Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  He kept pestering me to let him set the traps out for himself until finally, a little against my will, I gave in. Lillian told me, “No, he’s too young to be out on the ice alone, messing around with mink sets.”

  “Is he?” I wondered. And, glancing back to a hazy past, I began trying to remember how old I had been when I first shot a starling with a .22. Maybe seven or eight. And no one had been around to show me how to handle the .22 except maybe an older brother. Whereas Veasy had seen both me and Lillian setting out mink traps since he was old enough to slip along on skis.

  “Is he?” I repeated. “Just a few traps set around the lake here at the house, well within hollering distance if anything went wrong? After all, it would give him something to do after school hours, and on Saturdays and Sundays. He’s a bit young, yes, but maybe not too young to set out a trap or two and maybe catch a fine mink.”

  “He’s too young,” Lillian insisted.

  “I’ve been over to the big lake on my skis,” Veasy joined in. “Lots of times. By myself.” By the big lake, he meant Meldrum, which was three-quarters of a mile from the cabin, well out of hollering distance. And sensing that I was wavering, even if his mother wasn’t, he asked me directly, “Can’t I put out just two or three traps at the lake by the house? I can ski awful fast now, quicker than you go on snowshoes.” That part of it was fact. I said nothing, looking to Lillian for a decision. After at least five minutes of thinking it over, she said, “He does go quite a piece away on his skis. Too far sometimes. He was up the creek yesterday, gone for over an hour. And when I asked him where he’d been all that time he said halfway up the hill back of the house, to the old bear den where we smoked out our very first bear. That’s a mile and a half from here.” Then, with a small sigh of resignation: “Maybe it will be all right for him to be out on the lake, fixing a trap or two. At least I’ll know where he’s at.”

  So I gave him a half-dozen traps and went around the lake with him myself when he set them. I watched as he depressed their spring with his right foot. That part of it was all right. I watched as he made his trap cubbies out of pieces of stick. Nothing wrong about that either. And I watched as he took a piece of muskrat flesh from the small sack he was toting and placed it in the cubby. “Farther back,” I told him. “The way you’ve got it, a mink or weasel could get away with the bait without touching the pan.” And when he had pushed the bait farther in the cubby, using a long stick to do so, I said, “Now go to it. And whatever you catch is yours.”

  Despite the fact that timber wolves often left their track marks on the snow covering the frozen lakes, it wasn’t often I saw a wolf in the flesh. In summer you often saw them, seldom in winter. In winter they got wild and cautious, hunting mostly at night, moving off into heavy timber at daybreak to sleep or cleanse their fur beneath the shelter of some overhanging trees. When Veasy went off down the lake on a late winter afternoon to look at his traps, Lillian told him, “Watch out for the wolves,” just as a city mother would say, “Don’t cross the street against the light.” Timber wolves on the ice, like bears in the blueberry patches, were perhaps something that Lillian often thought of but never worried too much about. And I never lost much sleep thinking about timber wolves bothering Veasy either. Here in the wilderness one could, if he were that way inclined, spend countless hours worrying over all that might go amiss. But if you were so inclined you had no business living out in the wilderness in the first place.

  I had been over to Meldrum Lake taking a peek at a lynx trap I’d set three days ago. The lynx was ranging a thicket of spruces, hunting snowshoe rabbits, and I’d arranged my bait pen alongside a well-packed trail, set the trap and tossed in a couple of handfuls of feathers for bait. On the chance that the lynx had got caught in the set, I took the .22 rifle along to finish him off. A lynx lived quite a while when held by the foot in a trap. Too long, in fact, for comfortable peace of mind. But I couldn’t help that. The only traps that had ever proved suitable for the taking of such things as lynx were the leghold variety. Nothing else would do. But still, few professional trappers liked the thought of a lynx or anything else suffering in a trap, so the only thing one could do was visit the sets as often as possible before there had been too much time for suffering.

  But the lynx hadn’t been around; the set was undisturbed. And since it was late afternoon, and the January sun had set, I started back for the cabin to do up the evening chores.

