Part 3

Yoni had not been so really contented for many years. He sat upon a strange little seat, so soft and warm, and looking around he found to his great astonishment that each scale formed a little window through which he could look out. Mr. Fish was passing through the deepest part of the river, and Yoni could see so many strange water things, fish of many colors and shapes, turtles, eels, frogs, rocks with very beautiful clinging vines in which fish of many kinds were hiding. Yoni was in a maze of wonderment that was broken by the movement of Mr. Fish, who was pointing for the bank. Yoni looked out and recognized the place as the one at which he had camped many years before, and just across the river where the old elm was still standing, was the spot where he had first met Noimi, who afterward became his wife. This made him sad, but he felt better when he realized he had found a new friend and a very agreeable companion. Though he had not felt bold enough to ask, he thought Mr. Fish was much older than he himself was.

The fish swam to a great tree that had fallen into the water, due to the underwash of a swiftly flowing river and the grinding ice that cuts the banks in the spring.

“Get off here,” said Mr. Fish; and Yoni raised the fin and stepped out on the tree, and then climbed the steep bank. Mr. Fish, seeing how infirm the old man was, moved a little, then backing up, raised his strong tail and gave Yoni a gentle push.

“That is a great help,” said Yoni. Mr. Fish made no reply. He was thinking how unfortunate it was to be old, and of the “Tree of Youth” that grew where the waters of the Slave River flowed into the great lake of the same name.

Mr. Fish waited patiently for the old man to return from his wanderings, and when he did, his eyes were red from weeping.

“Cheer up,” said Mr. Fish, “we are going on a long journey. To go by canoe would take five or six days. If the water is not low, I can do it before sundown.”

“Good for you,” said Yoni, having great confidence in Mr. Fish as a means of transport.

Mr. Fish smiled. “I’ll give the old fellow the greatest surprise of his life,” said he to himself as he swished his tail to the right and to the left with the power of a great propeller.

“My! how fast we are going,” said Yoni aloud; and he told Mr. Fish so, but he was too busy dodging rocks and sunken timber to have answered even had he heard Yoni.

[Illustration: “My! how fast we are going!”]

On Mr. Fish swam, cutting the corners of the river, winding his way between sunken ledges, leaping great rapids in which many a trapper’s scow had been crushed, as the little crosses on the graves on the banks can testify--struggling over shallow water, getting fast on sand-bars covered with wreckage from the great forests, held by boulders in narrow ways and pushing through with his muscular tail and wiggles--then down into deep water where things looked black and spooky to Yoni. For hours, fast and slow, the great physical being worked like a mighty engine.

“What will become of me?” thought Yoni, “if anything happens to Mr. Fish?”

As the sun was falling and the shadows were dying in the water, the craft of flesh pulled to the bank, and Yoni, a bit cramped from being so long in one position, got on the back of Mr. Fish and looked around to survey his surroundings.

“We’ll remain here to-night,” said the fish, as he wiped the perspiration from his kind face.

“You must be very tired,” observed Yoni.

“Oh, no!” answered Mr. Fish. “It’s a bit strenuous when one has a cargo aboard, to get over dry land when one is accustomed to a water route. Going back you’d better take your time--that is if I don’t go back with you.”

Yoni looked worried.

“Why have you brought me so far from home?” he asked.

“Don’t ask silly questions,” replied Mr. Fish. “On the bank yonder you’ll find some leaves and fagots. I’d help you if I could, but it makes me very short of wind to be out of water very long, so you will have to excuse me. Collect an armful, build a fire under the tree with the leaves all aflame with the ‘Fire of Youth’--that one” pointing with his fin. “There are berries enough on the hill for your supper. I’ll sleep in the black hole over there. It’s near the shore.”

Yoni went about gathering leaves and small sticks which he placed near the tree, as there were many spots showing little piles of ashes where fires had been built before. While he was standing under the strange tree, a leaf would now and again fall--it seemed to him, all aflame. One touched his forehead and fell to the ground. He stooped to pick it up, but just as his fingers touched it, it disappeared.

“What can be the meaning of this?” said Yoni to himself, and then he remembered Mr. Fish having said something about the “Fire of Youth.” A strange desire to sleep came over him, and all night he slept, dreaming strange dreams of fairies and places and people.

