elise and Max, he wondered. Were they homesick too?

XVIII MIRAGE OF THE PRAIRIE

Early in the New Year, Louis, Neil and Walter set out for the Pembina Mountains or the Hare Hills, as that ridge of rough land was sometimes called. New Year’s day, ushered in with the firing of muskets, was another occasion for merrymaking and hilarity in the settlement. Indeed the feasting, dancing, and gaiety had scarcely ceased day or night since Christmas. Many a _bois brulé_ family had shared their winter supplies so generously with their guests that they had almost nothing left and would have to resort to hunting and fishing through the ice. Though they might starve before spring, the light-hearted, improvident half-breeds did not grudge what had been consumed in the festivities. They would do the same thing over again at the first opportunity.

The rapid decrease of supplies in the village gave Louis and Neil excuse for a hunting trip, and Walter was ready and eager to go along. At the Pembina Mountains they would be sure to find both game and fur animals, Louis asserted. He had been there the winter before and had found good hunting. On that trip he and his companion had come across an old and empty but snug log cabin that had been built by some hunting or trading party. He proposed to return to the old camp and stay several weeks.

Walter was the more ready to go because, on the last day of the old year, he had received word from the Periers that they were getting along all right. The letter, from Elise, was brought by a half-breed who had come from St. Boniface to be married on New Year’s day to a Pembina girl. Her father’s cough was much better, Elise wrote. He was working at the buffalo wool factory with Matthieu. Max had been disappointed to find that Mr. West’s school was a good two miles from Sergeant Kolbach’s home, too far for the little fellow to go and come in cold weather. “But we are both of us learning some English without going to school,” Elise added.

The cabin was warm, and they had enough to eat, principally pemmican, and fish caught in nets set under the ice in the rivers. “You know I did not like pemmican,” wrote Elise, “but now I am used to it. For Christmas we had a feast, a piece of fresh venison, and a pudding made with some wheat flour M. Kolbach had saved and with a sauce of melted sugar, the sugar the Indians make from the sap of the maple tree. Have you eaten any of that sugar, Walter? It is the best thing I have tasted since we came to this new land. You wrote to me that I must tell you if everything here did not go well. Of course it is not like home in Switzerland. We are not as comfortable or as happy as we were there, and sometimes Max and I are very lonely and homesick. Father does not complain of the hardships and is always planning what we are going to do when spring comes. We keep warm, we are well, and we have enough to eat, though we long for bread with butter, and milk, and cheese. I get the meals and wash and mend our clothes and keep the house clean. M. Kolbach says it is more comfortable than before we came. I can’t really like M. Kolbach, though I know I ought to, it is so good of him to have us here. He is rather harsh to Max sometimes, but not to me, and yet I feel a little afraid of him. Isn’t it strange that we can’t like people by just trying to, no matter how hard we try? But I am very grateful to M. Kolbach for taking care of us.”

This part of the letter troubled Walter a little, but, reading it over a second time, he concluded that Elise was merely homesick. Kolbach was very likely a rough sort of man, but he must have a kind heart or he would not do so much for strangers. There was no mention of the younger brother. Probably Elise knew nothing of him. Father Dumoulin thought Fritz Kolbach might not be on very good terms with the Sergeant. Perhaps after the robbery of the Indian, Fritz had not returned to St. Boniface. Undoubtedly the trader at Pembina had sent an account of that affair to Fort Douglas. Kolbach and Murray might not dare to show their faces there.

The day of their start for the Pembina Mountains, Louis and Walter were up before dawn. The morning was still and very cold. After packing their few supplies and belongings on the toboggan, the boys passed a long rawhide rope, or _shaganappy_, back and forth over the load and through the loops of the leather lashing that ran along the edges of the sled. Before the work was done their fingers were aching. They were glad to go back into the cabin for a breakfast of hot pemmican and tea.

