The Desperate Journey (10 page)

James and Davie made snowshoes for them. They bent willow twigs into a shape something like a tennis racket, and strengthened
the centre with narrow pieces of wood, then they laced strips of buffalo hide from side to side to hold the pieces in place. The shoes were fastened to the feet by thongs of animal skin, leaving the heels free to lift a little.

Kirsty tried a few steps on the flat ground round the camp.

“It’s like skating on snow. It’s fun! I like it!” she cried.

“Try going up that bank,” Davie told her. There was a hint of mischief in his voice. Kirsty took up his challenge.

“Watch out! Dinna dig your shoes in like that!” Davie shouted.

The warning came too late. The front of the shoe tripped Kirsty up and she fell head over heels in the snow “I – I canna get up!” she cried, the snowshoes waving madly in the air. “I canna get standing!”

Davie roared with laughter. “I knew that would happen!”

“Then it was awful mean of you to tell me to do it!” Kirsty said indignantly. “Give me a hand!”

“You’ve got to practise going up and down hill, you know. It will not be level ground here all the way to York Factory.” Davie helped her up.

“I would never have got on my feet again if you had not been here.”

“Oh, yes, you would! You just roll over and take your snowshoes off,” Davie told her.

Kate and Kirsty practised hard, and when the end of March came the whole family were judged fit to go with the advance party to York Factory. Robert Finlay came from Fort Churchill with Indian hunters and guides, and on April 6, 1814, the brave party set out. Donald Gunn the piper went ahead, his plaid flying in the wind, his bagpipes skirling the old Scottish songs to encourage the folk behind him. After him came Archibald McDonald, the leader, Mr Finlay and a guide. The men came after him, pulling their belongings and provisions on sledges, then the women, and at the rear came one or two of the stronger settlers to help any stragglers.

It was a hard terrible journey, for they had to keep going through all the hours of daylight. Every morning at three o’clock they were wakened by a gunshot. The first morning Kirsty was terrified.

“Whatever’s that? Are we being attacked?”

“No, Kirsty! That’s Mr Finlay firing to tell us it’s time to get up,” Davie laughed.

“But it’s black night!” Kirsty objected.

“It will be grey light by the time we’ve stripped the tents, rolled up the blankets, packed the sledges and had our breakfast,” her father told her. “We’ve to push on as hard as we can in the hours of daylight.”

Another gunshot warned them when it was time to start. No one was ever late. They were always ready to start at the mustering post. Never was there a more enduring band of people. For nine days they kept going, pushing one weary foot in front of the other, hauling on the sledges, uphill and downhill, along the ice of rivers to give smoother going wherever possible. Then one morning Kirsty sank down in the snow.

“I canna go on!”

“I wonder if I could carry you,” Davie said doubtfully.

“Then ye’ll have to carry me too, Davie, for I’m fair weary,” his mother said. Other women in the party declared they could go no further without a rest. Davie ran ahead to warn Archibald McDonald and Mr Finlay. They came hurrying back with him.

“We canna keep up the pace,” the women told him.

“I’ve got cramp in my feet,” one woman said. Others, too, had cramp and blistered heels. Mr Finlay knew all about the pain of snowshoe cramp.

“There is nothing to do but to call a halt,” he agreed. “We will make a camp for you here and leave an Indian guide and hunter with you. The rest of us must press on to York Factory to bring food and help for you. We will leave you provisions for ten days, but if you are fit to travel before that time, make haste to follow the trail.”

The very next day, however, some of the advance party returned.

“We’ve come on a store of birds the hunters from York Factory have left behind. There’s plenty of meat and to spare, so we have brought back supplies to you.”

With plenty of food to renew their strength and with rest for their blistered feet, the women soon recovered and were able to press on again. With shorter marches they reached York Factory only a few days behind the others. The ice on the rivers had not completely broken up, so they had to wait for a month at York Factory. This time, there was plenty of food, however, and the Company people treated them very kindly. There was music and singing and Highland dancing in the evenings, in which Davie and Kirsty played their part.