The sunshine chased away a gray dawn and shone straight in Yoni’s face. He turned to get away from the glare, and in turning he felt so strange that he partly awakened. Becoming wide-awake, he gripped the grass and leaves with a vigor long forgotten. He looked at his hands. They again had the appearance of youth. His limbs were hard and muscular. Looking down, he discovered he was wearing a beautifully embroidered suit of moose-skin made for him by Noimi many years before. Looking up, he saw that the tree under which he had fallen asleep was now bare of all foliage, and not a leaf was to be seen on the ground. Everything seemed strange to him.

“Mr. Fish! Mr. Fish!” called Yoni in a voice so strong it almost frightened him. “Where are you, Mr. Fish?”

[Illustration: “Mr. Fish! Mr. Fish!” called Yoni]

Mr. Fish was so tired on account of his long journey, that Yoni had to call many times. At last the vibrations of Yoni’s voice touched the ear of the fish, and he awoke, moved his tail, blew the water, and swam slowly to the bank. Of course, he knew what had happened when he saw the young man on the shore. He smiled so hard that three scales loosened by the struggle of the day before fell off, and went sailing and sinking down-stream.

“Good morning! ... and good-by! Long life and always happy days to you. Seek Noimi in the lodge just over the hill. I’m off for the sea.”

Yoni called frantically, but Mr. Fish had gone so fast and far, he could not hear. He would not have come back if he had, having given to the old man “Youth,” some say, the most beautiful and precious of all things.

FIRE BOY AND WATER BOY

As long as the oldest Indians could remember, the Fire and Water Boys had lived along the shores of the great lake called Athabasca. They never seemed to grow any older; sometimes they were very good and very helpful--sometimes, very annoying and often destructive. When the Indians grew tired of their pranks and tried to punish them, many strange things would happen.

Far off the shore of Chipewyan lies an island, beautifully wooded and shaped very like a lady’s hat. On this island, alone, for nearly fifty years had lived Ani, who seldom spoke to any one, nor did she ever go to the mainland to enter into the festivities of the other Indians living in the vicinity of the settlement comprising two old Hudson’s Bay forts, a store of the company that traded with the Indians, a log church and a few straggling huts that fringed the woodlands on one side and the lake on the other. In winter the Indians trapped and hunted for the many valuable fur animals that roamed the desolate parts of this great northern wilderness, and in the spring and summer fished for their winter supply for their dogs that helped them drag the game from the woods, often many miles from the settlement.

The women made white and colored moccasins of the most beautiful designs, adorned with porcupine quills dyed in many colors, some of the strands being almost as fine as a hair. These were braided and twisted with silk cords also of many colors, making a charming adornment for the feet, even of a queen. Because the Indian women were not industrious, there were but few made, and these were all bought by the trappers, so people of the Southland never saw them.

Far beyond the island on which Ani had made her home so long, was another smaller one where Ani’s lover, a very handsome Beaver Indian, had lived more than forty years before. He had gone on a long trail for moose and caribou and had never returned; and every morning at dawn, and in the evening at sunset Ani would take a wild flower that her lover had given her, and which she had kept in a squirrel-skin bag, and go to the edge of the lake when the sun made a path of gold away across to the far shore, and call in her feeble voice to the Great Spirit to send back her brown-eyed boy of so many dead years of long ago. But he never came, and her heart grew more sad as the years passed. There were so many reasons why she wanted him--her tipi needed repairing, it was hard for her to cut wood, the path to the lake was stony and sometimes she would bruise her feet and groan; but there was no one to hear or to help her. She would not leave the island, fearing if she did her lover would return and would not be able to find her.

One morning she heard the paddle of a canoe, and thinking perhaps he had come, she threw down her pan in which she was frying a portion of rabbit that she had snared two days before, and slowly crawled to the opening of her tipi and looked out; but it was not he--only two boys who were pointing their canoe directly to the path leading to her camp.

“Hello, Granny Ani!” called the boy plying the bow paddle, but Ani was so disappointed she made only a grunt as a reply.

“Hello!” they called again.

Ani made no answer, standing with a worried look.

“Get some fagots,” called the boy in the bow. “We have brought a goose and caribou tongues, and we will share them with you.”

[Illustration: “We have brought a goose and caribou tongues, and we will share them with you”]

Ani seemed pleased and went for an armful of dry branches--she had not eaten goose for so long, and caribou tongue she had almost forgotten. She was so slow the boys went to help her, and gathered for her a fine lot of branches, dry and just the right size to make a quick and hot fire. The goose was prepared and strung on a birch branch, as also were the tongues, just close enough to the fagots to roast without burning.

