Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  I took a deep breath. “Come here.” It was more of an invitation than a command. With the toe of my boot I smoothed off a patch of ground, then, kneeling, began tracing lines in the dirt with the tip of my right index finger. Curiosity stamped on their faces, the Indians inched closer until they had formed a circle around me.

  The lines in the dirt began taking definite pattern. A lake was mentioned here, a creek or muskeg there. The Indians perhaps knew more of such places than I did myself.

  “Inside this line,” I patiently began to explain, “my trapping country stop. Damn little fur stop here now, but once upon a time lots beavers, muskrats, mink, otter, fisher stop. But now no more beaver stop because no one leave any beaver in water to raise papoose ’nother year. And when beaver go, most all other fur go too.”

  I hefted a small pebble and, bracing back on my heels, hurled it out into the lake. “Look!” I said quietly. And the Indians turned on their heels and watched the spot where the pebble had splashed.

  “You see how ripple spread out over water where rock falls?” I asked. And just to make certain, I threw another. “Bimeby, s’pose Indians not steal them from me that’s how my beaver, mink and muskrat and other fur spread too. Until pretty soon so many stop my trapline some he got to move away to other place. That’s the time he maybe move onto your trap-line, and s’pose you leave alone just little while and let him get papooses, lots of fur stop your country again too.”

  I stepped back into the jack pines and returned with the traps and muskrats. I stared long and thoughtfully at the traps and fur. According to the unwritten law of the wilderness, any traps found upon a registered trapline automatically became the property of the owner of the line, as did, of course, any fur that was in them. No one, least of all those who had unlawfully set the traps, ever questioned that long-established principle. Mine was the right now to claim ownership of the fur and traps in my hand. The Indians were fully reconciled to the loss of both. But I knew that that wouldn’t do. So I dropped both fur and traps and fumbled in my pocket for tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. After rolling myself a cigarette, I asked the Indians, “You smoke?”

  The only talkative one of the four inclined his head. “S’pose tobacco stop.”

  I lit my cigarette and took a deep puff. “No tobacco stop now?” And receiving a negative gesture of the head in reply, I thought, “There’s not a five-cent piece among the lot of them.” So I passed over the makings and watched while each built himself a cigarette.

  Slowly then, I began tossing the traps down at their feet. Muskrats followed the traps. “Take them and go back your own country,” I told them. “And remember what I say to you: s’pose Indian leave me alone and not steal my fur, pretty soon lots fur come back his country too.”

  They picked up the fur and the traps and shuffled away to their horses. Suddenly one of the older ones halted and looked back across his shoulder. “T’ank you.” His voice was barely audible. And then they swung up into their saddles and single-filed into the dark mass of the forest. Long after they were out of sight, I kept staring at the forest. Then, turning to Lillian, I commented, “Well?” as if asking her for her own thoughts.

  She made a quick little gesture with her hands. “You gave them back their traps, and the fur that was in them too.” She broke off, glanced at the lake, then exclaimed, “No other white man would have done that! Eric, I know the Indians a great deal better than you do—I should, since I am part Indian myself. You gave them their traps and the fur and they’ll never forget it. And soon, in every reservation around us, all the Indians will hear how you gave them the traps and fur when you might have kept them yourself. Some people might say you were foolish, but you weren’t. You did just what had to be done. I don’t think we ever need worry anymore about Indians stealing our fur.”

  Chapter 12

  There was no indication in the fall of 1934 that disaster was about to stare us in the face. The fall had been a mild one, and not until mid-October did any large flocks of geese move in on us from the north. And the geese knew a thing about weather, and their judgement could usually be relied upon.

  With November’s first snowfall we backtracked to a bear den and routed out its tenant. Then I shot a two-year-old bull moose and hung its quarters beneath the spruce tree. The mouse cycle was at its peak, so we looked forward to a profitable catch of weasels when their coats would be white and prime. The shifting moods of the cycles, which have such paramount bearing upon the affairs of the different wildlife communities, had become something of a study with us. They played a major role in our economic well-being, so it was essential that we should have some understanding of them. If the plentitude of muskrats, waterfowl and other aquatic life resulted in an increase in mink, so too was a plentitude of mice accountable for a similar increase in weasel. No form of life can be permitted to increase beyond the carrying capacity of its food supply. There must be a little “left in the bank.” A wildlife community can increase just so long as there is a certain food supply in sight to warrant the increase. Beyond that point it cannot and will not go.