At last the ice on the Hayes River melted and it was time to say farewell to their friends at York Factory.

“Will you be coming with us, Mr Finlay?” Davie asked the trader.

“Aye, lad, I will. My post is at Brandon House, beyond your settlement at the Forks.”

“What are the Forks?” Kirsty asked.

“Not the kind you eat with, lassie!” the trader laughed “It is the meeting-place of several rivers that run into the Red River. There’s a fort there, Fort Douglas.”

It was a tremendous moment when the canoes were pushed out into the Hayes River and the settlers began the last long leg of the journey to their promised land. Donald Gunn was in the leading canoe and the skirl of his pipes lifted their hearts. To their surprise, the children found a band of Indians going with them.

“Are the Indians friendly to us?” Davie asked Mr Finlay.

“Most of the tribes are. They trade with us, you see. They hunt for us and we give them guns and ammunition and tobacco and knives and things like that in exchange for the furs, so we kind of depend on each other. The Indians are more our friends than the Norwesters are.”

“Who are the Norwesters?” Davie asked. “I heard traders speaking about them at Fort Churchill. They did not seem to like them much.”

“They are men of the North West Trading Company, rivals and sworn enemies of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They employ many half-breed French and Indian hunters whom we call the Bois Brulés, because of their brown colour.”

Kirsty shrank at first from the fierce-looking Indians with the paint on their face, their feather headdresses and the knives in their belts.

“They’ll not eat you, Kirsty! They’re very good to children. Here comes Peguis, the chief of the Saulteax Indians, He is a great friend of the white people. Hi, Peguis!” he cried.

“How, Finlay!” the chief said solemnly, holding up his hand in greeting.

“Here is a lad who wishes to be a hunter, Peguis.” Mr Finlay thrust Davie forward.

“How!” said the chief, extending a hand “Shake!”

Davie shook hands with the big chief.

“You fire gun?” Peguis asked.

“Yes, I can shoot,” Davie answer eagerly. “Mr Finlay taught me.”

“Good! And squaw-child?” He pointed to Kirsty. “She make moccasin?”

Kirsty shook her head. The chief shook his head too. “Bad! All squaw make moccasin.”

“She can make mitts,” Davie said holding up his fur mitten. “She made these.”

This time the chief nodded approval. Kirsty stared fascinated at his feather headdress. “You like it?” Peguis asked with pride.

“It’s beautiful!” Kirsty said in admiration.

Solemnly Peguis took off his headdress and detached a feather. He gave it to Kirsty, pointing to the cap she wore. Kirsty fished in her pocket and brought out a safety pin and fastened the feather in position.

“That gift is a token of friendship and a very great honour, Kirsty,” Mr Finlay told her. “Have you any small thing you can give
Peguis? The Indians like a gift in return.”

Kirsty looked troubled “I’ve only another safety pin.” She took it from her pocket. “It seems a foolish kind of gift.”

“Just the thing! Peguis will be pleased indeed with that.”

Kirsty shyly offered it to the big Indian.

“Good! Good!” Peguis was tremendously pleased with the safety pin and fastened it in his tunic like a brooch. He put out a hand to Kirsty. “Friend? Shake!”

Kirsty’s fear of him melted away. “Friend! Shake!” she said, putting her hand in the chief’s big one. The friendship with Peguis was to mean a great deal to all of them in the days that lay ahead.

On May 23 the Sutherlanders began their seven-hundred-mile trek by canoe and on foot. At first the banks of the Hayes River were low and the current slow, so canoeing was easy. Then the river banks rose steeply and the black water raced along through a narrow channel. Canoeing against the stream became hard work. The Indians set the pace and the Scots who wielded their paddles with them had hard work to keep up with their strokes. Peguis himself took Davie and Kirsty in hand and showed them how to turn the blade at the end of the stroke and to guide the direction of the canoe with it. Soon they reached waterfalls and rapids where the men had to lift the canoes out of the water, unpack them, and carry canoes and goods along the river bank till they reached smooth water again. This was called making a portage. An hour before sunset a camp was made on the river bank, tents erected and a meal cooked over campfires, usually a stew made of partridges or wild geese, hares or rabbits, and occasionally a deer. A deer meant plenty of meat for everyone.

