402 



THE ROCK CLIMBERS. 



II. — TWO DAYS AT DUNMORE. 



THE last relic of a hard fight between Crees and B^ck- 

 feet, or other undesirable citizens whose ill wishes 

 have practical value, had probably oursed the spot in 

 dying and thus I became enveloped in misfortune. 



The junction of a narrow-gauge coal road spread a due 

 amount of dirt and confusion, which seemed only to add 

 a deeper flavor of stagnation. 



The prairie was clean, but not a dog even in sight. 

 There were fabled mud-holes swarming with possible 

 ducks not far off, but the inhabitant did not dream of 

 taking his hand from the pulse of the telegraph and thus 

 losing the last touch of a better world. 



I do not quite do justice to the inhabitant. He was 

 really plural or, to speak exactly, dual, but fifty per cent, 

 of him was down with typhoid fever, leaving the scanty 

 but important number one to face the world. 



The Canadian Pacific road respects the Sabbath at one 

 point. Trains, to be sure, run Sunday if they get going 

 during the week, but at the terminus there prevails a 

 holy calm on the blessed day. Now for through travel 

 this is a small thing, but fancy taking a three days' jour- 

 ney to make a connection, landing nowhere, and then 

 finding that the Sunday blank falls on Thursday (your 

 existing day) at your stage of the line. Then imagine, 

 too, that a telegram comes from the friend who was to 

 meet you and share your sorrows, saying: "Detained; 

 will be with you in two days." 



Was it Sisyphus or Prometheus who was chained to a 

 rock while vultures ate his liver? Would it not have 

 comforted this spectator of his own sacrifice to have 

 jotted down the character of the rock, made pen pictures 

 of the wicked vultures, and held up to an indignant age 

 all the minor accidents that accompanied or even 

 preceded the traumatic interference with his hepatic 

 function, as your doctor would say? It would have done 

 so, and I to my notebook intrust certain memories, and 

 so alleviate my trials. 



If you start as far back as the San Francisco steamer 

 you will see the faint beginnings of the gang that were 

 on our train. 



The elderly Canadian gentleman, short, well made, 

 large-headed and mighty-bearded, skated over the decks 

 with a quick, short shuffle that was superior to sea- 

 sickness. His head was bald, his manner polite but 

 decisive, if not obstinate, and he spoke with the full 

 British twang. You did not at first suspect him of humor 

 till he declared that the Victoria people, having never 

 been abroad, were too English for a poor Canadian. Then 

 with a warming breast you conversed with him openly, 

 and were no longer astonished when he took off to per- 

 fection the ill-tempered American judge with the young 

 wife, whom he, the judge, addressed with shameful 

 rudeness, but who could well be trusted to get even with 

 the bear in time, if the snap in her eyes was any sign. 



The two young London globe-trotters got on at a way 

 station. They had shot deer and sheep, and were as com- 

 panionable ae possible. Somebody says that reserve is 

 really an American trait. Certainly these pleasant boys 

 had no needless reticence about them, but bubbled over 

 with their trip and its incidents; gave and took cigarettes 

 and civilities, and possibly would have exchanged visit- 

 ing cards if anybody had pressed them so far. 



Then there was an old Englishman of snowy hair and 

 beard, small and lithe, who told you all the facts about 

 himself, and some of his imaginings on the same subject, 

 as fast and as long as he could talk and you could listen. 

 How he had been in mines twenty years; the true theory 

 of earthquakes; how he softened a war party of hostile 

 Cheyennes by an offering of tobacco, what his feelings 

 then were, and all the rich experience of a poor man, for 

 hat and clothes, alas, showed not so much the rough dress 

 of voyage as the well-hid shabbiness of a sound economy. 



The Canadian gentleman had told us how sternly his 

 government enforced abstinence from liquor in the Terri- 

 tories. [Just here remember that Alberta, Assiniboia 

 and Saskatchewan are the Northwest Territories, and 

 that every other political unit in the Dominion is called a 

 Province.] The red-jacketed mounted police would, he 

 said, enter the cars, after dismounting, of course, and go 

 through the hand bags of the passengers, pouring out 

 their whiskies, raw or common; in short, wasting all their 

 liquors. 