  I spotted Veasy at the far end of the lake by the house. He too was heading homeward after making the round of his traps. Even at that distance I saw that he’d caught a mink, for it was dangling from his right hand, nose almost dragging in the snow. And I knew that it was an extra-large mink that he’d taken out of his traps.

  I squatted back on my snowshoes at the edge of the ice, thinking, “So you’ve made twenty dollars for yourself. Now what would a little fellow like you do with all that much money?”

  Veasy was coming square up the centre of the lake and was now about a half-mile away, skidding easily and quickly along on the skis I’d made him from the pliable wood of a spruce tree. Head and face almost hidden by the parka lined with the soft fur of muskrats, feet and legs encased in knee-high buckskin moccasins, also lined with muskrat fur—that’s how Veasy was dressed. The buck that supplied the skin came from the crest of a hogback a mile north of the cabin. The muskrats came from the beaver marshes. The thread was from the mail-order house. Lillian’s needle had supplied most everything else.

  Veasy angled away from the centre of the lake toward the west shoreline. He moved off the ice, into the timber to look at another trap set out in the spruces. In a couple of minutes he was in sight once more, again travelling the ice. But now there were others there too.

  The five wolves trooped out onto the ice from the timber. They came noiselessly and suddenly. A second ago there might not have been a wolf within miles of the cabin as far as my hearing them or seeing their sign was concerned, but now, out of nowhere at all, there were five of them out there on the ice, within a half-mile of where I was squatting.

  They paused a moment at timber’s edge, heads high, ears forward, noses measuring the air. Then, in single file and not more than a couple of hundred yards behind him, they began trailing Veasy. There were two blacks, two grays and one wolf almost as white as the snow it trod. Any one of them weighed a hundred pounds or more; any one could badly maul a fourteen-hundred-pound moose if the animal panicked at the sight of them.

  I started to come upright, then, shaking my head, squatted back down on the webbing. Instinctively I picked up the .22, then slowly laid it down again. Veasy was still five hundred yards away, the wolves slightly farther. The .22 was as useless as a pea shooter.

  The gap between child and wolves was lessening; they were only a hundred yards behind him now. They travelled softly, like phantoms, without noise, the soft snow they were treading muffling their footsteps.

  I wanted to gulp air into my lungs and let it go in one desperate, explosive cry. “Veasy, look behind you, timber wolves!” That’s what I wanted to cry out. But didn’t. That would never do. It would fluster Veasy, and throw him off mental balance. And maybe he’d panic and start running as fast as his legs could carry him for me. And the wolves would know he was scared of them, and if they acted true to their species they’d probably take after him as they would after a panicky moose or deer. I could do nothing but sit and watch.

  Then Veasy stopped. He turned around, saw the wolves and stood rooted to his tracks. And to me, watching impotently, time and most everything else was at a standstill. My lips began to move, forming soundless words—“Don’t panic. Don’t run. Just keep on coming steadily up the ice. Remember what I told you about timber wolves and moose? No wolf or combination of wolves in British Columbia will tackle a moose if it turns and faces them, bluffs them out. But if it panics and runs, they’ll tear it down before it’s gone a mile. Don’t panic, son. Just keep moving naturally up the ice as if you had the whole lake to
yourself.”

  Stout little legs moving again now, pushing the skis over the snow. Limp body of the mink swinging to and fro from a small mittened hand. Fur-lined ear flaps flopping up and down against healthy red cheeks, like ears flapping on a foxhound when it’s hunting up scent. Thus, up the ice he came, steadily, with never a telltale back glance to see what was going on there.

  And behind him, still in single file, perhaps only seventy-five yards behind now, five lusty timber wolves, any one of which could break a man’s leg at a single crunch of its jaws.