Only the men carried guns. Peguis noticed Davie’s longing eyes on his gun.

“You not big enough yet,” he said to Davie, who shook his head regretfully. “But you big enough for bow and arrow,” Peguis remarked, touching the bow he carried across his back and the arrows in his belt.

“I’ve never shot with bow and arrow,” Davie replied.

“You try?” Peguis unslung his bow and offered it to the boy.

“Show me, please,” Davie said.

“You stand like this.” Peguis took up a stance. “Now fit the arrow. Look along arrow. You see what you want to hit? That tree? Now bring string back like this.” The bow twanged and the arrow was quivering in the tree trunk. After that, every evening Davie had a practice with the bow and arrow while Peguis looked on. Often when a portage was to be made Davie carried Peguis’s bow and arrows, to leave the Indian free to carry his canoe.

One day when a long and difficult portage had to be made, the children ran, as usual, along the bank beside the river. Sometimes Kirsty stopped to pick wild flowers that were springing up in the woods. This time a carpet of wild anemones tempted her from one glade to the next.

“Hi, Kirsty! Better not go too far into the woods! It will soon be sunset,” Davie called as he followed her. Just then he caught the movement of horns behind a thicket.

“Ssh! Keep still! There’s a deer there,” he told Kirsty. “I’m going after it! It would be a feather in my cap indeed if I could shoot a deer for meat for us.”

On stealthy feet they stalked the deer, twisting and turning among the forest glades. Somehow the animal always managed to keep a bush or trees between himself and his pursuers. At last he broke cover and bounded across an open space. Davie let fly with his arrow. It was a beautiful clean shot which hit the deer in the throat and brought it crashing to the ground.

“I’ve hit it!” Davie cried, rushing to examine the deer “It’s a clean kill!” he said with satisfaction. “There’ll be venison for dinner tomorrow, Kirsty.”

“It’s too big an animal for us to drag back to camp, Davie.”

“Aye, it is indeed! We’ll have to get the men to carry it away. We must fetch them quickly. It will soon be dark.”

Already the light was fading and a white mist was rolling up from the river.

“Which way do we go?” Kirsty asked.

Davie looked about him, perplexed. “I think we came that way. I remember that big pine tree.”

“But there’s another pine tree just like it over there,” Kirsty pointed out.

The sinking sun shone redly between the massed tree trunks. Soon it would dip below the thick undergrowth of bushes. The river mist rolled nearer. Davie pointed to the lowering sun. “That must be roughly north-west. If we follow a line west of that we should come to the river and I then we can follow the bank.”

They struck out in a westerly direction, skirting clumps of bushes and crashing through foot-high grass. Thorns plucked at them and nettles stung them.

“Surely we did not come this way?” Kirsty said.

Davie was beginning to have his doubts too. “Perhaps we had better go back to the other pine tree,” he said, when all at once they came on an open space. Beyond it rose a clump of rocks. “If we can get to those rocks and climb them, we might be able to see where we are.” Davie took two or three steps forward, then he sank up to his ankles in soft spongy ground.

“Stay where you are, Kirsty! Don’t move! It’s a bog!” he cried, trying to pull out his feet. As fast as he pulled out one from the squelchy mud, the other seemed to sink in deeper, almost to his knees.

“I’m sinking!” he cried.

“What shall I do? What shall I do?” Kirsty was frantic.

Davie was still carrying Peguis’s bow. “Catch hold of that and pull for all you’re worth!” Kirsty hung on to a bush by the edge of the morass, leaned forward and grasped the end of the bow and pulled with all her strength. Davie managed to lift one foot out and struggle forward a step, then pull the other foot after him. Again he sank in the mud, but not so deeply this time before he
lifted his other foot for the second step. Three more plunging steps and he was standing on the tussock of grass with Kirsty.