"Okematan"s friends can always find him," answered the Indian with a grave but pleased look.
"So it seems. But I say, Oke, I want to ask a favour of you. Dan Davidson tells me you want me to go a-hunting with you. Well, I"m your man if you"ll let me take Little Bill with me. Will you?"
"Leetle Beel is not strong," objected the Indian.
"True, but a trip o" this sort will make him strong perhaps. Anyhow, it will make him stronger."
"But for a sick boy there is danger," said the chief. "If Arch-ee upsets his canoe in a rapid, Arch-ee swims on sh.o.r.e, but Leetle Beel goes to the bottom."
"Not as long as Arch-ee is there to hold him up," returned the boy.
"Waugh!" exclaimed the Indian.
"Humph!" remarked the boy. "What d"ye mean by `Waugh," Oke?"
"Okematan means much that it is not in the power of the tongue to tell,"
replied the Indian with increasing gravity; and as the gravity increased the cloudlets from his lips became more voluminous.
"Arch-ee hopes, nevertheless, that the tongue of Oke may find power to tell him a little of what he thinks."
This being in some degree indefinite, the chief smoked in silence for a minute or two, and gazed at Slowfoot with that dreamy air which one a.s.sumes when gazing into the depths of a suggestive fire. Apparently inspiration came at last--whether from Slowfoot or not we cannot tell-- for he turned solemnly to the boy.
"Rain comes," he said, "and when sick men get wet they grow sicker.
Carrying-places come, and when sick men come to them they stagger and fall. Frost often comes in spring, and when sick men get cold they die.
Waugh!"
"Humph!" repeated the boy again, with a solemnity quite equal to that of the Red-man.
"When rain comes I can put up an umbrella--an _umbrella_. D"you know what that is?"
The Indian shook his head.
"Well it"s a--a thing--a sort of little tent--a wigwam, you know, with a stick in the middle to hold on to and put it up. D"you understand?"
An expression of blank bewilderment, so to speak, settled on the chief"s visage, and the lights of intelligence went out one by one until he presented an appearance which all but put the boy"s gravity to flight.
"Well, well, it"s of no use my tryin" to explain it," he continued.
"I"ll show it to you soon, and then you"ll understand."
Intelligence began to return, and the chief looked gratified.
"What you call it?" he asked--for he was of an inquiring disposition--"a b.u.m-rella?"
"No, no," replied the other, seriously, "an um_brella_. It"s a clever contrivance, as you shall see. So, you see, I can keep the rain off Little Bill when he"s in the canoe, and on sh.o.r.e there are the trees, and the canoe itself turned bottom up. Then, at carryin" places, I can carry Little Bill as well as other things. He"s not heavy and doesn"t struggle, so we won"t leave him to stagger and fall. As to frost--have we not hatchets, and are there not dead trees in the forest? Frost and fire never walk in company, so that Little Bill won"t get cold and die, for we"ll keep him warm--waugh!"
When human beings are fond of each other disagreement seldom lasts long.
Okematan had taken so strong a fancy to Archie that he felt it impossible to hold out; therefore, being a man of strong common sense, he did not attempt the impossible.
Thus it came to pa.s.s that, two days later, a couple of birch-bark canoes were launched on the waters of Red River, with Dan Davidson in the stern of one and Fergus McKay acting as his bowman. Okematan took the stern of the other, while Archie Sinclair wielded the bow-paddle, and Little Bill was placed in the middle on a comfortable green blanket with the celebrated "b.u.m-rella" erected over him to keep off, not the rain, but, the too glorious sunshine.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
AN AUSPICIOUS BEGINNING AND SUSPICIOUS ENDING.
Let loose in the wilderness! How romantic, how inexpressibly delightful, that idea seems to some minds! Ay, even when the weight of years begins to stiffen the joints and slack the cords of life the memory of G.o.d"s great, wild, untrammelled, beautiful wilderness comes over the spirit like a refreshing dream and restores for a time something like the pulse of youth.
We sometimes think what a joy it would be if youth could pa.s.s through its blessings with the intelligent experience of age. And it may be that this is to be one of the joys of the future, when man, redeemed and delivered from sin by Jesus Christ, shall find that the memory of the sorrows, sufferings, weaknesses of the past shall add inconceivably to the joys of the present. It may be so. Judging from a.n.a.logy it does not seem presumptuous to suppose and hope that it will be so.