  I untied the flaps of my own fur-lined parka and tossed them away from my face. Beads of perspiration were now tickling my cheekbones. “Keep coming, son, steady, just like that. Don’t let them bluff you, don’t drive those skis any faster. You’re not scared of a no-account timber wolf, are you? Steady—steady—steady—”

  And at last Veasy reached me, puffing a little, eyes blinking. A couple of hundred yards off the wolves stopped and bunched. My eyes went to the .22, quickly left it again. It was too far, but if they’d just come a little closer ... Then one of the blacks trotted a few feet to one side, hunkered back on the snow and, forelegs braced, lifted its nose to the sky and howled, dismal, sad and spine-chilling. Then, sorting themselves out, and again in single file, the five wolves trotted off the ice and moved silently away through the timber.

  “Were you scared, son?” It seemed a foolish question to ask, but I asked it just the same.

  He nodded. “Just a little.”

  I said, “Shucks, never get scared of a timber wolf. Wolves’ll never bother you. Curious, that’s all they were.” I made out that I was examining the mink. “Say, that’s a lulu of a mink you’ve caught yourself. Should get twenty-five dollars for a mink like that.”

  But I have never told Lillian about the wolves. Somehow I thought she might not appreciate the picture of her young son being trailed by five wolves. Women are fussy about things like that. There were some things we told one another, some things we hardly ever mentioned. Such as she-bears in blueberry patches, timber wolves on ice, and little things like that.

  Chapter 18

  There wasn’t a mare’s-tail of cloud in the sky, and the soft westerly breeze sent whitecaps tagging each other across the lake and mosquitoes scurrying back into the grass whenever they dared to leave it. The alfalfa patch was beginning to purple with blossom, the timothy was knee-high. Radish and spinach were almost ready to eat, and almost every other seed recently sown in the garden was now a husky plant. It was the tenth anniversary of our first coming to the creek, to the very day.

  “Let’s celebrate,” suggested Lillian as soon as the breakfast dishes were put away, the cabin broomed out and dusted spic and span.

  “You name it,” I grinned.

  She wrinkled her forehead, and then said, “Let’s go visiting.”

  “To Riske Creek?” I didn’t like the idea of that. “We were there a couple of weeks ago.”

  “No, not to Riske Creek.” And laughing, she went on, “We just came from Riske Creek—ten years ago.”

  “Then just who are we going to visit?” I was curious to know.

  “No one.” Lillian took a loaf of bread from the bread tin and began slicing it. “We’ll take our lunches with us and just ride down the creek, and sit around the beaver ponds, and loaf in the sun, and things like that.”

  So Lillian made the lunches, and Veasy wrangled the horses, and I ran a rag through the barrel of the .303 rifle and pocketed a half-dozen shells, just in case we ran into a buck deer that would nicely fill the crocks.

  The trail winding in and out of jack pine and spruce timber along the banks of the creek was a very different trail from the one that was there ten years ago. Then it was only a thin game path, good enough for moose and deer but difficult to follow by anyone on horseback. So first we had widened the trail out so that we could get over it with pack horses in tow and without their bumping their packs against the trees. Later we widened it still more, so that we could get over it with team and wagon or, in winter, the sleigh. The beaver marshes downcreek were far larger than those at the head of the watershed, and consequently there was far more fur around them. At a strategic spot alongside the creek, five miles from Meldrum Lake, we had built a cabin, small but neat, floorless but warm. In winter and early spring, when trapping muskrats or other fur in that part of the country, we moved a light camping outfit down to the cabin and stayed there until trapping operations were over. That’s where we headed for now, for the cabin downcreek.

  We visited every dam within easy reach of the trail, loafing there a while, looking for mink tracks in the mud or just lying on our backs in the sun, staring up at the sky, I thinking my thoughts, Lillian hers, Veasy his. And whatever our thoughts were, we kept them to ourselves, for it was easier to lie on our backs thinking them than to put them into words.

  It was noon when we pulled up in front of the cabin, and Veasy proclaimed the fact by stating, “I’m hungry.”

  I said, “Climb down from your horse then, and build a fire for the coffee.”

