by Eric Collier
Going back up the hill I thought of the cabin, and Lillian and Veasy. Veasy of course had no proper idea of what the gruelling dangerous business now taking place on the timbered slope west of Meldrum Lake entailed. In a few years’ time, when he himself tried his hand at the game, he quickly learned about it. But if Lillian had never chased a coyote, she was aware of the hazards involved. No horse was altogether infallible, and galloping over windfalls, often hidden by snow, any horse might stumble and go head over heels, pinning its rider beneath it. In dense lodgepole pine there was always the danger of breaking a leg when crowding the horse through the trees. Or of a snag gouging you in the eye, or an overhanging limb tumbling you clean out of the saddle. Of these things Lillian knew. But if she fretted about them she also knew that, now that the traps were of no avail, if coyote pelts were to go on the stretcher boards, this was the way I must get them.
When again I cut the track I saw that the coyote had almost beaten me to the ice, only to be headed off and turned back up the hill when he knew I was below him. His jumps were now visibly shortening, and where possible he was travelling under or on top of the blowdowns, taking full advantage of any break in the snow that would make for easier travel. At last he was beginning to tire.
Under circumstances such as these a mature coyote will sometimes display uncanny intelligence in a bid to save his skin. If able to throw his pursuer off his tracks in a thicket, he’ll deliberately bed down in the snow and lie there regaining his wind and conserving his strength until the horse is almost on top of him. Once, when trying to wean an almost exhausted coyote away from the thicket of spruces in which he was hiding, I glimpsed him a few yards away stretched out on a flat rock, eyeing my every move. Yet before I could line the sights of my .22 rifle on him he was down off the rock and had melted away in the spruces.
I was tolerably certain that at long last this coyote was buckling under the pressure. Now it was entirely a matter of timing, of calculating just when and where to call on my horse for that final burst of speed that would draw him alongside the coyote. And the timing had to be right.
The trees ahead were thickening, the inevitable clumps of seedlings reaching out from gully and ridge. We were hauling back to the rabbit country. The jumps of the coyote were now only inches apart and their freshness said yes, the coyote’s only a stone’s throw ahead. A feel of the horseflesh between my knees told me of how much run there was left in the chestnut. He was good for about another half-mile.
“Mr. Binks!” The quirt flicked the gelding’s quarters and the chestnut catapulted. I swung low over the saddle to dodge the reaching limbs. We twisted here, twisted there, like couples in a square dance as the chestnut pounded down on the ever-shortening jump marks in the snow.
At last the view halloo. Twenty-five pounds of almost exhausted coyote bobbed up and down in the snow like a scrap of driftwood rising and falling on the wavelets of a lake. Perhaps there should have been pity in me as my hand snaked down to the scabbard and I drew out the .22 and bolted a shell home. And maybe the pity was there, yet it was one I could not heed. How often in February and March, when the crusted snow will support a loping coyote but give to the weight of a deer, have I stared down at gruesome evidence in the timber indicating where coyotes had chased an animal down and then slowly killed it. No matter how many I might run down thus in the deepening snows, coyotes will still be killing deer when I am gone from the woods.
“Mr. Binks!” A mere whisper now. And the chestnut gave me generously of his final spark of speed. No need for sight or aim as we drew abreast the loser. I leaned away from the saddle, poked the cold snout of the .22 against the coyote’s ear and quickly squeezed the trigger.
This business of pitting one form of life—the horse—against that other—the coyote—lacked justice to either one. Never for a moment did I look upon it as sport. It was a necessity of the moment, as eating and drinking are a necessity. In my time I have snuffed out the lives of many, many coyotes thus, yet it was not a task to my liking. And it was one I abandoned altogether when the need no longer existed.
The wick of the coal-oil lamp had been burning for two hours or longer when I got back to the cabin. Its pale light in the window acted as a tonic to my aching body, and I dug my heels into the chestnut’s flanks, telling the almost spent horse, “Another hundred yards and we’ll both know what it is to be warm again!”
