Chapter 8

Following along the faint trail for some distance, but taking care not to step in it, he at length struck it where it passed through the tall grass. Here he squatted down and made some sort of strange passes over his trap, mumbling certain words in a strange tongue. Like all of his people, Skookie was superstitious. What he wanted to do now was to wish his trap good-luck. Having attended to this part of his ceremony, he drew his knife and began to detach a square of the thick, matted moss, making a cavity about arm's distance at one side of the path. In this hole he buried the hub of the _klipsie_ and covered it carefully with moss, so that nothing was left to show. The arm, which lay back still farther in the grass, he covered up lightly so that it also would be concealed from view. Then, carefully, he stretched his trigger string across the path, mixing it up with some of the dried spears of grass so that it lay a foot or less above the level of the path, or at just about the height at which the fore-legs or breast of the fox would strike it as the animal came walking down the trail. Having bent the grass above his _klipsie_, and arranged everything so that the place showed no signs of what had been going on, Skookie at last smiled, stood back, and looked cheerfully at his work; then he cast a glance toward the skies, and made a sign with his fingers held downward as though to indicate falling rain.

"Bime-by water!" he said.

"He means that he wants it to rain," said Rob, "so that the scent will all be washed off from the trap and from the ground around it."

"Well," said John, "if the water is about the way it averages, he won't have to wait longer than to-night for his rain." Which, indeed, was the case, for in the night, while they were all safely in the barabbara around the fire, the rain came as usual, sufficient to blot out all trace of their late work on the fox trails.

The following morning the boys at once began to wonder what luck had met their trapping operations. It did not appear to them likely that they would catch anything the first night; but Skookie, it seemed, was of a different opinion. After breakfast he led the way to the place where the trap lay, and without hesitation walked into the tall grass, stooped down, and at once held up to view a long, dark animal at sight of which the boys uttered a joint whoop of joy!

"We got him!" said John. "We certainly did get a fox, and the very first night, too."

"Yes," agreed Rob, "we did more than that: we got a silver-gray fox, and a mighty good one at that. Was there ever such luck, I do wonder!"

Skookie took it all as a matter of course, but the others were much excited over this discovery. They put the silky, handsome animal upon the ground and began to smooth out its fur. The fangs of the _klipsie_ had struck it in the back of the neck and killed it instantly, so that the coat remained quite smooth and undisturbed by any struggles. It was long and silky--dark, with white-tipped tail, and gray extremities on all the hairs of the back.

"This skin ought to be worth anyhow one hundred dollars," said Rob, critically. "At least that would be my guess at it. The natives don't often get that much, but sometimes a trader will buy a skin for fifty dollars and sell it for five or six hundred. That all depends on the sort of market he finds."

"Anyhow," said Jesse, "it proves that Skookie can trap foxes all right."

The young Aleut was not disturbed by this praise, and proceeded to further prove his ability as a trapper. Having again set his _klipsie_ at a point a few yards farther down the trail, he took up the dead fox and led the way back to the barabbara, where he undertook to carry the carcass in for his skinning operations.

At this Rob demurred, for he had already seen proof of the custom of the native trappers, who nearly always skin out their game at the fireside of the barabbara, and who are very careless where they leave the carcasses.

"No, you don't!" said Rob. "We've just cleaned out that house, and we don't want it mussed up again so soon. Let's go over to the beach and skin our fox."

Skookie, always docile and willing to obey, once more led the way, carrying the fox under his arm. At last he seated himself on the ground, sharpened his knife-blade on a stone, and began to skin out the fox, much as an old trapper would. He made a cut from one hind leg to the other, cut off the tail bone, pulled the tail off clean by the use of two sticks clamped against the bone, and proceeded to remove the skin from the body without splitting it along the belly--"casing" it, as trappers call it. So carefully did he do his work that he did not make the slightest cut around the eyes or ears or nostrils, and even brought off the whiskers of the muzzle without disfiguring the skin in the least.

