Kitabı oku: «Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XIX

A MEDLEY

'We may soon expect winter,' said Sam Holt, as he drew forth his gigantic snow-shoes, which had been standing up against the interior wall of the shanty, and now emerged into the brilliant sunshine.

'Soon expect it!' ejaculated Robert; 'why, I should say it had very decidedly arrived already. I am sure twelve inches of snow must have fallen last afternoon and night.'

'It is late this year; I've seen it deep enough for sleighing the second week in November; and from this till March the ground will be hidden, generally under a blanket four feet thick. You are only on the outskirts of winter as yet.'

'Four months! I wonder it doesn't kill all vegetation.'

'On the contrary, it is the best thing possible for vegetation. Only for the warm close covering of snow, the intense and long-continued frost would penetrate the soil too deeply to be altogether thawed by the summer sun.'

'I was very much struck,' said Robert, 'by seeing, in a cemetery near Quebec, a vault fitted with stone shelves, for the reception of the bodies of people who die during winter, as they cannot be properly interred till the next spring.'

'Yes; Lower Canada is much colder than our section of the Province. Learned men say something about the regular northward tendency of the isothermal lines from east to west; certain it is that, the farther west you go, the higher is the mean annual temperature, back to the Pacific, I believe. So the French Canadians have much the worst of the cold. You might have noticed flights of steps to the doors of the habitans? That was a provision against snowing time; and another proof of the severity of the frost is that any mason work not bedded at least three feet deep into the earth is dislodged by the April thaws.

'Now what would you say to freezing up your winter stores of meat and fowls? They're obliged to do it in Lower Canada. Fresh mutton, pork, turkeys, geese, fowls, and even fish, all stiff and hard as stone, are packed in boxes and stowed away in a shed till wanted. The only precaution needful is to bring out the meat into the kitchen a few days before use, that it may have time to thaw. Yet I can tell you that winter is our merriest time; for snow, the great leveller, has made all the roads, even the most rickety corduroy, smooth as a bowling-green; consequently sleighing and toboggin parties without end are carried on.'

'That's a terribly hard word,' remarked Arthur.

'It represents great fun, then, which isn't generally the case with hard words. A toboggin is an Indian traineau of birch-bark, turned up at one end, and perfectly level with the snow. A lady takes her seat on this, and about a foot and a half of a projection behind her is occupied by a gentleman, who is the propelling instrument for the vehicle. He tucks one leg under him, and leaves the other trailing on the snow behind, as a rudder. I should have told you that, first of all, the adventurous pair must be on the top of a slope; and when all is ready, the gentleman sets the affair in motion by a vigorous kick from his rudder leg. Of course the velocity increases as they rush down the slope; and unless he is a skilful steersman, they may have a grand upset or be embosomed in a drift; however, the toboggin and its freight generally glides like an arrow from the summit, and has received impetus enough to carry it a long distance over the smooth surface of the valley at foot.'

'How first-rate it must be!' exclaimed Arthur. 'But we shall never see a human being in these backwoods;' and over his handsome face came an expression of ennui and weariness which Robert disliked and dreaded. 'Come, Holt, I'm longing to have a try at the snow-shoes:' and his white volatile nature brightened again immediately at the novelty.

'I'm afraid they're too long for this clearing, among all the stumps,' said the manufacturer; 'you may wear them eighteen inches shorter in the forest than on the roads or plains. At all events, I'll have to beat the path for you first;' and having fixed his mocassined feet in the walking thong and heel-cord, with his toes just over the 'eye,' he began to glide along, first slowly and then swiftly. Now was the advantage of the immense sole visible; for whereas Robert and Arthur sank far above their ankles at every step in the loose dry snow, Mr. Holt, though much the heaviest of the three, was borne on the top buoyantly.

'You see the great necessity is,' said he, returning by a circuit, 'that the shoe should never press into the snow; so you must learn to drag it lightly over the surface, which requires some little practice. To render that easier, I've beaten the track slightly.'

'Holt, are those genuine Indian mocassins?' asked Robert, as he ungirded his feet from the straps of the snow-shoes.

'Well, they're such as I've worn over many a mile of Indian country,' was the answer; 'and I can recommend them as the most agreeable chaussure ever invented. Chiropodists might shut shop, were mocassins to supersede the ugly and ponderous European boot, in which your foot lies as dead as if it had neither muscles nor joints. Try to cross a swamp in boots, and see how they'll make holes and stick in them, and only come up with a slush, leaving a pool behind; but mocassined feet trip lightly over: the tanned deer-hide is elastic as a second skin, yet thick enough to ward off a cut from thorns or pebbles, while giving free play to all the muscles of the foot.'

