The first three hundred miles had been completed by Mina’s party in just under two months. They now had little more than two weeks to complete the last three hundred miles. If they failed, the Pelican would depart Ungava Bay without them and they would be stranded there until spring—if, indeed, they even made it that far.
And there was another nagging question to consider. Where was Wallace—ahead or behind? Her accomplishments would mean nothing if he bested her. In that case her Laddie would be doomed to ignominy.
Mina prayed that the rest of the journey would be swift, that the weather would hold awhile longer, not grow too cold nor the wind blow too fiercely. And as for fierceness, what of the Indians? She felt in her bones that her party would soon come across the natives, and none of her group knew what kind of welcome to expect.
So she prayed. She prayed for the safety of her guides and that their food would last and that no one would fall sick and no mistakes would be made. She prayed not for herself but for George and Joe and Job and Gilbert. And always, always, she prayed for Laddie.
The next day, around noon, as the group portaged below the lake atop the divide—which Mina had christened Lake Hubbard—dark clouds rolled across the sky and all but obliterated the sun. For nearly a week the sun hid from them. Violent storms of rain and wind and snow assailed the expedition. At the end of that week, six days after their joy at attaining the Height of Land, they found themselves a mere thirty miles from the site of their accomplishment. The men, who heretofore had shown little of Mina’s anxiety, grew more and more restless. They attempted to hide their concern from her by speaking in Cree, but she could read the worry on their faces. Their troubled looks had grown increasingly frequent after the fourteenth, the day they came upon an Indian camp recently abandoned—and to which the Indians obviously intended to return soon.
Several uncovered wigwam frames remained erect in this camp, including one large oblong structure with three fireplaces. Lying about in piles were pots and kettles and tubs, plus clothes, piles of fur scraped from deerskins and heaps of broken animal bones. Hanging from a tree were several steel traps and the iron pounders used for breaking bones. On a stage under two deerskins George found a rifle, a shotgun and a piece of dried meat.
Everything was left undisturbed, and soon the party took to the river again. The volume of water seemed to be increasing now, the current growing swifter. Then the rapids began. Mina later described the experience in her book: “… as the little canoe careered wildly down the slope from one lake to the next with, in the beginning, many a scrape on the rocks of the river bed, my nervous system contracted steadily till, at the foot where we slipped out into smooth water again, it felt as if dipped into an astringent.”
Evening in their camp brought little relief from her nervousness. After supper that night the men sat around the campfire and exchanged stories they had heard about various groups of Indians. Some of the stories attested to the Indians’ hospitality toward strangers. But the men also spoke of the Hannah Bay massacre that had taken place in the middle of the previous century, when a band of Indians from the interior, angered that greedy fur traders were depleting the game, had sneaked into the fort at Rupert House on James Bay and killed all the whites. Then they had slaughtered the half-breeds and coastal Indians too because of their friendship with the whites.
All during the conversation Mina busied herself giving her revolver a good cleaning. Joe tapped the ashes from his pipe and said, “If it were only the Hudson Bay Indians we were coming to, there would be no doubt about the welcome we’d get. But nobody knows about the Naskapi.”
The other men nodded soberly. George, a few moments later, turned to Mina. “You’re giving that revolver a fine rubbing up tonight.”
“Yes,” she replied, and laughed a little. “I’m getting ready for the Naskapi.”
But none of the men returned her laugh. “They would not shoot you,” George told her.
“No?” she said. “Why not?”
“It would be us they would kill if they took the notion. Whatever their conjuror tells them to do, they will do.”
Mina thought George’s remark just a little too grave, and she laughed softly. Again, she laughed alone. “Well, maybe when their conjuror sees me coming at them with my pistol, he’ll tell them to kill me too.”
“No,” Gilbert said, “they would not kill you, Mrs. Hubbard. It would be to keep you at their camp that they would kill us.”
She lay awake through most of that night, a very clean revolver at her side.
Well before dawn Mina climbed out of her blankets. All of the fretting she had done through the long, quiet hours of night had wearied her. Every tiny sound made by wind or animal had seemed the stealthy approach of an intruder. So many times she had wished she could scurry over to the men’s tent and find a pair of warm arms to wrap herself inside. Some things about Labrador were elemental and straightforward, but some things were too complicated.
Now and then through the night, turning back had seemed the most prudent choice. But now, with the sky gradually lightening, retreat seemed the least appealing option. She had four good men to accompany her and they had plenty of food and she had been silly to entertain thoughts of giving up. If only the men had not frightened her with their talk about the Indians. Yes, the dangers were real, but every step of the way there had been dangers. There were dangers too in New York City and on her father’s farm in Ontario and in every hospital where she might someday work.
She decided that as long as she had her revolver she would be all right. Wasn’t that what Laddie would have told her? But what if the Indians somehow disarmed her? What if she emptied her pistol and still they kept coming?
There was no patter of rain on her tent canopy now but the air was cold and she had to rub her feet beneath the blankets to warm her toes. Then she lit a candle and reached for the small book that was always kept close, and as she often did she opened it at random, laid her finger on a page and read the passage beneath her finger. It was her way of waking to Laddie’s voice.