Sure enough, one morning as we entered the dining 

 car there sat a neat, square-built young fellow with scar- 

 let jacket, spurred half -boots, tight breeches with yellow 

 stripes, and one of those ridiculous mufiin-rings that pass 

 for cavalry caps balanced on the side of his head. A 

 soldierly young man he looked, with his cheeks glowing- 

 red through the tan and his fine straw-colored mustache. 



I had before tried to anticipate the action of the 

 Dominion officials by lessening the amount of whisky 

 subject to waste as speedily as I could, but at the sight of 

 the soldier I trembled for the half bottle still left. 



Breakfast over I awaited fate with attempted cheerful- 

 ness, still no police appeared. Medicine Hat was passed. 

 Dunmore alone lay before me with its inhabitant, and 

 perhaps, arrived there, I could evade the law. The train 

 stopped, I climbed down to the ditch and walked toward 

 the station. Before me stood the mounted police ! He 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



too was bound for Dunmore! "Out of the nettle danger 

 we pluck the flower safety." The police was the best 

 fellow in the world. 



Do I know anything about ranching in Canada? Lay 

 it to the police. Ascribe to the same source my know- 

 ledge of the intended fight between Smith and Kilrain; 

 of the personal character and appearance of Hanlan; of 

 the fastest time of professional sprinters, 



Then on more even grounds of a common experience 

 we discussed horses and fish, game, Indians, and then the 

 Riel rebellion. Only at my request would he tell me how 

 he got shot in a "scrap" (which meant a fight) on that 

 occasion. The "breeds" (for the "half" of "half-breeds" 

 is dropped in common speaking) planted their 350 men in 

 a brushy gulch and some fifty police advanced and drove 

 them. The "breeds" were armed with "trade" guns— 

 singiebarreled shotguns carrying an ounce ball on occa- 

 sions, and shooting with accuracy only about 50yds. The 

 rifles of the police could keep the "breeds" at a distance 

 and use them up were it not that the latter shrewdly neu- 

 tralized this advantage by fighting in thick cover, where 

 the soldiers had to come to close quarters. 



While pressing forward through brush and snow my 

 police, having dropped his overcoat owing to the heat, 

 offered, in his red jacket, a shining mark to the enemy, 

 and was accordingly potted. An ounce ball struck him 

 in the chest and passed through without knocking him 

 down, though he described the operation as painful. My 

 curiosity was but whetted when my new friend invited 

 (me to take a temperance drink, saying that his uniform 

 would frighten off more desirable treats; and it was with 

 sincere grief that I finally saw him jump on the caboose 

 of a coal train and depart. Englishman though he was, 

 he spoke good pure United States, while the travelers on 

 our train, even to the Canadians, had all the deformities 

 of the British dialect. 



Twenty-six hours gone and nearly as much more to be 

 enjoyed before my friend arrives. Did I say two days at 

 Dunmore? I exaggerated. I have long schooled myself 

 to consider my own society the best in the world, but 

 too much of even the best society grows monotonous. 

 Another caboose draws near and I follow the police. 



Out of the frying pan into the caboose! A missionary 

 and a commercial — well a drummer — were my compan- 

 ions. 



The missionary said that he had lived for eighteen years 

 on buffalo meat, but that the buffalo had answered their 

 purpose (of feeding him) and vanished. Wild meat made 

 men barbarous. He had known a person of excellent 

 parts converted into a lawless ruffian by three weeks of 

 buffalo diet. This missionary was fitted to sympathize 

 with savages of low intelligenee. But the drummer was 

 worse. Shaped like a drygoods box on end he seemed 

 filled with some kind of self-acting, continuous fog horn. 

 Through the mumble of the jolts you heard him sermoniz- 

 ing on subjects religious and political with excited howls, 

 and when the train stopped his discourse assumed the 

 importance of a bellow. At last night fell. The com- 

 mercial accents boomed indistinct as an angry surf and 

 I slept. H. G. Dulogt. 



'h* Spwtettlttn jurist 



SAM LOVEL'S CAMPS.— III. 