  A conservative estimate made during the summer of 1934 told me that by investing a few dollars in additional traps we had good chance of taking at least two hundred dollars’ worth of weasel when they primed out. So the traps were purchased and in mid-November set out and baited. The winter’s work had begun.

  We never had actually feared the winters, despite their snow and their wind and their savage bursts of colder than usual temperatures. A colder than usual temperature was when the mercury registered fifty below zero and the wind lanced down from the Arctic. In winter there were no flies to pester us, and almost every single day was one of enticing expectancy. Though a trap set for a mink might only catch a no-account flying squirrel or pack rat, it might catch a small dark fisher worth one hundred fifty dollars. Or a trap set for a coyote might, if luck blew from the right direction, catch a silver fox worth ten times as much as the coyote.

  If once in a great while loneliness beset us, it was only for a moment. Of a fact there was scarcely a spare moment to take so much as even a quick thought of loneliness. Lillian had her chores around the house to do, as well as one or two outside. She had her own little trapline, a mile of it, up and down the creek. This she travelled every day, weather permitting, with Veasy slipping along on a pair of homemade skis at her heels. Seldom a day went by but what she didn’t get at least a weasel or two in the traps. And of course she was ever buoyed up by the possibility that the very next trap she came to would hold a fine mink.

  Veasy was already delving into the mysteries of spelling. He knew that D-O-G was dog and C-A-T was cat. He knew other things, too, though how he came to know them is a question without plausible answer. Once, when looking for coyote tracks in the snow, I cut what was obviously a fox track. After a run of a couple of miles I ran the animal down, shot it with the .22 and tied it behind the saddle. Veasy was skiing a little way from the cabin when I came in sight. As fast as skis and legs and wind could carry him, he shot straight for the cabin door, shouting, “Daddy’s got a fox!” He’d never seen one before, but since it obviously wasn’t a coyote his line of reasoning perhaps told him that it had to be a fox. Or maybe the knowledge just came naturally, as a newly weaned coyote pup learns that the hunting of porcupine is a pastime only indulged in by coyotes long in years and wisdom, and if attempted by an adolescent predator will only result in a mouthful of barbed quills.

  Our first warning of an impending change in the weather pattern came to me in late November. When running a long line of traps I continually crossed the well-packed trails of deer travelling one behind the other. Apparently overnight, the deer had made sudden resolve to migrate to their wintering grounds proper along the Fraser River. “Now why,” I wondered, “should they be pulling out for the river this early?” Usually the deer stayed with us until well along in January.

  For the next three days the continual movement of deer toward the river sh
owed itself wherever I was running the traps, but on the fourth day when making my rounds, I cut the tracks of only a few. The main herds had passed on; only the stragglers were left.

  There is usually an explanation for much that takes place in the wilderness if one tries hard enough to find it. The ribbonlike paths of the mule deer, a hasty migration underway six weeks earlier than usual, pointed up one sure fact: a change in the weather was at hand, and a change that would be for the worse. Perhaps the deer could scent the change in the air, or perhaps their instinct for survival warned them of its advent. Anyway, they knew.

  Forty-eight hours after the passing of the deer herd, the wind began moving down threateningly from the north. Tallowy clouds blotted out the sun, and a foreboding hush brooded over the forests. The chatter of red squirrels no longer scolded me when I passed beneath the trees. Spruce hen and willow grouse winged away from the scattering timber, seeking less exposed habitat elsewhere. Moose that were pasturing in the alder thickets higher up the hillsides began trailing down to the muskegs and beaver meadows below. And snowshoe rabbits stayed close to their holes, ready to bolt down into the bowels of the earth when the threat of an approaching blizzard became actual fact.