'You haven't convinced me: it's but one remove from bare-footedness. Like a good fellow, show me how I'm to manage these monstrous snow-shoes: I feel as queer as in my first pair of skates.'

Mr. Holt did as required. But the best theoretical teaching about anything cannot secure a beginner from failures, and Arthur was presently brought up by several inches of snow gathered round the edges of his boards, and adding no small weight.

'It will work up on them,' said he (as, when a smaller boy, he had been used to blame everything but himself), 'in spite of all I can do.'

'Practice makes perfect,' was Sam Holt's consolatory remark. 'Get the axes, Robert, and we'll go chop a bit.'

'I'll stay awhile by the snow-shoes,' said Arthur.

The others walked away to the edge of the clearing, Mr. Holt having first drawn on a pair of the despised European boots.

Never had Robert seen such transparent calm of heaven and earth as on this glorious winter day. It was as if the common atmosphere had been purified of all grosser particles—as if its component gases had been mixed afresh, for Canadian use only. The cold was hardly felt, though Mr. Holt was sure the thermometer must be close upon zero; but a bracing exhilarating sensation strung every nerve with gladness and power.

'You'll soon comprehend how delightful our winter is,' said Sam Holt, noticing his companion's gradually glowing face. 'It has phases of the most bewitching beauty. Just look at this white spruce, at all times one of our loveliest trees, with branches feathering down to the ground, and every one of its innumerable sea-green leaves tipped with a spikelet which might be a diamond!'

They did stand before that splendid tree—magnificent sight!

'I wonder it escaped the lumberers when they were here; they have generally pretty well weeded the forests along this chain of lakes of such fine timber as this spruce. I suppose it's at least a hundred feet high: I've seen some a hundred and forty.'

'And you think lumberers have been chopping in these woods? I saw no signs of them,' said Robert.

'I met with planks here and there, hewed off in squaring the timber: but even without that, you know, they're always the pioneers of the settler along every stream through Canada. This lake of yours communicates with the Ottawa, through the river at the "Corner," which is called "Clyde" farther on, and is far too tempting a channel for the lumberers to leave unused.'

The speaker stopped at the foot of a Balm-of-Gilead fir, on the edge of the swamp, and partially cleared away the snow, revealing a tuft of cranberries, much larger and finer than they are ever seen in England.

'I noticed a bed of them here the other day. Now if you want a proof of the genial influence of the long-continued snow on vegetation, I can tell you that these cranberries—ottakas, the French Canadians call them—go on ripening through the winter under three or four feet of snow, and are much better and juicier than in October, when they are generally harvested. That cedar swamp ought to be full of them.'

'I wonder can they be preserved in any way,' said Robert, crushing in his lips the pleasant bitter-sweet berry. 'Linda is a wonderful hand at preserves, and when she comes'—

The thought seemed to energize him to the needful preparation for that coming: he immediately made a chop at a middle-aged Weymouth pine alongside, and began to cut it down.

'Well, as to preserving the cranberries,' said Mr. Holt, laughing in his slight silent way, 'there's none required; they stay as fresh as when plucked for a long time. But your sister may exercise her abilities on the pailfuls of strawberries, and raspberries, and sand cherries, and wild plums, that fill the woods in summer. As to the cranberry patches, it is a curious fact that various Indian families consider themselves to have a property therein, and migrate to gather them every autumn, squaws and children and all.'

'It appears that my swamp is unclaimed, then,' said Robert, pausing in his blows.

'Not so with your maples,' rejoined the other; 'there's been a sugar camp here last spring, or I'm much mistaken.'

He was looking at some old scars in the trunks of a group of maples, at the back of the Weymouth pine on which Robert was operating.

'Yes, they've been tapped, sure enough; but I don't see the loupes—the vats in which they leave the sap to crystallize: if it were a regular Indian "sucrerie," we'd find those. However, I suspect you may be on the look-out for a visit from them in spring—au temps des sucres, as the habitans say.'

'And I'm not to assert my superior rights at all?'

'Well, there's certainly sugar enough for both parties during your natural lives, and the Indians will sheer off when they find the ground occupied; so I'd advise you to say nothing about it. Now, Wynn, let your pine fall on that heap of brushwood; 'twill save a lot of trouble afterwards; if not, you'll have to drag the head thither and chop and pile the branches, which is extra work you'd as soon avoid, I dare say.'

