Stories from across Canada

Stories. from across Canada Bernard L. McEvoy

Stories from across Canada

Bernard L. McEvoy

Here at last is an anthology of Canadian short stories compiled especially for young readers. The thirteen exciting and often humorous tales involve children, Indians, animals, and even a few grown­ ups living, fighting, playing, and learning. They range in setting from west to east and offer to youngsters not only simple, clear-cut tales, but also relatively complex stories. While "Legend of Iroquois Falls" sweeps the reader back into the adventure and romance of Canada's past, "Load of Trouble," which contem­ plates the unusual problem of transporting a cow on a space ship, offers an imaginative glimpse into the wonder of the future. There are sports stories, tales of the outdoors, a French-Canadian legend retold by the editor, and adventure stories, all in perfect doses-a happy mixture of Canadian sketches. Farley Mowat, Scott Young, Roderick L. Haig­ Brown, and Sheila Burnford are among the well­ known writers represented here. All but one author is a Canadian, and every one has a story to tell and, perhaps, even a lesson to teach. The publication of Stories From Across CaMda fills a gap in the all-too-short shelf of Canadian anthologies. It is a unique collection-one that has long been needed and one that will last for decades.

McClelland and Stewart Limited The Canadian Publishers

Bernard L. McEvoy

Born in Toronto, Bernard L. McEvoy graduated from Trinity College, University of Toronto with a

B.A.

in English and History. From the beginning

his main interest lay in the publishing field, and his first job was with Oxford University Press in Toronto. He gained additional experience at Doubleday Publishers and then joined the staff of Longmans Canada Limited, where he worked from

1936 to 1963 and was Manager of the Educational Department. Mr. McEvoy is co-editor of Rip-Cord and Other

Stories and is at present Chairman of the Trustees of the Toronto Memorial Society. He is a member of the Commercial Travellers' Association of Canada and of the Royal Canadian Institute, and is a former Fellow of the Canadian Geographical Association. Jacket Design: Irene Peplinski

McClelland and Stewart Limited The Canadian Publishers

Stories from across Canada Edited by Bernard L. McEvoy

McClelland and Stewart Limited Toronto/ Montreal

© 1966 by McClelland and Stewart Limited ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Canadian Publishers McClelland and S t ew a rt 25

Limited

llollingcr Road, Toronto 16

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA BY

J OHN

DEYELL LIMITED

TO MY FATHER who led me into the happy world of books with his nightly chapter in those quiet days before the arrival of radio and t.v.

Contents Introduction

ix

BERNARD L. MCEVOY

1 Narrow Escape Some People's Grandfathers 9 My Pet Owls 15 The Hockey Game 20 Wully 33 1 ezebel 1essie 45 Legend of Iroquois Falls 49 51 A Struggle in the Woods Load of Trouble 56 Larouche and His Wish 67 A

·

RODERICK L. HAIG-BROWN GWEN PHARIS RINGWOOD FARLEY MOWAT SCOTT YOUNG ERNEST THOMPSON SETON HARRY J. BOYLE ELLA E. CLARK SHEILA BURNFORD EDWARD J. WOOD RETOLD BY BERNARD L. McEVOY

The Wild Goose The Ice Road The Trap 93

70

ERNEST BUCKLER

79

Acknowledgements

H. T. BARKER THOMAS H. RADDALL

110

Introduction

•

need for a book of this sort first became apparent when I visited my local public library and, in vain, searched the shelves for a miscellaneous collection of Canadian stories aimed at the young reader. The short-story shelf was well stocked with stories from China, from Holland,from Ireland, from Italy, from Japan-indeed from many other countries­ but Canada was represented, faute de mieux, by two lonely but excellent collections of adult Canadian stories that look­ ed sadly out of place among the young people's books. It was hard to believe that such a gap existed in the field of Canadi­ ana. Subsequent visits to other libraries and conversations with librarians and teachers convinced me that a volume such as this one would be welcomed. From coast to coast,from across the country's wide expanse, stories by Canadian authors have found their way into this little volume. In it young people,Indians and animals, even a few grown-ups, became involved in strange, exciting, and in some cases, funny adventures. Some of the tales give a picture of bygone days while others provide imaginative THE

scenes of today or a glimpse into the future. It is hoped that where a story has been but a tasty morsel,further stories by its author will be searched out and that the reader will sit down to a full and satisfying banquet. Perhaps these stories will satisfy the demands that have come from many parents as well as from librarians and teach­ ers.Perhaps this book will encourage others to make similar, or hopefully better, collections. Then there will be no need for young Canadians to ask in the future, as they have asked in the past: "Are there no stories about our own country?" Extensive reading alone would not have provided the great number of stories from which this anthology finally evolved. Suggestions, help,and encouragement have come to me with unstinting generosity. I welcome the opportunity to acknow­ ledge this debt and to thank, particularly,Mr. and Mrs.W.F. Langford, Mr. Robert Weaver, the librarians (and many others) in the Toronto Public Library system (especially those at George II. Locke Memorial Library, St. Clements Library, Boys and Girls House, and the General Reference Library), Mr. Mark Savage, and those authors, that agent, and those publishers (American,British,and Canadian) who have made this collection possible. BERNARD

L. McEvoY

A

Narrow Escape

RoDERICK L. HAre-BRoWN

•

He travelled back along the ridge for a mile or more and when he turned down on to the sidehill the moon was already big and bright ahead of him and the shadows of the trees were velvet black on the face of the snow. The snow held him up well and he travelled effortlessly, with a feeling of power and strength that made him forget everything in the sheer joy of movement. The first howl of the wolves stopped him short, turned half around on the sidehill to face back towards it. It was close and the sudden high sound of it seemed to ruffie the skin of his face and freeze his muscles.For a long half minute he stood absolutely still. Then he worked the lever of his rifle fiercely to drive a shell into the breech. He moved his feet a little, felt his muscles relax and knew he was ready. . The howl was not repeated and nothing moved on the hill above him.Don hesitated.He could go back, but if the wolf had seen him or scented him it would never show itself. If he went on and they were hunting he would hear them again. He went on.Before he had covered a hundred yards he heard 1

2

R O D E R I C K L . H A I G- B R O WN

the howl again,still behind him and above him on the hill. This time it was answered almost at once,from farther down the hill and again from a much farther distance.Once more Don waited and watched the track of his snowshoes out of sight into the shadows, but nothing moved. The first wolf howled again,still from the same place,and this time it was answered from half a dozen places all over the sidehill. In spite of himself Don felt dry-mouthed terror.He wanted to watch all ways at once,he wanted to go back and face them or to tum and run frantically down the hill.The distant wolves were closer now and the nearer ones had moved,still keeping about the same distance from him but working up on the sides to complete the semi-circle,with one directly above him and one directly below him on the hillside. Don waited,stock still,his rifle ready,his eyes straining into the broken moonlight.The wolves still howled,but at longer intervals now and they seemed to have stopped moving.The one directly below him howled again and he tried to judge from the sound how far it was away; perhaps two or three hundred yards,he thought,perhaps more. There was a long silence, then the howling started again, but still there had been no movement. Don made up his mind. He started off straight down the hill,towards the wolf that had howled be­ low him, travelling as swiftly and silently as he could. He came to the edge of a steep bluff and knew he had to turn aside; he turned along the hill towards the west, back into the semicircle of wolves instead of east towards the meadows. As he went down he watched closely,hoping to see the wolf cross in front of him, but again he could see no movement. When he was sure he had gone far enough and there was no chance that the wolf would offer a shot he began to hurry­ not wildly, but calmly, making the best use of the ground, picking steep clear places where he could run and slide on his snowshoes,stepping out in his fine,strong striding when­ ever the ground levelled off.So he came to the crest of a sharp

A NARROW ESC APE

3

break-off, swung a little sideways and jumped to give power and control to his slide.Without warning the harness of his right shoe broke. Don almost fell, recovered himself and stood still, the shoe twisted on his foot. He looked back over his shoulder and listened. There was no sound behind him, but he did not like the place-the crest of the slope, close above him, sharply cut his range of vision.He climbed back on to the bench, listened again and knelt to look at the damage. It was not easy to see close things in the moonlight under the timber, but he pulled off his gloves and felt with his fin­ gers until he knew that the strap across his instep was broken at the hole where the buckle held it.Then he heard a wolf howl well over on his right. Another answered from the left and the others took up the call in the same semi-circle as be­ fore. They seemed closer this time, but still beyond sight, and as they howled again he knew they were not moving in. For the first time he fully accepted the fact that they were follow­ ing him, not just ranging the hillside in search of more promising game. He listened again, heard them at the same distance and bent to his snowshoe. He tried to get the shortened strap through the buckle and pull it up to another hole, but his fingers could not do it.He was wearing two pairs of socks and thought quickly of taking his boot off, discarding one sock, then lacing the boot tightly again in the hope that the strap would pass over it. But he was doubtful if the difference would be enough and his fingers were already clumsy with cold. He reached into his pocket for his knife and cut away the loose ends of his leather bootlaces. Above him a wolf howled and another answered. The sound was closer now and he reached for his rifle and watched. Nothing moved. Don turned back to his shoe again. He thought: To heck with them. Let 'em come close if they want and they'll get a load of lead. I've got to fix this strap someway and fix it good or

4

RODERICK L . HAIG-BROWN

I'll never get out of here, so I might as well take my time to it. He doubled the broken strap back on itself to make a loop, pierced the leather carefully with his knife and secured the loop with a short length of lace. He was glad that was done before his fingers were really numb, because the rest was fairly easy; he threaded three lengths of lace through the loop and through the buckle, tightened them and tied them secure­ ly as he could. The wolves still howled occasionally. Don squatted on his snowshoes, wedging his gloves between his calves and his thighs to warm them while he warmed his hands against his body, inside his shirt.He wanted his fingers supple and loose for the rifle if the wolves ever gave him a chance. But they still would not come and he got up at last and started down the slope again. His plan was clear in his mind now. He would draw them down to the floor of the valley, then across and down to the corner of the meadows.Perhaps in the meadows they would show themselves.It was a chance anyway. They were still following, almost lazily it seemed from the sound of their voices.As he held on down the hill Don began to doubt his plan; they might give up following-a deer might start suddenly ahead of one of them and draw the whole pack away or they might simply grow weary of the slow chase. Then he heard a single wolf howl far out to the left and ahead; another answered him from the right and again the sound seemed to come from farther down the hill than Don himself was.For the second time he felt a rush of panic fear in his mind and body. Perhaps they were really hunting to kill him, Don Morgan; perhaps the wolves ahead were trying to tum him, wear him down by miles of travel and close in as they would on a deer; perhaps they meant to circle ahead and wait for him as Lee had said the father of the pack had waited for the deer that crossed the lake.Don tried to force the thought away from him with all his own

•

A NARROW E SCAPE

5

knowledge of wild animals and the thousand stories he had heard from his uncle and Steve Hardy and Ray and other woodsmen,but he could feel a measure of panic still in him­ self and see signs of it in what he did. He was travelling too fast and a little clumsily; he was carrying his rifle ready, pointed ahead of him and he was straining his eyes into the timber about him, glancing quickly from side to side and even behind. He slowed down and allowed himself to look only ahead. He was coming to the floor of the valley now and there was bright moonlight through the trees ahead of him. For a moment he thought he must have come through to the mea­ dows, then knew as soon as he thought about it that he must be fully a mile away from them. But there was a clearing ahead all right, a large clearing, several hundred feet long at least. He came out to the edge of it and saw that it was even larger than he had thought, a quarter of a mile long and perhaps half as wide. For a moment he stood still, listening. From the opposite side of the valley he heard clearly the hunt­ ing of the other wolf pack. Then behind him he heard the howl of his own wolves. He took a step forward and felt the lace in the broken snowshoe harness slip loose on his foot. Calmly he slipped his gloves off and knelt to tie it again. His brain was working steadily and swiftly on a new plan and he had no time for fear. He tied the lace quickly and easily and started at once across to the far side of the clearing. The snow was brilliantly white in the moonlight and the trees were a broken fringe of deepest black against the sky; the stars were so bright that they stood out against space behind them in spite of the moon's brilliance. Don saw this and felt a sharp pleasure in it. He felt a sudden elation, strong beyond pleasure, in the clear­ ness with which his plan had shaped itself. He was travelling very fast now,almost running on the good crust of the snow. When he was within a hundred feet of the far side of the

6

R O D E R I C K L . HAIG-B R O WN

clearing he swung sharply to his left and followed out the length of the clearing at the same distance from the timber. He went on just into the trees,swung left again and kept on for thirty counted paces. Then he crept out to the edge of the clearing,found himself a place behind a sloping log and waited. The wolves were still on the hill. Don heard one almost directly above him and another far up the valley. He wond­ ered how they would come-if they came at all. If they came on his trail and kept coming, the double turn he had made in the clearing would bring them to close range, broadside to his sights and well exposed against the lighted snow. He heard the wolf above him howl again and the sound was answered instantly from the edge of the clearing,near where he had entered it. Don raised his rifle and tested the sights against the snow; the light was good, better than he had dared hope. If they were coming he ought to be able to see them now, crossing the far end of the clearing; he watched closely and saw nothing.A light cold breeze touched his face and he hoped it would hold,however light it might be. He heard the other wolf pack on the far hill,closer now,but his own wolves made no sound.Then he saw them. They were coming on his trail,half-way down the clearing, black shadows,moving slowly.He tried to count them; four, he thought,perhaps five.He wanted to try the sights on them but was afraid to move-if they turned back at that distance he could hope for nothing better than a lucky shot. They came on,steadily and still slowly,in a silence that made him want to hold his breath. He brought the butt of his rifle stealthily against his cheek. He could see them clearly now, huge and dark,shaggy necked and heavy tailed, one follow­ ing the trail, the others turning out and coming back to it. It was time now.He put the sights on the nearest,led him a little and fired.The wolf somersaulted as Don pumped in a new shell. The others had stopped,heads held high.Don pick-

A N AR R O W E S CA P E

7

ed one, sighted for the neck,fired and saw it drop.The others were running for the timber as he fired again and almost as he pressed the trigger he knew he had missed. Don did not move. His mouth was dry with. excitement and his hands were trembling. A wolf howled dismally in the edge of the timber beyond where the dead ones lay.Then the answer came from behind Don and very close. Again he felt panic. His muscles tensed to turn his body, but he held himself rigidly still and watched. The wolf he had dropped first was moving, but he did not fire again. Beyond it, near the edge of the timber, he saw a faint shadow of movement. Then they were coming back, three of them, almost carelessly across the snow, turning and questing, lifting their heads, stopping to howl or sit down, but closing in towards the body of the second wolf.Don picked his chance and fired. A wolf swung round, fell, raised on its forelegs and turned to bite at its haunches.Don drove in a second shot just back of the shoulders. He worked the lever of his rifle, sighted on the next wolf,heard only a click as he pressed the trigger. He felt for new shells and reloaded, keeping his movements smooth and slow as he could. The last two wolves had not run. They were moving restlessly, now back a little along their own trail, now towards one of the dead wolves, now out on the unbroken snow towards Don. Don sighted again and fired.The two wolves held to their movement, without even raising their heads. A wolf dropped to his next shot and the last wolf began to run.Don fired twice, quickly, and saw him go down.Then he stood up.He took one step forward to go round his log and out into the clearing, stopped and turned sharply round. He knew something was behind him, but at first he could see only the white of snow and the blacks of tree trunks and branches. Then he saw the last wolf, huge and calm and black, sitting on the snow not twenty-five feet away.He lined his sights against a patch of snow,drew them down on the wolf's neck and fired. The wolf flopped over

8

RODERICK L . HAIG-BROWN

and lay with its feet twitching.Don reloaded and went up to it, saw it was dead and turned away. The rest of that night was a confusion of action for Don's tired brain and body. He went out across the clearing and shot twice more to finish the wolves he had not killed out­ right, then he knew only that he wanted to see and talk with someone. He left the clearing and began to hurry down the valley.

Some People's Grandfathers GwEN PHARIS RINGWOOD

The boy and the old man started out early to look at the trap­ line. They took some bread and dried salmon to eat along the trail. The boy, Little Joe, wanted to go fishing with the other Indians but he had no choice. Whenever his grandfather, Old Joe, went anywhere Little Joe was expected to go along. "The old man don't see so good," Sammy Jacob would say to his son, "You go with him. Watch he don't fall over the cliff." Since the trail to the trapline went nowhere near a cliff, Little Joe though this a very stupid admonition. He looked at his father every time to see if Sammy Jacob was making a joke but Sammy's face remained flat as a stone. If Old Joe acted like some grandfathers, I wouldn't mind, Little Joe told himself. Some grandfathers made jokes, and told stories,and gave their grandsons cigarettes to smoke.But not Old Joel When he talked,he ordered. "Get this. Do that. Have respect. " When he wasn't ordering, Old Joe stomped along in silence. 9

10

G W E N P H ARIS R I N G W O O D

To make it worse, Old Joe always carried the gun. Little Joe would bring out the rifle, but right away the old man would say, "I better take the gun. We might see something." Every time.When they did come on something, Old Joe often missed, not being able to see so good. I ,ast year he had shot a buck all right, a six-pointer, but Little J oc put this down to accident. So here they were on a winter morning trudging through snow and deadfall, with Old Joe, silent as a bini dog, carrying the gun as usual, and Little Joe, with only one mitten, be­ cause his sister had lost the other one, walking ahead and holding the branches back so they wouldn't slap the old man in the face. Over on the lake Sammy Jacob and Bob and Bob's two boys were fishing through the ice. There would be a big fire and a big lunch and everybody would be telling stories and jokes. Likely Little Joe's stuck-up cousins were drinking tea and �moking and pulling ling out of the lake like crazy. The way Little Joe saw it, Old Joe had lived too long. Eighty years is too long, reasoned Little Joe. Why, Old Joe still wore buckskin moccasins and his idea of a big day was to go berry picking down by the river. Samtny Jacob said Old Joe had been a great bronc rider but that must have been about 1 00 years ago.The only horses he had anything to do with now were the old pintos he drove qow:t;l the river when the salmon were running. The rest of the time Old Joe stayed around the camp giving orders. Whenever something exciting was going on like fishing through the ice, then Old Joe decided to visit the trapline. Sometimes Little Joe didn't know how he stood it, body­ guarding Old Joe, day in day out, since he could remember. Why, he had even had to stay home from the stampede last year to look after Old Joe because the old man didn't feel

S O M E P E O P L E ' S G R A N D FATHER S

11

like riding 50 miles in a wagon! No doubt about it, Old Joe had lived too long. "Now I'm 1 1 years old, maybe I could carry the gun," Little Joe said as they started. "Ah, it gets heavy," the old man said. "Besides, we might see something." Old Joe didn't speak again until they rcacheci the first trap which was sprung but empty. "Wolf," he said, examining the tracks. As if a person wouldn't know a wolf track. They cut through heavy timber. "If yon get lost, boy, build a fire against a big log like this one. Make a shelter of spruce boughs. A man can stay alive a long time, if he's warm." "I don't get lost," said Little Joe. "In a storm anybody can get lost. Have respect." Old .Joe spoke crossly, shaking Little Joe by the shoulder. Little Joe stuck his tongue out but he was careful the old man didn't see. Little Joe was hungry but there was no use suggesting they eat until they'd checked the second trap. They came out on a clearing. "Moose," Little Joe hissed. The big moose was browsing on the far side of the clearing. As he raised his head, the massive fluted shells of his antlers were outlined against the gray sky. He was grotesque but impressive. His great bulk was supported on thin steel-mus­ cled legs. His shaggy beard and overhanging upper lip looked strange and ugly beneath the magnificent antlers. Old Joe levered a shell into the rifle. He motioned Little Joe behind. The boy longed to grab the rifle, but he obeyed. The old man fired. The moose shuddered, blood spurted from his neck, but he did not fall. Old Joe reloaded. His second shot was high. "Look out," Little Joe shouted. As he yelled, the moose charged across the clearing. Little Joe saw the moose lift his grandfather in the air and drop him sprawling on the ground, saw the moose run on

12

GWE N P HA R I S R I N G W O O D

and turn, grunting angrily. The terrible front feet were braced for a second charge. The rifle lay a few feet from Old Joe's inert form. Little Joe looked at a pile of logs to his left in the middle of the clearing. Could he make it? He must try. He must try now! The moose was running again towards Old Joe. The boy ran out yelling and waving his cap. "Yaa . . . ! Ya . . . I Yaaa . . . !" he shouted. The moose stopped, turned towards this new enemy. "Yaaa . . . ! Ya . . !" Little Joe taunted, as he ran. The deadly feet pounded behind him. The boy threw himself under the deadfall, close to the wedged poplar logs. The bull vaulted the logs, ran a few feet and turned. Little Joe knew the moose, enraged by its wound, would continue to charge until he had cut the old man to ribbons, unless the animal's attention could be diverted. The bull was once more eyeing Old Joe. Again and again Little Joe forced himself through the dangerous manoeuvre. He would run out from the deadfall, attract the moose, flee from the lowered antlers and the pounding forefeet, until he could roll under the logs. The but! pawed and bunted at the sheltering poplars, and blood from the wound spurted out onto the logs and onto Little Joe's clothes. Once the old man moved. He was alive after all ! "Stay down," Little Joe shouted. "Don't move." The old man lay still but the moose had seen him move and headed toward him. This time Little Joe had to run out 30 feet from the dead­ fall to deflect the moose's charge. The cruel front feet missed him by inches as he ran under the logs. How long could the moose bleed so? The snow in the clearing was stained with blood and yet the bull showed no signs of weakening. "See me, Old Moose? See me?" Little Joe stumbled but .

