These were Dogribs of Chief Vital's band;
all told they numbered about thirty men, women, and children; with
them were twenty-odd dogs, which immediately began to make trouble.
When one is in Texas the topic of conversation is, "How are the
cattle?" in the Klondike, "How is your claim panning out?" and in
New York, "How are you getting on with your novel?" On Great Slave
Lake you say, "Where are the Caribou?" The Indians could not tell;
they had seen none for weeks, but there was still much ice in the
east end of the lake which kept them from investigating. They had
plenty of dried Caribou meat but were out of tea and tobacco. I had
come prepared for this sort of situation, and soon we had a fine
stock of dried venison.
These were the Indians whose abandoned dogs made so much trouble
for us in the days that followed.
At 4 P. M. of 23d of July we were stopped by a long narrow floe of
broken ice. Without consulting me the crew made for the shore.
It seemed they were full of fears: "What if they should get caught
in that floe, and drift around for days? What if a wind should
arise (it had been glassy calm for a week)? What if they could',
not get back?" etc., etc.
Preble and I climbed a hill for a view. The floe was but half a
mile wide, very loose, with frequent lanes.
"Preble, is there any reason why we should not push through this
floe using poles to move the cakes?"
"None whatever."
On descending, however, I found the boys preparing to camp for "a
couple of days," while the ice melted or drifted away somewhere.
So I said, "You get right into this boat now and push off; we can
easily work our way through." They made no reply, simply looked
sulkier than ever, and proceeded to start a fire for meal No. 5.
"Weeso," I said, "get into your place and tell your men to follow."
The old man looked worried and did nothing, He wanted to do right,
but he was in awe of his crew.
Then did I remember how John MacDonald settled the rebellion on
the river.
"Get in there," I said to Preble and Billy. "Come on, Weeso." We
four jumped into the boat and proceeded to push off with all the
supplies.
Authorities differ as to the time it took for the crew to make up
their minds. Two seconds and eleven seconds are perhaps the extremes
of estimate. They came jumping aboard as fast as they could.
We attacked the floe, each with a lodge-pole; that is, Billy and
Preble did in the bow, while Freesay and I did at the rear; and
in thirty-five minutes we had pushed through and were sailing the
open sea.
The next day we had the same scene repeated with less intensity,
in this case because Freesay sided with me. What would I not give
to have had a crew of white men. A couple of stout Norwegian sailors
would have done far better than this whole outfit of reds.
When we stopped for supper No. 1 a tiny thimbleful of down on two
pink matches ran past, and at once the mother, a Peetweet, came
running in distress to save her young. The brave Beaulieu fearlessly
seized a big stick and ran to kill the little one. I shouted out,
"Stop that," in tones that implied that I owned the heaven, the
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, but could not have saved
the downling had it not leaped into the water and dived out of
sight. It came up two feet away and swam to a rock of safety, where
it bobbed its latter end toward its adversaries and the open sea
in turn.
I never before knew that they could dive.
About eight o'clock we began to look for a good place to camp and
make meal No. 6. But the islands where usually we found refuge
from the dogs were without wood, and the shores were too rugged
and steep or had no dry timber, so we kept going on. After trying
one or two places the Indians said it was only a mile to Indian
Mountain River (Der-sheth Tessy), where was a camp of their friends.
I was always glad of a reason for pushing on, so away we went. My
crew seized their rifles and fired to let their village know we were
coming. The camp came quickly into view, and volley after volley
was fired and returned.
These Indians are extremely poor and the shots cost 5 and 6 cents
each. So this demonstration totalled up about $2.00.
As we drew near the village of lodges the populace lined up on shore,
and then our boys whispered, "Some white men." What a peculiar
thrill it gave me! I had seen nothing but Indians along the route
so far and expected nothing else. But here were some of my own
people, folk with whom I could talk. They proved to be my American
friend from Smith Landing, he whose hand I had lanced, and his
companion, a young Englishman, who was here with him prospecting
for gold and copper. "I'm all right now," he said, and, held up
the hand with my mark on it, and our greeting was that of white
men meeting among strangers in a far foreign land.
As soon as we were ashore a number of Indians came to offer meat
for tobacco. They seemed a lot of tobacco-maniacs. "Tzel-twee" at
any price they must have. Food they could do without for a long
time, but life without smoke was intolerable; and they offered their
whole dried product of two Caribou, concentrated, nourishing food
enough to last a family many days, in exchange for half a pound of
nasty stinking, poisonous tobacco.