After some judicious blows from the more experienced axe, the pine was good enough to fall just as required.

'Now the trunk must be chopped into lengths of twelve or fourteen feet;' and Mr. Holt gashed a mark with his axe at such distances, as well as he could guess. When it was done—

'What's the rate of speed of this work?' asked Robert. 'It seems so slow as to be almost hopeless; the only consideration is, that one is doing it all for one's self, and—for those as dear as self,' he could have added, but refrained.

'About an acre in eight or nine days, according to your expertness,' was the reply. Robert did a little ciphering in his mind immediately. Three axes, plus twenty-seven days (minus Sundays), equal to about the chopping of ten acres and a fraction during the month of December. The calculation was somewhat reassuring.

'What curious curves there are in this Canadian axe!' he remarked, as he stood leaning on the handle and looking down. 'It differs essentially from the common woodman's axe at home.'

'And which the English manufacturers persisted in sending us, and could not be induced to make on precisely the model required, until we dispensed with their aid by establishing an edge-tool factory of our own in Galt, on the Grand River.'

'That was a declaration of independence which must have been very sensibly felt in Sheffield,' remarked Robert.

They worked hard till dinner, at which period they found Arthur limping about the shanty.

'I practised those villainous snow-shoes for several hours, till I walked beautifully; but see what I've got by it,' he said: 'a pain across the instep as if the bones would split.'

'Oh, just a touch of mal de raquette,' observed Sam Holt, rather unsympathizingly. 'I ought to have warned you not to walk too much in them at first.'

'And is there no cure?' asked Arthur, somewhat sharply.

'Peter Logan would scarify your foot with a gun-flint, that is, if the pain were bad enough. Do you feel as if the bones were broken, and grinding together across the instep?'

But Arthur could not confess to his experiences being so bad as this. Only a touch of the mal de raquette, that was all. Just a-paying for his footing in snow-shoes.

CHAPTER XX

THE ICE-SLEDGE

Sam Holt had long fixed the first snow as the limit of his stay. He had built his colossal shoes in order to travel as far as Greenock on them, and there take the stage, which came once a week to that boundary of civilisation and the post.

Two or three days of the intensest frost intervened between the first snow and the Thursday on which the stage left Greenock. Cedar Pond was stricken dead—a solid gleaming sheet of stone from shore to shore. A hollow smothered gurgle far below was all that remained of the life of the streams; and nightly they shrank deeper, as the tremendous winter in the air forced upon them more ice, and yet more.

Notwithstanding the roaring fires kept up in the shanty chimney, the stinging cold of the night made itself felt through the unfinished walls. For want of boards, the necessary interior wainscoting had never been put up. The sight of the frozen pond suggested to Mr. Holt a plan for easily obtaining them. It was to construct an ice-boat, such as he had seen used by the Indians: to go down to the 'Corner' on skates, lade the ice-boat with planks, and drive it before them back again.

Arthur, who hailed with delight any variety from the continual chopping, entered into the scheme with ardour. Robert would have liked it well enough, but he knew that two persons were quite sufficient for the business; he rather connived at the younger brother's holidays; he must abide by the axe.

One board, about nine feet long, remained from Arthur's attempts at 'slabbing.' This Mr. Holt split again with wedges, so as to reduce it considerably in thickness, and cut away from the breadth till it was only about twenty inches wide. The stoutest rope in the shanty stores was fastened to it fore and aft, and drawn tightly to produce a curve into boat shape, and a couple of cross pieces of timber were nailed to the sides as a sort of balustrade and reinforcement to the rope. The ice-sledge was complete; the voyagers tied down their fur caps over their ears, strapped the dreadnought boots tightly, and launched forth.

'Throth, I donno how they do it at all, at all,' said Andy, who had lent his strength to the curving of the sledge, and now shook his head as he viewed them from the shore. 'I'd as soon go to walk on the edges of knives as on them things they call skates; throth, betune the shoes as long as yerself for the snow, an' the shoes wid soles as sharp as a soord for the ice, our own ould brogues aren't much use to us. An' as for calling that boord a boat, I hope they won't thry it on the wather, that's all.'

As if he had discharged his conscience by this protesting soliloquy, Mr. Callaghan turned on his heel, and tramped after Robert up to the shanty.

Meanwhile, the voyagers had struck out from the natural cove formed by the junction of the creek with the pond, where were clumps of stately reeds, stiffened like steel by the frost. The cedar boughs in the swamp at the edge drooped lower than ever under their burden of snow; the stems looked inky black, from contrast. The ice-boat pushed on beautifully, with hardly any exertion, over the greyish glistening surface of the lake.