S O M E P E O P L E ' S G RAN D F ATH ERS

13

ran on. He wasn't going t o make i t this time! H e couldn't! He looked back frantically. Suddenly the moose stopped.The proud head wavered, the front legs buckled and the great body crashed down, rolled, shuddered and lay still in the blood-stained snow. Little Joe felt relief and awe and pity as he circled the body of his enemy. Then he ran to Old Joe."He's dead. Your bullet got him." Old Joe didn't move. "Are you hurt bad?" Little Joe begged for an answer. Eighty years was too soon to die, 80 years wasn't enough for the tall black-haired old man who always tried to pull his weight in camp.Why, 80 years was just the age a grandfather should be! Old Joe turned his head. A gash furrowed the leathered cheek, the left eye was swollen shut, the skin bruised and purple. "I thought you were dead," Little Joe smiled. "I think my shoulder is broken maybe. Lift on my right side." Little Joe obeyed.Finally they stood together looking at the clearing. "Some moose," Old Joe said. Little Joe picked up the rifle, "We can come back for him." A wet sleety snow was falling as they walked the trail home. When the cabin came into view, Sammy Jacob and the others were skinning ling outside. Little Joe's mother looked up first.Then they all stared until Sammy Jacob ran jerkily up the hill shouting "What happened?" Only then did Little Joe realize what a fearful sight they made,two blood-soaked apparitions moving through the fall­ ing snow. "A moose hurt my grandfather," shouted Little Joe. After they got the old man in bed,after Little Joe changed his clothes and ate something,after they had gone back to the clearing, skinned the moose, hung the meat, stretched the

14

GWEN P H ARIS RIN G W O OD

hide, dragged home the five-foot antlers, then they all sat around the stove drinking tea and talking. Bob lit a tailormade and put it in Old Joe's mouth,then he passed the pack to Sammy Jacob and the cousins. They all lit up.Then Bob offered a cigarette to Little Joe. "I don't smoke," Little Joe mumbled. His ears couldn't believe his own mouth was talking. He had waited for years for them to offer him cigarettes to smoke. II is cousins grinned and whispered. They thought he was chicken. Little Joe hunched down miserably on the floor. They were talking about the moose. He wished he could tell them how the moose had looked-as proud as a tall spruce, as angry as the lightning,but he couldn't tell them. "Some moose, " Sammy Jacob said. Old Joe's one good eye looked straight ahead. His swollen face twisted into a grisly grin."Some man, " he said. But Little Joe didn't hear. Little Joe's head dropped against the log wall and he slept. It wasn't long before Old Joe felt better.One morning he moved stiffiy out to sniff the sunlight. Water rippled down the hills into the creek, the creek tumbled down to the river. Light green feathers tipped the pine trees. The squirrels darted up and down the tree trunks,teasing the dogs. Sammy Jacob and his brother Bob were getting ready to round up horses. "I think we should look at the traps today," Old Joe �aid, looking at Little Joe.Sammy Jacob started to speak and then shut up his mouth.Little Joe went in for the rifle.He offered it to his grandfather. "You better carry the gun," Old Joe ordered. "We might see something." Little Joe, silent as a bird dog, carried the rifle along the trail. He walked a little ahead of Old Joe and was careful to hold back the branches so they wouldn't slap the old man.

My Pet Owls FARLEY MowAT

•

WoL and Weeps were with us long enough to be well known in Saskatoon.Particularly Wol. As my father said, Wol never quite realized he was an owl. Most of the time he seemed to think he was people.At any rate, he liked being with people and he wanted to be with us so much that we finally had to stop trying to keep him out of the house. If we locked him out he would come and bang his big beak against the window panes so hard we were afraid the glass would break. Screens were no good either, because he would tear them open with one sweep of his big claws. So eventually he became a house owl. He was always very well mannered in the house, and he caused no trouble-except on one particular occasion. One midsummer day we had a visit from the new minister of our church.He had just arrived in Saskatoon, so he didn't know about our owls. Mother took him into the living room, and he sat down on our sofa with a cup of tea balanced on his knee, and began to talk to Mother about me skipping Sunday School. Wol had been off on an expedition down on the river15

16

FAR L E Y M O WAT

bank. When he got home he ambled across the lawn,jumped up to the ledge of one of the living room windows and peered in. Spotting the stranger he gave another leap and landed heavily on the minister's shoulder. Mother had seen him coming and had tried to warn the minister, but she was too late.By the time she had her mouth open, Wol was already hunched down on the man's shoulder, peering around into his face,making friendly owl noises. "Who-who?" he asked politely. Instead of answering the minister let out a startled yelp and sprang to his feet. The tea spilled all over the rug, and the teacup shot into the fireplace and smashed into a million pieces. It was all so sudden that Wol lost his balance; and when he lost his balance his talons just naturally tightened up to help him steady himself. When Wol tightened his grip the minister gave a wild Indian yell, and made a dash for the door. Wol had never been treated this way before. He didn't like it. Just as the minister reached the front porch, Wol spread his wings and took off. His wings were big, and they were strong too. One of them clipped the man a bang on the side of his head, making him yell even louder. But by then Wol was airborne. He flew up into his favourite poplar tree, and he was in such a huff at the way he had been treated that he wouldn't come down again till after supper. Riding on people's shoulders was a favourite pastime with Wol. Usually he was so careful with his big claws that you couldn't even feel them. Sometimes when he was on your shoulder and feeling specially friendly,he would nibble your ear. His beak was sharp enough to have taken the ear right off your head at a single bite, but he would just catch the bottom of your ear in his beak and very gently nibble it a little. It didn't hurt at all,though it used to make some people

MY P E T O W L S

17

nervous. One of my father's friends was a man who worked for the railroad, and he had very big, red ears. Every time he came to visit to our house he wore a cap-a cap with ear-flaps. He wore it even in summertime because, he said, with ears as big as his and an ear-nibbling owl around he just couldn't afford to take chances. Wol was usually good-natured, but he could get mad. One morning Mother sent me to the store for some groceries. My bike had a flat tire so I had to walk, and Wol walked with me. We were only a little way from our house whe n we met the postman coming toward us. He had a big l nmd l e of l etters in his hand, and he was sorting them and not watching where he was going. Instead of stepping around Wol, he walked right into him. Worse still, he didn't even look down to see what it was he had stumbled over. He just gave a kind of kick to get what­ ever it was out of his way. Well, you could do a lot of things to Wol and get away with it-but kicking him was something different. Hissing like a giant teakettle, he spread his wings wide out and clomped the postman on the shins with them. A whack from one of his wings was like the kick of a mule. The postman dropped his handful of letters and went pelting down the street, yelling blue murder-with Wol right on his heels. After I got hold of Wol and calmed him down, I apolo­ gized to the postman. But for a month after that he wouldn't come into our yard at all. He used to stand at the gate and whistle until one of us came out to get the mail. Our owls were so used to going nearly everywhere with me now that when school started that fall I had a hard time keep­ ing them at home. I used to bicycle to school, which was about two miles away across the river. During the first week after school opened, I was late four times because of having

18

FARLEY M O WAT

to take the owls back home after they had followed me part­ way. Finally Dad suggested that I lock them up in the big pen each morning just before I left. Wol and Weeps hadn't used that pen for a long time, and when I put them in they acted as if it was a jail. Wol was particularly furious, and he began to tear at the chicken wire with his beak and claws. I sneaked off fast. I was almost late anyway, and I knew if I was late once more I'd be kept in after school. I was about halfway over the river bridge when a man on the footpath gave a shout and pointed to something behind my back. At the same time a car, coming toward me, jammed on its brakes and nearly skidded into the cement railings. Not knowing what was going on, I put on my brakes too, and I just had time to stop when there was a wild rush of air on the back of my neck,a deep "HOOO-HOOO-HOO!" in my ear,and Wol landed on my shoulder. He was out of breath-but he was so pleased with himself that I didn't have the heart to take him home. Anyway,there wasn't time. So he rode the handle bars the rest of the way to school. I skidded into the yard just as the two-minute bell was ringing and all the other kids were going through the doors. I couldn't decide what on earth to do with Wol. Then I re­ membered that I had some twine in my pocket I fished it out and used it to tie him by one leg to the handle bars. The first class I had that morning was French. Well, be­ tween worrying about Wol and not having done my home­ work, I was in trouble with the teacher (whom we called Fifi behind her back). Fifi made me come up in front of the class so she could tell me how dumb I was. I was standing beside her desk, wishing the floor would open and swallow me up, when there was a whump-whump-whump at the window. I turned my head to look, and there sat Wol. It hadn't taken him long to untie the twine.

M Y P E T O WLS

19

I heard later that he had banged on the windows of two or three other classrooms before he found the right one. Having found the right room at last, he didn't waste any time. Un­ luckily Fifi had left one of our windows open. Wol ducked down, saw me,and flew right in. He was probably aiming to land on my shoulder, but he missed and at the last second tried to land on Fifi's desk. It was a polished hardwood desk; he couldn't get a grip on it. His brakes just wouldn't hold; h e skated straight across the desk scattering papers and books all over the floor. Fifi saw him coming and tried to get up out of her chair, but she wasn't fast enough. Wol skidded off the end of the desk and plumped right into her lap. There were some ructions after that. I was sent to the principal's office and Fifi went home for the rest of the day.

The Hockey Game ScoTT YouNG

•

THE next night, when St. John's and Gordon Bell faced off for the first game of the double-header, the Northwest team sat in a long row high in the Northwest section. At one end of the row was Martin, then Berton, Wong, Kryschuk, Mitchell, Big Canoe, Duplessis, Jamieson, Pete, Spunska, DeGruchy, Brabant, Lawrence, Paterson, Bell and Buchanan. They were all quiet and tense, talking in low voices among themselves. Pete could feel how tense Spunska was. He was being pitch­ forked into the toughest position any rookie could find him­ self in.DeGruchy and Pete had talked it over, a few minutes earlier. "We won't say a thing to him now about what he's to r�­ member, " DeGruchy said. Pete agreed. "Better to have him out there doing things instinctively, instead of trying to remember things we tell him." Mr. and Mrs. Gordon and Sarah were a few rows below them.Lee Vincent, in the press box, glanced up once or twice 20

T H E H O C KEY G A M E

21

at the row of Northwesters, feeling what was in their minds now. Red and Fat were down in the dressing room. Spunska said, "My father decided not to come. He moved the radio into mother's room.They'll be listening." He ex­ haled a long breath."Gosh,I hope I do all right. " "You'll do all right," Pete said. The game started.Pete watched McMillan of St. John's and Bush of Gordon Bell battle for the puck. Gordon Bell got the first goal, a neat passing play from Bevan to Jones. Then McMillan connected on a long shot to tie the score. Halfway through the period St.John's scored again,and in the second period, while the tension in the Northwest team grew and grew,St.John's poured in four more. The score was 6-l ,the game in the bag for St. John's,when the second period ended and the Northwest players filed to the dressing room. In the corridor below they mixed with Daniel Mac players heading for their dressing room, too. Everyone was quiet. Lee Vincent came downstairs and wandered around in the halls a few minutes, then went back up to watch the third period of the St.John's game. The Northwest dressing room was quiet. The players dressed without talking more than was necessary. Pete was among the first ready and waiting, and he had a knot in his stomach. "Wish the game would start," he said to Bell. "Boy,have I got butterflies! " Bell just nodded. "Me, too, I've got four-engined butter­ flies! " Spunska sat silently with beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. A prolonged burst of cheering from above was followed by the sound of skates clumping downstairs. Fat went out and came back to report that the score hadn't changed. So now St. John's was tied in the standings with Daniel Mac. But they were out of it.A tie or a win for Daniel Mac would give the ·

22

S C OTT Y O U NG

Daniels second place in the play-offs with Kelvin. A win for Northwest would put Northwest in the play-offs. For the last few minutes, Pete and DeGruchy went to sit with Spunska. Benny Wong and Rosy Duplessis came over too. But there was nothing to say. They just sat there with the fire slowly burning inside of them until Red headed for the door.He paused there, with his hand on the doorknob, and spoke. "I've never had to tell you guys how to do it, all season, " he said. "You've always known. And you know as well as I do that this is the big one." They filed out, and up the stairs. The Daniel Mac team already was on the ice. Pete skated through them, greeting some of the boys he knew. He spoke to Ron Maclean. "Funny us winding up in a situation like this, eh?" Pete said. Ron grinned ruefully. "I don't know how you guys have done it, " he said. "But tonight'll be different. " "Don't be too sure, " Pete said. They warmed up. The rink was jammed. The news of the suspension of Jamieson just before this all-important final game had been a blow to Northwest's hopes, but the news that he would be replaced by a boy nobody had seen but most sports-page readers knew about from Lee Vincent's earlier story, had given the game an extra interest. All through the stands people were talking it up. "Wonder how this kid'll make out. " "Real tough luck on Northwest. They were really hot. " "Can't blame that Jamieson kid. I'd do the same myself. " "Daniel Mac really murdered them last month, though, 9-3. " "But that was with Pete Gordon out. He's half the team. " "I don't know... . A team like this, nobody's really big. A team that won't be beaten can't be beaten. " The referees checked the nets.The tension grew and grew.

T H E H O C KEY G A M E

23

Spunska took a shot on the goal and it missed but hit the back board with a resounding crash. "That new kid's got a hard shot!" "Clumsy on his skates, though." "Looks clumsy, all right... . But he gets around pretty fast. " Pete was watching Spunska, through the warm-up, with an awareness so keen that it was as if he'd never seen the boy before. He remembered all the morning workouts, weeks of them. He wished now that he'd gotten a couple of forwards to come in the mornings, too, so they could have worked Spunska and DeGruchy against complete forward lines.But it was too late to think what might have been done.Anyway, Spunska had got that kind of training in the team workouts. It would do. Pete had an instinctive feeling that if Spunska ever was to play a great hockey game, this would be it, his first. He had that kind of spirit. He had ability, and more than anyone Pete had ever known, Spunska wanted to be a good hockey player. The whistle blew to start the game. Pete skated to center, exchanged a few words with Bell and Buchanan, looked back at the defense.DeGruchy and Spunska stood there together, It was daring, in a way, to put Spunska on the starting lineup. But Red had decided that way. De­ Gruchy was his best defenseman.If anybody could hold up a new boy, it was DeGruchy. Besides, in all those mornings at the Olympic DeGruchy and Spunska had worked together. They knew one another's styles of play.Sometimes an ounce of understanding is worth a peck of experience. The center opposing Pete was big Blackie White, second string last year when Pete was top center at Daniel Mac. His wings were George Peters, another veteran, and Chum Black­ burn, a new kid, a tall boy with long arms and a thin face, now talking it up with the others.Ron MacLean and Camp­ bell McKay were on defense, Lonny Riel in goal.

24

S C OTT Y O U NG

He noted all this in a few minutes while the referee held the puck. Pete's stick was down in the center circle, with White's.His eyes were on the puck in the referee's right hand. Down it camel The game was on! White got the draw.As he wheeled and drove forward,Pete poked the puck away from him, across to Bell,but Blackburn intercepted the pass and with a quick burst of speed tore in on the Northwest defense. Pete, wheeling, stride for stride with White to guard against a pass to center,saw DeGruchy wave his stick at Spunska to cover the puck carrier while DeGruchy stayed in center,watching for the pass. It was a first big test for Spunska, seconds after the game started. And Pete saw Spunska with his head up and his arms wide,stepping toward Blackburn, eyes on Blackburn's, ignoring the kid's dipsy­ doodling shift,and there was a solid crash and a sudden roar from the crowd as Blackburn went down. But the puck went between Spunska's legs. He wheeled fast and was back for it,but White drove into the corner after it, too. Spunska turned quickly and shot the puck against the boards so that it came back to Pete's stick and he was away. At the Daniel Mac defense,with White slashing at the puck from the side, trying to catch him, Pete looked up to place his wings, saw Maclean coming for him, shifted and passed to Buchanan, who got the first shot on goal. It was turned away quickly to the wing by Riel.Blackburn tried to get out, but failed. Maclean recovered and dashed down center ice, Pete chasing him. At the defense Ron got around Spunska but ran right into DeGruchy and the thud could be heard in the press box fifty feet away. "Two minutes gone," Lee Vincent said to Arthur Mutch­ ison, the timer. "And already two of the toughest checks of the season." Then Spunska was away on his first rush. There was a

T H E HOCKEY G A M E

25

chuckle of laughter in the crowd at his clumsiness, as he picked up the puck and broke into the queer half-run that he always used to get up speed, but the chuckle turned to a rising cheer as Spunska tore down center ice and into the Daniel Mac de­ fense. Just like that first time he got the puck, the first practice, Pete was thinking, speeding up fast behind Spunska. Except that now he knows what to do. I hope. . . . Spunska did know what to do. As he crossed the Daniel Mac blueline he looked behind him and saw Pete and just as he hit the Daniel Mac defense he dropped back a pass and for an instant the puck sat there two feet inside the blueline. Then Spunska hit the defense and he and Maclean went down together, and Pete was on the puck, passing to Bell,who swept in around Cam McKay. He was in the clear! He sped in, waiting for Riel to make a move, but Riel didn't move. Bell desperately swept across in front of the goal and tried a backhand, but the goalie had outguessed him, and he was too far past. The shot was wide. The teams started changing lines on the go. Berton re­ placed Pete, and then Bell kept the puck in the Daniel Mac zone and finally held it against the boards so the line change could be completed. Big Canoe and Mitchell joined Berton, and Lawrence and Duplessis went to defense. Pete sank down beside Spunska. "You did fine, boy. " "Nice going, Bill, " said Red, behind them. "Keep it up. " "That Ron Maclean can sure hit! " Spunska said. Pete grinned, and looked across the rink to the Daniel Mac bench. "He's probably saying the same thing about you. " The cheers rolled around them in constant thunder. Check, check, skate, shoot, save, shoot. . . . Pete's line was on again, ,a few minutes later, then off. Paterson made a great save on Blackburn and smothered the puck when White tried to bat

26

S C OTT Y O U N G

in the rebound. Benny Wong was in close and fired point­ blank at Riel, who saved. But this was like a play-off game. Both sides were playing it cagey, taking no chances they could help. The first period ended with no score.As the players left the ice the Northwest cheerleaders went into their act, and the Daniel Macs answered, and in the press box Lee Vincent sat and listened quietly,feeling excitement.He smiled when he heard the new version of the Northwest song. Oh, Northwest is not in the basement, Not we, oh not we, oh not we! We're new but we're bound for the play-offs, You'll see, oh you'll see, oh you'll see!