As he went out again, Walter paused on the threshold to stare in amazement. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but the whole world had changed. He seemed to be standing in the center of a vast bowl. On every hand the country appeared to curve upward. And the distance was no longer distant! Groves of bare branched trees, streams, heights of land that he knew to be miles away had moved in around the settlement until they seemed only a few rods distant. To the west the line of hills,—Pembina Mountains,—that he had never glimpsed, even on the clearest day, as more than a faint blue line on the horizon, loomed up a mighty, flat-topped ridge. Once before, in December, Walter had seen the landscape transformed, but it was nothing to compare with this. Louis, familiar from childhood with the mirage of the prairie, declared he had never known such an extraordinary one.

Awed and wondering, the two lads stood gazing about them. Turning to the east, they watched a spreading ray of crimson light mount the sky from the soft, low lying, rose and gold bordered clouds at the horizon. The sun was coming up. As the horizon clouds reddened and the rim of the glowing disk appeared, an exclamation from his companion caused Walter to wheel about.

Louis was pointing at two men and a dog team gliding through the air,—upside down! Every detail was startlingly clear, capotes with hoods pulled up, sashes, buckskin leggings, snowshoes. The driver with the long whip looked very tall. He belabored his dogs cruelly. It seemed to Walter that he ought to hear the man’s shouts and curses, the howls and whines of the abused beasts. He could see their tracks in the snow, and a fringe of trees beyond them,—everything inverted as if he himself were standing on his head to watch men and dogs moving across the prairie. As he watched, the figures grew to gigantic stature, the outlines became indistinct. They vanished altogether. The sun was above the clouds now. The distance grew hazy. Only part of the chain of hills was visible. Louis turned to Walter, excitement in his voice.

“I think those men go to the mountain too,” he said. “Do you know how far away they are?”

Walter shook his head. He felt quite incapable of estimating distance in this fantastic world, where things he knew to be miles away were almost hitting him in the face.

“At least fifteen miles,” declared Louis impressively.

“Impossible. We couldn’t see them so plainly.”

“And yet we have seen them. The mirage is always unbelievable.”

“What is it anyway, Louis? What causes it?”

The Canadian lad shrugged his shoulders. “The Indians say the spirits of the air play tricks to bewilder men and make them wander off the trail to seek things that are not there. Once I asked Father Dumoulin and he said the spirits had nothing to do with it. He called it a false effect of light, but that does not explain it, do you think?”

Again Walter shook his head.

“This I have noticed,” Louis went on. “I have never seen the mirage in winter except at dawn or sunset. In summer I have seen it in the middle of the day when it was very hot and still. But why it comes, winter or summer, I do not know.”

Neil’s arrival stirred the others to action. The dogs were harnessed and good-byes said to Louis’ mother and sisters and rather sulky younger brother. Raoul wanted to go too, but one of the boys was needed at home.

Fresh and full of spirits, the dogs set off at such a pace that the boys had all they could do to keep up. When they left the trail and took to the untracked snow, speed slackened considerably. Louis now went ahead of the team, though track breaking was hardly necessary. Underneath an inch or more of dry, loose stuff, almost like sand, the snow was well packed and held up the dogs and sled. The line of hills had vanished, but the mirage did not entirely disappear and the landscape resume its natural appearance until the sun had been up nearly two hours.

The day was cold, much colder than the lads realized at first, for, when the start was made and for some time thereafter, there was not a breath of wind. All three wore fur caps and mittens, woolen capotes, and thick knit stockings under their moccasins. Walter had possessed none of these things when he came to Pembina, but Mrs. Brabant had made him a capote from a Hudson Bay blanket and a cap and mittens from a rather well worn bearskin. She had knit warm, new stockings for both boys from yarn bought at the trading post. A prickling feeling in his nose was Walter’s first warning that his flesh was freezing. Stooping for a handful of snow, he rubbed the prickly spot to restore circulation, and pulled the hood of his capote farther around his face.