'I fancy there's a bit of breeze getting up against us,' said Mr. Holt, in a momentary pause from their rapid progression.

''Twill be in our backs coming home,' suggested Arthur, as an obvious deduction.

'And if we can fix up a sail anyhow, we might press it into our service to propel the sledge,' said Mr. Holt.

'Well, I never did hear of sails on dry land before,' said Arthur, thereby proving his Irish antecedents; of which his quick-witted companion was not slow to remind him.

'But I don't much admire that greyish look off there,' he added, becoming grave, and pointing to a hazy discolouration in the eastern skies. 'I shouldn't be surprised if we had a blow to-night; and our easterly winds in winter always bring snow.'

Uncle Zack was lost in admiration of the spirit which projected and executed this ice-boat voyage. 'Wal, you are a knowin' shave,' was his complimentary observation to Mr. Holt. ''Twar a smart idee, and no mistake. You'll only want to fix runners in front of the ice-sled goin' back, an' 'twill carry any load as easy as drinkin'. 'Spose you han't got an old pair of skates handy? I've most remarkable good 'uns at the store, that'll cut right slick up to the Cedars in no time if tacked on to the sled. You ain't disposed to buy 'em, are you? Wal, as you be hard fixed, I don't care if I lend 'em for a trifle. Quarter dollar, say. That's dog-cheap—it's a rael ruination. Take it out in potash or maple sugar next spring—eh? Is it five cents cash you named, Mister Holt? Easy to see you never kep a backwoods store. Did anybody ever hear of anythin' so onreasonable?'

To which offer he nevertheless acceded after some grumbling; and the runners of the borrowed skates were fastened underneath the sled by Mr. Holt's own hands and hammer. Next, that gentleman fixed a pole upright in the midst, piling the planks from the sawmill close to it, edgeways on both sides, and bracing it with a stay-rope to stem and stern. At the top ran a horizontal stick to act as yard, and upon this he girt an old blanket lent by Jackey Dubois, the corners of which were caught by cords drawn taut and fastened to the balustrade afore-mentioned.

Sam Holt had in his own brain a strong dash of the daring and love of adventure which tingles in the blood of youthful strength. He thoroughly enjoyed this rigging of the ice-boat, because it was strange, and paradoxical, and quite out of everyday ship-building. The breeze, become stronger, was moaning in the tops of the forest as he finished; the greyish haze had thickened into well-defined clouds creeping up the sky, yet hardly near enough to account for one or two flakes that came wandering down.

'Ye'll have a lively run to the Cedars, I guess,' prophesied Zack, as he helped to pack in the last plank. 'An' the quicker the better, for the weather looks kinder dirty. See if them runners ain't vallyable now; and only five cents cash for the loan.' The queer little craft began to push ahead slowly, her sail filling out somewhat, as the wind caught in it at a curve of the shore.

Certainly the runners materially lessened the friction of the load of timber on the ice. The skaters hardly felt the weight more than in propelling the empty sledge. When they got upon the open surface of the pond, they might expect aid from the steady swelling of the sail, now fitful, as gusts swept down, snow-laden, from the tree-covered banks of the stream. They hardly noticed the gradually increasing power of the wind behind them; but the flakes in the air perceptibly thickened, even before they had reached the pond.

'Now make a straight course across for the pine point yonder,' said Sam Holt, as they passed in lee shelter for an instant. 'I suspect we might almost embark ourselves, Arthur, for the breeze is right upon it.'

A few minutes of great velocity bore them down on the headland. They stopped for breath, the turned-up prow of their ice-boat resting even in the brush on shore. Then they coasted awhile, until another wide curve of the pond spread in front.

By this time the falling snow was sufficiently dense to blur distant outlines, and an indistinct foggy whiteness took the place of the remaining daylight. Mr. Holt hesitated whether to adopt the safer and more laborious plan of following the windings of the shore, or to strike across boldly, and save a mile of meandering by one rapid push ahead. The latter was Arthur's decided choice.

'Well, here goes!' and by the guiding rope in his hand Mr. Holt turned the head of the ice-boat before the wind. They grasped the balustrades at each side firmly, and careered along with the former delightful speed; until suddenly, Arthur was astonished to see his companion cast himself flat on the ice, bringing round the sledge with a herculean effort broadside to the breeze. A few feet in front lay a dark patch on the white plain—a breathing-hole.