" They had to change that song, " Mutchison said dryly. "I don't imagine they're sorry, though." " No.'' When Pete came back to the ice in the second period his tension was gone.Funny.The whole season had been going through his mind, during the space between periods. He looked back now and thought of how sad he'd been three months ago about leaving Daniel Mac,and now he was skating his heart out to beat them.He skated to the boards and waved to his parents and Sarah.Spunska, skating slowly along the boards, looked up and waved,too,with a half-shy,half-proud smile.And Pete noticed that Sarah was still watching Spunska, when the big boy had gone by, and her lips were moving as she talked excitedly to her pa-rents. There'd been no penalties in the first period.In the second Ron Maclean tangled with Winston Kryschuk and fell to the ice, and while he fell he was yelling at the referee to make sure he'd been seen. It was a trip all right-accidental,but a trip anyway.Kryschuk disconsolately went to the penalty box, and Daniel Mac turned on the heat. Pete and Pincher Martin were sent out to kill off the pen­ alty, with DeGruchy and Rosy Duplessis on defense.Pete got

T H E H O C K EY G A M E

27

the draw on the face-off,but lost it to White,and White shot the puck into the Northwest zone and the Daniels piled in after it. For a minute there was bedlam. Shots rained on Paterson from all angles,but he kept them all out. Pete tried to get out with the puck.Ron Maclean knocked him down. Martin tried,but lost it to White at the blueline. DeGruchy tried to shoot it the length of the ice to relieve the pressure. Blackburn knocked it down with his hand and blasted a shot on goal. Then there was a mad scramble around the goal and with Blackburn lying in the goal crease George Peters slipped the puck into an open corner. The goal judge's light flashed on! There was a groan from the Northwest stands,a thunderous yell from the Daniel Mac section,but the referee was in there fast,waving his arms that the goal was disallowed,just as De­ Gruchy and Pete descended on him to protest that Blackburn had been lying in the crease. The Daniel Macs didn't protest.They knew Blackburn had been in the crease,although scrambling to get out. The crease, marked by a line painted in a rectangle in front of the goal, was three feet wide and seven feet long; only the goalie was allowed in it unless the puck was there. "Lucky! " Maclean wumhled to Pete,skating by. Pete said nothing. ll had been lucky. Fired by that luck,the shorthanded Northwesters kept the puck in center ice or the Daniel Mac zone until Kryschuk came back from the penalty box. Now Daniel Mac was playing it cagier than ever,making sure they never got trapped in the Northwest zone. The second period also ended without a score. Downstairs,Red said,"You've got to get a goal this period, gents. A tie is all Daniel needs.Even a scoreless tie." And the team came back in the third period determined that,whatever happened,it would be no tie.

28

S C OTT Y O U N G

But the minutes ticked away. Northwest threw the game wide open. Every time the puck went into the Daniel Mac zone all the Northwesters moved up to the blueline in a power play. One of Spunska's hard drives from the blueline bounced off two or three players and the crowd noise rose and fell as the puck skidded within inches of an open corner of the net. When the Daniels got it out they wouldn't even follow it into the Northwest zone unless there was a real chance for a break. Pete was thinking that in a way this was lucky,not making the burden too heavy on the green member of the defense, and then suddenly this green member of the defense took control of the game. It was a play following the strict pattern of bar-the-door hockey Daniel Mac had been employing. White carried the puck into center ice,saw no chance for a safe pass,and shot a long roller at the Northwest net. Paterson stopped it easily and looked around for someone to give it to. And everybody saw Spunska coming full tilt towards his own net, picking up the puck,making the quick turn not gracefully,but well,and without slackening speed he was flying down the ice into the hitherto impregnable lineup the Daniels had set up in the center zone,gathering speed,pushing the puck in front of him, not letting it get too far in front. The rest of the Northwest team rallied with him, turned, flying, and the Daniels were taken by surprise, unable to get up speed fast enough to match Spunska going in. Just before he hit the blueline Spunska glanced up to place possible pass receivers; the Daniel Mac defense opened a little to cover the wings and Spunska saw his chance. He gave the puck a last little shove and then leaped in the air to get over the sticks of the defensemen closing in on him too late. Pete struggled to get through,too,but was turned around,and he saw Spunska lining up the shot and then blasting. Riel came out to cut down the angle of the shot and barely got his skate on the puck as Spunska drove it at the small opening. The

THE H O CKEY GAME

29

puck bounded from Riel's skate to the sideboards, SpuRska went in after it, passed out to center, and in the next two minutes he was everywhere in the Daniel Mac zone,falling down,getting up,shouting,tearing from side to side. It was as if all the first part of the game had been a slow build-up of his confidence,and now he had it,and he was in command.Pete thought of Spunska's parents,listening to the game; thought of all the mornings at the Olympic,and there was a lump in his throat. Five minutes left in the game, still a scoreless tie. Four minutes. Spunska rushed dangerously again,was relieved,sat fretting with DeGruchy on the bench,sprang to his feet when Wong was in for a close shot,then Martin.With two minutes to go Spunska and DeGrunchy went back to the ice. Pete and Bell and Buchanan replaced the Martin line.Spunska made another ferocious rush, got another shot, again was turned back by the cool Riel. Most of the six thousand people were standing now,their voices lost in the uproar. Lee chewed his pencil and gripped the sideboards in front of him. Red Turner had his hat off and was twisting it into a shapeless mess. Sarah Gordon gripped her father's arm hard. Mr. Gordon sat quietly,watch­ ing his old school and his son's new school fight it out to the end. Sixty-five seconds left to play. In their anxiety,the North­ westers had committed an offside on a long pass from De­ Gruchy to Bell across the red line. The face-off was in the Northwest zone. Red debated if he should change his lines,for this last push. Put on somebody fresh.He sent Big Canoe out and told him to call DeGruchy to the bench. Grouchy skated up,ready to protest if he was being taken off. Red said,"Tell Paterson that as soon as we get the puck out

30

S C OTT YO UNG

of our own end he's to come to the bench. We'll replace him with a forward. " As DeGruchy skated back to tell Paterson, the rink was suddenly quiet and Pete,standing on the blueline, trying to relax for the last all-important minute,could hear the voice of the radio broadcaster in the gondola in the rafters,an excited voice, and again he could imagine it sounding in the room at Spunska's home,Mrs. Spunska in the bed,Mr. Spunska in a chair,waiting,as everyone waited. The referee tooted his whistle. Pete went in to take the face-off. He had to get this one. He did. He batted White's stick away and whirled with it and from the corner of his eye saw Paterson leaving his nets,cautiously,ready to get back in case his side lost the puck. No goalie,now! All or nothing! At center he looked up and the whole Northwest team was with him, Bell and Buchanan and Spunska and DeGruchy, skating fast,eagerly, a step behind him. Paterson reached the bench. Hurry Berton sprang to the ice. Pete stick-handled across the blueline, holding the puck as long as possible,waiting for everyone to get into position. Then he passed to Berton, coming in, and Berton eluded a check and shot. The puck was whacked back to the blueline to DeGruchy,who shot. Riel kicked it out. Buchanan was in for the rebound,Riel batted it off to the side. Spunska drove in, was blocked,fell, and passed to Berton. But Maclean,desper­ ate, his red hair flying out behind him, beat Berton to the pass. Forty seconds left. Maclean got his stick on the puck and DeGruchy was falling back to cover a possible rush on the open goal when Spunska, kneeling on the ice, halfway to his feet, dove full length on the ice and hooked the puck away from Maclean again and sent it over to Pete. Pete took a quick glance at the goal. No holes. He feinted a shot and laid the puck back to Spunska,

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31

who was on his feet now, and Spunska got set for a drive and in that instant, waiting for the shot, everybody froze. Spunska leaned for the shot, but didn't shoot! His quick slap pass went across the goalmouth to Berton, who was almost in the clear. Berton took the puck and shifted, all in one motion, to get away from his check, fired a quick backhand. The rebound came out to Pete. H is cars were full

of the screaming excitement of the crowd. He shot, panting, anxious. The rebound came out to DeGruchy. He fired. Spunska shot. Riel dove to try to grab the puck and end this furious rally and in the instant before he got his hand on it, Spunska flicked it away from the groping fingers and Pete twisted free from Ron Maclean. He got it. He looked up. Riel was sprawled on the ice, the goal wide open. As Pete was hit, he shot over Riel. The puck hit the back of the net. The red

I

32

S C OT T Y O U N G

light for the goal went on a second before the blue light and buzzer to end the game. The loudspeaker blared out above the noise, with the slow British voice of Arthur Mutchison. "Goal for Northwest! Scored by Gordon, assist from Spunska. Final score: Northwest 1 , Daniel Mac no score. Northwest wins the second place in the play-offs." The crowd drowned out the last of it. Camera flash-bulbs flashed. Red Turner dazedly tried to straighten out his hat, wondering how on earth it had got into this mess. Fat sat alone on the bench. He hadn't followed the others when they poured onto the ice.He wasn't sure he had enough strength left to walk. He clutched the bundle of spare hockey sticks, wondering if ever again in his life he'd feel like this. Spunska burst through the crowd and put his arm around Pete's shoulders and hugged him. DeGruchy came up be­ tween them, separated them, and hugged them both. He was laughing, almost deliriously happy."Only one thing wrong, Pete! " he yelled above the crowd. "You must be dis­ appointed that your good old Daniel Mac didn't make the play-offs! " "Sure! " Pete said, grinning. "Sure, sure ... .'' Daniel Mac was a long way behind him now.

Wully ERN E S T T H O M P S ON SETON

•

AwAY up in the Cheviots little Wully was born. He and one other of the litter were kept; his brother because he resembled the best dog in the vicinity, and himself because he was a little yellow beauty. His early life was that of a sheep-dog, in company with an experienced collie who trained him, and an old shepherd who was scarcely inferior to them in intelligence.By the time he was two years old Wully was full grown and had taken a thorough course in sheep. He knew them from ram-horn to lamb-hoof, and old Robin, his master, at length had such con­ fidence in his sagacity that he would frequently stay at the tavern all night while Wully guarded the woolly idiots in the hills. His education had been wisely bestowed and in most ways he was a very bright little dog with a future before him. Yet he never learned to despise that addle-pated Robin. The old shepherd, with all his faults, his continual striving after his ideal state-intoxication-and his mind-shrivelling life in general was rarely brutal to Wully, and Wully repaid him 33

34

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

with an exaggerated worship that the greatest and wisest in the land would have aspired to in vain. Wully could not have imagined any greater being than Robin, and yet for the sum of five shillings a week all Robin's vital energy and mental force were pledged to the service of a not very great cattle and sheep dealer, the real proprietor of Wully's charge, and when this man, really less great than the neighboring laird, ordered Robin to drive his flock by stages to the Yorkshire moors and markets, of all the 376 mentalities concerned, Wully's was the most interested and interesting. The journey through Northumberland was uneventful. At the River Tyne the sheep were driven on to the ferry and landed safely in smoky South Shields. The great factory chimneys were just starting up for the day and belching out fogbanks and thunder-rollers of opaque leaden smoke that darkened the air and hung low like a storm-cloud over the streets. The sheep thought that they recognized the fuming dun of an unusually heavy Cheviot storm. They became alarmed, and in spite of their keepers stampeded through the town in 374 different directions. Robin was vexed to the inmost recesses of his tiny soul. He stared stupidly after the sheep for half a minute, then gave the order, "Wully, fetch them in." After this mental effort he sat down, lit his pipe, and taking out his knitting began work on a half-finished sock. To Wully the voice of Robin was the voice of God. Away he ran in 374 different directions, and headed off and rounded up the 374 different wanderers, and brought them back to the ferry-house before Robin, who was stolidly watching the process, had toed off his sock. Finally Wully-not Robin-gave the sign that all were in. The old shepherd proceeded to count them-370, 371, 372, 373. "Wully," he said reproachfully, "thar no' a' here. Thur's anither." And Wully, stung with shame, bounded off to scour

W U L LY

35

the whole city for the missing one. He was not long gone when a small boy pointed out to Robin that the sheep were all there, the whole 374. Now Robin was in a quandary. His order was to hasten on to Yorkshire, and yet he knew that Wully's pride would prevent his coming back without another sheep, even if he had to steal it. Such things had happened before, and re­ sulted in embarrassing complications. What should he do? There was five shillings a week at stake. Wully was a good dog, it was a pity to lose him, but then, his orders from the master; and again, if Wully stole an extra sheep to make up the num­ ber, then what-in a foreign land too? He decided to abandon Wully, and push on alone with the sheep. And how he fared no one knows or cares. Meanwhile, Wully careered through miles of streets hunt­ ing in vain for his lost sheep. All day he searched, and at night, famished and worn out, he sneaked shamefacedly back to the ferry, only to find that master and sheep had gone. His sorrow was pitiful to see. He ran about whimpering, then took the ferryboat across to the other side, and searched everywhere for Robin. He returned to South Shields and searched there, and spent the rest of the night seeking for his wretched idol. The next day he continued his search, he crossed and recrossed the river many times. He watched and smelt everyone that came over, and with significant shrewdness he sought unceasingly in the neighbouring taverns for his master. The next day he set to work systematically to smell everyone that might cross the ferry. The ferry makes fifty trips a day, with an average of one hundred persons a trip, yet never once did Wully fail to be on the gang-plank and smell every pair of legs that crossed5,000 pairs, 1 0,000 legs that day did Wully examine after his own fashion. And the next day, and the next, and all the week he kept his post, and seemed indifferent to feeding himself. Soon starvation and worry began to tell on him. He grew thin and ill-tempered. No one could touch him, and any attempt

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to interfere with his daily occupation of leg-smelling roused him to desperation. Day after day, week after week Wully watched and waited for his master, who never came. The ferry men learned to respect Wully's fidelity. At first he scorned their proffered food and shelter, and lived no one knew how, but starved to it at last, he accepted the gifts and learned to tolerate the givers. Although embittered against the world, his heart was true to his worthless master. Fourteen months afterward I made his acquaintance. He was still on rigid duty at his post. He had regained his good looks. His bright, keen face set off by his white ruff and pricked ears made a dog to catch the eye anywhere. But he gave me no second glance, once he found my legs were not those he sought, and in spite of my friendly overtures during the ten months following that he continued his watch, I got no farther into his confidence than any other stranger. For two whole years did this devoted creature attend that ferry. There was only one thing to prevent him going home to the hills, not the distance nor the chance of getting lost, but the conviction that Robin, the godlike Robin, wished him to stay by the ferry; and he stayed. But he crossed the water as often as he felt it would serve his purpose. The fare for a dog was one penny. and it was calculated that Wully owed the company hundreds of pounds before he gave up his quest. He never failed to sense every pair of nethers that crossed the gang-plank-6,000,000 legs by computation had been pronounced upon by this expert. But all to no purpose. His unswerving fidelity never faltered, though his temper was obviously souring under the long strain. We had never heard what became of Robin, but one day a sturdy drover strode down the ferry-slip and Wully mechan­ ically assaying the new personality, suddenly started, his mane

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bristled, he trembled, a low growl escaped him, and he fixed his every sense on the drover. One of the ferry hands not understanding, called to the stranger, "Hoot mon, ye maunna hort oor dawg." "Whaes hortin 'im, ye fule; he is mair like to hort me." But further explanation was not necessary. Wully's manner had wholly changed. He fawned on the drover, and his tail was wagging violently for the first time in years. A few words made it all clear. Darley, the drover, had known Robin very well, and the mittens and comforter he wore were of Robin's own make and had once been part of his wardrobe. Wully recognized the traces of h i s master, and despairing of any nearer approach to his lost idol, he aband­ oned his post at the ferry and plainly announced his intention of sticking to the owner of the mittens, and Dorley was well­ pleased to take Wully along to his home among the hills of Derbyshire, where he became once more a sheep-dog in charge of a flock. Monsaldale is one of the best-known valleys in Derbyshire. The Pig and Whistle is its single but celebrated inn, and Jo Greatorex, the landlord, is a shrewd and sturdy Yorkshire­ man. Nature meant him for a frontiersman, but circum­ stances made him an innkeeper and his inborn tastes made him a-well, never mind; there was a great deal of poaching done in that country. Wully's new home was on the upland east of the val ley above Jo's inn, and that fact was not without weight in bringing me to Monsaldale. His master, Dorley, farmed in a small way on the lowland, and on the moors had a large number of sheep. These Wully guarded with his old-time sagacity, watching them while they fed and bringing them to the fold at night. He was reserved and preoccupied for a dog, and rather too ready to show his teeth to strangers, but he was so unremitting in his attention to his flock that Dorley did

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not lose a lamb that year, although the neighboring farmers paid the usual tribute to eagles and to foxes. The dales are poor fox-hunting country at best. The rocky ridges, high stone walls, and precipices are too numerous to please the riders, and the final retreats in the rocks are so plentiful that it was a marvel the foxes did not overrun Monsaldale. But they didn't. There had been but little reason for complaint until the year 1881, when a sly old fox quar­ tered himself on the fat parish, like a mouse inside a cheese, and laughed equally at the hounds of the huntsmen and the lurchers of the farmers. He was several times run by the Peak hounds, and escaped by making for the Devil's Hole. Once in this gorge, where the cracks in the rocks extend unknown distances, he was safe. The country folk began to see something more than chance in the fact that he always escaped at the Devil's Hole, and when one of the hounds who nearly caught this Devil's Fox soon after went mad, it removed all doubt as to the spiritual paternity of said fox. He continued his career of rapine, making audacious raids and hair-breadth escapes, and finally began, as do many old foxes, to kill from a mania for slaughter. Thus it was that Digby lost ten lambs in one night. Carroll lost seven the next night. Later, the vicarage duck-pond was wholly devastated, and scarcely a night passed but someone in the region had to report a carnage of poultry, lambs or sheep, and, finally even calves. Of course all the slaughter was attributed to this one fox of the Devil's Hole. It was known only that he was a very large fox, at least one that made a very large track. He never was clearly seen, even by the huntsmen. And it was noticed that Thunder and Bell, the staunchest hounds in the pack, had refused to tongue or even to follow the trail when he was hunted. His reputation for madness sufficed to make the master of