Their course at first lay to the north of the Pembina River, over flat prairie without an elevation high enough to be called a hill. On that January morning, the whole plain was a stretch of dazzling white. In the distance it appeared level, but it was actually made up of rolling snow waves. It was, Walter thought, like a great lake or sea, the waves of which had suddenly frozen while in motion and turned to snow instead of ice.

XIX BLIZZARD

As the sun rose higher the wind began to blow. The loose surface snow was set in motion, crawling and creeping up the frozen waves. The wind gained in strength, and everywhere the plain seemed to be moving. The glitter was less trying to the eyes now, for the sun had grown hazy. Louis glanced up at the sky, shouted to his dogs, sent his long whip flying through the air and flicked the leader with the lash.

“A storm comes,” he called to his companions. “We must make haste and reach the river where it bends to the north.”

With the increase of speed, Walter, less experienced in this sort of travel than his comrades, found keeping up difficult. Neither with nor without snowshoes was he the equal of the swift, tireless Louis. Neil too was his superior on snowshoes, though on bare ground Walter could outrun the Scotch boy. In spite of all his efforts he fell behind. Seeing his difficulty, Louis suggested that he ride for a while, standing on the rear of the sled. Glad though he was of a few minutes’ rest, Walter did not ride long. The northwest wind soon chilled him through, and he was forced to run to warm himself.

The dogs’ pace was slackening. The course was due west, and the wind, striking them at an angle, slowed their progress. The surface snow, caught up by the gale, drove against and swirled about beasts and boys.

Walter plodded after the others, head lowered, capote hood pulled down over his cap to his eyes. Suddenly he realized that the fine, driving, blinding stuff that struck against him with such force and stung wherever it touched his bare skin, was not merely the fallen snow whipped forward by the wind. Snow was falling,—or being lashed down upon him,—from above. The sunshine was gone. The distance, the sky were wholly blotted out. He and his comrades were in the grip of a hard northwest storm, a genuine prairie blizzard.

Louis was having his hands full trying to keep a straight course. All landmarks blotted out, the wind was the only guide, and the dogs were continually edging away from the bitter blast. The French boy, of a naturally kind disposition and brought up by a good mother and a father who had no Indian blood, was far more humane than most dog drivers. He never abused his beasts, and he punished them only when discipline was necessary. Now, however, he was compelled to use the whip vigorously to keep them from swinging far to the south. Shouts and commands, drowned out by the roaring of the wind, were of little avail.

Dogs and boys struggled on in the driving wind, the bitter cold, and the blinding snow; and the struggle saved them from freezing. The snow was coming so thick and fast they could see only a few feet in any direction. Following behind the toboggan, Walter could not make out Askimé or the second dog. The third beast, next to the sled, was but a dim shape. Louis and Neil took turns going ahead of Askimé. While one was breaking trail, the other wielded the whip and tried to keep the dogs in the track.

Plodding on through a white, swirling world, fighting against wind and snow, his whole mind intent on keeping the shadowy, moving forms in sight, his feet feeling like clogs of wood, his ankles and calves aching with the unaccustomed exercise of snowshoeing, Walter lost all count of time. When the sled stopped, he kept on blindly and nearly fell over it.

Louis seized him by the arm and shouted, “We can go no farther. We can’t keep a straight course. We must camp here.”

Walter tried to look about him. He could see nothing but wind-driven snow, not a tree or hill or other sign of shelter. “We’ll freeze to death,” he protested huskily.

“No, no, we will be safe and warm. Kick off your snowshoes and help Neil dig.”

Walter obeyed, slipping his feet from the thongs. Following the Scotch lad’s example, he seized one of the shoes and, using it as a shovel, began to scoop up snow. Louis unharnessed the dogs and unlaced the hide cover, almost freezing his fingers in the process. Hastily dumping the supplies in a heap, he turned the sled on its side, and joined the diggers. In the lee of the toboggan, which kept the drifting snow from filling the hole as fast as they dug it out, the three boys worked for their lives. Down through the dry, loose surface, through the firm packed layer below, to the hard frozen ground, they dug. Scooping out the snow, they tried to make a wall, though the wind swept it away almost as rapidly as they piled it up.