  Lillian darted into the cabin and came out scowling. “Pack rats,” she scolded. “They sure litter the cabin up. I’ll have to broom it out before I do another single thing.”

  If Lillian ever hated anything, then that thing was pack rats. No matter how many got caught in the traps we left set for them, there were always more to take their place. And if Lillian left a bit of curtain over the window to give the cabin a sort of homey appearance, the rats soon chewed it to shreds when they had the cabin to themselves. And they chewed harness, and nipped the strings off the saddles, and generally fouled up anything they could reach that was chewable. When Veasy was two years old and asleep in his cot, a pack rat jumped up on the cot and bit him in the ear. You just couldn’t get along with pack rats no matter how hard you tried to humour them.

  While Lillian broomed every last vestige of pack-rat manure from the cabin and Veasy tended the coffee pot, I lay on my back, eyes partly closed, busy with my thoughts. There was much that was comforting about them, too.

  Now, every beaver dam on the creek that could be patched up and repaired was repaired. Every saucer was full and overflowing. In recent years fur prices had been good, and now my mind was no longer plagued by financial worry. There were muskrats galore on the watershed now, as well as in the landlocked lakes about it. So many, in fact, that the matter of trapping them when their fur was fully prime was becoming quite a problem. We only had so much time to do it in, and sometimes ran out of time before all the marshes were trapped. The muskrat pelts were at their best through March and early April, but once the ice began rotting in the lakes the quality of the pelt deteriorated and fetched but half the price it would have brought in March.

  Others, too, on the creek had benefited from all we had done to it in the ten years we had been here. Now, even in the driest summer, there was never a shortage of irrigating water for the crops in the valley below. Every landowner down there had water in his ditches wherever and whenever he needed it. There was no longer any blotting paper above to soak up every bit of moisture that fell. It spilled out of the saucers and fled on down the creek.

  When first we came to the creek, not too many domestic cattle grazed the summer range about it, and those that did were in constant danger of perishing in the bog holes whenever the summer was a dry one. But now some three thousand head of Hereford range cattle were trailed back to

  The same stretch of Meldrum Creek as pictured on page 56, this one taken after the Colliers had repaired the beaver dams.

  the timber range along the head of the creek in early July by the ranchers, and left there until mid-September. And wherever the cattle ranged, they were seldom more than a half-mile from a clear and firm water hole and never did one become bogged down in the mud.

  Yet despite all that had been accomplished, there was still something lacking. Though the old breeding grounds of the beavers were again all under water, and their old da
ms repaired, they still lacked one thing— beavers. A vacuum was there, and we knew not how to go about filling it.

  “Coffee’s ready!” Veasy’s call took my mind from beavers to the more tangible fact that I was hungry. Lillian came from the cabin, brushing the door sill on the way. “Pack rats,” she grumbled, squatting cross-legged by the fire and unwrapping the lunch. “God save me from them!”

  Riding back home late that afternoon my thoughts again wandered to beavers. Ten years was a long time to want something and still be without it, yet right this very moment we were as far away from having any beavers in the creek as we were ten years ago. At least, so I thought.

  And so we rode home, me brooding about beavers, Lillian sizing up the blueberry vines alongside the trail and once in a while stating aloud, “There’ll be a good crop there this year,” and Veasy perhaps thinking about things that had nothing to do with beavers, or blueberries either for that matter, the three of us blissfully unaware that shortly, within a few days’ time, we were to be visited by one who was to play a vital role in not only giving Meldrum Creek back its beavers, but most every other watershed in the Chilcotin too.

  R.M. Robertson, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, migrated to Canada in 1910. He homesteaded on the flat plains of Saskatchewan in 1914, owner of one hundred and sixty acres of untilled prairie, his home a small hut with a sod roof. If it had not been for World War I, Mr. Robertson might today have been a prosperous prairie farmer, the hut with its sod roof a memory of a day when he hitched his team of horses to the doubletrees of a walking plow and turned the very first furrow in his rich Saskatchewan loam.