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the Peak hounds avoid the neighborhood. The farmers in Monsaldale, led by Jo, agreed among themselves that if it would only come on a snow, they would assemble and beat the whole country, and in defiance of all rules of the hunt, get rid of the 'daft' fox in any way they could. But the snow did not come, and the red-haired gentleman lived his life. Not­ withstanding his madness, he did not lack method. He never came two successive nights to the same farm. He never ate where he killed, and he never left a track that betrayed his retreat. He usually finished up his night's trail on the turf, or on a public highway. Once I saw him. I was walking to Monsaldale from Bake­ well late one night during a heavy storm, and as I turned the corner of Stead's sheep-fold there was a vivid flash of light­ ning. By its light, there was fixed on my retina a picture that made me start. Sitting on his haunches by the roadside, twenty yards away, was a very large fox gazing at me with malignant eyes, and licking his muzzle in a suggestive manner. All this I saw, but no more, and might have forgotten it, or thought myself mistaken, but the next morning, in that very fold, were found the bodies of twenty-three lambs and sheep, and the unmistakable signs that brought home the crime to the well­ known marauder. There was only one man who escaped, and that was Dorley. This was the more remarkable because he lived in the center of the region raided, and within one mile of the Devil's Hole. Faithful Wully proved himself worth all the dogs in the neighborhood. Night after night he brought in the sheep, and never one was missing. The Mad Fox might prowl about the Dorley homestead if he wished, but Wully, shrewd, brave, active Wully was more than a match for him, and not only saved his master's flock, but himself escaped with a whole skin. Everyone entertained a profound respect for him, and he might have been a popular pet but for his temper which, never genial, became more and more crabbed. He seemed to

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like Dorley, and Huldah, Dorley's eldest daughter, a shrewd, handsome, young woman, who, in the capacity of general manager of the house, was Wully's special guardian. The other members of Darley's family Wully learned to tolerate, but the rest of the world, men and dogs, he seemed to hate. His uncanny disposition was well shown in the last meeting I had with him. I was walking on a pathway across the moor behind Dorley's house. Wully was lying on the doorstep. As I drew near he arose, and without appearing to see me trotted toward my pathway and placed himself across it about ten yards ahead of me. There he stood silently and intently regarding the distant moor, his slightly bristling mane the only sign that he had not been suddenly turned to stone. He did not stir as I came up, and not wishing to quarrel, I stepped around past his nose and walked on. Wully at once left his position and in the same eerie silence trotted on some twenty feet and again stood across the pathway. Once more I came up and, stepping into the grass, brushed past his nose. Instantly, but without a sound, he seized my left heel; I kicked out with the other foot, but he escaped. Not having a stick, I flung a large stone at him. He leaped forward and the stone struck him in the ham, bowling him over into a ditch. He gasped out a savage growl as he fell, but scrambled out of the ditch and limped away in silence. Yet sullen and ferocious as Wully was to the world, he was always gentle with Darley's sheep. Many were the tales of rescues told of him. Many a poor lamb that had fallen into a pond or hole would have perished but for his timely and sagacious aid, many a far-weltered ewe did he turn right side up; while his keen eye discerned and his fierce courage baffled every eagle that had appeared on the moor in his time. The Monsaldale farmers were still paying their nightly tribute to the Mad Fox, when the snow came, late in Decem­ ber. Poor Widow Gelt lost her entire flock of twenty sheep,

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and the fiery cross went forth early in the morning. With guns unconcealed the burly farmers set out to follow to the finish the tell-tale tracks in the snow, those of a very large fox, undoubtedly the multi-murderous villain. For awhile the trail was clear enough, then it came to the river and the habitual cunning of the animal was shown. He reached the water at a long angle pointing down stream and jumped into the shallow, unfrozen current. But at the other side there was no track leading out, and it was only after long searching that, a quarter of a mile higher up the stream, t hey found where he had come out. The track then ran to the top of Henley's high stone wall, where there was no snow left to tell tales. But the patient hunters persevered. When it crossed the smooth snow from the wall to the high road there was a difference of opinion. Some claimed that the track went up, others down the road. But Jo settled it, and after another long search they found where apparently the same trail, though some said a larger one, had left the road to enter a sheep-fold, and leaving this without harming the occupants, the track-maker had stepped in the footmarks of a countryman, thereby getting to the moor road, along which he had trotted straight to Dorley's farm. That day the sheep were kept in on account of the snow and Wully, without his usual occupation, was lying on some planks in the sun. As the hunters drew near the house, he growled savagely and sneaked around to where the sheep were. Jo Greatorex walked up to where Wully had crossed the fresh snow, gave a glance, looked dumbfounded, then point­ ing to the retreating sheep-dog, he said, with emphasis: "Lads, we're off the track of the Fox. But there's the killer of the Widder's yowes." Some agreed with Jo, others recalled the doubt in the trail and were for going back to make a fresh follow. At this juncture, Dorley himself came out of the house. "Tom," said Jo, "that dog o' thine 'as killed twenty of

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Widder Gelt's sheep, last night. An' ah fur one don't believe as it is first killin'." "Why, mon, thou art crazy," said Tom, "Ah never 'ad a better sheep-dog-'e fair loves the sheep." "Aye! We's seen summat o' that in las' night's work," replied Jo. In vain the company related the history of the morning. Tom swore that it was nothing but a jealous conspiracy to rob him of Wully. "Wully sleeps i' the kitchen every night. Never is oot till he's let to bide wi' the yowes. Why, mon, he's wi' oor sheep the year round, and never a hoof have ah lost." Tom became much excited over this abominable attempt against Wully's reputation and life. Jo and his partisans got equally angry, and it was a wise suggestion of Huldah's that quieted them. "Feyther," said she, "ah'll sleep i' the kitchen the night. If Wully 'as ae way of gettin' oot ah'll see it, an' if he's no oot an' sheep's killed on the country-side, we'll ha' proof it's na Wully." That night Huldah stretched herself on the settee and Wully slept as usual underneath the table. As night wore on the dog became restless. He turned on his bed and once or twice got up, stretched, looked at Huldah and lay down again. About two o'clock he seemed no longer able to resist some strange impulse. He arose quietly, looked toward the low window, then at the motionless girl. Huldah lay still and breathed as though sleeping. Wully slowly came near and sniffed and breathed his doggy breath in her face. She made no move. He nudged her gently with his nose. Then, with his sharp ears forward and his head on one side he studied her calm face. Still no sign. He walked quietly to the window, mounted the table without noise, placed his nose under the sash-bar and raised the light frame until he could put one paw underneath. Then changing, he put his nose under the

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sash and raised it high enough to slip out, easing down the frame finally on his rump and tail with an adroitness that told of long practice. Then he disappeared into the darkness. From her couch Huldah watched in amazement. After waiting for some time to make sure that he was gone, she arose, intending to call her father at once, but on second thought she decided to await more conclusive proof. She peered into the darkness, but no sign of Wully was to be seen. She put more wood on the fire, and lay down again. For over an hour she lay wide awake listening to the kitchen clock, and starting at each trifling sound, and wondering what the dog was doing. Could it be possible that he had really killed the widow's sheep? Then the recollection of his gentleness to their own sheep came, and completed her perplexity. Another hour slowly tick-tocked. She heard a slight sound at the window that made her heart jump. The scratching sound was soon followed by the lifting of the sash, and in a short time Wully was back in the kitchen with the window closed behind him. By the flickering fire-light Huldah could see a strange, wild gleam in his eye, and his jaws and snowy breast were dashed with fresh blood. The dog ceased his slight panting as he scrutinized the girl. Then, as she did not move, he lay down, and began to lick his paws and muzzle, growling lowly once or twice as though at the remembrance of some recent occur­ rence. Huldah had seen enough. There could no longer be any doubt that Jo was right and more-a new thought flashed into her quick brain, she realized that the weird fox of Monsal was before her. Raising herself, she looked straight at Wully, and exclaimed: "Wullyl Wullyl so it's a' true-oh, Wully, ye terrible brute." Her voice was fiercely reproachful, it rang in the quiet kitchen, and Wully recoiled as though shot. He gave a des-

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perate glance toward the closed window. His eyes gleamed, and his mane bristled. But he cowered under her gaze, and grovelled on the floor as though begging for mercy.Slowly he crawled nearer and nearer, as if to lick her feet, until quite close, then, with the fury of a tiger, but without a sound, he sprang for her throat. The girl was taken unawares, but she threw up her arm in time, and Wully's long gleaming tusks sank into her flesh, and grated on the bone. "Help! help! feyther! feyther! " she shrieked. Wully was a light weight, and for a moment she flung him off. But there could be no mistaking his purpose.The game was up, it was his life or hers now. "Feyther! feyther! " she screamed, as the yellow fury, striving to kill her, bit and tore the unprotected hands that had so often fed him. In vain she fought to hold him off, he would soon have had her by the throat, when in rushed Dorley. Straight at him, now in the same horrid silence sprang Wully, savagely tore him again and again before a deadly blow from the fagot-hook disabled him,dashing him, gasping and writhing on the stone floor, desperate, and done for,but game and defiant to the last.Another quick blow scattered his brains on the hearthstone, where so long he had been a faithful and honored retainer-and Wully, bright, fierce, trusty, treacherous Wully, quivered a moment then straight­ ened out, and lay forever still.

J ezebel J essie HARRY

J.

BoYLE

•

For several days I had noticed my mother and father in earn­ est conversation. Whenever I came within hearing distance they stopped. At first I hoped that it had something to do with Christmas, but this was a faint hope. They would never spend that much time on planning gifts. Something was brewing and I had a suspicion it had to do with work. This started with small chores. There was the matter of kindling for the kitchen stove and a supply of wood in the woodbox. Chickens had to be fed and watered and we had to gather the eggs. The blow came on a November evening when Father inter­ rupted me as I scuffled with grandfather. "You seem to have a lot of spare energy these days," he began and when I didn't answer, continued, "I think it's time you started some regular work around here. Starting tomorrow morning. I want you to milk the red cow each morning and night." I was stunned.

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"You mean?" "Yes," he said finally, "You'll milk Jessie." I looked to Mother for help but she avoided my eyes. Jessie was a monstrous creature we had been trying for three years to get rid of, short of selling to the canners. It would have been an admission by my father that he had been beaten in a deal if she went off to the packing plant. None of the neighbors would buy her because she was awkward, wandering and cantankerous. I had milked some before, but it was different to draw a permanent assignment each night and morning. It was my first sentence! That night I had a dream that Jessie followed me to school and, when the teacher asked me to recite homework, the cow walked into the room and started doing it for me. This was interrupted by Father calling me as he was on his way down to light the fire. I danced and pranced in the cold air and found no comfort in the kitchen. A northeast wind was slashing rain through the bleak dark as we trudged to the barn. "I tell you boy," Father said, teething into the gale, "When you get the feel of it there's nothing to compare with the satisfaction of hard work." It was pleasant in the stable with the compressed, animal heat of the night intact. The lanterns shed pale light and the stock attacked the feed with vigor. I stopped to look at the ugly face of my adversary. She seemed to be grinning and skelped at me with the crooked horn. Father was cheerful and gave me the best milking stool. I moved in gingerly, and sat down. The bulk of the cow moved like a great boat shifting with the tide against the pier. The trouble was that I was between the boat and the pier and I dug both fists into her as viciously as possible. She stayed smothering me, as if to underline who was boss, and then

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moved across to the other side of the stall. This seemed like co-operation until I realized it was merely to give her full room for an assault with her tail. I can still feel the stinging lash. In a boyish rage I grabbed the tail and curled it. She slammed the pail with her hoof and shifted against me until I sprawled in the gutter. Father went on as if nothing was happening at all. I could get mad, cry, run away or try milking again. I com­ bined crying with the latter and there must have been some latent sense of sympathy in the bovine harridan because she let me go ahead. After what seemed a dreadful length of time, I had only a thin layer of milk on the bottom of the pail. I heard father finish up the blue cow and move to the roan and still 1 grabbed and pulled and only a dribble of milk keened in to the pail. " Here boy," said my father, "Let me show you." He sprayed the milk into the pail in great fashion, showing me how to use my thumb and first finger and the pressure from the palm of my hand. When the pail was half full, he stood up and said, "Now you can finish." It worked pretty well. I got a rhythmic stroke and the milk streams plunged into the foaming pail and I was feeling quite satisfied. My legs were aching a bit, so I shoved the stool back and edged up. Then Jessie kicked and sent the pail flying. When Father got to me, I was desperately trying to pull her tail off. Thus began the morning and evening ordeal of milking. They were the two spots of my life I dreaded. In time I could milk the old monster and, with constant vigilance, cope with her vagaries. I found articles in farm magazines and papers suggesting it was wise to drop all dairy cattle and concentrate on beef. A professor who advocated letting the calves run with the cows was my hero. I left all these articles where father would

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be sure to read them, but it was a losing battle because we depended on the cream cheque each week during a majority of the year for the little cash money that was available. In the spring when the drover came around I prayed father would dispose of Jessie. I plotted to let her into the new garden so mother's wrath might force Father to let the old villain go to the packing plant. I came home one day from school and met the drover lead­ ing Jessie away behind his buggy. ''I'll bet you feel sorry to see this one go," he laughed and I raced to the house. Mother was smiling. "Your prayers have been answered. Jessie got in the new corn patch this morning." "I didn't do it," I said guiltily. "No," she said gently, "Your father left the gate open when he went to the village and I didn't notice it." She added softly, "I think he blames me, but I was churn­ ing." That night I started to milk the red heifer, a gentle crea­ ture without guile. Somehow, although I couldn't admit it to anyone, I missed the old reprobate.

Leg end of Iro quois Falls E L LA E. C LARK

•

Iroquois Falls are in the A bitibi River, in northeastern Ontario, not far from Lake A bitibi. On the eastern shore of the lake is a great rock where a spirit is said to live; whenever any noise is made in the area, the spirit growls with anger. So the Indians avoid the lake. Several tribes of eastern Canada used to tell this story about the waterfall in the river. Similar legends have been recorded a bout Niagara Falls and also about a waterfall in the St. john River of New Brunswick.

Many years ago, Iroquois warriors came north to fight the Indians in the Abitibi country. On their way, they captured an old woman of the enemy tribe and took her with them as a guide. The river was new and strange to the Iroquois. They wanted the old woman to inform them which rapids they could ride through in their canoes and which ones they should carry their boats around. When they came to white water, they asked, "Do your people chute these rapids?" "Oh, yes. They are safe," she would sometimes say. Other

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times she would answer, "No, it is necessary to portage here. The current is swift, and there are many rocks." After a while they approached the spot where the river drops more than one hundred feet. As the waterfall is imme­ diately below swift rapids, its roar is drowned by the rushing and splashing of the white water above. And the cascade is hidden from view by a sharp turn in the river. As the Iroquois approached the rapids above the waterfall, the leader of the party asked the guide, "Do your people chute these?" "Oh, yes," she replied. "They are quite simple now. But as they are shallow, I had better get out of the canoe to lighten it. I'll walk to the place where we sometimes have to portage, and you can pick me up there." So the old woman got out of the canoe and walked over the portage. The Iroquois stayed in the canoes. As they started down the rapids, the boats were caught in the strong current and were buffeted against the big rocks. Quickly the first canoe was carried around the bend. Then the men saw before them the terrifying drop of the falls. Frantically they tried to reach the shore. Frantically they yelled a warning to the people behind them. But the warning was too late. The men could not control their boats. Canoe after canoe was swept over the brink and was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Not a single Iroquois in the party survived to tell his people what had happened.

A

Struggle in the Woods S H EILA BuRN F ORD

•

The shadows lengthened across the deserted track, and the evening wind sighed down it to sweep a flurry of whispering leaves across the rut, their brown brittleness light as a benison as they drifted across the unheeding white form. The curious squirrel peered in bright-eyed wonder from a nearby tree, clucking softly to itself. A shrew ran halfway across, paused and ran back; and there was a soft sound of wings as a whisky­ jack landed and swayed to and fro on a birch branch, tilting his head to one side as he looked down and called to his mate to come and join him. The wind died away-a sudden hush descended. Suddenly, there was a sound of a heavy body pushing through the undergrowth, accompanied by a sharp crack ing of branches, and the spell was broken. C h a tte ri ng shrilly in alarm and excitement, t h e squ irrel ran up the trunk of the tree and the whisky-jacks flew oiL Now on to the trail on all fours scampered a hal f-grown bear cub, round furry ears pricked and small deep-set eyes al ight with curiosity in the sharp little face as he beheld the old dog. There was a grunt51

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ing snuffling sound in the bush behind the cub: his mother was investigating a rotten tree stump. The cub stood for a moment and then hesitantly advanced toward the rut where the terrier lay. He sniffed around, wrinkling his facile nose at the unfamiliar smell, then reached out a long curved black paw and tapped the white head. For a moment the mists of unconsciousness cleared, and the old dog opened his eyes, aware of danger. The cub sprang back in alarm and watched from a safe distance. Seeing that there was no further move­ ment, he loped back and cuffed again with his paw, this time harder, and watched for a response. Only enough strength was left in the old dog for a valiant baring of his teeth. He snarled faintly with pain and hatred when his shoulder was raked by the wicked claws of the excited cub, and made an attempt to struggle to his feet. The smell of the drawn blood excited the cub further; he straddled the dog's body and started to play with the long white tail, nibbling at the end like a child with a new toy. But there was no response: all conscious effort drained, the old dog no longer felt any pain or indignity. He lay as though asleep, his eyes veiled and unseeing, his lip still curled in a snarl. Around the bend in the trail, dragging a large dead par­ tridge by the wing, came the cat. The wing sprang back softly from his mouth as he gazed transfixed at the scene be­ fore him. In one split second a terrible transformation took place; his blue eyes glittered hugely and evilly in the black masked face, and every hair on the wheat-coloured body stood upright so that he appeared twice his real size; even the chocolate-coloured tail puffed up as it switched from side to side. He crouched low to the ground, tensed and ready, and uttered a high, ear-splitting scream; and, as the startled cub turned, the cat sprang. He landed on the back of the dark furred neck, clinging with his monkeylike hind legs while he raked his claws across the cub's eyes. Again and again he raked with the terrible

53 talons, hissing and spitting in murderous devilry until the cub was screaming in pain and fear, blinded with blood, making ineffectual brushing movements with his paws to dislodge the unseen horror on his back. His screams were answered by a thunderous roar as the huge black she-bear crashed through the bushes and rushed to the cub. She swiped at the clinging cat with a tremendous paw; but the cat was too quick for her and with a hiss of fury leaped to the ground and dis­ appeared behind a tree. The unfortunate cub's head received the full force of the blow and he was sent spinning across the track into the bushes. In a blind, frustrated rage, maddened by the cries of her cub, the mother turned for something on which to vent her fury, and saw the still figure of the old dog. Even as she lumbered snarling towards him the cat dis­ tracted her attention with a sudden leap to the side of the track. The bear halted, then reared up to full height for attack, red eyes glinting savagely, neck upstretched and head weaving from side to side in a menacing, snake-like way. The cat uttered another banshee scream and stepped forward with a stiff-legged, sideways movement, his squinting, terrible eyes fixed on his enormous adversary. Something like fear or in­ decision crept into the bear's eyes as the cat advanced; she shuffled back a step with lowered head. Slow, deliberate, pur­ poseful, the cat came on-again the bear retreated, bewildered by the tactics of this terrible small animal, distraught by her cub's whimpering, slowly falling back before the relentless inch-by-inch advance. Now the cat stopped and crouched low, lashing his tail from side to side-the bear stopped too, shift­ ing her weight uneasily before the spring that must follow, longing to decamp but afraid to turn her back. A sudden crackle of undergrowth turned the huge animal into a statue, rigid with apprehension-and when a great dog sprang out of the bush and stood beside the cat, teeth bared and snarl­ ing, every hair on his russet back and ruff erect, she dropped to all fours, turned swiftly and fled towards her cub. There A STR U G G L E I N TH E W O OD S

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was a last growl of desperate bravado from the bush and a whimpering cry; then the sounds of the bears' escape receded in the distance. Finally all was quiet again; the curious squir­ rel leaped from his ringside seat and scrambled farther down the trunk of the tree. The cat shrank back to his normal size. His eyes regained their usual cool, detached look. He shook each paw distaste­ fully in turn, glanced briefly at the limp, muddied bundle by his feet, blood oozing from four deep parallel gashes on the shoulder, then turned and sauntered slowly down the track towards his partridge. The young dog nosed his friend all over, his lips wrinkling at the rank bear smell, then attempted to stanch the wounds with his rough tongue. He scratched fresh leaves over the bloodstained ones, then barked by the old dog's head; but there was no response, and at last he lay down panting on the grass. His eyes were uneasy and watchful, the hairs still stood upright in a ridge on his back, and from time to time he whined in perplexity. He watched the cat drag a large grey bird almost up to the nose of the unconscious dog, then slowly and deliberately begin to tear at the bird's flesh. He growled softly, but the cat ignored him and continued his tearing and eating. Presently, the enticing smell of raw, warm meat filtered through into the old dog's senses. He opened one eye and gave an appreciative sniff. The effect was gal­ vanizing: his muddied half-chewed tail stirred and he raised his shoulders, then his forelegs, with a convulsive effort, like an old work horse getting up after a fall. He was a pitiful sight-the half of his body that had lain in the rut was black and soaking, while the other was streaked and stained with blood. He looked like some grotesque harle­ quin. He trembled violently and uncontrollably throughout the length of his body, but in the sunken depths of the slanted black-currant eyes there was a faint gleam of interest-

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which increased as he pushed his nose into the still-warm bundle of soft grey feathers. This time there was no growling rebuff over the prey: instead, the cat sat down a few yards away, studiedly aloof and indifferent, then painstakingly washed down the length of his tail. When the end twitched he pinned it down with a paw. The old dog ate, crunching the bones ravenously with his blunt teeth. Even as his companions watched him, a miracu­ lous strength slowly seeped back into his body. He dozed for a while, a feather hanging from his mouth, then woke again to finish the last morsel. By nightfa l l he was able to walk over the soft grass at the side of the track, where he lay down and blinked happily at his companions, wagging his pitiful tail. The Labrador lay down beside him, and licked the wounded shoulder. An hour or two later the purring cat joined them, care­ lessly dropping another succulent morsel by his old friend's nose. This was a deer mouse, a little creature with big eyes and long hind legs like a miniature kangaroo. It was swal­ lowed with a satisfying gulp, and soon the old dog slept. But the cat purring against his chest and the young dog curled at his back were wakeful and alert most of the re­ maining night; neither moved from his side.