Next he found a spreader, or tapering board, under the eaves of the barabbara, and over this he stretched his fox-skin, inside out, setting it away in the back part of the barabbara, where it would slowly dry without being exposed to the fire.

"Well, he certainly is a trapper, all right," said John, admiringly. "Now I believe we could do that sort of thing ourselves. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't get a lot of foxes here, and maybe make some money out of the skins some day."

Rob shook his head. "I don't think so," said he. "Even this skin, although it is not yet rusty from the sunlight, is not perfectly prime, as you can see by looking at the inside of the skin. A really prime skin is white and clear, and you can see that this one is just a little blue along the back. That isn't a good sign to me."

Rob's guess as to the fur soon proved to be correct. For four more nights they watched their _klipsie_ trap without success. On the fifth morning they found another dead fox in the trap, with the barbs through his back. This, however, was only a "cross" fox, and his fur proved so worn and rusty that Skookie scornfully refused to take off the hide. That ended their fox-trapping, for Rob refused to allow any more foxes to be killed. Skookie, apparently willing to go on with his work, or to stop as they preferred, smilingly took up his _klipsie_, after he had sprung the trap, detached the arm, and restored the separated parts to their original hiding-places.

"Plenty times my peoples come here," he said, smiling.

"That means," said Jesse, "that some time or other, if we have luck, we may be discovered here by his people, even if our own people never find us."

"Yes," Rob added, "but I only hope that may be before winter comes and leaves us unable to get out."

XXI

AN ALEUT GOOSE-HUNT

Although utterly remote from the ordinary haunts of man, our young hunters found their new environment one free from monotony, after all. The sea was never twice the same, and even the weather was capricious enough to afford variety. As spring wore on the region seemed to teem with wild life, whether on the earth, in the water, or the air. The gulls, crows, ravens, and eagles were continually passing, with clouds of shags or cormorants, which nested on the rocks a mile or so down the bay, together with numbers of oyster-birds, whale-birds, and other strange fowl of the outlying coast.

Each night and morning also there passed up the lagoon a stream of honking and chattering wild-fowl, the largest of which and most valuable, though least attainable, were the great Canada geese, which frequented this part of the island in large numbers.

"If only we could get hold of some of those fellows," said John, longingly, one morning, as they saw an especially fine flock pass slowly up toward the head of the lagoon. "I'll warrant they'd be good to eat. See, some of them can hardly fly yet, they're so young."

"Yes," said Jesse, "if we had only thought of it last week, they probably would not have been able to fly at all--flappers, they call those young birds. Then we might possibly have killed some of them in the grass at the head of the lagoon."

"We could kill all we wanted now with the rifles," commented Rob; "but, as I said awhile ago, I don't think we ought to use rifle ammunition for killing birds. No one can tell how much we may need our cartridges later on. No, I don't think we will get any geese unless we can catch them with our hands. I haven't much faith in those throwing-cords that Skookie was showing us."

John turned to his friend Skookie. "S'pose you catch-um geese, Skookie?" he asked.

The Aleut boy surprised them very much by his sudden use of English.

"Sure!" he said. He had perhaps learned this word from associating with whites somewhere down the coast.

His prompt reply made them all laugh, but none the less it was of yet greater interest than this.

"How do you mean, Skookie?" asked Rob. "How can you catch a goose when you have no gun? You can't get close enough."

It was always a problem how much English the Aleut understood or did not understand. Now he made his answer by diving into the back of the barabbara and coming out with the curious bunch of thongs which the boys had noticed him carrying when they first encountered him on the beach--a dozen thongs attached to a common centre, each being a couple of yards in length, and each bearing at its extremity a perforated ivory ball perhaps of an ounce or so in weight.

"Well, that don't look very much like a goose-hunt to me," said John; "but it seems to me I've read about the Eskimos using something of this sort. Maybe it'll work on geese, though it looks like a mighty funny kind of shot-gun to me."

