Winter Adventures of Three Boys by Egerton R. Young (lightweight ebook reader .TXT) 📖

first time almost for hours, now that the last bear was killed, one and all began to feel the terrible cold, and no wonder. Such had been the excitement of the last few hours that they had not noticed that it was long past the dinner hour, and, when eating is neglected in such a temperature, much suffering will quickly follow. So the cry was, "Back to the camp!" No second order was necessary, and great was the delight of the boys to find that some one more level-headed and less excited had long since returned and had a bountiful dinner awaiting everyone.

It was too late to return home that day, and so a swift runner was sent back for additional sleds, while the men, under Mustagan's guidance, with the dogs available--and they were not many--dragged the bears to the camp, and there during the evening and night carefully skinned them and cut up the meat.

Mr Ross and the boys, who were thoroughly tired, wrapped themselves well up in their robes and rested in the camp, feeling that they had had enough excitement for that day. This unique experience of bear-hunting in the depth of winter was often talked about in after years. Many sceptics scoffed at it as a dream, but they who were in it knew better.

Frank never forgot poor Swag's sad end, and for long days he mourned the loss of his faithful dog.


CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING--THE EAGLE MOON--EXPRESSIVE INDIAN NAMES FOR SOME OF THE MONTHS--CHATS AMONG THE BOYS ABOUT THE PHENOMENA OF THE NORTH LAND--POWER OF THE FROST--CUNNING OF ANIMALS--CLEVERNESS OF THE GUIDES--INVITATION TO A MUSKRAT HUNT GLADLY ACCEPTED--HABITS OF THESE LITTLE ANIMALS--METHODS OF CAPTURE--THEIR MANY FOES--THE QUEER BATTLE BETWEEN WILD CATS AND WOLVERINES.

Thus rapidly and pleasantly passed the winter months at Sagasta-weekee. Cold they were, and at times the blizzards had howled around, but as a general thing the days had been full of sunshine and the nights of wondrous beauty. Wretched days of fogs and mists and damps were almost unknown. The air at all times was full of ozone, and knew no taint of fever or malaria. There was a luxury in living where the skies were nearly always bright and the air was always absolutely pure.

For long months the Frost King had reigned supreme, but now there were indications that his grip was lessening and that his power was coming to an end. In sunny, sheltered spots the snow began to soften and then to disappear. Then tiny little rivulets in the warmest hours of the day began to make sweet music, gathering strength and courage and hurrying on to play hide and seek as they dashed under the great icy coverings of the still frozen lakes. Strong south winds blew frequently, and under their magic influences the great snowdrifts rapidly lessened and then disappeared. From underneath the still hard, dry snow some mysterious melting influence was at work, and the great masses sank down, and soon all flitted away under the wondrous but unseen influences of the coming spring.

"I saw a great golden eagle," said Alec, as one day he came in from a short hunting trip with Big Tom.

"Did you see it first?" said Sam.

"No, indeed," replied Alec; "Big Tom's eyes were more alert, and so he first saw it and then pointed it out to me as it was flying in graceful circles far up in the blue heavens."

"The Indians will be all saying that spring indeed has come," said Mr Ross. "As the appearance of the eagle is, as I think I told you, the beginning of spring, Mikisewpesim, the eagle moon, is the first spring month."

"Is it not," said Frank, "a very uncertain way of marking the seasons?"

"The variation is not as great as a person would at first imagine," was Mr Ross's reply. "We talk about an early spring or a late spring, and March with us is sometimes like April. Then some other years it is just the reverse. So the Indians' methods of marking the months by the arrival of the birds, or other events in nature, is not generally much out of the way."

"What birds follow the eagles?" asked Sam.

"The wild geese," replied Mr Ross, "and as they do not come until the great marshes, which are their early feeding grounds, are partially bared of snow, they are about a month behind the eagles."

"Then is there a goose month also?" asked Alec.

"Yes, indeed," replied Mr Ross, "and it is a very important one to the Indians, and I anticipate that we, too, will have our share of excitement in it. It is called Niskepesim, from `niska,' goose, or `niskuk,' geese, and `pesim,' month. The Niskepesim, goose moon, which corresponds with our April, is followed by Unekepesim, frog moon, as then those denizens of the swamps and ponds begin their croakings. In our North Land frog moon corresponds with May. Then comes `Wawepesim,' egg moon, as in June the birds are nesting and hatching out their young. So it is with all the other months, each has some equally expressive name."

"I am sure we are thankful for all this information," said Frank.

