The Last of the Plainsmen by Zane Grey (bill gates best books .TXT) đ
- Author: Zane Grey
- Performer: -
Book online «The Last of the Plainsmen by Zane Grey (bill gates best books .TXT) đ». Author Zane Grey
âFaugh! to tell an American plainsman that!â The hunter paused a steady moment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue fire. âThere is no law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition and Naza! And the greed of the Hudsonâs Bay people. I am an old fox, not to be fooled by pretty baits. For years the officers of this fur-trading company have tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, an Englishman, could not buy food of them. The policy of the company is to side with the Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So they can keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food by trading a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum for millions of dollars worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man after man, Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a helper? Have I, a plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be scared by you, or a lot of craven Indians? Have I been dreaming of muskoxen for forty years, to slink south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I.â
Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat in the hunterâs face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated the outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice, addressed the interpreter.
âTell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in council. Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are not even squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back on them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, fierce, bold, like eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them he is the one who could teach them to raise the muskoxen and the reindeer, and to keep out the cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the hunter goes north.â
Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering thunder.
True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed by, his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunterâs stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolen a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for an unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was unexpected.
A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thiefâs passage, and laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the Indian, and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash. Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this unexpected incident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore. Whereupon the champion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a bag, which gave forth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp articles on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.
âMy name is Rea,â he said, in deep, cavernous tones.
âMine is Jones,â replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip the proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stunted shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, a hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bull neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar, marked him a man of terrible brute force.
âFree-trader!â called the commandant âBetter think twice before you join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter.â
âTo hell with you anâ your rantinâ, dog-eared redskins!â cried Rea. âIâve run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own country, anâ Iâm goinâ with him.â
With this he thrust aside some encroaching, gaping Indians so unconcernedly and ungently that they sprawled upon the grass.
Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.
Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he had fallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province. These free-traders, from the very nature of their calling, which was to defy the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own accountâwere a hardy and intrepid class of men. Reaâs worth to Jones exceeded that of a dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of the north, the language of the tribes, the habits of animals, the handling of dogs, the uses of food and fuel. Moreover, it soon appeared that he was a carpenter and blacksmith.
âThereâs my kit,â he said, dumping the contents of his bag. It consisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a box of miscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few articles of flannel. âThievinâ redskins,â he added, in explanation of his poverty. âNot much of an outfit. But Iâm the man for you. Besides, I had a pal onct who knew you on the plains, called you âBuffâ Jones. Old Jim Bent he was.â
âI recollect Jim,â said Jones. âHe went down in Custerâs last charge. So you were Jimâs pal. Thatâd be a recommendation if you needed one. But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me.â
Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much action. With the planks Jones had on board he heightened the stern and bow of the boat to keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he fashioned a steering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and shifted the cargo so as to make more room in the craft.
âBuff, weâre in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin anâ make a fire. Weâll pretend to camp to-night. These Indians wonât dream weâd try to run the river after dark, and weâll slip by under cover.â
The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind swept the tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in gusts. By the time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were housed from the storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and the big log cabins of the trading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black night, when a freezing, pouring blast sent him back to the protection of the tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had taken it down and awaited him. âOff!â said the free-trader; and with no more noise than a drifting feather the boat swung into the current and glided down till the twinkling fires no longer accentuated the darkness.
By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its meaning. The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced the pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The craft slid noiselessly onward into the gloom.
And into Jonesâs ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a steady, muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It had come to be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long life of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight shudder over his warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble had presaged the dangerous and dreaded rapids.
âHell Bend Rapids!â shouted Rea. âBad water, but no rocks.â
The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the air with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world appeared to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to the roar of the river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met shock on shock, breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend of watery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into a black chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of light. Then the convulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance, changed its course abruptly to slow down and drown the sound of rapids in muffling distance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of the wind and the rush of the rain.
By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining, blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of the spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded peak behind the dark branches.
Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the moonblanched water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls of granite, where it swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again the far-off rumble, faint on the night. High cliff banks appeared, walled out the mellow, light, and the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes, whirlpools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and raced with the boat.
On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping frosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slave plunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing no patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark shiny rocks in spume and spray.
CHAPTER 9. THE LAND OF THE MUSK-OX
A far cry it was from bright June at Port Chippewayan to dim October on Great Slave Lake.
Two long, laborious months Rea and Jones threaded the crooked shores of the great inland sea, to halt at the extreme northern end, where a plunging rivulet formed the source of a river. Here they found a stone chimney and fireplace standing among the darkened, decayed ruins of a cabin.
âWe mustnât lose no time,â said Rea. âI feel the winter in the wind. Anâ see how dark the days are gettinâ on us.â
âIâm for hunting muskoxen,â replied Jones.
âMan, weâre facinâ the northern night; weâre in the land of the midnight sun. Soon weâll be shut in for seven months. A cabin we want, anâ wood, anâ meat.â
A forest of stunted spruce trees edged on the lake, and soon its dreary solitudes rang to the strokes of axes. The trees were small and uniform in size. Black stumps protruded, here and there, from the ground, showing work of the steel in time gone by. Jones observed that the living trees were no larger in diameter than the stumps, and questioned Rea in regard to the difference in age.
âCut twenty-five, mebbe fifty years ago,â said the trapper.
âBut the living trees are no bigger.â
âTrees anâ things donât grow fast in the north land.â
They erected a fifteen-foot cabin round the stone chimney, roofed it with poles and branches of spruce and a layer of sand. In digging near the fireplace Jones unearthed a rusty file and the head of a whisky keg, upon which was a sunken word in unintelligible letters.
âWeâve found the place,â said Rea. âFrank built a cabin here in 1819. Anâ in 1833 Captain Back wintered here when he was in search of Captain Ross of the vessel Fury. It was those explorinâ parties thet cut the trees. I seen Indian sign out there, made last winter, I reckon; but Indians never cut down no trees.â
The hunters completed the cabin, piled cords of firewood outside, stowed away the kegs of dried fish and fruits, the sacks of flour, boxes of crackers, canned meats and vegetables, sugar, salt, coffee, tobaccoâall of the cargo; then took the boat apart and carried it up the bank, which labor took them less than a week.
Jones found sleeping in the cabin, despite the fire, uncomfortably cold, because of the wide chinks between the logs. It was hardly better than sleeping under the swaying spruces. When he essayed to stop up the crack, a task by no means easy, considering the lack of materialâRea laughed his short âHo! Ho!â and stopped him with the word, âWait.â Every morning the green ice extended farther out into the lake; the sun paled
Comments (0)