Load of Trouble J.

E D wARD

WooD

•

I was sitting around in the Space Express offices, calculating how much longer I could hold out without getting another job, when the loudhailer blared. "Tim McGuire out there?" It was the agent. "Yeah." "In here, Tim. I 've got a trip for you." I was into the office but quick. "I'll take it," I told him as he looked up. He laughed. "You're getting to the bottom of your sock, I can tell." I sat on the edge of his desk. "You're not fooling, Pete." I was serious. The big companies could afford to run freight to Mars for exactly a hundred dollars a pound less than I could and I was losing customers all the time. "Look, I don't care how dangerous this load is, I want it." I remembered the time I handled the delion, gruesome stuff. I was sick from the radiation for months after. Pete looked at me and laughed; he shook with laughter.

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"Nothing you ever handled could come near this load for trouble." My mouth was dry. "Where's the joke then?" I have to work but I don't enjoy risking my neck any more than the other guy. Pete held his hands up for quiet. "You took a load to Alun once, remember, food pills and drugs for the Alunic sickness." I nodded dumbly. I recall that one whenever I don't sleep; we had to stay quarantined in the ship for three weeks on our return so the sickness wouldn't take here on earth. It was a form of madness, but contagious. I cleared my throat harshly. "Alun is no joke, Pete, but I'll go. I hope it's a worth­ while load, not some minimum charge hoist." He spread his hands. "This one is good, a ton and a quarter." I whistled; my maximum payload is a ton and a half, but I had never been this near it before. "What is it, more drugs and food?" "Well," Pete began, "in a way it's both. You see, it's a live cow. " I laughed with him then. "You're fooling, Pete. You must be." "No, this is deadly earnest. The foundation for space medi­ cine believes it has a serum to beat Alunic sickness. I don't know too much about it, except it can't be transported frozen or in bottles, only alive in a cow." I nodded, understanding his point. "You'll carry one of the foundation's veterinarians with you to attend to the animal," Pete added. I stood up. "When do I start?" "As soon as you can." Pete was looking through the papers in a file. "They want it immediately. I'm to provide you with the equipment at their expense and you'll be paid when you return." He wrote out two chits and handed them to me. "Take this one to the fuel depot and get Katie ready, and

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this one to the space crewman's pool. Get yourself two good men. I'll see you tomorrow." "Thanks, Pete." I folded the papers and put them into my pocket. I went out scratching my head thoughtfully. This was funny. In this day of synthetic foods, the only cow I ever saw was in the zoo. Down at the fuel yards I arranged for Katie to be armed up with enough fuel. Katie is one of the original K87s that made the first trips back in the seventies. She was horribly in­ efficient, but a pretty reliable bus for all that. The fuel engi­ neer is a buddy of mine. "Got myself a load, Jack." I told him what it was and he laughed. Seems to me that everyone on earth laughed that day, but I didn't care, nor did the two men I hired. Jack Stewart, the engineer, said his folks had been farmers in the old days and he knew a little bit about animals. My com­ munications man, Fred Bailey, knew as much as I did. This was going to be a headache. At nine the next morning we were sitting round Pete's desk discussing details. The cowman from Spacemed was there, an earnest kind of guy wearing old-fashioned spectacles. We listened while he outlined the problems. I don't think he had done very much space travel, but he sure knew lots about his cow. "I have checked a scale model of your machine," he told me, "and I find that your freight holds will not accommodate a cow. However, I have made plans for the animal to travel in the control cabin." My two crewmen looked at one another in dismay, but I just shrugged. Even if I would have to step around a cow, I still needed this job. "There's no spare room in the cabin," I reminded him. "Ah ! " he began eagerly. "Let me explain. " So we just listened.

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After all it was his party. When he had finished, I could think of nothing to add so we left, to reassemble next morning at the ship. I was there four hours ahead of time, but the others joined me soon after. We did our checks, all the routine ground testing. Then the doc arrived, bringing his protege. She looked harmless enough, a big brown and white beast, staring about amiably. The gangplank was put up, and we started easing her in through the crew door. All the old K87s had the big doors, to allow for the cumbersome spacesuits of those days; none of the modern ships would have got the animal in their doors. That's why I had the load. The doc backed in first holding a bundle of cow food, and she followed him in peacefully. My two crewmen fastened the nylon acceleration straps under her belly and we all heaved her up tight against the ceiling. That did it. She bawled till our ears rang. There was about three feet of space under the cow's feet and we scrambled out from under her. "How do I see my gauges, chief?" Stewart wanted to know when we were outside. "That darn cow is right over the monitor.'' "You'll have to do the best you can," I told him irritably. "Look, Doc, can't you give that thing a needle to keep it quiet?" "Oh, nol " He was aghast. "It would induce a state of de­ pression injurious to the serum. I'm afraid we must put up with the noise." "Okay, okay." I moved away. I had to recheck my gear before we started. At fifteen minutes before launching, we were locked in and ready. Stewart was checking his clocks, slowly going round each one visually. Bailey was tinkering with the radar beam directional gear and the doc was milking the cow. Imagine, kneeling carefully between her feet, milk­ ing her into a bucket on the floor. "How often do we have this caper?" I asked him.

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He looked at me, very seriously. "Every twelve hours, Cap­ tain. I have a mechanical contrivance which I shall use when we are under way." "Good. Are you sure you've got everything else you need?" He pushed the bucket clear, crawled out from under the cow, and stood up. "Yes, I have her space equipment stowed in the hold." "Okay, Doc, put that milk away and take up position." I liked this little man. He had no thought in his head except for the welfare of his charge. I like to see a man as conscien­ tious as that. He scuttled down the companionway with his bucket and was up a minute later buckling himself into his harness on the wall. The rest of us were strapped in by now, resting under the spring tension up against the deckhead. The cow had extra straps around her jaw to level out the pressure; it had stopped her bawling, too, thanks be. At L­ hour the lights glowed and I threw the switches. For perhaps a second we paused, and then in ferocious acceleration we began to sag downwards in our G-harness. The cow was facing me. I saw her eyes grow bigger in astonishment as we moved slowly down the wall. Just as her feet touched the deck, the ship began to steady and she was drawn up again like a big clumsy yoyo. Then we were free of gravity. I unsnapped my harness and felt my way down the wall to the floor, clamping my space shoes firmly down. The doc was uncoupled before me. Trudg­ ing awkwardly on his clamp shoes over to the cow, he undid her chin strap and started to tap her chest with a stethoscope. She looked at him curiously, swishing her tail slowly from side to side. Without looking up, the doc patted her on the neck. "She is in grand shape, Captain," he told me. "Heart completely normal."

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"That's good." I was setting the controls to cruising con­ ditions, settling down for the twenty-six-hour trip. Stewart touched my sleeve. ''I'm afraid I won't get my first check completed unless I can use the monitor. Can we move the cow for a while?" "I guess you'd better ask Doc," I told him. Doc looked thoughtful for a moment; then he said, "I don't see why not. I don't think it would harm her now." Stewart and I unfastened the straps. Then Doc gave the cow a little push and she sailed away across the ceiling like a toy balloon at a children's party. Stewart turned the monitor and began making rapid notes on his log. I was watching the cow. She gave out a loud horrified lowing and the force of it drove her backwards through the air. She cannoned off Stewart's head and began to bounce about between the walls, bawling. It was too much for me. I laughed till the tears ran. Bailey and the doc were trying to catch hold of her. Doc was in a panic. "Captain, this is making her nervous." "Okay." I clumped over and took her by the horns. Doc was making a leash for her, out of the chin stay. He lashed it round a stanchion and passed the end round her horns. She hovered there, an angry captive balloon. Doc said, "We must refasten her as soon as possible." He was pale with the worry. "Take it easy, Doc. She'll be fine now." I went back to my computer, leaving him patting her neck soothingly. The next second he was shouting again. Turning, I saw the cow upside down, her feet waving wildly. The doc was trying to turn her rightside up, but the strap had caught and she was stuck head down. I took a deep breath, counted ten, and unfastened the strap from her horns. Then I pushed her foot. She revolved twice and finished off upright. "Stewart," I said, ignoring the doctor, "for Pete's sake, hurry with your checks before I go berserk."

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"Roger, Captain." He clicked off the monitor and we hauled the animal up into place again. She seemed to feel at home there because she stopped bawling and just looked us over coldly. She stayed there for the next two watches. I was below when Doc milked her, but I came on watch in time for another game of handball when Stewart made his midtrip checks. This time we held on to her until it was over. Then I took control. I managed quite well, despite having to go on hands and knees every time I wanted to cross the cabin. At least I did manage until Doc appeared up the companionway with an armful of dry grass. I was on the other side of the cow. Suddenly my settings altered and the ship began to ac­ celerate alarmingly. I hailed Stewart and he came up the ladder at a run. I heard him blistering the doctor. Then his head poked through and he said briefly, "Doc was using the rocket controls as a feed rack, and the cow pulled our boosters on." I slapped my forehead. "He sure is in the right business. He's a farm boy all through." Stewart went back below and Doc crawled in. "Sorry, Cap­ tain, I was carried away." "You should be," I told him grinning. "What's the prob,. lem now?" "I wonder if you would help me give her a drink." We had to unfasten her. I held her while she sucked up the water and we lashed her up again without incident. I began to feel kindly disposed towards her. "What will they do with her, Doc? They won't slaughter her, will they?" "Oh, no," he told me. "She will be used as an incubator for the serum." He gave her a prod. "You observe that it produces no ill effects." I was glad of that. I was becoming attached to that cow. I went below and opened the fridge. It was full of cattle food,

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greens, and little bales of grass. All the crew supplies had been put on one of the shelves underneath ; everything was warm and horrible. I drank my lukewarm water. The pas­ senger's comfort came first aboard Katie. It was at the next milking that the accident happened. The doc had his electric milker plugged in and the cow was swishing her tail from side to side contentedly when there was a flash and all the lights on the non-vital circuit went out. Stewart hastily checked the fuse boxes. "They're burnt out," he informed me. "Emergency power on," 1 ordered. The lights came on and we saw the cow stretched out stiffly. The doctor quickly checked her heart and I ungs. "That's strange," he said, straightening up. "Her involun­ tary muscles are working, heart and lungs normal, but all voluntary function has ceased. " He shook his head. "It is, without doubt, some f6rm of electrocution." Then Bailey spoke, "All the ground directional gear is out of function, Captain." He was ;:� quiet man. I guessed it must be permanent trouble or he would not have reported it. "Can you fix it?" "No, the tubes are dead." He smiled. "Makes an expen­ sive glass of milk, doesn't it?" I nodded briefly. "You've got two hours before we enter the gravity pull of Alun. Do your best." We would need that gear to find our way up the radar beam to Alun's landing area. It was no use crossing the uni­ verse with a cow and then dropping it off in one of the vast deserts that covered Alun. vVe had to home on to the city where the Spacemed outpost was situated. The doc was on his knees under the cow for the rest of the trip. "She will be all right when this coma passes," he said. "I don't think the serum will be harmed.' ' Well, that was the big thing. I left him beside the cow, even though he was in the way.

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Soon we felt the first touch of gravity from Alun. I had Bailey watch the telescreen, checking what passed under our emergency scanner. After a trip completely round the planet, he reported: "It's no use, Captain. I'll have another try at the beam gear." I nodded shortly. Things were bad. We did not have enough fuel to circle indefinitely, yet if we put the doc down in the desert, both he and the cow would die. I didn't want that on my conscience. That cow had me beat. I laughed. "Modern science beaten by a cow. They got around for centuries on their own feet." But Doc was riot listening to me. He undid the straps that fastened the cow. Drawn by gravity, she flopped against the side of the ship. He hoisted her up clear of the floor by the center strap. " Look," he said. "Her tail! She's magnetic." Her tail was out stiff, indicating the beam, and her whole body swung very slowly. "Turn right," he told me. I pushed the air drag that side. As we watched, the cow swung around until her tail was pointing in the same direct­ ion as before. Without another word, I turned the ship until we were running in the direction the cow was pointing. I put on all the drag we could bear and we ran slowly around Alun at about eight hundred knots. My throat was dry. I knew we had fuel fbr only one run. Then the cow began to dip her tail down towards the ground. I brought the ship up vertically and slackened off. The cow began to turn over and then wedged in her strap. Slowly I brought the ship down. The radio altimeter was useless and I had to depend on the oblique facing scanner to give an idea of altitude. We landed with a smash that jarred the whole frame of the ship. Bailey said, "She's moving." The cow suddenly went limp.

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Then the radio began to blare. "Do you receive me? Your location please, K87. Do you read me?" I answered, "K87 to Alun control, we are down; believe within monitoring distance of you." The voice came back. "We have you fixed now, 87. Are you okay?" I handed the transmitter to Bailey. "Tell them about it all; tell them how we used a cow for a compass. I have to dress the lady." I helped the doctor swathe the cow in her suit. It was a complicated affair with a great many straps and we sweated a lot doing it. When she was bound and had her oxygen mask in place, she was wedged tightly in the cabin. Doc dressed slowly; he was thinking hard. "It was all a matter of static electricity, that was why the radio started again." "That's right, Doc." I was sorry to be leaving him on this miserable planet, but it was his work. "Maybe you can patent the idea. " Bailey came back to me, "There's a party outside now, skipper. Is Doc ready?" I turned to the doc. "Are you fit?" "Yes, I 'm ready now, Captain." "Okay, open the inner door." The three of us crewmen pushed the cow into the space lock. It was a tussle. Then Doc shook hands all round. "Thanks for the ride," he said to me. I thumped his shoulder affectionately. "Thanks for the ex­ perience, Doc, and good luck." We shut the door and he released himself from the space lock. Through the camera we saw the last of him. He was bounding after the cow, which was taking twenty-foot leaps into the air.

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Stewart said, "Heck, I meant to remind him about the gravity here." "Never mind," I said, as we prepared to take off again. "Doc won't mind, but you should have warned his cow."

Larouche and his Wish (retold by Bernard L. McEvoy) •

I n St. Roch it was a bright morning in early winter. Davy Larouche-fat, lucky, merry Davy-had put on his Sunday clothes and was standing before the mirror brushing his hair. "I can see that you are getting ready to impress the girls in town again today," his wife joked. "Get along," Davy laughed, "you know as well as I that today we all take our tithes to the cure. You wouldn't have me go in my old things, surely." He looked through the window at the lovely day and sighed. "If only there had been better weather during the growing season then we would have had more for the cure and for us too." After breakfast Davy tossed his bulging sacks into the sleigh, stuffed his pipe with tobacco, and after he had lit it to his satisfaction he set off toward the village, his sleigh bells jingling merrily. He sang happily to himself as he sped along. As he approached the town the road passed through a wood. Here Davy came upon a stranger standing at the road67

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side. He was fair complexioned with piercing blue eyes and he wore his hair so long that it hung over his shoulders. The young man was certainly nobody that Davy had ever seen before. Davy noticed that the stranger's clothing, a blue robe belted at his waist, was not only foreign to the district but also inappropriate for hard work or cold weather. Davy stared at him with curiosity, with a certain awe, and in such astonish­ ment that quite unintentionally he leaned back on the reins and brought his horse to a stop. "Peace be unto you," the stranger said smiling. "The same to you," Davy stuttered. "Where are you going?" ''I'm taking my tithe to the priest." "Judging from your load, you have had a good harvest." "Not bad, but if I could have made the weather we would have had a real harvest." "As you wish, from now on you will have whatever weather you ask for." The man in the robe stepped back, and calling to his horse, Davy started up again. After he had gone a few yards Davy turned to wave good-bye. The road was quite deserted. As he drove along thinking of what the stranger had said, he wondered if he had just met an angel or a lunatic. A year went by. Tithing time came again. There were no loaded sacks this year for the cure. This time Davy set off on foot with his entire offering bundled in a handkerchief. Poor Davy! No longer was he the fat merry lucky man that had set out a year ago along the same road. He was not singing to himself this time. When he reached the wood, lo and behold there was the same stranger standing back from the road among the trees. As Davy approached the stranger raised his hand. "Peace be with you." "Thank you," Davy said, hiding his small bundle behind

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his back. "I need it. And as for my neighbours they are all so furious with me that I don't know what to do. They say that I am a magician, for every time I wish for any particular kind of weather, sure enough we've had it. The sun has been too hot at the wrong time. The rain has been too cold at the wrong time. We've had parching droughts and flooding down pours so that the crop has either withered or been washed right out of the ground. Even the stock has been affected. As for my family they're as indignant as my neighbours." The stranger smiled. "You are satisfied then that God knows better than his children as to what is best for them? Your wishing power is gone. N ext year your tithes will be better." Davy Larouche thoughtfully trudged off down the road.

