Fullerton Leonard Waldo
Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North
VIII
CAPTURED BY INDIANS
In the lonely interior of Labrador in midsummer an old man sat on the rocky ground with a ring of Indians about him.
He was "Labrador" Cabot of Boston. Year after year he had gone to Labrador to visit the Indian tribes and study their ways. He could talk the Indian language and understand what they said to him.
"What's the matter with your leg?" asked the Chief, a big, strong fellow with keen eyes. "Can't you walk? We must get started if we want to find the deer."
"I think I must have broken my leg when I slipped and fell on the rocks," answered Mr. Cabot.
He made an effort to rise and stand, but sank back helplessly.
A curious, evil grin spread across the red man's face.
"You're sure you can't walk?"
Mr. Cabot shook his head.
"What will you do?"
"One thing is sure," said Mr. Cabot, "I'll have to stay with you if I'm to get out of this place alive."
"We can't let you keep us back," answered the Indian. "We might leave you here with a fire and something to eat."
"And what would I do after the fire went out, and the food was gone?"
The Indian shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know."
"Can't some of your men make a litter of boughs and carry me?" pleaded Mr. Cabot.
"They could if they wanted to," answered the Indian, coldly. "But I don't think they want to."
"Haven't we always been friends?" urged Mr. Cabot.
"I suppose so."
"Haven't I been here summer after summer, and helped you, and given medicine to sick people?"
The Indian picked up handfuls of sand and threw them on the fire. "Yes, and you were always writing in a little book. Maybe when you went away from here you told lies to the world about us. Who knows?"
Mr. Cabot was puzzled. Was this the friendly, peaceful Chief he knew before he had the misfortune to fall and hurt his leg?
In spite of the pain he was suffering, he tried to talk calmly and not show that he was afraid of being left behind. "Why have you turned against me?"
"What do you mean?" the Indian chief answered.
"A little while ago you seemed like my friend. Now you are willing to leave me here where there are no fish, and the deer do not come, and the mosquitoes are worse than any wild animals. What is the meaning of all this?"
"I will tell you," the Indian answered, very slowly. "You must pay us for what a white man did to us."
"What do you mean?"
"Listen, and you shall hear.
"Last year, we had fox furs—very many and very fine. We had risked our lives: we had starved and frozen to get them. All over Ungava we had tracked and trapped in the wilderness.
"Then—see what happened. A trader came among us. He had much money. It was not like any money we had seen before, but he said it was a new kind of money. And he would give us more of it for our furs than any man had given us before.
"He gave us much to drink. We had a feast, and dancing. The trader gave handsome presents to our wives. Beads and bright cloth for dresses. He gave us tobacco, and whiskey.
"When we did not know what we were doing, he bought our furs. He bought them all. He gave us this new, strange money and much of it. Then he went away. We fired guns in the air to honor him. We shook hands with him. We thought he was our friend. We promised to be friends with him as long as sun and moon endured.
"He smiled, and waved, and went away—and we, we had nothing of him but the money. It was paper, all of it, very bright and new and green, with printed marks on it we could not read.
"Some shook their heads when he had gone, and said, 'No, no, brothers. We should not have taken this green paper and given him those furs.'
"But others said, 'Look what he has paid us! We are all rich men. The price is better than we ever had before!'
"The old, wise men said, 'How do you know that it is more, when you do not know how much it is?'
"So, night and day, there was talking to and fro—along the trail by day, around the camp-fire when the sun had set.
"It soon came time for us to send men down to Rigolet, on Hamilton Inlet, there to buy at the Hudson's Bay store the things that we would need in the winter time.
"We sent twelve of the strong young men in their canoes to get the things and bring them home to our tents. We were happy when we thought of all the guns and tobacco, all the flour and the fine clothes so much money would buy.
"They went: and they were gone many days, while we waited in one fixed place for them, and in our minds spent the money many times over."
Then the Indian paused. He was squatting on his haunches, and puffing at his pipe. Mr. Cabot's leg was giving him much pain, but he was too proud to ask the Indian to do anything for him.
