The Pioneers by R. M. Ballantyne (most popular ebook readers .txt) 📖

Three years passed away, during which period Mackenzie, being busily occupied with his arduous duties as a fur-trader, could not carry out the more noble purposes of discovery on which his heart was set. But a time at length arrived when circumstances permitted him to turn his eyes once more with a set purpose on the unknown wilderness of the West. Seated one fine morning about the beginning of spring, in his wooden residence at Fort Chipewyan, he observed Reuben Guff passing the window with an axe on his shoulder, that worthy, with his son and Swiftarrow, having engaged in the service of the fur-traders at the end of the late expedition. Opening the door, Mackenzie called him in.

“Where are you bound for just now, Reuben?”

“To dinner, monsieur.”

“Reuben,” said Mackenzie, with a peculiar look, “has all your pioneering enthusiasm oozed out at your finger ends?”

“No, monsieur,” replied the man, with a slight smile, “but Lawrence and I have bin thinkin’ of late that as Monsieur Mackenzie seems to have lost heart, we must undertake a v’yage o’ diskivery on our own account!”

“Good. Then you are both ready, doubtless, to begin your discoveries with a canoe journey of some extent on short notice?”

“At once, monsieur, if it please you.”

“Nay, Reuben, not quite so fast as that,” said Mackenzie, with a laugh; “you may have your dinner first. But to-morrow you shall become a genuine pioneer by preceding me towards the far west. You know the position of our most distant settlements on the Peace River?”

“Perfectly,” said Reuben, whose eye kindled as he began to see that his master was in earnest.

“Well, I intend to visit these settlements this fall, and push on towards the Rocky Mountains. It will take me to the end of the season to accomplish this, so that our real voyage of discovery will not begin until the following spring. Now, there is a certain locality beyond our most distant outpost, which I shall describe to you afterwards, where I intend to build a fort and spend next winter, so as to be on the spot ready to begin the moment the ice breaks up. Preparations must be made there for the building of the fort. Timber must be felled, cut, and squared for the houses and palisades, and two able and willing, as well as experienced men, must go there to begin this work without delay. It occurs to me that the two best men I have for such work are Reuben Guff and his son. Are they prepared for this duty, think you?”

“Say the word, monsieur,” was Reuben’s laconic but significant reply.

“Well, then, it is said. Come back here after dinner with Lawrence, and I will give you instructions: you shall start to-morrow at daybreak.”

Reuben bowed and left the hall with a light step. Next day he and his son started on their journey in a small birch-bark canoe; on the 10th of October Mackenzie followed in a canoe of larger dimensions. He visited several establishments of the district of which he had charge; ascended the Peace River towards its unknown sources, gave good advice to the several bands of Indians whom he met with by the way, and generally strengthened the hearts and hands of his agents. Passing the last outpost on the river, he pushed on, until, finally, he reached his intended winter-quarters on the 1st of November—not a day too soon, for the river was already being covered with its winter coat of ice.

Here he found Reuben and Lawrence, bronzed and hardened with toil and exposure. They had done good service during the previous summer, for all the timber was prepared, a space marked out for the fort, and a deep trench dug for the palisades. Here also were found a band of natives, amounting to about seventy men, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Chief, as they styled Mackenzie, and thirsting especially for tobacco and rum, both of which—unlike the natives of the far north—they were particularly fond of.

To build a fort in a few weeks, consisting of a dwelling-house and several stores, with palisades eighteen feet high, in the midst of frost so intense that their axes sometimes became as brittle as glass, and living in tents the while, exposed to the storms of wind and snow peculiar to a hyperborean clime, was a feat which, if detailed, would fill a volume. We are constrained to dismiss the subject in a line. Thus curtly, also, must we treat the winter. Yet some points we cannot forbear to touch on, illustrative as they are of some curious experiences of the fur-traders.

The Indians there were unusually ignorant of medical science, and when ill applied to Mackenzie, believing, with childlike simplicity, that he certainly knew everything and could do anything!

One woman came to him with a swelled breast, which her friends had lacerated with flints in order to cure it; this failing, they had blown on it, but with similar want of success. Mackenzie knew not what to do, but, bringing common sense to bear on the case, he made the poor creature keep it clean (she was naturally dirty), poulticed it several times, and anointed it with healing salve. In a short time a perfect cure was effected. After that an Indian while at work in the woods was attacked with a sudden pain near the first joint of his thumb, which disabled him. He appealed to Mackenzie, who, to his surprise, found a narrow red inflamed stripe about an inch wide, extending from the man’s thumb to his shoulder. The pain was very violent, and accompanied with chilliness and shivering. Mackenzie admits that the case was quite beyond his skill; but as it was necessary to relieve the Indian’s mind, he attempted a cure. He prepared a kind of volatile liniment of rum and soap, with which he ordered the arm to be rubbed. The success of this treatment was doubtful, because at first it drove the man mad, and the red stripe not only increased but extended in the form of several blotches on the body, and was accompanied by pains in the stomach. Seeing this, our amateur doctor fell back on the old plan of bleeding, an operation which he had never before performed. The result was marvellous. The following night the man was much better, and ere long was restored to his former health, and filled with gratitude.

Again, on another occasion, a young Indian’s gun burst and maimed his hand so that the thumb hung by a mere strip of flesh. When he came to the fort his wound was in a very offensive state. His friends had done their best for him, but as their panacea for everything consisted in singing or howling, and blowing on the affected part, he was not perceptibly the better for their exertions. The youth’s life being in danger, Mackenzie once more tried his skill. He applied to it a poultice of bark stripped from the roots of the spruce fir, having first washed the wound with the juice of the bark. This proved to be a very painful dressing, but it cleaned the wound effectually. He then cut off the pendent thumb, and applied a dressing of salve composed of Canadian balsam, wax, and tallow dropped from a burning candle into the water. As before, the treatment was successful, insomuch that the young red-skin was soon in the hunting-field again, and brought an elk’s tongue as a fee to his benefactor.

During the winter he was visited by a few Rocky Mountain Indians, who gave him some important information; namely, that the Peace River in the mountain districts was interrupted by numerous bad rapids and falls, and that, towards the mid-day sun, there was another great river whose current ran in an opposite direction, the distance between the