The Wild Goose ERNES T B ucK LER

•

I've never stopped missing my brother Jeff. I'm all right; and then I pick up the rake he mended so perfectly for me where the handle went into the bow; or I come across where he'd scratched the threshing count on the barn door, with one of those clumsy fives of his in it; or it's time for someone to make the first move for bed; or some winter dusk when the sun's drawing water down beyond the frozen marshes-do you know that time of day? It's as if your heart slips into low gear. (I'm glad Jeff can't hear me. But I don't know, maybe he wouldn't think it sounded soft. Just because he never said anything like that himself-you can't go by that.) I always feel like telling something about him then. I don't know, if I can tell something to show people what he was really like it seems to help. The wild goose flew over this evening. The sky was full of grey clouds. It looked as if it was worried about something. I could tell about Jeff and the wild goose. I never have. 70

THE WILD GOOSE

71

It really started the afternoon before. We went hunting about four o'clock. I was fourteen and he was sixteen. You'd never know we were brothers. You could tell exactly how he was going to look as a man, and I looked like a child that couldn't make up his mind what shape his face would take on later. He could lift me and my load (though he'd never once glance my way if I tackled anything beyond my strength-trying to lead a steer that was tough in the neck, or putting a cordwood butt on top of the pile, or anything) . But I always seemed the older, somehow. He always seemed to-well, look up to me or something, it didn't matter how often I was mean to him. I could draw the sprawling back field on a piece of paper and figure out the quickest way to mow it, by algebra; but when I took the machine out on the field itself I wouldn't know where to begin. Jeff could take one look at the field and know exactly where to make the first swath. That was the difference between us. And I had a quick temper, and Jeff never lost his temper except when someone was mad at me. I never saw him mad at me himself but that one day. The day was so still and the sun was so bright the leaves seemed to be breathing out kind of a yellow light before they fell to the ground. I always think there's something sort of lonesome about that, don't you? I'm no kind of a hunter. You wouldn't think I was a country boy at all. But Jeff was. He was a wonderful shot; and the minute he stepped into the woods there was a sort of brightness and a hush in his face together, I can't describe it. It wasn't that he liked the killing part. He seemed to have a funny kind of love and respect for whatever he hunted that I didn't have at all. If I don't see any game the first quarter mile I get to feel like I'm just walking around on a fool's errand, dragging a heavy gun along. But Jeff's spell never slacked off for a second.

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You'd have to live in the country to know what hunting meant to anyone like Jeff. And to know how he rated with the grown-up men; here's just this kid, see, and he knows right where to find the game, no matter how scarce it is, and to bring it home. Anyway, we'd hardly gone any distance at all-we were just rounding that bend in the log road where there's the bit of open swamp and then what's left of the old back orchard, before the woods start-when Jeff halted suddenly and grabbed my arm. "What's the matter?" I said. I guess I spoke louder than ordinary, because I was startled. I hadn't thought of having to be cautious so soon. Jeff's gun went up, but he didn't have time for even a chance shot. There was a flash of a big buck's flag. He'd been standing under the farthest apple tree. Then in a single motion, like the ripple in a rope when you hold one end in your hand and whap the other against the ground, he dis­ appeared into the thicket. Deer will sometimes stand and watch you for minutes, still as stone. Stiller than thunder weather. Stiller than holding your breath. So still you can't believe it. They're cocked for running, but you get the feeling they weren't there before you saw them. Your eyes seem to have plucked them right out of the air. Their feet don't seem to quite rest on the ground. But the second you speak, they're off. The human voice is like a trigger. It would have been a sure shot for Jeff. There wasn't a twig between them. It would have been the biggest buck anyone had brought home that year. Even I felt that funny sag in the day that you get when game's been within your reach except for carelessness and now there's nothing. You j ust keep star­ ing at the empty spot, as if you should have known that was the one place a deer would be.

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Jeff turned to me. His eyes were so hot in his head I almost crouched. "For God's sake," he said, "don't you know enough to keep your tongue still when you're huntin'?" It was like a slap in the face. The minute Jeff heard what he'd said the anger went out of him. But you'd have to live in the country to know what a funny feeling it left between us. For one hunter to tell another he'd spoiled a shot. It was as if you'd reminded someone to take off his cap inside the house. I didn't say a word. Only in my mind. I seemed to hear my mind shouting, "You just wait. You'll see. I'll never . . . never . . . " Never what, I didn't know-but just that never, never agam . . . Jeff rumbled with a laugh, trying to put the whole thing behind us, as a joke. "Well," he said, offhand like, "that one certainly moved fast didn't he? But we'll circle around, Maybe we'll ketch him in the choppin', what?" I didn't say a word. I just broke down my gun and took out the cartridge, then and there. I put the cartridge in my windbreaker pocket and turned toward home. "Ain't you comin'?" Jeff said. "What d'ya think?" I said. I glanced behind me when he'd gone on. I don't know, it always strikes me there's something sort of lonesome about seeing anyone walk away back-to. I almost changed my mind and ran and caught up with him. But I didn't. I don't know why I could never smooth things over with Jeff right away when I knew he was sorry. I wanted to then, but I couldn't. I had to hang on to the hurt and keep it fresh. I hated what I was doing, but there it was. It was pitch dark when Jeff got home that night, but he didn't have any deer. I sort of kept him away from me all the next day. I hated

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myself for cutting off all his clumsy feelers to make up. ("What was the algebra question you showed the teacher how to do when you was only ten?") It always kind of gets me, seeing through what anyone is trying to do like that, when they don't know you can. But I couldn't help it. (Once Jeff picked up about fifty bags of cider apples nights after school. The day he took them into town and sold them he bought every single one of us a present. I followed him to the barn that evening when he went to tend the horse. He didn't hear me coming. He was searching under the wagon seat and shaking out all the straw around the horse. He didn't want to tell me what he was looking for, but I made him. He'd lost a five dollar bill out of the money the man at the cider mill had given him. But he'd kept the loss to himself, not to spoil our presents. That's what he was like.) It was just about dusk when Jeff rushed into the shop the day after I had spoiled his shot at the deer. He almost never gut so excited he forgot himself, like I did. But he was that way then. "Git your gun, Kenny, quick," he said. "There's a flock o' geese lit on the marsh." It would be hard to explain why that gave even me such a peculiar thrill. \Vild geese had something- well, sort of mystic -about them. When the geese flew south in the fall, high in the sky, people would run outdoors and watch them out of sight. And when they turned back to the house again they'd have kind of a funny feeling. The geese seemed to be about the most-distant, sort of-thing in the world. In every way, You couldn't picture them on the ground, like a normal bird. Years and years ago Steve Hammond had brought one down, and it was still the first thing anyone told about him to a stranger. People said, " He shot a wild goose once," in the same tone they'd say of some famous person they'd seen, "I was close enough to touch him."

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75

I was almost as excited as Jeff. But I kept rounding up my armful, pretending the geese didn't matter much to me one way or the other. "Never mind the wood," Jeff said. He raced into the house for his gun. I piled up a full load before I went into the house and dropped it into the box. It must have almost killed him to wait for me. But he did. "Come on. Come on," he urged, as we started across the field. "And put in a bal l cartridge. �We'll never git near enough fer shot to carry." I could see myself hitting that small a target with a ball cartridge! But I did as he said. When we got to the railroad cut, we crawled on our bellies, so we could use the embankment the rails ran along as a blind. We peeked over it, and there they were. They were almost the length of the marsh away, way down in that mucky spot where the men cut sods for the dike, but their great white breasts looked big as pennants. They had their long black necks stretched up absolutely straight and still, like charmed cobras. They must have seen us coming down across the field. Jeff rested the barrel of his gun on a rail. I did the same with mine. But mine was shaking so it made a clatter and I raised it higher. "I'll count five," Jeff whispered. "Then both fire at once." I nodded and he began to count. "One. Two. Three . . . " I fired. Jeff's shot came a split second afterward. He gave me a quick inquisitive glance, but he didn't say a word about me firing before the count was up. He threw out his empty shell and loaded again. But the geese had already lifted, as if all at once some spring in the

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ground had shot them into the air. They veered out over the nver. All but one that is. Its white breast was against the ground and we didn't see it in the blur of wings until its own wings gave one last flutter. "We got one ! " Jeff shouted. "Well, I'll be damned. We got one ! " H e bounded down across the marsh. I came behind, walk­ ing. When I got there he was stroking the goose's soft down al­ most tenderly. It was only a dead bird to me now, but to him it seemed like some sort of mystery made flesh and shape. There was hardly a mark on it. The bullet had gone through its neck, fair as a die. Then Jeff made a funny face. He handed the goose to me. He was sort of grinning. "Here," he said. "Carry her. She's yours. That was some shot, mister. " "Mine?" I said. "Sure." He looked half sheepish. ''I'm a hell of a hunter, I am. I had two ball cartridges in this here pocket, see, and two shot in this one." He put his hand into the first pocket and held out two ball cartridges in his palm. "I guess I got rattled and put the shot in my gun instidd o' the ball. You know how far shot'd carry. It was you that got him, no doubt about that." I carried the goose home. It didn't mean much to me, but he didn't know that. He could only go by what it would have meant to him, if he'd been the one to carry it home. I knew what he was thinking. This would wipe out what I'd done yesterday. And the men wouldn't look at me now the way they looked at a bookworm but the way they looked at a hunter. I'm glad that for once I had the decency to pretend I was excited and proud as he'd thought I'd be. I'm glad I didn't

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say a word-not then-to let him know I saw through the trick. For I knew that it was a trick. I knew I hadn't shot the goose. While he was counting I'd felt that awful passion to wreck things which always got into me when I was still smart­ ing over something. I had fired before he did, on purpose. "\Vay over their heads, to scare them. The day Jeff went away we sort of stuck around close to each other, but we couldn't seem to find anything to say. I went out to the road to wait for the bus with him. Jeff had on his good clothes. They never looked right on him. When I dressed up I looked different, but Jeff never did. I don't know why, but every time I saw Jeff in his good clothes I felt sort of-well, like defending him or something. The bus seemed to take a long time coming. He was going away in the army. He'd be with guys who were twice as much like him as I was, but just the same I knew he'd rather be with me than with them. I don't know, buses are such darned lone­ some things, somehow. When the bus was due, and I knew we only had left what few minutes it might be late, I tried to think of something light to say, the way you're supposed to. The only thing that came into my mind was that day with the goose. It was a funny thing to bring up all of a sudden. But now we were a couple of years older I thought I could make something out of it to amuse him. Besides when someone's going away you have the feeling that you ought to get every­ thing straight between you. You hardly ever can, but you get that feeling. "You shot the goose that day," I said, "didn't you?" He nodded. I'd never have opened my fool mouth if I'd known what was going to happen then. I'd felt sort of still and bad, but I hadn't felt like crying. How was I to know that the minute I mentioned that day the whole thing would come back so darn

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plain? I'd have died rather than have Jeff see my face break up like that. But on the other hand, I don't care how soft it sounds, I'm sort of glad I did now. He didn't look embarrassed, to see me cry. He looked so darned surprised-and then all at once he looked happier than I believe I ever saw him. That was Jeff. He'll never come back. I don't even know which Korean hill it was-the telegram didn't say. But when I tell anything about him like this I seem to feel that some­ where he's sort of, I don't know, half-smiling-like he used to when we had some secret between us we'd never even dis­ cussed. I feel that if I could just make him absolutely clear to everyone he wouldn't really be dead at all. Tonight when the geese flew over I wished I knew how to write a book about him. The geese didn't ligh t th is time. They never have since that day. I don't know, I always think there's something lonesome about wild geese. But I feel better now. Do you know how it is?

The Ice Road H . T . BARK ER

•

My paternal grandmother, Constance O'Toole, used to tell me when I was little that every girl has a day she remembers best. Sometimes it's her wedding; sometimes it's the birth of her first child; but for me it was my seventeenth birthday. That was the day that Daddy cut the hole in the Ice Road. Actually, the whole thing had started during the summer, when Mr. Kendricks built his new house. He put it spang next to ours, on the Bedequc cliffs. There it stood, overlooking the water; long, low and modern it was, and a constant reminder to Mother that our place was over a hundred years old, being the ancestral O'Toole residence. vVhat's more, our house was sort of weathered c lapboard, unpa inted for three generations. "What's the good in paintin' the place?" Daddy used to say. "Salt air and blizzards'll blow it right off again. " Daddy didn't have much time for Mr. Kendricks, who owned a car lot in Summerside. Summerside is the town across the bay, and during the warm weather you had to drive seven miles around to get there. In winter, though, you could drive across the bay on the Ice Road. Anyway, Daddy didn't like 79

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Mr. Kendricks even before he built his new house, because Mr. Kendricks was a newcomer to the Island. Daddy figures that anybody who hasn't lived on the Island for simply dec­ ades back just isn't an Islander. Actually, I suppose you'd have to describe Daddy as a bit of a character. He stands five-foot-three in his boots, with every inch of him pure mule. Folks in town call him "Muley Joe", a nickname he earned as a boy. Daddy would never tell me how he got this name, so one day I asked Granny O'Toole. "Ah, the stubborn spalpeen," Granny said, spitting out a bit of turnip. "When your father was twelve he wagered he could stay under water longer than any boy in town. It was nearly drowned he was, Diane, and there's folk that say the boy who pulled him off the bottom should have left him where he lay." That's just the way I felt on my seventeenth birthday. During the growing season Daddy raises potatoes and tur­ nips, and in the spring he fishes lobster. When I was a little girl I used to love to go out with him in the big longliner and watch him check his traps. During the winter we lived on turnips, potatoes, canned clams and the pogy, and Mother and I would hook rugs for the tourist trade. We'd all sit cosy in the big kitchen, with the cook stove crackling and the gas lamp hissing during the dim afternoons, and then Daddy would get up and go to the front porch to watch the sunset. Cloudy or clear he would look west and wait for the sun to go down. Then he would come back into the kitchen, light his stumpy pipe and calculate the day's egg and milk earnings. Daddy followed this routine every winter for as long as I could remember-until Mr. Kendricks built his house due west of us. Then Daddy had to go out and sit among the cows to watch the sun go down. The other thing that Daddy liked to do was to sit in his fishing shack during the winter, and fish through the ice. Early in December he'd get the shack and tow it across the ice to

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The Hole, and there he'd spend the mornings spearing cod and mackerel. The morning of December 1 9 was clear, cold and sunny, but with a breathless promise of bad weather to come. The forecast called for a blizzard starting in the late afternoon, and I was hoping that Johnny Kendricks wouldn't be delayed in getting home from Acadia University. He was due today, the first day of the Christmas holidays, and my seventeenth birth­ day. Tonight he would come for supper and bring me a surprise present. His letter didn't tell me what it was, but in my heart I hoped that it was what we had dreamed about last summer-my engagement ring. "Happy birthday, Diane," Mother said. " Get up, lass, there's breakfast on the table." But just then Daddy came storming in. He slammed the door shut behind him and roared "My Shack! The black­ guard has moved my shack! " "Your fishing shack?" Mother said, aghast. "And what else would I be speakin' of?" Daddy demanded. " Moved it, he has, and built himself a fancy spur to the Ice Road, and right over The Hole it goes! " I dressed quickly and the three o f us went out to the cliff edge. It was a beautiful clear day, though the wind was pick­ ing up and it was bitter cold, and Summerside, a mile across the ice, looked close enough to touch. A thin line of bluish­ white marked the Ice Road, which curved across the bay in a long arc from the village of Bedeque to Summerside. And spliced on to the Ice Road was Mr. Kendrick's spur, leading to the foot of the cliff at our feet and joining his new cliff access road. The bulldozer was just leaving, chuffing back to town. On either side of the new road were piles of broken ice. On the far side of one of these piles was Daddy's fishing shack, lying on its side! Daddy's fishing shack had been in the same place every

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winter since positively paleolithic times! Grandfather O'Toole had discovered The Hole, which was the best fishing spot in the bay. Daddy had fixed up the shack until Mother complained that it was more comfortable than the house. I t had real glass windows, a hardwood floor (with the centre cut out) , a new gas lantern, and a small stove. There was a secret hiding place, too, where Daddy kept his rum, and Mother spent each summer trying to find it. Mother always said that if Daddy would spend half the time and money on the house that he did on his shack we'd have a nicer place than the Kendricks. But Daddy would j ust shrug and say: "A house is for sleepin' in-a shack is for livin' in." And she couldn't budge him. Daddy was simply furious. And on my birthday, and with Johnny coming home with that surprise present! "Daddy," I said quickly, "we'll go and put the shack back in place. I'm sure Mr. Kendricks didn't realize--" "He'll put it back himself, he will," Daddy grunted. "He moved it, and it's him will put it back. I'll j ust go see him, and. . . " But just then Mr. Kendricks drove his bright new Olds out of his garage and down the cliff access road. He stopped at the bottom and rolled his window down. "Hi, folks ! " he called up to us cheerily. "Happy birthday, Diane! I'm off to meet Johnny at the airport-be back in an hour!" He waved again, rolled the window up, and drove away along his spur to the Ice Road. Daddy glared after him, utterly enraged at not having been able to open his mouth. "Joe," Mother said cautiously, "you're not to be causin' grief, now. I t's the girl's birthday." But Daddy's face was purple. "I 've put up with that Iooby for six months! " he hollered, terrifying three nearby gulls. "Him and his big new cars! He frightens the cows, he does, with his racin' by at ninety miles an hour ! "

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"Joe, that's not true," Mother said. "He never drives fast. Settle yourself now, you know what the doctor said about your heart." "Settle myself, she tells me! " said Daddy to the heavens. "And how can I settle myself when good men are behind bars and a monster like Kendricks roams the world a free man? He's even taken away my sunsets, he has! " "That he has," Mother agreed. "But the land he bought, fair and square, when old Casey died. You wouldn't bid on it! And you can't deny the man his right to build on it." "But he hasn't bought the ice," Daddy said slyly. "Solid or liquid, rising or falling, it's tidal waters, and no newcomer is goin' to diddle me out of my rights. Come on! " ""Where?" Mother asked. "To the Ice Road, you daughter of folly! We're going to move that shack back where it belongs-over The Hole! " We watched the Olds all the way back from Summerside as Mr. Kendricks sped along the Ice Road. When he came to Daddy's shack he drew to a halt. The shack was sitting right spang in the middle of his spur, and the ice was piled too high on either side for the car to go around it. Mr. Kendricks got out of the car, Johnny with him, and my heart gave a little leap when I saw that boy. Then the two of them started to move the shack. " Lay one finger on my shack and it's a bullet you'll feel in your gizzard ! " Daddy hollered from the top of the cliff. Mother and I turned in horror to see Daddy sitting on the edge of the cliff with the rabbit gun on his lap. "joe O'Toole! " Mother said grimly. "Give me that rifle." " Hands off, female. Tend to your rug makin' but not to my business. You'll not stop me in the questin' for my rights. You down there! Get away from my shack! " "Daddy ! " I screeched. "How did you get that gun out here?"

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"Keep your mouth shut, woman. You're as noisy as your mother, and that's some noisy." "Mr. O'Toole! " Kendricks shouted. "I demand an explana­ tion! " "Build yourself another road or go the long way round, I care not which ! " Daddy shouted back, waving the gun. "But over my Hole you'll not go! Nor anywheres near it, neither! Your strange noises frets the little fishes, poor beasts. I been fishin' that hole for forty years, and my father before me, and I got squatter's rights, I have! " he finished triumphantly. Honestly, I could have just died) with Johnny standing there listening to Daddy rave. "Daddy! " I hissed. "Please!)) "It's no use, girl," he said. "My mind's made up and nought will change it. It's a stubborn man I am, and I'll not let go." But it's my b irthday!" I almost cried. "So it is, so it is," he agreed, not taking his eyes off the re­ treating Kendricks. He waited til l the car had reached the junction with the Ice Road and turned off before he lowered his gun. "Indeed it is your birthday," he said to me, "and you're old enough to know the rights and wrongs of the thing. A man must fight for what he believes in this wicked world." He heaved a pious sigh and crossed himself. "Amen," he concluded, and went back into the house. Lunch was a deadly affair in our house with Mother and I not speaking to Daddy. and Daddy speaking only to the cat. After a while the chilly atmosphere proved too much even for Daddy and he retired to the more congenial company of the cows. "Mother," I said dispiritedly. "What are we going to do?" "You know your father," she said sadly. "It's a stubborn man he is. " "But, Mother, it's my birthday. And Johnny was going to come for supper. He won't come near the place after-after what's happened. And he has a special present for me-oh, Mother! " I burst into tears.

