Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  Behind us was the intermittent thud of burning timber falling across the trail. The fire had by now, no doubt, jumped the trail at a dozen different spots and was seeking what it could find toward water’s edge. I wheeled my horse sharply west and loped it down to the lake. The northern end of the lake was only two hundred yards away, but I could see nothing of its shoreline. All I could see was a sheet of brilliant flame.

  I looped the bridle lines around the horn of the saddle and quietly told Veasy, “We’re trapped!”

  For while there was no fire over on the west side of the lake, the burning forest at the north barred our escape there. And we couldn’t retreat the way we had come, for now the fire was on either side of the game trail and crowding down against the water. Forest fire to the north of us, to the south of us, to the east. And to the west there was only the water, in places forty feet deep.

  I puckered my eyes and stared meditatively out across that water. A couple of loons danced their crazy devil dance out in the middle of the lake. They, anyway, were safe. So were the fishes. I glanced at my horse’s ears, patted its neck. There was only the one way out: we must swim the lake.

  “Tighten your cinch,” I bade Veasy, slipping out of the saddle and tightening my own.

  He looked at me for a second or two. “You going to swim the horses?”

  I said, “I’d rather drown than roast.”

  In winter I’d often piloted my horse from east to west across the northern end of Meldrum Lake because that was quicker than going around the shoreline. It was around five or six hundred yards from east shore to west. But in winter there were two or three feet of solid ice beneath the horse. Now there was no ice. There was just a couple of loons making one hell of a racket, and the sound of wavelets lapping at the beach.

  “All set?” I asked, swinging back into the saddle.

  “Whenever you are.” The reply was steady and measured.

  I neck reined my horse into the water. The gelding snorted and fought to get the bit between its teeth and turn back to land. “Get going!” And I brought the quirt hard down on his rump. Unwillingly he breasted out into the lake, feeling with one front foot at a time for the bottom he could not see.

  I slung my rifle over my shoulder and lifted my feet clear of the stirrups, bending my knees until my thighs were almost parallel with the seat of the saddle. I grabbed a handful of mane with my left hand and took a firm grip on the bridle lines with my right. Suddenly there was no jar at all to the gait of the horse. He moved easily along, head high, nostrils flared, tail floating. As far as movement was concerned, I might have been riding on a cloud. We were out in swimming water.

  The gelding was a strong and willing swimmer once he knew that he was in deep water and unable to turn back. The water sheered away from his side, and his eyes were riveted on the opposite shoreline. My face was almost brushing his mane, my knees about touching my chin, calves of my legs pressed tight against the leather. Balance, I had to maintain balance. If I lost balance and leaned to either side, the gelding might be thrown off balance too and maybe roll over on its back.

  “Veasy, all we can do now is trust in God and the horses!” There wasn’t much else that we could put trust in.

  “I’m trusting!” There was no fear in the words, and their closeness told me that Veasy was only three or four horse lengths behind me.

  We were almost in the middle of the lake now, but far from the other shore. But the gelding was swimming easily, well up in the water, and his breath was coming evenly too. I wanted to turn in the seat of the saddle for one swift appraisal of how Veasy’s horse was making it. But pushed the desire away. Movement of any kind might throw the gelding off balance.

  “Look out, we’ve got company!” Veasy’s voice sounded very close. I thought, “His horse must be outswimming mine.”

  From out of the corner of my eyes I saw a huge head take shape. The head was crowned with a set of antlers, which, though now a mass of velvety pulp, would in three months’ time perhaps measure fifty inches or more across. “Gol’ durned bull moose,” I grunted.

  The bull swam with the ease and swiftness of an animal as much at home in water as on land. It made two yards for every one my gelding was making, and was only a few feet from the horse as it passed. But it paid us no attention at all. Its eyes too were sighted on the nearing shore. Human being, domesticated horse and bull of the north woods, all out there in the lake fleeing a common foe.

  The bull moose was perhaps a half-mile off in the timber when our horses touched land. “Swam like a moose yourself,” I told the gelding, patting its quivering neck and loosening the cinch. “Got us out of one heck of a muddle-up that time, you did.”