The chestnut was gray with frosted sweat. Icicles were matted to its tail, making a harsh swishing sound at each stride the animal took. I leaned well forward in the saddle, mittened hands pressed against the horse’s withers, as if trying to steal a little of the animal’s body heat to comfort my own tortured flesh. For the past hour it seemed that that flesh was sheer ice.
That’s how it always was when I got through chasing a coyote in the snow, whether I killed the animal or not. The excitement and furious tempo of the chase seemed to heat my blood, often brought perspiration to the skin. But with the chase and excitement of it all over, the bitter cold again became almost unbearable, especially on the way home.
The cabin door was open; I could see that when I was fifty yards from it. I thought, “She’s out there, watching and waiting, and listening.”
I heard her little cry of joy and relief when her body was just a vague form in the night. I reined the chestnut up to her, turned in the saddle and began fumbling with numbed fingers at the knots in the strings binding the limp, lifeless coyote to the skirts of the saddle.
“Here, let me.” Quickly, Lillian untied the knots and lifted the coyote down.
I eased gingerly out of the saddle and pressed my cold lips against the warm ones she offered me, then she slipped the bridle from the chestnut’s head, took the halter shank and bade me, “You go in and thaw out. I’ll stable and feed the horse.”
I reached for the halter shank. “I’ll tend to the—”
“You’ll go inside at once,” she cut in. It was an order, not a suggestion. “You’ve had enough cold for one day.” And she started with the horse for the barn, leaving me gawking stupidly after her.
I lugged the coyote into the cabin and began unbuckling my overshoes. Veasy inspected the “kill,” then piped, “Daddy, when will I be old enough to chase coyotes?”
“By the time you’re old enough for that,” I solemnly told him, “I hope beyond anything that neither of us ever has to chase coyotes down in the snow.” And fervently hoped I was right.
Chapter 10
I had been staring thoughtfully at the saucer for all of five minutes. It wasn’t even a clean saucer, it was the one we fed the cat in. It was lying on the ground outside the cabin, upside down. Whether Veasy’s feet or the antics of the cat had propelled the saucer to its present undignified stance was hard to say. Anyway, it didn’t matter. It seemed to sort of blend into my thoughts as the colour of a deer blends with the background of the forest.
Winter was almost spent, although there was still the odd patch of snow here and there. Yesterday the creek had awakened as freshets commenced moving down it. And yesterday an advance echelon of Canada geese had passed over the cabin, high up, true, but there just the same. And the geese never fooled either themselves or anyone else. When they passed over the cabin, heads north, tails south, spring was here to stay.
Veasy was over by the hay corral, hunting fictitious deer with the bow and arrow I’d made him. He was stalking one right this very second. Suddenly he crouched down, placed the notch of the arrow against the string, then straightening, sped it toward the target. Then he whooped. Of course he’d killed himself a four-point buck because he never killed lesser fry, like two points or spikes. And of course he never shot at does or fawns.
Lillian and I were seated outside the cabin on blocks of wood, busy with nothing at all, just thankful the winter was over, just as right this very minute all over the Chilcotin, ranchers and trappers, stump farmers and wild-horse chasers, and squaws and papooses were all seated on blocks of wood outside their homes, bu
sy with nothing at all, thankful the winter was over.
By and large the winter hadn’t treated us too badly. Through January and up to mid-February I’d chased and killed thirteen coyotes. According to my recollection, five others had outguessed or outrun me. It wasn’t a bad percentage in my favour. And thirteen coyotes in terms of ten-dollar bills added up to maybe one hundred thirty dollars. But in mid-February a twenty-four-hour chinook wind followed by deep-freeze temperatures had put an iron crust on the snow, and then the coyotes could gleefully thumb their noses at me. Only a fool or a greenhorn would match horseflesh against coyote when the snow was crusted like that.
For the next six weeks there was little else to do but get still further acquainted with the handles of the crosscut saw. Stove wood, like money, was something one just could not have too much of, for when the thermometer glares at you with a reading of minus fifty, wood, like money at any temperature, just seems to evaporate.