This morning she read the entry for Tuesday, September 15, 1903:
Temperature 31 degrees, 5AM. West wind, spits of sleet and fair. Wind continued hard all day. Could not leave shore. I lay awake all last night, thinking over the situation. George is worried and talks of Indians who starve. Tries to be cheerful, but finds it hard. Here we are, wind-bound, long way from Michikamau. No hopes of wind abating. The caribou migration is due to begin. Yet we can’t start and are at least two weeks from their grounds, with no grub and no prospects of good weather. Our grub is 18 pounds pea-meal—to be held for emergency—and 2 pounds flour, 1 pt rice, 3 pounds bacon. To go on is certain failure to reach the caribou killing, and probable starvation. If we turn back we must stop and get grub, then cross our long portage, then hunt more grub and finally freeze up preparatory to a sled dash for Northwest River. That will make us late for boat. But we can snowshoe to St. Lawrence. All this, with what we have done so far, will make a bully story. I don’t see anything better to do. I asked Wallace. He opposed—then said it was best. I said to George—would you rather go on or turn back? “I came to go with you and I want to do what you do.” When I said we will turn back, he was very greatly pleased. Now my job is to get the party back to Northwest River, getting grub as we go. We will take the back track to some good fishing grounds, catch fish, try to kill a caribou, and wait for freeze. We can’t take the canoe down the Naskapi—hence the need of freezing.
Staid in camp all day. Could not launch canoe. No place to fish or hunt. Feel better, now that the decision is made. Ate very thin rice and bacon soup and drank tea. Long chat with Wallace. Feeling good in spite of short grub. George is telling again how he will visit his sister at Flying Post and what he will eat. We are talking of plans for our home going, and are happy despite impending hunger.
Unfortunately the message failed to direct Mina, as she had hoped it would, in a specific course of action, a specific
approach to the day. So she flipped ahead several pages and laid her finger down again.
Thursday, October 15, 1903:
Dreamed last night came to New York, found M. and had my first meal with her. How I hated to find it a dream. Lightened packs a good deal. Left Wallace’s rifle, cartridges, rod, my cleaning rod, my sextant and 15 films and other things, cached in bushes at left side of little stream between two lakes. Wallace hated to leave rifle, and I hated to leave other stuff. Spent most of forenoon getting ready. Ate for breakfast bit of skin from old caribou head, boiled with bone broth. At lunch—on Montagnais Lake—same, but skin was that from old caribou hide which we had carried to mend moccasins. Were almost to our second camp—where we ate first goose—when I got shaky and busted, and had to stop. Wallace came back and got my pack and I walked to camp unloaded. In PM George shot three partridges which jumped up before us in swamp. Killed them with my pistol. Made us very happy. Ate one for supper, and oh, how good. In spite of my weakness I was happy to-night. I remember a similar happiness once just after I went to New York. I got caught in the rain; had no car fare—got soaked—spent last 10 cents for rolls and crullers—then crawled into bed to get dry and eat, not knowing where next meal would come from. Talk of home. George not thinking now of eating of recent years, but just the things his mother used to make for him as a child. Same way with Wallace and me, save that I think of what M. and I have eaten that she made.
Was he telling her to give up, to turn around before it was too late? No, it couldn’t be. Laddie would never countenance surrender. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that he was advising just the opposite. I got shaky and busted and had to stop. And what had been the result of that decision? It was against Laddie’s nature to throw in the towel and he had done so only when his body gave out, and what had been the result of it?
Even in that terrible moment he had found some happiness. Just as in New York, with no money and no prospects, homeless and cold and wet, he had been happy. That, if anything, was his message to her.
I think of what M. and I have eaten that she made. To the very end he had been thinking of her and taking comfort in the simple moments of their lives. I thought of you, he seemed to be telling her with those words. I thought of you then just as you must now think of me. She could almost hear his voice in her ear, could feel his breath warming the side of her face. Push on, brave girl. Push on.
By the time the eastern wall of her tent turned from charcoal to ash grey, she had dried her tears and warmed herself with a new determination. She reached for her woollen stockings and pulled them close. They were frozen stiff. But she was anxious to be out of her tent and moving again, so instead of digging through her pack for dry stockings she pushed the cold ones beneath her blanket and bit by bit worked them on.
When fully dressed she peeled back the tent flap and peeked out. Frost sparkled on the rocks and low bushes, a scattering of diamonds. The men were out and moving about too, though stiffly, sleepily, getting a fire ready for a bracing pot of tea.
By the time they all finished their tea, the wind had picked up again. Row after row of little whitecapped waves raced across the lake. But the wind was blowing the mist off the lake and every now and then Mina could catch a glimpse of the distant shore.
“It isn’t too rough, is it?” she asked George. “I really do want us to get moving this morning.”
He studied the sky. Eventually a sliver of blue appeared, though just for an instant before the rising fog obscured it. “I think we can try it,” he said.