SOLON and Joseph fished off the rocks when they came 

 to eligible places, and caught a few perch and rock 

 bass, while they continually feasted their eyes with the 

 wonderful sight of the lake, so immense a body of water 

 that, it seemed to them, it gave them a fair idea of the 

 immensity of the ocean. This was more impressed upon 

 them when they had strolled to Bluff Point, and looking 

 beyond the promontory of Thompson's Point, saw the 

 blue lake and the blue sky meet far to the northward, 

 with bluer dots of distant islands hung between them, 

 and the white wings of sloops whose hulls were beyond 

 the horizon. And there was the tall white tower of Split 

 Rock Lighthouse, newly built, and now a pillar of cloud 

 by day, a star by night to warn mariners off its perilous 

 rocks, and giving these mountaineers a vivid realization 

 of the dangers besetting those who go down to the sea in 

 ships; perils and dangers that the waves seemed always 

 whispering of as they hungrily lapped the rocks and 

 chuckled wickedly in the water-worn caverns. By 

 and bye they saw a smoke arising from the watery 

 horizon, and after it a speck, which at last grew till 

 it became a steamboat, a leviathan which soon wallowed 

 ponderously past, close to the further shore, its 

 gay flags and pennons flaunting bravely against the 

 shadowed steeps of Split Rock Mountain, a wake of foam 

 following the roaring paddlewheels. Some time after 

 the majestic apparition had vanished behind the promon- 

 tories to the west of them, the waves of its wake came in, 

 beating the rocky shore with slow, sullen surges, like 

 baffled foes retreat; a; from the path of a conqueror. 

 Strange woods set afioit far away came tossing ashore to 

 the windrow of wave-worn logs, slabs, chips, and bits of 

 painted boats that lined the shores. An old shoe sug- 

 gested thoughts of drowned men, and white- winged gulls 

 hovered like spirits over the distant waves. It was all 

 very new and strange and mysterious. These two 

 anglers bore back to camp but few visible trophies, when 

 in the afternoon they followed thither their shadows, 

 eluding guides that were now distinctly seen leading the 

 way across broad patches of clean forest floor, now 

 dancing in vague outline and confused dismemberment 

 on tree trunks and low branches, and now disappeared in 

 a throng of other shadows or a mass of shade. But the 

 sights they had seen better repaid the time and travel 



[Jan. 5, 1888. 



spent than much bigger strings of fish than they carried 

 would have done, and they were content. 



Antoine prowled along the shore from the Slab Hole 

 to the South Slang and to the rotting and displaced abut- 

 ment of the old bridge that had just given up the weary 

 task of spanning so much marsh and so little channel. 

 He transfixed many unlucky bullpouts wriggling slowly 

 in and out of their spawning holes, and tranferred them 

 with great satisfaction from his rude spear to his string 

 of elm bark; battle-scarred amazons, torn and stabbed by 

 the horns of other amazons, and lean fathers of the race 

 of bullpouts, as scarred and wounded as their warlike 

 wives. To the Canadian a bullpout was a bullpout, to be i 

 taken at any time, by any means, and without regard to 

 its condition. If he ever thought, as doubtless he never 

 did, how the continuation of his most prized fish depended 

 on procreation, doubtless he would not care, for what 

 Canuck ever did? Apparently it i3 their belief that fish 

 were created solely for them, and belong to them alone, 

 and that they have a right to take in any manner, as they ' 

 will if they can, the last one to day, though there should 

 be no fish for any one forever after. 



Antoine discovered an old scow adrift in the marsh, 

 water-logged, with red-painted square prow and stern and 

 gunwales just above the water and over-lapped with clots 

 of old weeds. By the help of a long pole, with a hook on 

 the end of it, and by some wading, he succeeded in bald- 

 ing it ashore, and after bailing it and overturning it 

 found that with a little tinkering it would make a ser- 

 viceable craft for those unsealegged mariners Solon and 

 Joseph to go fishing in. A rusty fish book, a bit of line 

 with a hammered leaden sinker clasping its rotten strands, 

 and a soggy pine float of a seine rope found lying in the 

 bottom, the hole and step for a jack-staff and the 

 charred marks of fallen embers on the bow showed that 

 it was a boat accustomed to fishing in various ways, so : 

 saturated with experience that it seemed as if it might 

 impart something of it to those novices. 



"Bah gosh!" said Antoine as he sidled around his prize, 

 inspecting it with intense satisfaction and burning inr 

 cense of rank tobacco at bow and stern and sides, "dat 

 was jes' de sloop for Solem an' Zhozeff ! Dey ant worse 

 a damn sight for go in can-noe, bose of it. Dey draownd 

 evree boddee an' deysef dat go wid 'em in can-noe! 

 Wen Ah'll gat dis feex up wid some nail, fln' rag an' 

 tuppytime, dey can', teep it board over, dey can' speel 

 heewef off 'f he ant seet raght 'tween de middly of it. 