  With December the first granulated kernels of snow commenced slanting in with the wind. I stepped out of the cabin one morning to face the wrath of a snow-laden wind that nigh crushed the breath from my lungs. Fourteen inches of snow had fallen during the night, and the trail from cabin to barn was buried. I glanced at the thermometer hanging on the outer logs of the cabin. The mercury was at eighteen degrees below zero. That would not have been too unpleasant if it hadn’t been for the wind, and drive and thrust of the snow. In clear still weather one can run a line of traps in a temperature of thirty or more below at the cost of perhaps only a slightly frost-bitten cheek or nose, but when even a mere ten below is spiced by an arctic wind, no trapper in his right senses moves far from the shelter of his cabin.

  For three weeks the snow continued to fall intermittently, reaching a depth of forty inches. Our hopes of a large catch of weasel lay buried beneath its mass. Even the coyotes had forsaken us to follow the deer to the river. From a short-term viewpoint, that December of the heavy snows was a catastrophe indeed, yet every inch that fell added to a total that decided our eventual plan.

  Christmas sulked in on a quartering moon. The skies cleared temporarily and snow no longer rustled against the windowpanes. The wind from out of the Yukon blew sharp as splintered glass. The spruces along the creek cracked as the frost bit into them, and from higher up the hill a little red fox yapped and wailed its ravenous misery.

  Moose calves hoisted up from the snow at daybreak, legs stiff with frost. Chickadee birds dropped from their perches in the spruce trees, tiny feathered bodies frozen solid as they roosted. It was Christmas, the birthday of Our Lord. Christmas Day and the mercury reading exactly fifty-three degrees below zero.

  Only the moose or occasional wandering timber wolf saw fit to wallow through the depths of snow now crushing the forests, for fifty above or fifty below, moose must continue to forage daily lest their body heat forever be extinguished within them.

  For the first time since entrusting our destiny to the wilderness, we now had to forego our customary pre-Christmas journey to the trading post at Riske Creek. I had hoped somehow to breast the snow with team and sleigh and go out for supplies and mail a few days before Christmas, but in a temperature of zero minus fifty it is not fit that either man or horse should be out on any trail.

  It was apparent that Santa Claus wouldn’t pass himself down the six-inch stovepipe this Christmas, and somehow I had to break the sad news to Veasy. But how? Then I had an inspiration. On Christmas Eve, just after sundown, I took him outside the cabin and stood studying the sky. The cold was so crisp and sharp that the very process of breathing compelled me to cough. A few drops of moisture coming from Veasy’s eyes froze as they formed on his cheeks.

  I shook my head and muttered, “Don’t see how anyone can travel in weather like this.” And after a timely pause, “Not even Santa Claus.”

  Veasy pondered over this a moment or two, then said, “He’d freeze, wouldn’t he?”

  I nodded. “He and his reindeer too.”

  Veasy said, “And then there’d never be any more Christmases, would there?”

  “Well,” I replied cautiously, “there’d be other Christmases, but maybe no more Santa Claus.”

  “I hope he stays in the warm,” was Veasy’s reaction to the melancholy news.

  Fifteen inches of new snow fell between Christmas and New Year. Our pantry shelves were almost as bare as Mother Hubbard’s, although we didn’t lack meat and vegetables. And if a three-meal-per-day menu of moose or deer meat, with the occasional goose for variation, became monotonous, it at least kept flesh on our ribs.

  We hadn’t seen another human being for over two months, or received or sent off mail in the same length of time. We were Crusoes on the island, around us a sea of snow. Yet these were trivial matters, inconvenient but not serious. But there was one insidious thought of which we couldn’t rid ourselves: what if serious illness suddenly stalked into our home? Although the healthy life that was ours was seldom disturbed by even a common cold, I had disturbing recollection of other trappers who, shut away from any possible medical help in the wintry isolation of their traplines had sickened and died alone in their cabins to rest there frozen, not to be found until spring or sometimes later.

  The more Lillian and I brooded over the matter, the more urgent seemed the necessity of our somehow breaking out to Riske Creek with the team and sleigh. This was easier thought about than done, for apart perhaps from the occasional moose track, which would be of no help to horses at all, the track from Meldrum Lake to Riske Creek hadn’t been travelled since the snow first began falling.

  Lillian finally brought matters to a head. “We’ve just got to break a trail through to Riske Creek,” she blurted out across the breakfast table.