  As we neared a windfall to sit down while the horses dried off and got their wind back again, a grouse fanned its feathers and came skidding on a wing toward us. The grouse, a hen, moved to within fifteen feet of us, then artfully trailing a wing to try and make us believe she couldn’t fly at all, turned sharply away. “She’s got chicks,” I said.

  Peep-peep. It came from almost under my feet, yet I searched for a few seconds before spying the chick. Peep-peep. Other chicks began piping for their mother. She was on a windfall, fanning her feathers. “Hatched yesterday,” I judged, picking the chick up and examining it. Then I set it down in the grass and repeated softly, “Only yesterday. And what a fire-torn country you’ve been born into.”

  And there across Meldrum Lake, and in the country to the north, thousands of acres of forest were on fire. There was jack pine and fir, spruce and aspen, willow and alder, all going up in smoke. And there were Franklin’s and ruffed grouse chicks, wobbly moose calves, spotted fawns, little black bear cubs, soft furred fisher cats, baby rabbits, clumsily gaited porcupines, red squirrels and flying squirrels, bluebirds and robins, coyote pups and lynx kittens—all going up in smoke across Meldrum Lake and in the country to the north.

  Next morning we could both see and hear the flames from the cabin door. They were only a half-mile away, and they had swept down the east shoreline of Meldrum Lake in seven-league boots. Then suddenly they marked time. Because at the creek, where it came away from the lake, they were halted in their tracks. Though they had destroyed a lot of our forest, they could not destroy our home.

  When first we came to the creek, and at this time of the year, there was only a trickle of water moving downcreek from Meldrum Lake. Then, such a fire would have crossed the creek and leaped to our cabin without a pause. Now all was changed. Below Meldrum Lake, for mile after mile, lay the beaver dams. And their every gate was closed. Unable to press south, the fire turned, following the edge of the beaver ponds, thrusting here, reaching there, seeking a path to cross the water and march forward again on the other side. But there was no path, and there was only the water of the beaver ponds—and that no fire could cross.

  Then came the rains. In mid-June the overhead clouded and rain beat down on the forests. Again the underfoot became sodden even as it had been when the last of the snows were melting. And so was the fire halted, and eventually extinguished altogether. And so our home was saved.

  Chapter 25

  Axe blades ringing, handsaws whining and, as if beating time to it all, the steady tattoo of the hammers driving the nails home. Stacks of lumber piled every which way close to the shingle of the lake, and kegs of spikes and nails, rolls of building paper, tiers of sweet-smelling fir shakes for the roofing scattered everywhere, all contributing to the smells and sounds of a new house a-building.

  Shouts of “heave, hoist and roll” or “turn her over on her belly and notch her down another inch” mingling with the jargon of the tools, and another log leaves the ground, teeters on the skid poles, then rolls slowly up and is notched down into place. And the sun gets up and the sun goes down, and another four or five rounds of logs have been laid, or the floor joists spiked into place. Thus the mansion takes on form and meaning from a spot where but a week ago there was only a scrub patch of willow.

 
; For sixteen years the little cabin with its sod roof and rough board floor had been the only home we’d known, the only one we could afford, and for that matter the only one we needed. But now the logs were settling, and the split timbers of the roofing buckling slightly. The ridge logs too were beginning to belly toward the floor beneath. Twice in the last twelvemonth I’d had to unhinge the door and shorten it an inch or two so that it would open and shut without scraping the floor. Ten whole days it took Lillian and me to build the cabin. So anxious were we to get the job over with and a roof above our heads, we weren’t too fussy about its foundation. Now the bottom log was beginning to rot and crumble where it touched the earth, and for every inch it settled we had to lop another inch off the door or window; if we didn’t we couldn’t open them.