"Sufficient unto the day," however, is the joy thereof.
When the two canoes pushed off and swept rapidly over the fair bosom of Red River, the heart of Archie Sinclair bounded with a feeling of exultant joy which it would have been very hard indeed to convince him was capable of increase, while the bosom of his invalid brother was filled with a sort of calm serenity which const.i.tuted, in his opinion at the time being, a quite sufficient amount of felicity.
When we add that the other hunters were, in their several ways, pretty much in the same condition as the boys, we have said enough to justify the remark that their circ.u.mstances were inexpressibly delightful.
Proceeding some distance up stream they finally diverged into a minor tributary which led to waters that were swarming with water-fowl and other game.
"This is a grand burst, Little Bill," said Archie, as he plied his paddle vigorously, and glanced over his shoulder at the invalid behind him.
"Prime!" answered Billie. "Isn"t it?" he added, with a backward glance at Okematan.
"Waugh!" replied the reticent savage.
"Ay, `Waugh!" that"s all you"ll get out of him when he"s puzzled," said Archie; "though what he means by it is more than I know. You must speak respectable English to a Red-skin if you want to convince him. Why, if he had understood you literally, you know--and obeyed you--he"d have had something to do immediately with the lock of his gun."
"I have often wondered, Archie," returned his brother with a languid smile, "what a lot you manage to say sometimes with nothing in it."
"Ha! ha!--ho! ho! what a wag you"re becoming, Little Bill. But I thank "ee for the compliment, for you know it"s only philosophers that can say an awful lot without a"most sayin" anything at all. Look at Oke there, now, what a depth of stupidity lies behind his brown visage; what bucketsful of ignorance swell out his black pate, but he expresses it all in the single word `Waugh!" because he"s a philosopher. If he was like La Certe, he"d jabber away to us by the hour of things he knows nothin" about, and tell us long stories that are nothin" less than big lies. I"m glad you think me a philosopher, Little Bill, for it takes all the philosophy I"ve got to keep me up to the scratch of goin" about the world wi" you on my back. Why, I"m a regular Sindbad the Sailor, only I"m saddled with a young man o" the plains instead of an old man of the sea. D"ee understand what I"m saying, Oke?"
The chief, who understood little more than that his own name and that of La Certe were mentioned, nodded his head gravely and allowed the corners of his mouth to droop, which was his peculiar way of smiling--a smile that might have been unintelligible to his friends had it not been relieved and interpreted by a decided twinkle in his eyes.
While they were conversing, the two canoes had rounded a rocky point and swept out upon a lake-like expanse in the river, which was perfectly smooth and apparently currentless. Several islets studded its calm breast and were reflected in the clear water. These were wooded to the water"s edge, and from among the sedges near their margin several flocks of wild-fowl sprang up in alarm and went off in fluttering confusion.
It chanced that just then a trumpet-like note was heard overhead, as a flock of wild geese pa.s.sed the spot and came suddenly close within range of the canoes which had been concealed from them by the bushes that fringed the river.
Guns were seized at once by the bowmen in each canoe, but Archie was smarter than Fergus. Before the Highlander had got the weapon well into his hands the boy fired and one of the flock fell into the river with a heavy plunge.
Little Bill signalised the successful shot with a high-toned cheer, and the Indian with a low-toned "Waugh," while Fergus made a hurried and therefore bad, shot at the scared flock.
"That wa.s.s a fery good shot, Archie," remarked Fergus, as the canoes ranged up alongside of the dead bird.
"Yours was a very good one, too, Fergus," returned the boy; "only not quite straight."
The smile on the face of Okematan proved that he understood the drift of the reply, and that this was the style of humour he appreciated so highly in his young friend. We civilised people may wonder a little at the simplicity of the savage, but when we reflect that the chief had been born and bred among the solemnities of the wilderness, and had been up to that time wholly unacquainted with the humours and pleasantries that sometimes accompany juvenile "cheek," our wonder may perhaps be subdued.
"This would be a splendid place to camp for the rest of the day,"
suggested Davidson, while they rested on their paddles after the goose had been secured. "We must lay in a small stock of fresh provisions, you know, if we are to push on to-morrow or next day to our hunting ground. What say you, Okematan?" he added in Cree, turning to their guide.