The Indian's face grew very stern as he remembered. His tone became as hard as the expression of his face. He looked at Mr. Cabot and clenched his fist. "When our men came to the storekeeper, they walked all about the store. 'I'll take that fine dress,' said one. 'Give me that shotgun,' said another. 'I will have this bag of tobacco,' said a third. Some took flour, and some chose bright ornaments for their wives, and others took candy, and one man got a talking-machine. Some chose the best clothes in the store. They also took much food of every kind, and ammunition for the guns.
"They made great piles of the things on the floor, to take them to the canoes.
"Then they brought out their money to pay for all these things.
"'What is that stuff?' said the storekeeper.
"'That? It is our money. It is what a trader paid us for our furs.'
"'What was his name?'
"'That we do not know. We did not ask. We do not care who buys from us; all we care is that he buys. One man's money is as good as another's.'
"Then the storekeeper laughed in their faces. And he said: 'You have been fooled. You have been fooled as easily as little children. Do you know what this "money" is that you have given me?'
"'No,' they said.
"'It is not money at all,' he told them. 'It is nothing but labels from beer bottles. You cannot have those things you have piled up on the floor. I will take them back and keep them here until you bring me real money for them.'
"Then they said to him, 'But it is all we have. We cannot go back to our people with nothing.'
"He said: 'I cannot help that. It is no fault of mine.'
"They wanted to fight—but it would do no good to kill the agent or drive him away. There would be no one from whom to get things another year.
"'You ought to have brought your furs to me. I would have given you real money for them,' said the agent.
"They went away very sorrowful. After many days they came back to us again. We were very glad when we saw them coming—but we wondered that their canoes were not piled high with the things we had told them to buy.
"When we heard their story we were very sorrowful. We talked about it a great deal. We said, 'What shall we do?'
"Then we made up our minds. This is what we decided. We said: 'The next white man that comes among us we shall hold. We shall not let him go until he pays to us a sum of money, seven hundred dollars, equal to that which we have lost. Since he is a white man he or his friends must make up to us that which we have lost at the hands of a white man.'
"So now you see—you are the man. And it is you that must pay back to us the money."
"But I haven't seven hundred dollars."
"Then you must promise that you will pay it, or get your friends to pay it. These many years you have come here among us. We will trust you for that. It is much that we should trust you—when it is one of your own people who brought such suffering and loss upon us."
"But this is an outrage!" said Mr. Cabot. "I never did anything to you but good. You know that."
"Yes, we know that," said the Indian, gravely. "But we shall leave you here unless you pay. You cannot find your way out alone—even if you could stand and walk upon your broken leg. We shall not carry you from here unless you pay the money. Is that not so?"
He turned to the others, who had not said one word all this while: they had been merely looking on and listening.
"Yes," they said. "He has spoken for us all. As he has said, we shall do. You shall be left here, if you do not pay."
"The Great Spirit has given you into our hands," the Chief declared. "When you came to us this summer again, we said among ourselves that he had sent you. We did not know that he would cause you to break your leg. We were going to keep you even if this had not happened. Now the Great Spirit has caused this hurt to happen to you. We see, by this, that we were not mistaken. He sent you to us as surely as he sends the fish or the deer when we have need of food. It is for you to choose, if you will pay, and go on with us to the coast—or refuse to pay and be left here in the wilderness to die."
So Cabot had to sign a promise to pay them the $700 for a great rascal whose name neither he nor those Indians will ever know.
They made a stretcher and put him on it, and carried him with them out to the coast.
If they had not done so—his white bones would now be bleaching beside the cold embers of a camp-fire in the desolate interior of Labrador.
Do you blame those Indians for wanting to "take it out" of the first member they met, of a race that bred such a rogue as the man who cheated them?
Dr. Grenfell tells us that for about two hundred years the Eskimo of the interior and the Indians of the coast were at war with one another. There was a battle, long, long ago, in which Indians killed a thousand Eskimo.
But nowadays when the Eskimo and Indians come together they have no quarrel.
There was such a meeting at Nain in 1910. It was the first time the Eskimo had ever seen Indians in that tiny fishing-village, and they "ran about in circles" in their excitement.
It was on a Sunday afternoon when the Indians appeared. They had come down a stream from the interior, and when they rounded the bend in their boats—of a kind that was strange to the Eskimo—the latter set up a cackle like that of a barnyard when a hawk appears.