  Lillian never nagged at me concerning the matter of building a better home, although she did grumble now and then when she caught a sliver scrubbing the rough floor of the old one. It was never worse than that. In the spring of 1945 (I’d just got through planing another half-inch off the door) I took a deep and serious breath and announced, “We’ve lived here long enough.” Lillian looked at me sharply, and Veasy too, as if both wanted to say, “Then where will we live now?”

  “We’re going to get us another house,” I went on to explain. “We’ll build another one. And this time we’ll put a proper foundation under it if I have to pack cement in from Riske Creek on my back to give it one.”

  The words emphasized the mood, and the mood set the pace for the action. “The logs,” I rambled on, “will be thirty-six feet long and as straight as the track of a bullet. There’ll be a sitting room big enough to dance in, a washroom, at least three bedrooms, a kitchen for Mrs. Collier and—come on, son, let’s take axes and saw and go up on that hill over there to see what we can find.”

  We had to climb almost to the top of the hill to locate the sort of timber I wanted. They must be trees without hint of windshake or crook in them, free of major limbs, and as sound and as solid within as Gibraltar’s Rock without.

  We wandered from tree to tree, squinting up at their stems and testing them with our axes. “Your mother,” I confided to Veasy, “is going to have the cutest darned house these funny old woods can give her.”

  Despite the fact that there were at least a million trees on the hill, it took us a whole day to locate and blaze the ones we wanted. We were choosy about our timber because, as I explained to Veasy, “We’ll not be building another one, at least not in my time or your mother’s either, for that matter.”

  It took almost all of a week to select just the right kind of timber, fell it and haul it onto a skidway and skin off its bark. But we worked old sun off its legs, and the ring of our axe blades on timber wakened the moon and the stars. When the sixtieth log was peeled and decked on top of the others, I squatted down on the skidway, built myself a cigarette and said to Veasy, “Know something? Now that the war is over, we’re liable to see the craziest spree of spending the world ever heard about. Money will be flowing like water over a beaver dam. Every woman will be buying a mink coat. There’ll be a pile of money in furs next winter.” A prediction that came true.

  And now, a year later, the seasoned logs were going up, round after round, though it had been a tricky matter hauling them down from the top of the hill with a team and sleigh when the snow deepened enough to cover the windfalls and rocks. For so sheer was the pitch of the hill, the sleigh runners had to be rough locked from top to bottom, and even when braked like this a strong arm and soothing voice were needed to curb the impatience of the team when breast strap and martingale put strain on hames and neck yoke.

  But I had no part in that. Veasy decked the timbers on the sleigh, chained them to the bunks and steered the horses down the dizzy descent to the bottom. And when all were hauled, he took wedge, sledge hammer and axe, found a thicket of good straight pine and split out timbers for the roofing.

  For those earlier years of pinch a penny here, clutch a nickel there, had left their mark on the three of us. Now, with a new home to be built, the moods and dictates of leaner years forbade us spending a single dollar upon any piece of building material that was ours for the taking in the woods.

  Yet despite all that our woods had to offer, there was much that must be purchased outside and hauled in on the wagon. There were windows and doors, nails and flooring, cement and wall plaster, building paper and linoleum. And I was determined to pay cash on the counter for all, so that when the job was finished we’d not be owing any man a cent for what went into the building.

  At first I thought that perhaps Lillian, Veasy and I could build the house ourselves; then I changed my mind. Lillian had been there at my side at the building of the old cabin, helping me fell the logs and giving the last ounce of her strength helping roll them into their notches. And I’d vowed then and there that if and when another was built, she’d share in none of the labour. Pots and pans, scrub brush and broom, darning needle and flatiron, such things as these and a great many more are tools that any woman should know how to use, no matter whether the home sits within hollering distance of a bear den or by crowded city pavement. But no woman should be called upon to share in labour fit only for man’s coarse strength, though many there are sharing it, and without calling either.

  “We’ll contract that part of it out,” I decided. “Yes, we’ll put the logs on the ground and pay someone else to throw them up and round the job off.”

  Once that decision was agreed upon, I cautiously began sniffing around for the scent of someone who’d build the house in the right way and for the right wages.