  “I’ve been thinking along those lines myself,” I agreed. “It’ll likely take me all of four days if I make the round trip on snowshoes—”

  “Snowshoes!” she cried. “What good would a snowshoe track be to me if you broke a leg or Veasy came down with pneumonia or something? Eric, it must be done with the team and sleigh.” And when this brought no immediate response from me, she furthered, “We can take a camp outfit along and fill the sleigh box with hay for the horses.”

  “We?” I shook my head and said, “Snowshoes or team and sleigh, this is one trip I’d best tackle alone.”

  “Veasy and I are going too.” Lillian’s voice had hardened. “Think I want to sit here not knowing whether you got through or not? Of course Veasy and I are going. It won’t be the first time we’ve slept out under trees, and probably won’t be the last for that matter.”

  “In over five feet of snow, maybe thirty or forty below zero?”

  “Yes, in five feet of snow and fifty below if it likes.” Lillian’s voice sounded unnaturally firm, and her face was set with iron determination. Her eyes never flinched as she stared me in the face. Here was one facet of Lillian’s character that had never before asserted itself, at least not since she was married to me. Usually she tried to make her point by diplomatic and gentle persuasion. Now, however, I knew that my wishes were of no avail whatsoever against the granite of her resolve.

  “Okay,” I sighed, “we’ll all go.”

  On bare ground, with the horses hitched to the wagon, we could make the trip from the cabin to Riske Creek in eight or ten hours of slow but certain travel. Hitched to the sleigh, and with only a few inches of snow on the ground, the team could get us out in less time still. But with the snow at its present depth it was a highly debatable matter whether we could get through with the team at all. But by giving the horses their time, and making an overnight camp when they could pull us no farther that day, we at least stood some chance of getting through to Riske Creek. There was danger, to be
sure, but after you’ve been snowbound for one or two months without a sign of a human being, it seemed to us that almost any chance was worth taking. We took it.

  Chapter 13

  We postponed the moment of harnessing and hitching the team to the sleigh in slender hope that there could be a sudden warm-up in the weather. The hope was slight, because Chilcotin winters had taught us that for every twenty-four hours that a snow-freighted wind blows down from the north, one can usually expect that there will be another twenty-four hours of silent, deadly cold when the wind and the snow cease.

  Finally the skies shed their gray, but as gray gave way to blue and an argent sun again looked down on the woods, the mercury skidded to zero minus forty. But still, after almost a month without a glimpse of it, there was something cheerful, if not warming, to the bright stare of the sun. So, trying to forget the telltale evidence of the thermometer, we piled blankets, camping outfit and hay into the sleigh box, coupled the team to the neck yoke and struck out to the south.

  At least there was no wind to pry at our clothing, and if the fur trim of our parkas was soon hoary with frost, and we were continually forced to rub a heavily mittened hand across our eyelashes to rid them of the ice, down in the depths of the sleigh box, head and hands just above the blankets, we managed to keep our bodies reasonably warm.

  For the horses, every yard gained was a yard of cruel effort. The snow piled and pushed ahead of the neck yoke until such a solid mass of it was windrowed up in front of them the horses could not wiggle the sleigh another inch. Now I had to climb down from the sleigh, wallow around to the neck yoke and shovel the snow aside before the horses could get the sleigh runners squeaking again. The presence of any short pitch in the road called for a minute or two of rest for the team.

  Two miles out from the cabin we came upon gruesome evidence of the toll that December’s “bitter” moon was exacting from the wildlife of the forests. Square in the middle of what had once been the road before it was blanked out by snow lay a calf moose. Its head rested back upon its withers, and both hind and front legs were doubled beneath it. So natural did the calf look there in the snow, it seemed that surely this poor little waif of the wilderness was not dead but only sleeping. But that was the way it died. Unable to stay in the track of its mother, all will to live slowly but inexorably sapped by the relentless torture of the cold, there finally came a moment when the output of energy required to search for a mouthful of forage exceeded the input of energy gained by the consumption of the food. And so, tiring of such hard struggle for existence, the calf knelt down in the snow and lay there, breath crystallizing upon its lips, heart feebly ticking away the final moments of life.