The Indians, with their bundles on their shoulders, filed ashore, made their way to a hut the kindly Moravian missionary let them use, and sat in muddy, weary silence round the walls.
The Eskimo crowded into the doorway, their tongues hanging out, staring at these queer folk as if they had dropped from the moon.
But other Eskimo, kind-hearted and hospitable, were moved to show the strangers what shore life was like.
They got busy at the stove, boiled water, and presently handed about large cups of tea, with sugar and biscuit.
The Indians devoured the refreshments thankfully, for they were very hungry. The Northern Indians lead lives that are often sharpened with hunger for long periods together. You can see it in their lank frames and their gaunt faces. The southern Indians, nearer the flesh-pots, with kindly priests at work among them, look roly-poly, chubby and content.
It was a very silent party. The Indians who had been so bold as to come this far to the sea were probably homesick for the flat stones, the dwarf birches, the far-lying ponds and cold swirling streams, the hordes of mosquitoes and the caribou of their lone spaces at Indian House Lake. The cluster of houses at Nain looked to them as New York would seem to one who had always dwelt in the heart of the Maine woods.
By morning, after a sound sleep on the floor, they were eager to begin trading.
A southern Indian translated.
They had brought deerskins chiefly. There are few valuable furs in their part of Labrador, but they did their best to make a brave showing with the few they were able to find.
You can imagine their people at home at Indian House Lake saying before the start of the expedition: "Oh, if we only had some beaver or marten skins! Wouldn't it be nice, now, if we could get a silver or a cross fox? Those people down there at the coast know such a lot, and are so rich, and so particular! Nothing but the very best we have will do."
They held up a bearskin with great pride. They had a wolverine,—the only sort of fur on which snow will not freeze,—several wolf-skins, and moccasins, embroidered. The translator would point to what they wanted on the shelves. Then they would take the object in their hands and weigh it very carefully, thinking of all those portages on the homeward trail—probably twenty at least—over which every ounce must be carried on a man's shoulders.
They bought lots of tea—one man getting as much as sixteen pounds. They wanted gay prints. Other things to which they took a fancy were tobacco, cartridges, fish-hooks, matches, needles, and pearl buttons. First they handed over the skins, and received money in return: then they spent the money. Mouth-organs were much in demand, and they looked longingly at an accordeon and tried to play on it and were enchanted with the squawks that came out: but they were not rich enough to buy it. One boy bought a clay pipe, and spent all his time licking it. They were not allowed to smoke in the store, but they spat wherever they pleased.
Doctor and Mrs. Grenfell are out on the war-path against this disgusting custom, and they have had very hard work to persuade even the "liveyeres" that there is danger concealed in germs that cannot be seen, when saliva dries and the wind blows it about. In all this glorious fresh air it is mournful to think of the many who die of consumption, pneumonia and all sorts of lung-trouble, because of stifling houses and unclean habits.
The Indians at first were extremely shy. Then they waxed merry, and as they bought they laughed and chatted. In the party were three women. One of them was young and good-looking, and she was showered with presents—kettles, cups and saucers, perfumed soap and cologne! A young man bought for her anything she wanted—and every time he made a purchase for the fair one the others laughed aloud. And each time he bestowed a gift, one of the other women turned to her husband and made him buy the same thing for her. Human nature is the same on the Labrador as on Coney Island.
It took two days for them to do their buying, and wrap up their purchases, and say farewell.
By this time Indians and Eskimo were sworn friends.
The Eskimo crowded to the end of the little pier, and knelt down to reach over and grasp the hands of the parting guests. There were shouts of "Yomai!" from the Indians, and various cries in answer from the Eskimo. Then, crouching on their heels, the Indians trimmed their sails to the breeze and were borne swiftly round the point to be seen no more.
How different is all this from the days of old, when the Eskimo were called "the most savage people in the world!"