"It's an old weapon of wild people," said Rob. "I've read about that sort of thing. They use it in South America for catching animals, and there they call it the _bolas_, or balls. I think they use stones down there, and of course they are a great deal heavier than these little ivory weights."

He motioned to Skookie to show how he proposed to use this curious device. The Aleut, understanding perfectly what was required, again caught the thongs by their central ring and deftly began to whirl them about his head. Aiming at a post which stood up in the grass near the barabbara, he finally cast loose his whirling thongs, which promptly wrapped tightly around the post as they flew. The young brown hunter grinned at this, and all the boys were surprised at the force with which the thongs clung about the object of the aim.

"Jinks!" said John. "I shouldn't wonder if they'd kill a bird, if they hit it, or anyhow tie it up. The question is, how can you get close enough to the geese to catch them with this sort of arrangement. A goose is about the wildest thing in the world. I don't suppose Skookie could hit anything very far."

"I don't know," mused Rob. "But why not let him try? If the birds are done nesting, and the young ones are flying, they would make a mighty good addition to our table if we could get some of them."

Another flock of geese passed by. Rob pointed from the thong-cords toward the geese.

"S'pose you catch-um?" he asked of Skookie.

The boy smiled, and without a word picked up his thongs and led the way along the shore of the lagoon. The others followed, seeing that he proposed to capture some wild-fowl in the native way, as he had once before intimated might be done.

He was no bad hunter, this young savage. After locating a big flock of geese which were sunning themselves on the mud flats close to the grass, he led his companions far back from the water, making a wide détour. At length he began to approach the fowl from a point where they would be concealed by the heavy grass. It seemed an age to the white boys, but Skookie was in no hurry. Like a cat he crawled and crawled, a few inches at a time, until finally he reached a point where they could hear the contented croaking and jabbering of the geese as they rested, entirely unsuspicious of any danger. It must be remembered that in this part of the world the wild-fowl are seldom if ever disturbed, and hence are far less suspicious than when they are near to civilization. If these honkers suspected anything at all now, they did no more than occasionally lift their heads and crane their long necks around. They could see nothing, because their pursuers were all crouched low beneath the tops of the grasses.

The Aleut boy kept on his stealthy approach--little by little--until finally he was within thirty or forty yards of the edge of the water, along which the great wild-fowl were scattered. Rob nudged him to get up and throw, but Skookie knew his own business better. Without uttering a sound he crawled forward rapidly a few paces, on his hands and knees, then sprang to his feet and ran rapidly through the grass toward the edge of the water, uttering the while wild whoops as he began to swing the thongs about his head.

"Look out!" cried John. "They'll all get away! Why don't he throw?"

But Skookie did not undertake to throw so long as the geese were on the ground. He knew that the young geese were weak and not used to flight, and that even at its best a wild goose is slow and heavy to take wing.

All these geese, some scores of young and old, intermingled, now began to scream, squawk, and honk, and clumsily to take wing as best they could. Thus they rose in a confused brown mass, almost in the face of the young hunter, who advanced rapidly, whirling the weighted cords about his head. At precisely the right instant, and not upset by the sudden clamor of the rising fowl, the Aleut boy straightened his arm in front of him and launched his missile with precision into the very middle of the flapping mass of flying fowl.

The execution done was perhaps no more than he expected, but as the white boys saw his success they broke into a cheer. As the startled flock screamed and honked away, down came two of the fowl, one with broken wing and another laid fair about the neck by the gripping cords which had encircled it. Before they could escape, all the boys were after them, plunging into the mud and water, careless of anything but their game. They found that one of their geese was an old gander, but the other was a fat young bird, which John fondled with the utmost interest.

"I'll bet you this one'll be good to eat!" said he. "Let's go back and see how it goes."