  I found my man at Riske Creek. His name was Wes Jasper. He could swing an axe or a hammer or coax the rhythm from a handsaw as well as any I knew. Jasper was a jack-of-all-trades. He’d tackle any job in sight that showed glimpse of a dollar’s worth of profit. He could hoist aboard the meanest bucking horse in the Chilcotin and ride the outlaw to a standstill. Or rope and tie a maverick calf in seven seconds flat, or herd a band of wild horses out of the thickest acre of forest and chase them into the artfully concealed wings of a trap corral. He could plait a rawhide lasso rope, make a horsehair cinch and shoot the eye out of a blue grouse sixty yards away. Though a cow puncher by chosen profession, Jasper saw no disgrace in dropping his lasso rope and hefting an axe. So, after having run my man to earth and after a long evening of good-natured haggling over price, Jasper said yes, he reckoned he could build the house.

  Lillian had little to say about the project at all until the logs were down off the hill. Then she had a great deal. She made almost daily visits to the spot where the home was to be built, measuring here, measuring there, shaking her head or nodding, smiling or frowning, or just sitting down on the logs, looking at nothing at all. Finally she said, “We must have proper plans for every square inch of space.” I shifted uneasily in my chair and asked, “What do you mean by plans?”

  She said, “How is everything going to fit in unless it is all planned out in advance?”

  I sniffed. “This cabin was built without plans and it has been a mighty comfortable one too. Warm as a rack of buttered toast in winter, cool as iced lemonade in summer.”

  Lillian’s eyebrows lifted. “One room?” She spoke mildly, but there was heavy emphasis on the “one.”

  “You think we should go down to Vancouver and hire ourselves an architect?” I asked sarcastically.

  Lillian made no reply. Her eyes went to Veasy, and mine shifted there too. He strolled to the window and stood looking out, hands in pockets. And watching him I thought, “How he is shooting up.” He lacked a half-inch of being six feet and weighed around a hundred and sixty pounds. He could hoist a two-hundred-and-seventy-five-pound buck across the saddle without puffing enough to blow a match out, or snowshoe or ski for eight hours straight without a single sit-down. Veasy lacked one vice that both Lillian and I had: he never touched tobacco. I was a heavy smoker, Lillian moderately so. Between us we managed to get away with a half-poun
d tin of tobacco a week, rolling our own cigarettes. I had been smoking since I was fourteen, but until going to the headwaters of Meldrum Creek with me Lillian had never touched tobacco. There she somehow acquired the habit, liked it and made no attempt to deny it.

  We never did tell Veasy, “No, you mustn’t smoke.” Tobacco and cigarette papers were there on the table all the time, and had he taken a paper, filled it with tobacco, placed the cigarette between his lips and lighted it, neither Lillian or I would have said a word. Perhaps if Veasy had gone to school with other children the story might have been different. But Veasy didn’t go to school, at least not to one where there were other children. And whether that is a curse or a blessing I wouldn’t like to say.

  He came away from the window, sat down again and said, his voice firm and steady, “Mother is right. A building of that size should be planned out on paper so everything will fit in.”

  I said, “You know I can’t draw a line from A to B without it’s got a crook in it.”

  “Veasy can,” Lillian was quick to interject. “Can’t you?” And her eyes went to Veasy for confirmation.

  “I can try,” said Veasy cautiously.

  If the wilderness had treated Veasy kindly where physique and health were concerned, it had been tolerably kind to him in other matters too. He knew a little of the mechanics of geometry and not only had compass, protractor, set square and slide rule, but what is of far more importance, he knew how to use them. So between them, he and Lillian drew up the plans for the house, while I sat back in a chair, pretending to read but all the time straining an ear to catch whispered talk of “the clothes closet should fit in here,” or “your bedroom goes there,” or “the heater stove sits here.” Once I peeked at them over the top of the pages and asked, “What, no deep freeze?”

  But finally it was all there on paper, the lines neat and straight, and when Jasper and his crew arrived to start a-building, that’s how it was built.