"It is a pleasure to get information, even if it sometimes has to be acquired under difficulties, and it is equally pleasing to impart it to those who will make use of it," was Mr Ross's reply.

"I am sure," said Sam, "we will have a deal to talk about when we return home next summer. The only thing that is bothering me is that lots will say that it is only a pack of lies that I am trying to cram down their throats."

"Well, then," replied Frank, "we will not be the only returned travellers whose veracity will be questioned. Don't you remember, Sam, about the first ambassadors to England from a tropical country in the south of Asia, that when they returned home they were rash enough to say that in England sometimes in winter the water became hard enough to walk on. Then the king was so mad at them for telling such monstrous lies that he immediately handed them over to the executioner and had them shortened by the length of their heads."

"I wonder what he would have done with me," said Sam, "after I had enlightened him on some of the facts of this country, for that mere trifle of a statement about ice forming on a river in England was a mighty small incident, in comparison with what I have here discovered."

"What would you tell him," asked Alec, "supposing the old rascal were still alive, and should ask you to visit him and then set your tongue a- wagging?"

"Sure," replied Sam, without any hesitancy, "if his Satanic majesty--I beg his pardon, that Siamese king--wanted any more water information, I would say to him, `Sire, your majesty, once, in a fit of indignation at the doing of a stable man, called Pasche, I seized a bucket of water, just drawn, and up with it to throw over the fellow, and, wonderful to relate, it just hit him in chunks of ice as dry as marble.'"

"Well, we know that is true," said Alec; "but supposing the old fellow still left your head on your shoulders, what next would you tell him?"

"If the old questioner still wanted anything more about liquid matter, I would just inform him that we carry the milk of our cows wrapped up in old newspapers, and that it keeps that way for months, as solid and tidy and handy as a brickbat in the end of a stocking."

"If he could stand that and let you survive, what next?" said Frank.

"I fancy I would confound his intellect by telling him that the breath- laden air of the church, one bitterly cold Sunday, where some hundreds of Indians worshipped, so froze up that the whole of it fell to the floor in beautiful snow so plentifully that in one place, near a cold window, it was over a foot deep."

"Supposing he survived that, or rather let you survive, what next would you cram him with?" said Frank.

Sam, glib of tongue and ever ready, at once answered:

"Well, if that son of the sun, or whatever his Oriental title may be, wanted any more information about our liquids, I would enlighten him with the information that here, as a pastime or scientific experiment, we take quicksilver or mercury and cast it into bullets that become as hard and solid as lead, and then shoot them through stable doors."

"Anything more?" said Mr Ross, who had been an amused listener, and had been much pleased with Sam's ready answers, which showed how well he was gathering up the facts of the country to use them in other lands in years to come.

"Well, yes," said Sam, "I would tell his bibulous majesty, if he were in the habit of imbibing moisture of a fiery kind, that on one of our long journeys with our dogs I had with me on my sled, for purposes that need not concern his majesty, a bottle of the strongest wine. One day, when no eyes were on me, for good and honest purposes I made a visit to the aforesaid bottle, and to my horror and grief I found the bottle burst into a hundred pieces. Feeling carefully around--for it was in the dark when I had made this visit--I discovered that the wine itself was frozen into a solid mass exactly the shape of the bottle. I carefully wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and thus carried it along. Suffice to say, none of it was lost."

"Well," said Frank, "if just about water, milk, mercury, and wine we will be able to tell such things, shall we not have lots of fun when we talk of our dogs and their doings, and of many other things that at first seemed so marvellous to us, but are now everyday occurrences and have in a measure lost their force and novelty?"

"I fancy," said Alec, "that some of the things we can also tell them about the cunning and cleverness of the wild animals we have been hunting, or seeing the Indians hunt, will open their eyes."

"After all," said Frank, "the cleverness of the Indian guides in finding their way through the pathless forests, day or night, where there was not the least vestige of a trail, sometimes for hundreds of miles, and often when blizzard storms howled around them for days together, was to me as wonderful and unaccountable as anything I have witnessed."

"Yes," said Mr Ross, "that is indeed wonderful. I have been studying it all my life, and am just as much puzzled to-day as I was at first with these first-class guides. They are not all thus gifted, but there are some who never blunder, or even hesitate, under the most difficult circumstances. The sky may be leaden with clouds all day, and an ordinary person get so bewildered that he does not know north from south, or east from west, but the guide never hesitates for an instant, but on and on, with unerring accuracy, he pushes day after day, or even night after night."

"That is wonderful indeed," replied Alec, "but the cleverness with which the wolves tried to get ahead of me by cutting across the necks of land in the river, and