"I wonder if you ever will get enough to eat, John!" said Rob, reprovingly. "We have only had breakfast an hour or so. But I'm agreed that young wild goose will make a good change of diet for luncheon."

He patted Skookie on the shoulder to compliment him on his skill.

"Plenty times me catch-um," said Skookie, proudly, as he untangled his cords. "Plenty times my peoples come dis place."

Whether he meant that his people had been hunting here very often, or intended to hunt here often, they could not understand. Happier than they had been for some days, they went back to the hut, picked the old goose, skinned out the breast of the young one, and began, somewhat unskilfully, to prepare for the cookery of their new game. The best they could do was to cut the breast of the fowl into strips and fry it with some of the bear fat in the broken skillet. Even so, they found it delicious eating.

Skookie, after the fashion of his people, sat on the ground cross-legged, and when it came his turn to help himself from the common dish he plunged his fingers into the hot contents, and fishing out a long piece introduced it into his mouth. When his mouth was full as it would hold he took his knife-blade, and after his fashion cut off a piece close to his lips, on the outside--the way in which most of these Northwestern natives eat their meat. The other boys, who had been reared with different ideas of table manners, looked at him with surprise. Skookie did not seem to notice, but munched away contentedly, repeating the performance now and then.

"If that's the way they eat up here," said John, at last, "I suppose we ought to learn how to do it." So saying, soberly he began to sharpen his knife on a near-by stone, as he had seen Skookie do, and, taking a piece of goose breast in one hand, he partly filled his mouth and undertook to cut it off at the proper length. At once he uttered a wild cry, and dropped both knife and morsel to the ground. Blood flowed from his face, and he clapped his hand to the end of his nose, which he had nearly severed with the stroke of his knife, as it had slipped unexpectedly through the piece of meat.

"Now look at you!" said Jesse. "You've pretty near cut off your nose; that's what you've done. That comes of forgetting the way you were brought up. Come here--let me see how badly you're hurt."

Skookie broke out into wild peals of laughter at this mishap, which left John none too well pleased. Rob and Jesse, however, bent over him as he whimpered with the pain, and did what they could to make amends for the disaster.

"Hot water is best for a cut," said Rob, taking their tea-vessel from the fire and looking about for a piece of rag. Thus, in short, by the free use of hot water, he did at length stop the flow of blood in part, at least.

"John," said he, at last, "you came mighty near spoiling your beauty. Your nose is turned up, anyhow, and now you have nearly cut off a half inch more of it. Lucky for you the cartilage was tough, or you would have looked more like an Ethiopian than an American. I guess it will grow fast again, although you will have to wear a handkerchief tied around your face and head for some time."

"I don't care," mumbled John. "I wanted to see how they did it."

"Well, you know now," Rob assured him, in a matter-of-fact way. "But I would suggest that you eat in the ordinary civilized fashion after this, because you haven't any more nose than you need, and your mother might not like you to come home with a part of it missing."

It was some days before the smart of this wound was entirely gone, but it may be said that in time it healed and left but a slight scar at the lower end of the nose, although John for some days went about with a handkerchief tied about his face. This did not prevent his taking part in future goose-hunts, which came to be a regular part of their programme.

Before the geese had become too wise they succeeded in killing several dozen with the thongs, each of them taking his turn and throwing them, which they found not so difficult an art to master, after all. Skookie showed them how to smoke the breasts of these wild-fowl so that they would keep, and thus they made a valuable addition to their stores.

XXII

SPORT WITH THE SALMON

"_Natu_ salmon," said Skookie one morning, poking his head in at the door of the barabbara, where the others still sat, washing up the breakfast dishes.

"What's that he says, John?" asked Rob, who seemed less ready than the younger boy to pick up the native speech.

"_Natu_ means _nothing_ or _no_ or _not_," interpreted John. "What's the matter with the salmon, Skookie?"

They all crawled out of the low-hung door and followed the Aleut to the spot where they had left their fish concealed. They found nothing but stripped bones. Around the spot hung a crowd of great ravens and crows, protesting at being disturbed at this easy meal.