Two hours later the breeze had driven most of the clouds away. For the first time in seven days they saw the sun again. Mina sat in the centre of the canoe with her head laid back and her face raised to the sun, soaking up its warmth. “It’s going to be a good day,” she announced.
The men said nothing. She knew they were still worried about the Indians.
“Really,” she said, “everything is going to be fine today. You wait and see.”
Gilbert and Joe’s canoe glided along beside hers. Gilbert asked, “How do you know, missus?”
“I just know, that’s all. I can smell it in the air.”
Gilbert raised his head and sniffed. “All I can smell is Job,” he said.
They passed down that lake and along a narrower stretch of the river, then onto a longer lake that Mina named Resolution. The entrance to this lake was crowded with small islands, but beyond the islands Resolution opened up clear and calm and wide. For the first four miles the lake was bordered by low, bushy banks, but then the canoes approached a high sandy point that reached out into the water from the eastern shore, and at the moment Mina first saw that hillside in the distance, and especially the irregular patches of shadow near its top, her pulse began to race. “It might be caribou,” Joe said.
But Mina knew that those shadows were not made by caribou. And as the canoes drew closer, a flash of light flared from the centre of a shadow, the glint of sunlight on metal. “It isn’t caribou,” George said sombrely.
A minute or so later a short volley of rifle shots rang out from the hillside. The men reached for their own rifles and laid them across their knees. Mina slipped her revolver from its holster, raised it into the air and fired a single shot in reply.
Twice more the Indians on the hillside fired a quick volley, and each time Mina answered with a single shot. She had no way of knowing the intention behind the Indians’ shots, nor how they were interpreting hers. But for the moment it was their only form of communication. George directed his canoe farther out into the lake. The other canoe followed.
Eventually the shadows on the hillside took recognizable form—a group of twenty or so women and children. The men paddled very slowly now, ready at any moment to swing their canoes to the far side of the lake. One of the women stepped forward from the group and shouted something. Soon the entire group took up the shout, all the time waving their hands as if to push the canoes away.
George said, “They’re telling us, ‘Go away, go away. We are afraid of you. Our husbands are away.’” He had learned the language of the Montagnais two years earlier, when, after the first Hubbard expedition, he had been forced to winter over at the North West River Post, where some of the Indians did their trading.
“Tanto sebo?” Job shouted into the din—Where is the river? “Tanto sebo?” He and the other men had visibly relaxed, even exchanging a few smiles, when they heard that there were no men in camp.
Upon hearing their own language coming back to them, the Indians quieted. In Montagnais George called up to them, “We are strangers and are passing through your country.”
Now the shouts of fear from the hillside turned to laughter, and four of the women raced down toward the shore to welcome the strangers. “Is it safe?” Gilbert asked.
Mina said, “Of course it’s safe. They want to meet us. And I want to meet them.”
George spent a few moments longer studying the hillside for signs of any other Indians. Finally he agreed to turn the canoes toward shore.
By the time everyone in Mina’s party had shaken the hands of the first four women, several other women and children had come down off the hill. Mina was more than a little surprised by how open and at ease the Indians were, especially in light of their fear only minutes earlier. They displayed not a trace of shyness or suspicion. She was also impressed by their appearance:
Their clothing was of a quite civilized fashion, the dresses being of woolen goods of various colors made with plain blouse and skirt, while on their feet they wore moccasins of dressed deerskin. The jet black hair was parted from forehead to neck, and brought round on either side, where it was wound into a hard little roll in front of the ear and bound about with pieces of plain cloth or a pretty beaded band. Each head was adorned with a toque made from black and red broadcloth, with beaded or braided band around the head. Both the manner of wearing the hair and the toque were exceedingly picturesque and becoming, and the types were v
arious as those found in other communities, ranging from the sweet and even beautiful face to the grossly animal-like. They were not scrupulously clean, but were not dirtier than hundreds of thousands to be found well within the borders of civilization, and all, even the little children, wore the crucifix.
Through a series of exchanges between the Indians and Mina’s men, she learned that the Montagnais males had gone to Davis Inlet on the east coast to trade for winter supplies. They had been gone for five days and were expected to return in three or four, bringing with them all the eagerly awaited goods from the trading post, including tea, sugar, tobacco, clothing and trinkets.
As for the Barren Grounds Indians, the Naskapi, whom Leonidas Hubbard had hoped to meet, they, the Montagnais women said, could be found at their hunting grounds farther north along the river. “You will sleep twice before coming to their camp.”
Mina instructed George to ask if the women had had any other visitors recently, particularly four white men and an Indian.
No, said the women. Nobody but you.
“Ask them how far it is to the George River Post at Ungava.”
When the answer was received, George’s face darkened.
“How far?” Mina asked.
“Two months, they say.”
Her stomach fell. Two months! In that case they would not reach Ungava until October. Not only would the Pelican be long gone, but her party would be caught fast in the grip of winter by then. Would they even be able to reach the post? Laddie had died in a blizzard on October 18. Was that to be their fate as well?
Heart So Hungry Page 20