IX
ALONE ON THE ICE
In April, 1908, Dr. Grenfell had the closest call of his life. Of course in April the ice and snow are still deep over the bays and forelands of Labrador and northern Newfoundland. There is not the slightest sign that spring with its flowers and mosquitoes is coming. All travel save by dog-team is at a standstill, and only a life-and-death message—such as Dr. Grenfell is constantly getting—is a reason for facing the howling winds and the driving snows of the blizzards that the bravest seamen and the mightiest hunters have good reason to fear.
On Easter Sunday morning at his St. Anthony home Dr. Grenfell was walking back from the little church to his house after the morning service, thinking of the sermon, and of his mother in England.
Suddenly a boy came running after him from the hospital near by.
"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!"
The Doctor turned in his deep, floundering steps to see who it was that called him.
"Doctor," panted the small messenger, "I came to the hospital to fetch ye. There's a man with dogs, from sixty mile away down to the south, and he says they must have a doctor come to 'em, right off, or the boy'll die."
The Doctor put his kind hand on the little fellow's shoulder. "Who is it that is sick?"
"I dunno, Doctor, but he's wonderful sick. He'll die unless ye come."
The Doctor thought a moment—then he remembered. It was a young man on whom he had operated two weeks before, for a bone disease that was eating away his thigh.
Those who had tried to help him had closed up the wound—the worst thing to do. The poison had collected, and probably the leg would have to be taken off.
The Doctor knew that every minute counted. He went to his kennels in the snow and picked out his sturdiest dog-team. They whined and pawed and jumped up and down, eager to be chosen. The real "husky" hates to loaf, except when he has come in from a long, hard run late at night and has had his meal of fish. He wants to be at work all the time, and when the sled is loaded the dogs must be tied up tight or they will dart away at breakneck speed and perhaps upset everything. This sleigh was heavy-laden with instruments, drugs and dressings. A second team was to follow, with the messengers.
Dr. Grenfell loved, as with a personal affection, every one of the five beasts that were taking him on this long haul to save a boy's life.
First came "Brin," by common consent the surest leader anywhere on the coast. The strongest dog of the team—big and affectionate and playful—was "Doc." A black and white dog whose muscles were like small wire ropes, was "Spy," and "Moody," now in his third year, was a black-and-tan named for Dr. Grenfell's friend Will Moody, son of the evangelist. "Moody" had the reputation of never looking behind him: he was eager to go on to the bitter end.
The youngest dog of the team, named "Watch," had beautiful soft eyes, a Gordon setter coat, and long legs capable of carrying him over the frozen crust at a tremendous rate of speed. Then there was "Sue," the most wolf-like of the lot—black as jet, her pointed ears the standing question-marks for further orders. "Jerry" was a perfect lady, quick on her feet as a dancer, and so fond of play and so demonstrative that she often tipped the Doctor over when he had a boxing-bout with her, and sent him sprawling on his back in the snow.
"Jack," a black dog with the looks and the ways of a retriever, had "Moody's" good habit of going straight on without turning to see who followed, and he was put in the position of trust nearest the sledge. He liked to run with his nose close to the ground, and nothing that the trail or the snow-crust could tell any wise "husky" dog was a secret to the busy nose of this gentle-natured fellow.
Do you wonder that Dr. Grenfell was proud and fond of these four-legged helpers, and that he gave them the tender care one bestows on children? It would have grieved him to the heart to think of any accident happening to any of them. He looked on them just as a Captain Scott or a Sir Ernest Shackleton regarded his mates on a Polar expedition. They were his friends and helpers. Some of them had stood by him in many a hard tussle with the cold and the stinging hail, with the rotten ice threatening to let them down into the river or the sea. With their bushy tails thrown over them like fur wraps, they had slept in the snow-drift round his camp-fires. They seemed to him like human beings, his little brothers. As he is fond of saying, "Dogs are much nicer than a Ford car. A Ford car can't come and kiss you good-night."
Since it was late April, and the melting ice might mean a soaking any moment, Grenfell carried a spare outfit—a change of clothes, an oilskin suit, snowshoes, an axe, a rifle, a compass. He knew there was no place to stop and get any of these things if he should lose them. The most daring skipper of a boat or driver of a sled along the coast, the Doctor takes no chances when it comes to his equipment.