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"There, there, dear," she said soothingly, putting her arm around me. "We'll think of something." But at that moment there came the ominous sound of some­ thing being scraped across the ice. Mother and I stared at each other in a wild surmise, then rushed to the window and looked out. Mr. Kendricks and Johnny were moving Daddy's shack off the spur road, and Daddy was running down the cliff road, brandishing his gun and shouting at the top of his voice. "What children men are ! " Mother said as we ran out after him. We caught up to Daddy just as he was raising his gun. He and Mr. Kendricks were staring at each other balefully, eye to eye, with Johnny standing back near the ice shack. "Daddy ! " I said, and grabbed the barrel of the gun. "Leave be! " he growled at me, and addressed himself to Mr. Kendricks. "It's squatter's rights. I been here longer than any on this shore, and I got rights to that hole! " "Squatter's rights be damned! " Mr. Kendricks roared. "You've got no more right to a hole than I have to a road, you stubborn old nincompoop! " "Oho ! " Daddy said dangerously. "So it's a stubborn old nin­ compoop, is it?" "Yes, a nincompoop! Nincompoop ) nincompoop) nincom­ poop!" he hollered hysterically, his face growing crimson. "Nincompoop, eh?" Daddy ruminated. "If there is a king of nincompoopery on this earth, you wear the crown, Joe O'Toole! And I ' l l tell you something else! It's about time you painted that cruddy old house of yours! It's ruining property values along the cliff! " "It's a cruddy old house, is it? Well, let me tell you, Ken­ dricks . . . " "No! I'm telling you! I'm telling you to get this eyesore off my road before I have the law on you for creating a public mischief! "

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"Daddy," I tried again, "please don't fight. It's my

birth-

day.I"

"Ah," Daddy said, clutching at the straw. "It's my girl's birthday you've ruined, Kendricks, with your carrying on like a sick moose. Because of your throwing my fishin' shack away on the ice it's a fine birthday she'll be havin' ! ' ' "Oh, for Pete's sweet sake," Mr. Kendricks said disgustedly, putting his shoulder to the shack and moving it about an inch. "Come on, Johnny, let's move this thing." "Over your own dead bodies you'll move it!" Daddy said with a fine disregard for logic. He raised the gun. Then my mother stepped in. "Joseph Patrick Kevin Rochfort O'Toole," Mother said. "For many a long weary year I've stood by with my mouth shut and watched you make a stubborn fool of yourself, but this is too m uch. Now give me that gun." With a lightning move of her arm she took hold of the rifle, snatching it from him and hiding it under her parka. "Now you march up that road and go into the house and behave yourself. It's sorry we are, Mr. Kendricks," she said to the other man. Then she took hold of Daddy's ear. "If it comes to a fight, Joe O'Toole," she said grimly, ''I'm bigger and stronger than you. Now come on, or I'll pull the ear right off your mulish head." The three of us marched up the cliff road, Mother frown­ ing, Daddy sputtering, and I in tears. Daddy sulked in the bedroom all afternoon. It grew dark early and the wind picked up, but Daddy preferred to sit by the bedroom window and listen to the sounds made by the Kendricks as they moved his shack. We ate a silent dinner of clam pie and home-canned blue­ berries, and it was when Daddy was drinking his second cup of coffee that he suddenly said "Ah!" and got up from the table. He put on his boots and parka and went out. "Where do you suppose he's going?" I asked listlessly. "To sit with the cows, I've no doubt."

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"Some birthday," I muttered. Mother went to the window. The curtains billowed out with the breath of icy air that seeped through the storm win­ dow, and a fine dusting snow was beginning to settle on the sill. Suddenly the whole house shuddered as a violent gust passed over. "The barn's the best place for him," she decided. " Let him sleep with his precious cows. He's got the barn more snug than the house anyway." But she prowled around the house j ust the same, until she made me nervous. Finally she returned to the front window and looked out. It was as black as the inside of a root cellar. "None the less, I wish the old coot would come in," she muttered. "He's not been well since his last attack, and he won't take his pills. Even comin' up the cliff road makes him out of puff and turns his lips." "Daddy's too stubborn to get sick," I said. "Just the same," Mother said, "mad at him I may be, but I'm goin' to make him come in the house." "Oh, very well," I said sulkily. ''I'll come with you." We put on our parkas and muffied our faces with heavy wool scarves and opened the door. The gale hit us with Island fury, ripping the door knob out of my hand and sending me flying, face down in the snow. Mother helped me up, and clinging to each other and leaning against the seventy-mile wind we made our way across the yard toward the barn. The snow blew horizontally across our faces in the darkness, stinging our cheeks like fine sand. "Hang on!" Mother shouted. I barely heard her, as the words were whipped from her mouth. I could feel her mitt­ ened hand strong on mine and see the fitful glow of the flash­ light as we pressed on through the storm. Breathless, we staggered into the barn. It took the two of us to close the wildly swinging door. Inside, it was dark and warm and sweet-smelling, and we took a moment to adjust.

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"Joe ! " Mother called sharply. She swung the flashlight around. Daddy wasn't there. "Look! " I said. "He's taken the axe! " I t was true. The axe was gone from its accustomed place. "Oh, that stubborn old Irishman! " Mother whispered. " He's gone to the Ice Road!" We found him halfway down the cliff, a white mound in the howling wilderness. He didn't stir as we picked him up and dragged him back up the cliff. Somehow we got him into the house, and while I fought to close the door, Mother put him on the couch and stripped him of his icy clothes. All the time, she was muttering: "Oh, you crazy old bog-trotter, what have you done this time? Was it to the Ice Road you were goin'? Is i t your heart that's stopped pumpin' in your stubborn old body? Joe, Joe, will you never learn?" But Daddy just lay there while Mother massaged him, his face blue and pinched, his breathing shallow. Mother turned to me. "You'll have to get help, girl. How bad he's froze I don't know, nor whether it's his heart has given up, but a doctor he must have-that I do know. Now get you over to the Kendricks' place and phone for a doctor." "But Mother-the Kendricks?" "You're worryin' about foolish men's quarrels when your father's practically in Saint Peter's arms? Go, girl, go! " She bent over him again, massaging his hands and feet, crooning softly to him. Almost frozen, I rang the Kendricks doorbell. "Diane! " Johnny said as I fell forward into his arms. "Oh, Johnny! " I gasped. And then he was kissing me, wet as I was, with the door open and the snow blowing into the front hall. "What's going on?" Mr. Kendricks demanded, entering the hall. "Who left that door-oh, good evening, Diane."

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" Mr. Kendricks! " I said, too spent even to blush. "It's Daddy. He's sick. May I use your phone to call a doctor?" "It's out of order," he said. "The storm must have blown the lines down. What's the matter with the old-with your father?" "I don't know," I said, "but he's taken bad. Mother thinks it might be his heart again. Johnny, if we can't get a doctor he might die!" "Now, calm down," Mr. Kendricks said gently. "I think we can get him into the hospital at Summerside. We'd never make it by the Bay Road-the cu ttings a re ten feet high, and there'd be so much blowing snow that the road would be impassable. But the Ice Road should be clear. ·we'll have to chance it." "The Ice Road?" I said stupidly. Mr. Kendricks chuckled. "I moved the shack this after­ noon-remember? Come on, we're wasting time! " We put Daddy i n the back seat of Mr. Kendricks' Olds and bundled him up with blankets and hot water bottles till he looked like a rag-picker's dream of heaven. Johnny guided us down the cliff road with a flashlight, for we couldn't see anything past the headlights except driving snow. Except for the shrieking of the gale it was like driving in a cotton cocoon. When we reached the bottom, Johnny climbed back in. He looked like a ghost, powdered with snow and ice. "It should be clear sailing now," he gasped, slamming the door shut. "Once we're on the Ice Road, we can't get off. The ice is piled on either side." Carefully, Mr. Kendricks wheeled the big car onto the ice. The wind bucked the car and for a moment he fought the wheel. Then, suddenly, there was a crunch, the car stopped, and the front end dropped a foot. "What the blazes! Am I off the road? Johnny, take a look." When Johnny got back into the car his face was a study of astonishment and anger. "Dad," he said, "somebody's

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chopped a trench right across the road, and we're in it up to the hubcaps!" Mr. Kendricks and Johnny slowly turned and gazed at the mound of blankets that was my father. My father! So he'd collapsed on the way up from the Ice Road, not on the way dow n ! He'd chopped the hole in revenge for Mr. Kendricks's moving his shack, and now that same hole stood between him and the hospital. Honestly, if he hadn't been unconscious, I'd have killed him! "We'll never get the car out of it tonight," Johnny said. "We'd need a tractor. Dad, what'll we do?" Mr. Kendricks thought a moment, then said, "Johnny, could you find the shack?" Johnny nodded. "I think so." "Then let's go and rip a couple of boards off it. We can make a crude stretcher with the blankets, and between us we can carry him across the ice." " You'll not lay a hand on my fishin' shack ! " came a quaver­ ing voice from the mounds of blankets. "Weak as I am, you cantankerous old muckworm, I'll take you outside and. . . " Mr. Kendricks stared in stupefied amazement for a moment, then started to laugh. He laughed until he was weak, he laughed until his sides ached, he laughed until the tears streamed down his face. When he could speak again, he shoved out his hand and said: "By heaven, O'Toole, shake hands! Whatever else you may be, you're not a quitter ! " "I'll not shake hands with the man that moved m y fishin' shack," Daddy said. "But I didn't move it, you old faker! " "What's that you're sayin'?" "I said you're a faker. There's nothing wrong with you. You didn't like the idea of crossing the ice on a night like this, so you spoke up." "No, no, I don't mean that part. I mean about you not movin' my shack."

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"Well," Mr. Kendricks said carefully. "You never gave me a chance to explain. It was the bulldozer crew that moved it­ they thought it was mine. I was going to have it moved back and the road changed, but you got me so mad that I wouldn't have moved my road if the Queen was under it, wanting to come up for air." "And-will you move it now?" Daddy asked slyly. Mr. Kendricks thought for a long time. Then he said, "Joe O'Toole, you're a stubborn man . 'Veil, so am I. So let's strike a bargain." "A bargain? \\That kind of bargain?" "I'll move my road under two conditions. The first is that you give me Sunday afternoon fishing rights in your shack. I've always had a hankering to try my hand at mackerel-spear­ ing." "Done," Daddy said promptly, "if you bring the rum." Kendricks laughed. "You're a hard man to deal with, O'Toole. All right. Now the second condition is that you re­ model your house. Give it a coat of paint. Your house is a disgrace to the cliff. I know you can afford it, you rascal. I watch the price of potatoes, too ! " Then Mother chimed in. "Just a minute, Mr. Kendricks," she said. "I want you to add something. Ever since you built your house I 've had to listen to himself here moanin' and groanin' because he can't see the sunset from the house. And I've always wanted a sun deck off the front porch. Joe, you miserly old poltroon, you're going to build a sun deck so that you can sit out there afternoons and watch the sun go down." "Would I be able to see the sun set from there?" Daddy said feebly. "You would," Mother affirmed. "Ah, well," Daddy sighed. "It's not as if it wasn't something I 've been plannin' for many years." "Now," Mr. Kendricks said. "There's just one more thing." "Ah," said Daddy, "I knew you were savin' something back.

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You're a hard, stubborn man, Kendricks. What terrible thing did you save for last?" Mr. Kendricks laughed and said: "We're all to go up to my house and have a drink of whisky together and learn to be neighbours. If I 'm going to live next to a man like you, Joe O'Toole, I want you on my side ! " Daddy's hand came free o f the blankets. He seized Mr. Kendricks's hand and pumped it vigorously. "For a newcomer," Daddy said, with the ghost of a chuckle in his voice, "you're not so bad. You might even make an Islander yet, Kendricks-in a generation or two." What happened after that is a little hazy in my mind, be­ cause while they were talking, Johnny leaned over the seat and slipped that ring on my finger. And nobody noticed except Mother-and she'd never say anything at all.

The Trap T H O M A S H. RADDAL L

•

To Macllreath the man was a gift from the gods. Cooks were scarce, and here was this competent looking stranger with convincing recommendations and a desire actually to work "in a small camp, sir, and the farther back the better." He called the time clerk at once, and saw that Jonas Demont was booked for the most remote job of them all. ""We've commenced cutting an odd lot of pine at Old Man Lake," Macllreath said. "A small job-about twenty men. There's a cookee from Camp Eight on the job now, but you'll take over from him and he can go back to Eight. Where's your duffie?" "I've got a trunk outside," Demont said. " It's a bit heavy." Macllreath was amused. A wandering cook taking a heavy trunk into the lumber woods ! But these were strange times, these days of the Great Depression. He had a broken-down preacher, a Danish journalist, and the son of a cabinet min­ ister in his camps. "A wagon starts for Camp Nine-that' s yours-in the morning. It's quite a trip. You'll have to stop overnight at 93

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Two and Seven. You'll be there all winter, of course. You can send out mail by the scaler. There'll be lumberjacks coming out, too, from time to time; they're a restless lot nowadays." Jonas Demont nodded briskly and turned to go. Mac­ Breath called after him. "One minute! Would you mind tell­ ing me why you want to go so far?" The cook turned slowly. He was a spare man of middle height. His lean sinewy hands were covered with black hair. His face was long and dark, dean-shaven to a tinge of blue, with a wide mouth and a thin upper lip. His nose was a thin wedge and his eyebrows and hair were black as night. His eyes were black, too, and never still. He might have been any age from thirty to fifty. There was an air of coiled energy about him. "Why," he said mildly, ' ' I 'm a clean man myself, and an old camp's always lousy. No offence, I hope sir? But you know how it is." Macllreath nodded. Curiosity gave way to admiration. All cooks were finicky, of course, but most of them preferred the convenience and better supplies of camps farther down the line, and reconciled their finer feelings by harassing the logging superintendent for insect powder. "Good luck," said Macllreath. The cook nodded and stepped through the doorway like a lean dark cat. It proved to be a usual winter, although as usual the team­ sters and swampers were never satisfied with the depth of snow or the amount of frost. Supplies toted in before the freeze-up made the camps self-sufficient for five months, but there was a certain amount of travelling back and forth and the mail came in from rail head at Kettle Siding by light sleigh, and there were always a few fed-up lumberjacks com­ ing out or new ones going in. On the whole, however, the camps lived in wintry isolation until March, when the sun came riding up the sky and the

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thaws began. The highways lying shadeless in the open farm country were soon bare, but in the blue shadow of the woods the snow and ice remained, awaiting the warm April rains. Corporal Sewan of the Mounted Police was not surprised to find a wintry scene at Camp One when he arrived in a muddy buggy from Kettle Siding on a day in March. Macllreath came out of his office to greet him and they went inside. Sewan dropped a haversack on the office floor. He was a stocky man of thirty-eight with a square red face. His long brown boots were spattered with the flying mud of the road but his khaki breeches were immaculate and the brass shone from his buffalo-head buttons and the shoulder badges of his short blue topcoat. In winter most of the scattered police wore the fur hat or the yellow-banded forage cap, but Sewan liked the wide-brimmed Stetson and was rarely seen without it. Macllreath noticed the haversack at once. "Hello, going in?" Without waiting for a reply he added in a rush of indignation, "Look here, if it's poaching again you're barking up the wrong tree. I've given strict orders to camp bosses, what's more I've had the camps searched quietly when the gangs were out at work. There isn't a rifle or a shot­ gun between here and Old Man Lake." There had been trouble over game laws in the past. Fresh meat was unknown in the more remote camps except when one of the work oxen broke a leg and had to be butchered, and as the Elambook River country was rich in game there was temptation. There had been one mortifying affair when Macllreath at a camp table found himself eating what was unmistakably venison and looking up to meet Sewan's ironic grin. And on another unfortunate occasion there had been a whole moose carcass, gutted, skinned, and hung up boldly under the eaves of a cookhouse. Corporal Sewan took off his topcoat, for the stove wavered in an aura of hot air and the March sun poured in through

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the south windows. H e produced a pipe and filled i t from a worn rubber pouch. "I believe you, Mac. Don't get too sure about guns, though. A rifle's not hard to hide, and a take-down model's easily toted up the line in a duffie bag. A diet of beans and plate beef is apt to harden a man's conscience when he comes on a fresh moose track in the choppings. But it's something else this time." Macllreath relaxed. A grim woman after one of the lum­ berjacks for non-support, no doubt, or a city thief hiding under a mackinaw shirt for the winter. You got all kinds nowadays. "I may as well tell you," Sewan said, "because you can help me a bit. It's a matter of beaver skins." "Beaver! Ah! Well, that might be anybody. Some greedy fool discovers a beaver house, tears it open and knocks one of 'em on the head. Hard to put your finger on that." The policeman nodded and sucked his pipe under a match. "Right. But this happens to be a well organised racket. It's like this. We've known for three years that beaver skins were being smuggled out of this province and into the States, where there's a fancy price. Beaver are protected here by provincial law, so we opened a file on it and began to check on the trappers. Needle-and-haystack business, of course. In this district every farm boy does a little trapping in the winter time, not to mention the professional trappers. Well, we nabbed a couple of poor devils with a skin or two in their possession, and the magistrates hit them hard-there's a minimum fine of $ 100 and it may run up to $500-although the fellows swore they'd just caught the skins on the off­ chance of peddling 'em to some wandering dealer, and I fancy they were telling the truth. "Other police sub-divisions reported the same thing. Our file grew up to a point and then stopped. We'd scared the

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small trappers into a virtuous way of life-but the shipments went on." "Strange," Macllreath said. "After all you can't put a skin that size in your pocket. They're bulky and quite stiff." "Sure. And the border customs are pretty sharp, both sides of the line. It began to look as if the skins were going direct to the States by boat. Just then we got a hot tip from the American customs people, and began to watch the schooners loading pulp, lumber, gypsum and so on for United States ports. Just after Christmas our Grimsby sub-detachment nabbed two dozen skins in the forecastle of a pulp steamer. One sailor admitted ownership-probably taking the rap for the rest-and was sentenced for i llegal possession. He told us freely enough how he proposed to smuggle 'em ashore in the States-one at a time, wrapped around his body under a coat­ but he was very, very vague about this end. Said he didn't make a business of it; just bought this lot on spec from a stranger-couldn't remember the stranger's name, nor what he looked like. The old story." "Shades of prohibition! " grinned Macllreath. "Yes. Think they'd cook up something new, wouldn't you? Well, the Grimsby sub-detachment did a lot of ferreting and learned nothing except that a 'Jew pedlar' sometimes came aboard at this end, selling sheath knives, cheap watches and the usual sailors' slops. I got a memo from Grimsby pointing out that a number of Jews went about the countryside buying small antiques, hooked rugs, furs and so on, and it might be a good lead to follow. So I got busy. "There were three or four in my district. Constable Ackwin and I stopped 'em on the road at various times and searched their stuff, but all the furs they had were legitimate-fox, mink, wild-cat, weasel, all that. I knew these fellows pretty well-they've been very useful to me, for they know pretty well everything that goes on about the countryside-and I was sure they were on the level. One, a little man named Beren-

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stein, complained that people always called a man of the slightest foreign appearance a 'Jew,' especially a pedlar of any sort. It set me thinking, but a policeman's job takes in a multitude of sins, and a number of things popped up to keep us on the jump in other directions. "Last week I came out to Kettle Siding on a case of sus­ pected arson. It was the usual thing with lonely wooden houses-nothing left but a nice clean insurance policy and a cellar full of hot ashes. I did the usual things; questioned the owner pretty sharp, searched the title history of the property, found out the weather, direction of wind and so on at the time of the fire, and enquired of the nearest neighbors if anything had been removed or sold from the house before the fire. They'd heard of nothing, were pretty sure no house­ hold goods had been sold, because it was winter time. "In summer, they said, it was possible to sell that kind of stuff without attracting notice, because 'Jews' come around in old motor trucks buying hooked rugs, good bits of furni­ ture, all kinds of things. But in the winter these wandering merchants stick to furs, because it's hard to get around except in a sleigh, and furs make a nice compact load, besides being practically ready-money." "And there you were! " said Macllreath. He was enjoying it after a winter's talk of logs and logging. It was as good as a book. "Wrong," Sewan said. "The fire had nothing to do with beaver skins. But one of the neighbors remarked that there was a 'Jew' who bought nothing but hooked rugs in the winter time. At least he shipped a lot of 'em by express from Kettle Siding. Now, hooked rugs are made in all shapes and sizes but the favorite in these parts is an oval affair about three feet long-just about the size and shape of a cured beaver-skin." "Ah ! " "Exactly! I went to the railway agent a t Kettle Siding and

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made certain arrangements, and in two days in walked my man, a Syrian named Yusuf Shaab, not a Jew at all. I'd never seen him before. He was a slick-talking bird with a shock of crinkly black hair and more pimples than I'd ever seen on one face in my life. He had a big parcel for shipment by ex­ press, addressed to himself at Riverhaven-where the lumber schooners load. When he saw me he turned a dirty green, but he talked like a high-speed phonograph all the time I was unwrapping his parcel, protesting he'd been asked to ship it by 'a friend, you understand' -and if there was anything but hooked rugs in that parcel he'd be mortified to death. "I flung it open and counted twenty prime beaver skins. Yusuf couldn't remember his friend's name nor what he look­ ed like. I took him in charge for illegal possession and turned him over to Ackwin for a trip to the county jail. Amongst his belongings I found a bundle of cheap junk-jewelry, doubtful Swiss watches, clasp knives, bottles of pain-killer, that kind of stuff. He was the sailors' 'pedlar' all right, the mysterious link between trapper and boat. In a few days we'll take him before a magistrate and ask for a maximum-$500 or five hundred days. It's a first offence, so the magistrate'll probably make it a fine." "Which," suggested Macllreath, "will probably make Mr. Shaab very sick." "Not sick enough, but the best we can do. The beggar'll pay the fine and clear out. He's probably made a small for­ tune. At most he's paid fifteen dollars a skin-beaver fur's hot stuff and the trapper's anxious to get rid of it-and they fetch fifty or sixty dollars apiece in New York. Allowing for shipping expenses to the States, those skins we seized would have given Yusuf a profit of $600-and that was a single ship­ ment. If he managed four or five hundred skins a season, well, figure it out for yourself. He'd been at the game three years, perhaps longer." Macllreath pursed his lips. "Not much longer, Corporal.