But now the geese were back, and the creek was in flood, and the lake ice rotting, and the saucer lying upside down in the dirt. And thinking about all that water going down the creek made me think of the saucer. Water and saucer—they blended perfectly.
I went over and picked it up, returned to the block of wood and began twiddling the saucer around in my fingers. Veasy was through hunting for a while, for of course any hunter gets tired. He stalked over to the cabin and began watching the saucer.
“Did you get it?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Was it fat?” Another nod.
“Did it have a liver?”
He frowned. “All deer have livers.”
I said, “Good. I’m sure starved for a feed of fresh deer liver. After a while you and me’ll go skin it out.”
My thoughts went back to the saucer. It made me think of something else. So: “Blotting paper,” I suddenly sang out. “I want a piece of blotting paper.”
Lillian’s eyebrows tilted. “What on earth for?”
I said impatiently, “Go find me some blotting paper, there’s a good woman. And bring me a dipper of water too.”
“Pen and ink?” she suggested as she stepped into the cabin.
“Of course not,” I answered. “Just blotting paper and water.” What foolish questions women sometimes ask, I thought to myself.
On her return I tore off a piece of the blotting paper and placed it at the bottom of the saucer. Then, a drop at a time, I tipped a little water into the saucer. Then I turned the saucer upside down.
“Where water go?” Veasy wanted to know on seeing that none left the saucer even though upside down. Veasy was not yet acquainted with the full properties of blotting paper.
Again I dribbled water into the saucer, a drop at a time. Following a good many drops a little water was now visible in the saucer. Still I continued dribbling water into it until it was half full. Gradually the saucer filled until water began running over its brim.
I squinted at Lillian over the top of the saucer, much as a schoolmaster glances at his class, and explained, “Every dry marsh along the creek is like that saucer with its blotting paper. The marshes themselves are so much blotting paper, absorbing all rain or snow as quickly as it falls or melts. But if we could just soak up their blotting paper as I did, in the saucer, the rain and melting snows would gradually fill them until they too overflowed and again fed the creek. Simple, isn’t it?”
“To hear you talk about it, yes. But—” Lillian shook her head as if it wasn’t that simple after all.
“Never mind the buts. Let’s figure out how we can start filling one or two of the saucers.” And getting up and feeling for my pocket knife, I said to Veasy, “Now, let’s skin that deer and get at his liver.” But Veasy wasn’t interested in any deer. He was pouring water into the saucer and holding it upside down.
From source to mouth, Meldrum Creek follows a leisurely and at times somewhat aimless path. On leaving the lake of its origin the creek travels northeast with many a twist and turn until arriving at Meldrum Lake, ten miles downstream. There it takes an easterly course for another ten miles to spill into a chain of lakes lying roughly north to south. These were the lakes that had earlier been tapped by the ranchers for water for their irrigation ditches.
After passing through them, and as if now in impatience to reach journey’s end by the shortest possible route, the creek flows due east for another nine miles and so comes to the river.
But not until it is almost within sight of the Fraser is there any noticeable fall to its grade, for above the trench of the river the land slopes but slightly, and here the gentle flow of the creek offers numerous sites where the beavers of old were able to build and maintain their dams. In a few days’ time, as soon as the frost was gone from the ground, we too were to become beavers of sorts.
Fortified by the moral encouragement of the rancher Moon, we were now ready to take the first hesitant step in our grand design of eventually reflooding every acre of marsh upon the creek that could be flooded without doing harm to anyone else. To me, the principle of the saucer and its blotting paper was beyond all dispute, but there were so many saucers, so much blotting paper, and if for the time being we could do nothing about the larger ones, we might do something with the lesser.