"We had six fine salmon there last night," grieved Jesse. "They're awfully hard to catch now, too, because they've got shy in the shallow water. They're all down in the big hole at the mouth of the creek, and it's going to be harder and harder to get any. As for the whale meat that the old chief left, I don't suppose it was salted enough, and it probably won't keep."

"We'll have to build some sort of shelter for our fish and game," said Rob, looking at the havoc which had been wrought by the birds. "It isn't right to waste even salmon, abundant as they are--although they may not be so abundant after this, as you say, Jesse."

"I'll tell you what," said John, after a moment's thought, "I've got an idea!"

"Well, what is it?"

"You know, there was Uncle Dick's fishing-rod we brought with us in the dory. I took it out and pushed it under a log at the top of the beach wall. Now, I put that rod in the boat carefully myself, because I knew how much Uncle Dick thought of it. I don't suppose he'll thank us for bringing it away, because it's his best trout rod."

"I don't see what use it would be to us," said Jesse. "It's too light to tie a grab hook to, and even if you hooked it into a salmon the rod would break."

"Yes," said Rob, "a trout rod isn't meant in any case for fish as heavy as this. Besides, you see, these salmon never take a fly; even if we had any flies to go with the rod, or any line, or any reel, for that matter."

"The reel is on the butt joint of the rod; I'm pretty sure I saw it there. Come, let's find out! I tell you, I've got an idea," insisted John.

They all repaired to the beach where, as promised, John produced the rod from its hiding-place under the drift-wood log. True, the reel was there in place. Without delay he put the joints of the rod together, finding some difficulty in this, for the rain and salt air had not improved it in the least. None the less they threaded the line through the guides and found that everything was serviceable.

"Uncle Dick would not care," said John, "if he knew just how we are situated."

"Still, I don't get your idea," began Rob.

"Well, I don't know whether or not it's a very good one," answered John; "but who's got a few little hooks to lend me now?"

"Here are two or three," said Jesse, fishing in his pockets. "They're about big enough for bait hooks for trout, but salmon won't take any bait. I don't see what you mean."

John made no comment, but cut off two or three short pieces of the line about a foot in length. To each of these he attached one of the sharp-pointed little hooks and fastened them at intervals a couple of feet apart on the line. One hook he tied at the end of the line itself.

"Oh, I see!" said Rob. "You mean to throw that outfit as though it were a fly."

John nodded. "If you can cast as light a thing as a little trout fly with this rod," he said, "you ought to be able to cast these hooks--larger, not much heavier, and just about right to go straight. Anyhow, let's go down and try."

"Good idea!" agreed Rob. And they all departed, the Aleut boy with them, to the lower reaches of the stream, where, as has been said, the salmon now more frequently resorted.

As they stood on the bank above the big pool they looked down into it, and saw that the sea-tide run of the salmon had brought in the average number of fish. The whole interior of the pool, which otherwise would have had a dark-green appearance, seemed to be made up of melted silver layers, all in motion. There were hundreds of fish moving about, up and down, and round and round, hesitating about following up the thread of the fresh water, and not wanting to go back to the salt water, which lay behind them.

"My gracious, there's about a million in there!" exclaimed John, peering over the edge.

"Yes, but Skookie couldn't get any with the snag-pole now," said Rob. "They're getting wise and stay too far out. I shouldn't wonder if your idea was a good one, if only that rod were stronger."

Rob rubbed his chin meditatively. "You are welcome to try first. I don't want to break that rod, and I know what will happen if you hook on to a big fish with it."

John set his lips in determination, none the less, and stepped down to the edge of the pool. Slowly the interior mass of silver seemed to grow fainter. The fish saw him, and moved gently away to the opposite side of the pool. Presently, however, they could see the shining mass edge back again to the centre of the pool, where the deeper water was over the gravel.