Though the messengers had broken the trail on the up journey, they preferred to fall in behind the Doctor on the down trip. They knew that he would want to travel like the wind. They felt a certain security and comfort in letting him take the lead. It relieved them of a lot of responsibility for setting the course. There are always people traveling in Grenfell's wake who are willing to let him make the hard choices and take the daring chances. But a good reason for Grenfell's going first this time was that his picked team of young, strong, spry dogs were hustlers, whom it would be impossible to hold back, and the other dogs were heavier and slower.
Although Grenfell in the twenty miles before nightfall twice called a halt, the slower team behind him was unable to catch up. He reached a small hamlet and had given his eager dogs their supper of two fish apiece, and was gathering the people together for prayers when the second team overtook him.
In the night the weather changed. The wind began to blow from the northeast; a fog set in, with rain. The snow became mushy, to make hard going, and out in the bay the sea was ugly, with the water heaving the ice-pans about. The plan for the coming day was to make a run of forty miles, the first ten miles a short cut across a bay, over the salt-water ice.
Grenfell did not want to get too far from his convoy, and so he let the second team start on ahead, with a lead of two hours.
He told them just where to call a halt and wait for him. There was a log hut, or "tilt," at the half-way point. Since there was no one living on that part of the very lonely coast-line, this hut was a refuge fitted out with anything that a shipwrecked mariner or a benighted traveler by land might need—dry clothes, food, and medicines.
"You go to the hut and wait there till I come," were the Doctor's final orders.
The rain began to fall, and when Grenfell got under way it was such treacherous going that he couldn't cut straight across the bay as he wished, but had to keep closer to the land. The sea had risen in its wrath and thrown the pans of ice about, so that there were wide spaces between, and half a mile out from the shore it was clear water.
But far out from the shore there was an island, and by a daring series of jumps across the cracks,—the dogs as buoyant as their master, hauling the sled as though it were a load of feathers,—Grenfell reached the island, and made the dogs rest—a hard thing to do—while he looked about him to see where the next lap of the journey would take him and them.
It was four miles, he knew, to a rocky headland over yonder, if he ventured out on that uncertain field of ice. That would save several miles over the more prudent course alongshore.
As far as he could see, the ice looked as though it would hold up the sled. It was rough—but a hardened voyager with a dog-team is accustomed to a hummocky road. It looked as if the sea had torn it up, as men tear up the paving blocks in a city street, and then thrown the bits together to make a hard, cohesive mass that men and dogs could surely trust. The strong wind seemed to have packed it in and the intense cold of the night, he supposed, had frozen it solid.
The wind died down, and Grenfell found that he was deep in what is known as "sish"—soft ice as mushy as the name sounds. He compares it to oatmeal, and it must have been many feet deep. There was a thin coating of new ice on top of it, through which the whip-handle easily pierced.
The "sish" ice is composed of the small fragments chipped off the floes after the pounding and grinding between the millstones of the great winds and the heavy seas. The changing breeze now blew from offshore, and instead of packing the ice together it was driving it apart. The packed "slob" was "running abroad," as the fisher-folk say. The ice-pans were so small that there was hardly one as large as a table-top.
By this time the team had come to a halt on one of these tiny pans, and with the other pans floating about as the entire sheet was breaking up the peril was evident. It was not possible to go back—the way was cut off by the widening spaces between the pans. Only about a quarter of a mile was left between their pan and the shore.
Grenfell threw off his oilskins, knelt by the side of the komatik, and ordered the dogs to make for the shore.
It takes a great deal to "rattle" a husky. But the dogs, after about twenty yards of half-wading, half-swimming, were thoroughly frightened. They stopped, and the sled sank into the ice. With the sled in the freezing water, it was necessary for the dogs to pull hard, and now they too began to sink.
Not long before, the father of the boy to whom the Doctor was going was drowned by being tangled in the dog's traces in just such a place as this. To avoid that danger, Grenfell got out his knife, and cut the traces in the water.
But he still kept hold of the leader's trace, which he wound about his wrist.
In the water there was not a piece of ice to be seen in which dogs or driver could put their trust. The dogs were as eager as their master to find something to cling to. Care-free and jolly as they had been hitherto, they knew as well as he that death by drowning stared their little caravan in the face.