Working steadily at their best speed, they succeeded at last in excavating a hole large enough to hold all three. The heap of supplies had been converted into a mound, the toboggan into a drift. Burrowing into the mound, the boys pulled out robes and blankets, hastily spread them at the bottom of the hole, and threw in their supplies. A long pole, that Louis had added to the load just before starting, was laid across the hole, one end resting on the toboggan. Clinging to the hide cover to keep it from blowing away, they drew it over the pole and weighted down the corners with a keg of powder, a sack of bullets, and the steel traps. After the edges of this tent roof had been banked with snow to hold it more securely, the three lads crawled under it.

When he had recovered his breath, Walter asked, “What has become of the dogs?” He had not noticed them since Louis took off their harness.

“Do you think they are lost then?” said their master with a grin. “No, they have buried themselves in the snow to keep warm. They have earned a meal though, and they shall have it.” Seizing three of the frozen fish he had brought for the dogs, Louis crawled out into the storm to find and feed them.

He was back in a few minutes, huddling among the robes and blankets. The hole was none too large. When they sat up straight, their heads nearly touched the hide cover, and all three could not lie down at one time. But in the snug burrow, with the snow-banked sled to windward, they did not feel the wind at all.

Knowing that they might have to camp where there was no fuel to be found, Louis had included a few small sticks among their supplies. Shaving one of the sticks into splinters, he struck his flint and steel and kindled a tiny fire on the bare ground in the center of the shelter. In the cover above he cut a little hole for the smoke to escape. Small though the blaze was, it sent out heat enough to thaw the boys’ stiff fingers and feet, and its light was cheering in the dark burrow. Louis melted snow, made tea, and thawed out a chunk of frozen pemmican.

By the time the meal was over, Walter found himself surprisingly warm and comfortable. He had not supposed he could be so comfortable in such a crude shelter. He was drowsy and wanted to take a nap, but one fear troubled him and made him reluctant to yield to his sleepiness.

“If the snow covers us over, won’t we smother in this hole?” he asked.

Louis shook his head. “There is no danger, I think. Often men overtaken by storm camp in the snow like this, and I never heard of anyone being smothered. There is not much snow on our tent now. It banks up against the toboggan and blows off our roof. But even if we are buried in a drift, we can still breathe I think, and we won’t freeze while we have food and a little wood to make hot tea.”

“And the dogs?”

“They will sleep warm, covered by the snow.”

Reassured, Walter settled himself as comfortably as he could manage in the cramped quarters, and went to sleep. When he woke, he found the others both sleeping, Neil curled up in his thick plaid, and Louis in a sitting position with his head down on his knees. The fire had gone out, and in spite of the blanket in which he was wrapped and the buffalo robe spread over Neil and himself, Walter felt chilled through. It was too dark in the hole for him to see the figures on his watch. Trying to rub some warmth into his cramped legs, he roused Louis.

“How long have I been asleep? Is it night?”

“I think not yet,” replied Louis, answering the second question. “It grows colder. I will make a fire and we will have some hot tea.”

To clear a space for the fire, Louis unceremoniously rolled Neil over and woke him. The Scotch lad growled and grumbled at being disturbed, but the prospect of hot tea restored his good humor. Looking at his watch in the light of the tiny blaze, Walter discovered that it was not yet five o’clock. The storm still raged over them.

“Do we get something to eat with this?” Neil asked, as Louis poured the steaming tea into his tin cup.

“Not now. We have only a little wood. We must not keep the fire burning. Warm your fingers and your feet well before it burns out.”

Louis was the leader of the expedition, and Neil did not question his decree. The three drew their blankets and robes closer about them, and made the most of the hot drink and the tiny fire. They were not sleepy now, so they talked, huddled together for warmth.

After a time conversation lagged. They grew silent, then drowsy. Walter dropped off, and woke to find Louis kindling another little blaze. It was after nine, and the three made a scanty meal of thawed pemmican before going to sleep again.