 Bah gosh! dat was pooty good lucky for fan dat boat3, 

 me! He ant b'long for someboddee, Ah'll bet you head, 

 an' 'f he was, he can' have it!" 



So filled with the importance of great achievements he 

 shouldered his spear and string of fish and trudged 

 proudly toward camp, but before reaching it he made 

 his fish more presentable by stripping off their torn 

 skins. 



As Sam with noiseless strokes paddled his canoe up 

 the great bow of the channel where it winds through the 

 lower end of the "wide ma'sh" and slowly trailed his 

 lure of pork rind and red flannel along the border, marked 

 by purple young lily-pads, unwittingly he crossed it, and 

 a grating succession of tugs at his hook reminded him 

 that he had been too contemplative in his recreation and | 

 had gone astray into the shallow and weedy false chan- 

 nel that runs straight lakeward from near the mouth of I 

 the South Slang. He hauled in his line, cleaned his hook ; 

 of its burden of weeds and retraced his way to the true 

 channel, which, having regained he paid more attention 

 to his course and was presently rewarded by a sturdy tug 

 that had in it the unmistakable viciousness of a pickerel's ■■ 

 bite. Yet as he hauled in the line, hand over hand, the 

 resistance was so sullen and sluggish that he was half 

 inclined to think he was drawing in only another raft of 

 weeds, till he saw the gaping jaws splitting the surface. 

 He soon had a lusty pickerel boated, who beginning his i 

 fight to© late to avail aught but annoyance of his captor, 

 hammered the cedar lining of the canoe and snapped his 

 jaws wickedly till he was knocked in the head with the 

 paddle. 



Moving forward again, Sam soon had a sharp bite that 

 promised something better than the ambitious little perch 

 that had attempted to gorge the alluring combination of 

 pork and wool, and came skittering to hand with all the 

 tight and conceit taken out of him. A little later the . 

 trolling bait was nibbled and then seized by a fish that ' 

 proved to be of nobler metal. Swimming deep, he fought i 

 every inch of histmwilling way to the canoe, which when I 

 brought to he attempted to run under, but Sam foiled 1 

 this device, got him alongside and skillfully lifted and 1 

 swung him aboard. He was of handsome form, and his I 

 small, firm set scales were golden green on his sides and ' 

 silver white on his belly. In every way he looked gamy 

 and good, a fish created to afford both sport and tooth- J 

 some food. Sam had never seen his like, but rightly ] 

 guessed him to be the "pike," whose excellence Uncle 

 Tyler has extolled. So trolling up stream to the then 

 well defined mouth of the South Slang, now so disguised i 

 with mask of weeds that old voyagers may hardly recog- ' 

 nize it, and a little way up the channel of this begrudg- ' 

 ing tributary, Sam got now and then a bite, and lost and i 

 saved some fish; another pike-perch and two or three j 

 pickerel. He had fish enough now, and paddled or 

 drifted anywhere, hearing and seeing many things of ', 

 interest to such a simple lover of nature. From far and j 

 near in the green expanse of marsh came strange out- . 

 cries, laughter, yells, and more subdued jargon con- ' 

 verse of unseen waterfowl, strange voices of birds 

 who were strangers to him. He recognized the voices of * 

 some old acquaintances when occasionally a bittern 

 boomed, and the blackbirds grated and gurgled out their 

 notes, and when some old choir leader of the bullfrogs \ 

 sang his short prelude and his brethren struck in and I 

 bellowed a grand chorus that made all the wooded shores 

 resound, Once an old wood-duck convoyed her newly- J 

 launched fleet of callow ducklings out of the rushes into j 

 the channel just before him, and then in sudden panic at 

 sight of his larger craft, took wing for cover of the woods, 

 flying low and followed almost as swiftly by her brood, , 

 simulating flight with ineffectual plumeless wings, but 

 actually making their way by running like water sprites 

 over the water after her. Now and then a dusky duck 

 would splash out of the weeds with a loud alarm of | 

 quacking, but her young always kept out of sight if they 

 had yet ventured so far as the channel's edge from their 

 birthplace. There was no signs of Sam's last spring's 

 dear enemies the muskrats but the floating crumbs of t 

 their midnight feast, chips of the waterlily roots, and 

 shreds of aquatic weeds. Their winter huts had all been 