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Beaver have been under closed season here for years, but it's only in the last five or six that they've been plentiful. Lately they've increased like rats. A confounded nuisance to us, by the way." "Why?" Sewan looked surprised. "They gum up our log drives on the smaller streams. "\Ve've got camps reaching into the headwaters of the Elambook, and we use dozens of brooks to float our logs out to the main stream. The beavers use 'em for their own habitations, so we have to clear their bloomin' dams out to let our logs go by. Ever see a beaver dam pulled apart? They set the key branch­ es with the butt downstream, so the weight of the rising water drives 'em deeper into the mud, and they make a wattle of twigs and branches on that base, plastered with mud and weighted sometimes with stones. You've got to pull the whole thing stick by stick right down to the bottom. And if you don't put a wide-awake man there to scare 'em off, they'll come back at night and stick it up again." Corporal Sewan grinned. "Y' know, Mac, this places you under suspicion. You've got a number-one motive for killing beaver. Are they really as bad as you say?" "Don't misunderstand me," Macllreath smiled wryly. "I admire 'em. They're the smartest and most industrious ani­ mal in the woods, including man. And when I say they're plentiful up the Elambook, I mean plentiful. They've flooded all the wild meadows and the poplar clumps look as if they'd been struck by a hurricane." Sewan took a long pull on his pipe. "This is interesting. From what you say the Elambook country is a beaver-hunt­ er's dream." "Yes, but don't take a wrong tack now. There's not a trap­ per in the country. They'd have to go up the river past some of our camps or take the tote-road in. I'd know, either way. But I see what you're after. A £ella caught trapping beaver

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wholesale in the region about Kettle Siding would sew up your case nicely, wouldn't it?" The policeman examined his muddy boots thoughtfully. "It would. And I think I'm on the right tack. The day after we nabbed the pedlar at Kettle Siding I met one of your lumberjacks on the spree. Paid off, I suppose, and celebrat­ ing after a winter in the camps. I stood aside and let him pass-there's no harm in a jack a little drunk, and I don't believe in making the law sound like an old maid aunt­ but suddenly he stopped and began to swear, as if he'd re­ membered something painful. You could hear him all over the street. I went back and swung him around and told him to pipe down a bit. He looked at me, pretty independent I tell you, but he'd sense enough to know he was in no shape for war. He said all right, he'd be good, but if he ever got hold of that blankety-blank pedlar. . . ! You see? What luck! "It's funny how things break. I went at him hard about the pedlar and he sobered up in a hurry. All I got out of him was that he'd delivered something to a bloody pedlar for a friend of his, and the pedlar was supposed to pay him something next day for his trouble. And that was the trouble. The pedlar had disappeared. Skipped, he said. But not another word. I got the lumberjack's name though-Harry Pennick, and I know where I can pick him up again when I want him. And now I want you to tell me if Pennick worked for you last winter, and where. " The time-keeper came i n a t Macllreath's call. "Pennick, sir? There's three or four Pennicks on the payroll. Let's see. Pennick . . . Pennick . . . here we are, Harry Pennick, team­ ster at Camp Nine, paid off three days ago." "And where's Camp Nine?" demanded Sewan. "Back of beyond. A three-day trip by wagon, two if you hike it. Why?" ''I'd like to have a look at it. Got a hunch. You might come along, Mac. It'd make things easier."

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"Okay." Macllreath dragged his tall bulk erect. "But I still think you're wasting your time. Lumberjacks are busy men. They've got no time to mess around with beaver traps." They went afoot, not liking the slow and cold discomfort of a tote sled. The friction and pressure of sled runners had made deep gutters of ice in the beaten snow of the road. I t was thawing a little, i n spite of the shade o f the trees, and little bright runnels of water trickled everywhere and made the walking treacherous. On both sides of the road, in the shade of the hemlocks, the snow crust was broken here and there by deer tracks, and once there was the huge plunging track of a moose, with a tuft of black hair lying in it. Sewan picked up one of the tufts, clotted with dried blood, and counted twenty ticks, round and shiny-hard. "Poor devils, the ticks eat 'em alive this time of year. No wonder they try to rub 'em off against the trees." "Reminds me," Macllreath said, "of the cook at Camp Nine. He couldn't abide lice. " "Good man," grunted Sewan. As they drew towards Camp Five at the end of the day Sewan asked, "Why was this man Pennick paid off?" "Oh, the ordinary course of things. We've paid off most of the crowd. Our wood's all yarded beside the streams or piled on the lake ice ready for the break-up. We're keeping a gang at each camp for the log-driving, that's all." "That won't be long now." "No, the ice is going fast in the open . Snow's quite deep in the woods still. If you want to cruise about looking for a mysterious trapper up here you'll have to borrow a pair of snowshoes at the camp." They spent the night at Camp Five, three shacks of logs and roughage lumber on a bend in the tote-road. The crew looked curiously at Sewan's uniform but after supper all they talked about was the impending break-up. The camp had made up a pool on the date at a dollar a bet, and Sewan observed several

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of the men screwing bright new calks into the soles and heels of their boots in preparation. The visitors slept on the floor of the camp office, a precau­ tion against lice. There were empty berths in the bunkhouse but the foreman said, without a smile, that the strawsacks had got up and walked away. They were stiff and cold in the morning and glad to be moving. In the busy click of knives and forks they sat amongst silent bearded men at the mess-table and ate a heavy break­ fast of baked beans thick with molasses and pork fat. The road was less travelled as they passed each camp. There was less ice and more snow, and there were long intervals between the droppings of horses and oxen which stained the middle of the way. In the afternoon they reached Camp Nine, a long shack with the cook-house at one end. There was a rough log stable. At their approach six or seven men came out of the cook­ house and stood muttering and expectant in the slush of the camp yard. "Umph! " growled Sewan. "What's this? A committee of welcome?'' Macllreath was annoyed. He was a hard driver and the sight of idle men always stung him like a personal challenge. He spoke his mind promptly. "Why aren't you men rigging booms on Old Man Lake?" The foreman spoke, a tall man with a red beard and a Norwegian accent. "Dot's all done, Mister Maccaleeth. See ! " He pointed a thick red finger like a carrot. Through the scattered hard­ woods left standing in the choppings they saw massed logs afloat in a jumble of broken ice, straining at the chained boom slung across the lake outlet. "So ho! The ice went under the weight of 'em. The brook'll be open soon. One good south-east rain, and we'll be driving logs."

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"Yah," said Olaf. "Mister Maccaleeth, someding's fonny here. De cook, he's gone." "Since when?" snapped Sewan. "Yes'day afternoon," several men said together. One added indignantly. "We had to get our own grub today. It's a hell of a note." Sewan and Macllreath regarded each other blankly. "Let's take a look inside," the policeman said. In the cook's room, a small coop opening off the kitchen, they found an old-fashioned whaleback trunk. Inside it was a suit of blue serge, carefully folded, three khaki shirts, sev­ eral pairs of socks and two suits of woollen underwear. Sewan pounced on an envelope tucked amongst the shirts. It was inscribed: Y. Shaab, Esq., c-o General Delivery Kettle Siding, N .S. There was nothing in the envelope. He looked about the room. On the wall a number of steel traps hung from rusty chains, and under the bunk they found a number of cured skins-red fox, mink, and one or two otter. "De cook," explained Olaf from the doorway, "he's great feller for drapping. Ay neffer say soch a feller. Good cook, mind. But off to de voods effery afternoon to look at draps. Ya." "See any beaver skins?" Sewan asked casually. The foreman considered. He had been logging in the Canadian woods for years, but he knew very little about the animals in them. "Ay don't t'ink so. He shows me furs lak dose dere. Sends out barcels all vinter by fellers goin' down de line. Ay guess he mek good money, eh?" Sewan was baffled. He tapped that tantalising envelope in his fingers. The cook had vanished leaving everything but

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what he wore at the time, and all he had left was innocent. There was a small trap-door overhead. "What's up there?" Sewan said. "Chust a leedle kind o' loft. You vant to go oop! Ay boost you oop." Olaf boosted the policeman's heavy frame with ease, and they heard a hollow "Ah ! " The loft had a board floor. Upon it, pegged out with nails, were four beaver skins in the course of preparation. Sewan brought them down. "So he was afraid of lice? You see the game? He wanted a small camp well up the line, where he'd be in fresh beaver country and away from observation more or less. And in a small camp there isn't much cooking to do-plenty of time for his side-line. Each year he'd shift to another job, because he'd cleaned out the beaver 'round the last one." Encouraged, they renewed their search with vigor, and in the camp store-room, amongst barrels of flour, plate beef, beans, molasses, Sewan came upon the rest of the evidence, twenty-three green beaver skins in a puncheon. They were stowed like pancakes, flesh side to flesh side, with a layer of salt between. The cook had been a busy man. Sewan questioned the men carefully. They added little to his knowledge. Demont had wielded even more than the usual power of a camp cook. They were all, even the big N orwegian, a little afraid of him. He had ruled their minds as well as their bellies. Demont was "quick," they said, "with a sort o' black look about him." It was plain that he had been the real boss of the camp. "What I don't get," Macllreath said, "is why he took the trouble and the risk. Beaver skins are hot stuff, as you say. And your pimpled friend wasn't paying him more than fifteen bucks apiece. Make more at honest trapping, I'd say." " 'Point is," the corporal said, "beaver's the easiest fur to catch if you're not troubled about the rules. Simply tear off the top of the lodge, set your traps on the slide where they come up to the dry chamber, and bide your time. The beaver

1 06

T H O M A S H . RADDA L L

comes back right away to repair his roof and-snap! I 've heard old hands say they've sat down a few feet feet away sometimes and listened for the click. There are other ways. This cook of yours has probably cleaned up a hundred skins at the very least this winter, if they're as plentiful as you say. And of course the fox skins and the rest were clear profit, besides making a good cover for the game. It all bears out my theory. The secret was so well kept. I figured the supply was coming from a few dose-mouthed fellows who were making a business of it." Macllreath stared at the slush in the camp yard, squinting his eyes against the afternoon sun. "Wonder who tipped him off about Shaab? And where's he gone? He must have struck off through the bush or we'd have met him on the tote-road. "And," said Sewan quickly, "if he took to the bush he'd need snowshoes. Snowshoes! He must have had a pair! " "Ya," rumbled Olaf. "He's got snaw shoes. Not like our snaw shoes, boss. Round "-He made a gesture with his enormous hands-" round like dat, vit' werry big stringss." "Bear-paws?" The policeman scraped his chin. "Indian made, by the sound of it. They don't cut their rawhide so thin as the manufacturers. Not used much around here. Easy track to follow-but of course he's got the whole woods tracked-up hereabouts. It's two weeks since the last snow." He and Macllreath borrowed snowshoes from the camp and began to explore, accompanied by the lumberjacks, some with snowshoes, some without, plunging along, all eager to witness the discomfiture of the cook, blithely ignoring the fact that Demont had at least twenty-four hours' start. The cook had been a busy traveller indeed. The queer thick-webbed tracks led off in all directions. But they found he had not gone towards the base. The only track in that direction led to a brook and a ravaged beaver lodge, the sticks and roots and frozen mud flung ruthlessly aside.

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" He's taken to the timber," Macllreath said. He was aston­ ished. "Then I 'll find him," Sewan grunted, "if I have to spend the summer in the woods." He divided the party for a systematic process of elimina­ tion. At dusk he and Macllreath and Olaf came to an opening like a swordcut in the forest. A small stream flowed through a fold in the pine ridges in a series of deep still-waters, and the beavers had dammed it in exactly the right place to create a long deep pond. The dark green mass of the pines shut in the pond like walls, except towards the west, where beyond the faint murmur of the dam a few rays of sunset pierced the dusk like spears. The ice on the pond was dark with sun-rot. The cook's bear-paw tracks left the woods and vanished on the ice, pointing straight towards the heaped dome of a beaver lodge on the other side. But there were no tracks on the far side. The lodge was intact. Its top gleamed in the last light. In the middle of the pond, between the beaver lodge and the staring men, lay a ragged black hole in the ice, a good twenty feet wide. In later years Macllreath re-lived many times that weird moment. They all stood breathless in the edge of the woods, regarding the small cakes of broken ice in the wide black hole, the dusk creeping out of the grim trees, the sunset gleam throwing a significant finger on the top of the lodge. And the dreadful hush. It was incredible. The completeness of that spectacle, its passive and terrible finality numbed them like a blow. Macllreath had a guilty feeling, as if in this sinister place they had come upon a secret not meant for mortal eyes. The policeman spoke first, and his cool and cynical com­ ment rang in the silence like a shout. "Put up a dam' good fight for it, didn't he? They could do nothing until morning. After the night's

1 08

THOMAS H . RADDALL

frost the ice would be sound for an hour or so. At daybreak they came with hookaroons lashed to poles and walked out to the hole gingerly. The ice was fully eight inches thick, sun-rotted to a substance like sugar crystals, but the sharp frost of the long dark hours had given it a temporary strength. Amongst the fragments of ice in the hole, cemented now by a thin skim of the night's freezing, they found a cap and one mitten, and just under the surface a snowshoe of the bear-paw type. An empty moccasin was lashed to it with a long strip of lamp wicking. Sewan turned it over in his gloved hands. "Wicking's an old trick, of course. Makes a good snowshoe harness but the knots swell tight when the stuff's wet. There's a safe hitch in case you get into trouble-you can twist your foot sideways and slip the snowshoe off-but he didn't use it. Look." Olaf and three of the lumberjacks were fishing slowly in the deep water with their hookaroons. Macllreath stared at the lamp-wicking and those unyielding knots, seeing the silent and lonely struggle in the chill black water, the frantic efforts to get rid of the fettering snowshoes, the mute wit­ nessing trees, and the afternoon sun pouring down. He was profoundly moved. "Look here," he said slowly. "If the man got this one off by unlacing the moccasin, why not the other? He was a · powerful man, and probably a swimmer." The corporal shrugged. "Hard to say. You've got to re­ member a man would get numb pretty quickly in there." They heard the Norwegian exclaim, "Ah! Ah! ", and watched his pole coming dripping slowly from the depths with the sodden bundle of a man. They had trouble getting it on the ice. The right foot was bare. The left foot was invisible, and held by a thing yielding soggily from the bot­ tom. Sewan got down on hands and knees and peered into the water. "Hold on a minute, boys. His other snowshoe's caught in

T H E TR,AP

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a waterlogged branch. I can see the twigs." He looketl up at Macllreath. "That's why he couldn't get clear. His snowshoe fouled in a sunken branch when he plunged in, and he couldn't drag it up high enough to get at the moccasin lace. Played himself out trying to jerk free, the ice breaking every time he got a hold; and at the last went down to it, and the cold water got the best of him." Macllreath nodded. It was all clear now. He had a queer chill at the stomach. Olaf suggested cutting the snowshoe clear but the corporal, thinking of the inquest, would have none of it. Evidence was evidence. Gathering recklessly at the ice edge they twisted the dead man's leg and got a grip on the slimy twigs, and drew to the surface a sodden trunk of young pop­ lar. The twigs were thrust through the mesh of the snowshoe, and one branch had slipped over the heel, forming a rude but effective clamp. The tree, a small one, perhaps fifteen feet high when standing, was coated with mud and slime. Many weeks before, probably in the fall, the butt had been gnawed through by the chisel strokes of beaver teeth. There was, as Sewan said, nothing extraordinary about it. Beavers always clutter their ponds with poplar for the winter's food.

Acknowledgements This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page

"A Narrow Escape" from Starbuck Valley Winter copyright

1943

by Roderick L. Haig-Brown by permission of. William Collins Sons & Co. (Canada) Limited and William Morrow & Company Inc. "Some People's Grandfathers" from "Some People's Grandfathers Give Them Cigarettes to Smoke" by Gwen Pharis Ringwood, first published in the Family Herald, by permission of the author. "My Pet Owls" from Owls in the Family ©

1 961

by Farley Mowat,

by permission of Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited. "The Hockey Game" from Scrubs on Ska tes copyright

1952

by ,

Scott Young, by permission of McClelland and Stewart Limited. "Wully" reprinted with the permission of Charles Scribners Sons from Wild A n imals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton

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"1ezebel 1essie" copyright ©

1965 by Harry 1. Boyle, by permission

of the author.

l

"Legend of Iroquois Falls" by Ella Elizabeth Clark, copyright

1961

in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited, by permis­

sion of McClelland and Stewart Limited. "A Struggle in the Woods" from Th e Incred i b le Journey ©

1961

1960,

by Sheila Burnford, by permission of Hodder & S toughton

Limited and Atlantic-Little, Brown & Company. "Load of Trouble" by Edward 1- Wood, by permission of the author. "The Wild Goose" by Ernest Buckler, first published in The A t­ lantic A dvocate, by permission of the author. "The Ice Road" by H. T. Barker, first published in The A tlantic A dvocate, by permission of the author. By permission of Thomas H. Raddall, "The Trap" from Tam­ bour and O th er Stories, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Copy­ right

1945 by Thomas H. Raddall.

'

Mc Clel land & Stewart

(

'