The success—or otherwise—of the plan hinged upon our being able to shut off the tap without robbing the irrigation ditches of what little water they had. At first thought it seemed a sheer impossibility, and well might have been were it not for all the “saucers” and their blotting paper. If we inundated one or two of the lesser saucers at the head of the creek, might we not be merely impounding water that would only soak away on some larger marsh below before getting anywhere near the irrigation ditches? And would not the filling of even one small saucer to a point where the water spilled out of it result in just that much more water in the creek channel below? Here were questions that we were now about to try to answer.
In rebuilding the first dam we employed the tactics of a beaver itself. An examination of what was still left of their dams showed us that their concrete had mostly been sticks and other trash. Good enough for us. We felled spruces and other conifers and toted their limbs to the dam site, where they were laid out on the surface in network design, tops upstream.
Again, although against my will, Lillian insisted that she too should help at the handles of the crosscut saw in felling the timber. As soon as the trees crashed to earth she dropped the saw, hefted her short-handled, single-bitted axe and began hacking at the limbs. Originally the dam had been some three hundred forty feet long, and the task of rebuilding it without even a plow or scraper seemed one that had no end.
After arranging a mat of boughs along the dam, we then wheeled dirt from a nearby pit and dumped it on the boughs. First a layer of boughs, then a layer of dirt, boughs and dirt, dirt and boughs, hour after hour, day after day, until it seemed that we’d logged off all of the forest and moved a hilltop besides. But finally the job was done and when the dam filled there would be five or more feet of water where now there was stagnant marsh. The boughs comprising perhaps half the bulk in the dam served two useful purposes: in the first place they saved us some of the drudgery of shovelling and wheeling dirt and gravel, and in the second, now that the job was finished, water could cascade over its top without danger of the whole structure washing out. That was the principle upon which the beavers built their dams, and if it was good enough for beavers it was good enough for us.
The reflooding of a mere ten acres of marsh to a depth of five feet is a slow and tedious process when the flow of water coming into it is only a mere trickle. It seemed that the saucer was never going to fill. But eventually its blotting paper was soaked, and water began inching up the face of the dam, until, three weeks after its completion, the water licked at the top and began spilling over.
And then the weather pattern itself decided to give us a hand. Shortly after the dam was finished, the skies clouded over, the wind rushed in from the south, and rain b
egan to fall. It fell intermittently for forty-eight hours, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a deluge that kept us in the cabin. But we didn’t mind that. Lillian had her sewing—she never did seem to catch up on that and I doubt that she ever will—I had Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, a book well calculated to keep any thoughtful man occupied for many a rainy night, and Veasy had the canoe he was whittling from a piece of cottonwood split. Let it rain! The more it rained, the better the canoe would float when it came time to run the rapids.
The rain was surely hint enough for us to begin work now on another beaver dam a half-mile below the first. The job took all of a week, for it had originally been two hundred feet long and eight feet high in the creek channel. But we hacked down more spruces and we trundled another hill or two away on the wheelbarrow and finally that job was done and another few acres of marsh was lake.
Now came a few days of dread and gnawing anxiety. For over two weeks the “tap” had been shut off at the head of the creek. Had the irrigation ditches, miles below us, gone without water as consequence? If so, we’d know about it before long. All now hinged upon whether or not one of the ranchers, or his hired help, moved in on the scene to investigate a sudden shortage of water in an irrigation ditch.
“Heck of a note if all of a sudden we hear boom-boom-boom, and find that they’ve blown our dams to Kingdom Come,” I cheerfully summed up this period of dark and hideous uncertainty. But there wasn’t a single boom. No one came near the dams. The irrigation ditches hadn’t been affected.
As soon as they had their water back, the marshes again began producing crops of aquatic grasses and tubers. The root systems, of course, had been there all the time, and only water was needed to induce them to show life. By late July a half-dozen different varieties of aquatic weeds and grasses pushed their stems above water, and the ponds took on a vivid greenish hue. Three hen mallards suddenly appeared on the scene, warily piloting their broods of half-fledged youngsters among the waving grasses. A mink left its catlike track in the soft dirt of the dams, and muskrats began building feed beds in the flooded willows.