About twenty-five yards away there was a big lump of snow, such as children put up when they mean to make a snow-man. The leading dog, "Brin," as he wallowed about managed to reach it, at the end of his long trace of about sixty feet. "Brin" had black marks on his face, which made it look as though he were laughing all the time, like one who finds this world a grand, good joke. When he clambered out on the hummock he shook his coat and turned round and gazed calmly at his master.
"He seemed to be grinning at me," says the Doctor.
But it was no laughing matter for the other dogs, floundering about.
Grenfell hauled himself along toward "Brin" by means of the trace still attached to his wrist. But suddenly "Brin" stepped out of his harness, and then the Doctor found himself sprawling and struggling in the water, with no means of getting to the place where "Brin" had found temporary safety.
Grenfell thought this time it was all over. He had looked Death in the eyes before, but Death had decided to go by. This time, it did not seem possible to escape. He did not feel any great alarm—in fact, he became drowsy, and thought how easy it would be just to fall asleep and forget everything, as the icy water chilled and numbed his senses. He was like the weary traveler who drops into the snow-bank, on whom the torpor steals by slow degrees.
Suddenly Grenfell caught sight of a big dog that had gone through the ice and was pulling the trace after him, in a desperate effort to reach the hummock on which "Brin" was sitting. Grenfell grabbed the trace, and hauled himself along after the animal. He calls this "using the dog as a bow anchor."
But the other dogs were following this poor beast's example, and they crowded and jostled the Doctor so that it was hard for him to hold on. One of them, in fact, got on his shoulder, very much as a drowning man in his desperation will throw his arms round the neck of someone who tries to rescue him, and drag him under. This pushed Grenfell still deeper into the ice, and it was a question whether his energy would hold out in that frigid water.
As they say on the football field, he now had only three yards to gain, and by a mighty effort he drew himself past his living anchor and climbed up on the piece of slob ice. He rested a moment to draw breath, and then began to haul his beloved dogs one after another up to a place beside him. They swam and panted through the lane in the ice that he had broken, and seemed to understand perfectly that their master was trying to save them, even though they had lost their heads and had almost drowned him.
It would not do for them all to remain on that small, treacherous lump of ice. It might break in two at any moment with the combined weight of dogs and driver. It was slowly drifting with the tidal current out to the open sea, where all hope would be lost. Grenfell knew that if he were to save his team and himself—they were always first in his thoughts—he must act instantly.
He stood up to survey the scene. About twenty yards away there was a good-sized pan floating about in the "sish" like a raft, such as that on which Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer floated down the Mississippi. To reach that raft would at any rate be to postpone death for a little while. But it was taking too much of a risk, to try to get from the little cake to the big one without a life line. How was he to make such a line, and then how was he to get it across the wide space between?
Fortunately when the Doctor cut the dogs away from the sled he had not lost his knife: he had tied it to the back of one of the dogs. There it was still. It was the work of a joyful moment to untie it, and he fell to work cutting from the dogs' harness the sealskin traces that remained and stringing those together to make two long lines. His overalls, coat, hat and gloves were gone, but he still had his sealskin hip-boots. He took these off, shook them free from ice and water, and tied them on the backs of "Brin" and another dog. Then he fastened the lines to the two animals, tying the near ends round his wrists.
"Hist!" he shouted—the signal to go on: but the dogs refused to budge. They were setting their own wits against their master's. Such dogs believe they know their business. They saw no proper place to go to. Why should they dash into the icy water for the sake of reaching another pan not much bigger than their own? If it were land—that would be another story. So they must have reasoned, in their doggish fashion. They had been devoted and obedient—but there were limits even to their faith.
Grenfell three times threw the dogs off the Pan. Each time they struggled back upon it: and their master could not blame them.
"This is really the end!" Grenfell told himself. "We never shall get out of this!"
Just as a boy sometimes comes up to the scratch where a man has failed, a small dog may play the hero when a big one quits. That was the case here. The smallest dog of the lot, "Jack," came to the rescue. He was so small that he was not taken very seriously for his hauling power—but when it came to hunting, he was there with all four paws, and he was used as retriever when Dr. Grenfell went out with a gun. Here was a chance for him to show the stuff that was in his black, rough hide.