“I have no tinder,” said Ani.

“Never mind,” said the boy with the bright, flashing eyes, and with the tip of his finger he touched the branches, at which they burst into flame, much to the astonishment of Ani.

“Spirits,” thought she, “I’ll not go too near them.”

“Get a gourd,” demanded the other boy in a tone Ani did not like--but she obeyed, and brought a fine big one hanging on long strings of caribou sinew. She handed it to the boy, and as soon as he had taken it, it filled to overflowing with clear, cool water.

“You are children of the Evil Spirit,” said Ani, looking first at one and then at the other, and then at the fire.

This remark made the boys laugh.

The goose and tongues were by this time nicely browned, and the edge of the fire had spread to a pile of dry leaves. This was put out by a gesture of the hand of the boy who had so mysteriously filled the gourd. But this Ani had not noticed as she was now anxious to know if the boys would make a fair division of the food, as she was growing very hungry.

[Illustration: Looking up to her he waved his hand and smiled]

The first boy reached out and tore from the goose a leg dripping with rich juice while the other lad took from the stick a dainty tongue, and began eating. Ani waited for them to invite her to join in the feast, but they did not. This so offended her that she seized the nearest boy (who made no resistance) by the hair of the head, and led him to the water, pushing him into a deep hole where he sank to the bottom. Looking up to her he waved his hand, and smiled, making strange faces at the astonished old woman who was too startled to speak. Then going back to her tipi, she collected a large armful of leaves and piled bundle after bundle of branches until they mounted as high as she could reach. Then she went to the other boy with her pipe, pretending she wanted to smoke, and asked him to light it, which he did. Then she put the fire from her pipe on the ground beneath the great pile and blew until a flame burst out, the fire leaping high. Quickly seizing the boy, she dragged him to the pile and pushed him into the burning mass. He also did not resist, but sat without discomfort in the midst of the flames until the fire had burned itself out. Then he shook the ashes from his clothing and walked back to his friend who had returned from the river, and they finished their meal together.

[Illustration: He sat without discomfort in the midst of the flames]

“Where is the old lady?” asked the boy whom Ani had tried to burn, and they went in search, finding her sitting behind an old hut that had been deserted before she came to live on the island. She was very much worried by their coming, and told them so; but they only smiled, and told her she was to have all the goose and the caribou tongues that remained, and that they, who were the incarnation of fire and water, the elements she needed most, had been sent to her by the spirit of her lover to hunt, to make her fire, cook her food, and to water the island so berries and herbs would grow--and to do all that fire and water could do for her in her old age.

The old Indians who knew Ani said the boys served her in every way as long as she lived, and that she was never so happy as when they were with her; and some said her young lover came back, and they journeyed together to the far-off land that the white man called heaven.

OLD SPOT AND THE CUPIDS

Arachnida, or “Spotted Spider,” the name given him by his neighbor Yuti, who lived at the edge of the trail not far from the bear’s den, had grown so large, and his legs so long that his snare was no longer strong enough to bear his weight. Once in a while he would go back to it, make a few extra turns, spin stronger strands, and try it out; but it was no use, down it came every time he tried. After repairing it, he would say to himself, “Never again.” Then he would go back to the dark cave in the ledge that for many years had been the home of his friend, Bruin, who had wandered away, and had never returned. Nor did any one know of his whereabouts.

Old Spot, though having really no claims by right of possession to Bruin’s premises, felt he was not trespassing. He had always been on the most intimate terms with him, and had served him in many ways, recalling how often he had nursed him when Black Bear had feasted, not wisely, but too well in the garden of Yuti, who had cultivated a well-ordered patch bordering the woodland near his lodge.

Yuti suspected Bruin--in fact had seen him leaving the patch where the corn grew several nights before he had gone away; but being on friendly terms with Spot, who was very devoted to Bruin, he never made any complaint, feeling it was better to live in accord with his neighbors rather than to plant the seed of hostility. “Bruin was hungry, so let him eat. The sun and rain will cause more corn to grow.” This is what Yuti would say.

Old Spot had always lived alone, weaving his snare in the most likely place for his prey, just at the beginning of the trail as it entered the wood, and in good view of his apartment in the ledge. His spinners and spinnerets had the reputation of making the strongest silk thread in that vicinity.

Of course, Spot was proud of this, but he was getting on in years--some of his twelve eyes were losing focus, and he sometimes felt, though not always, with Bruin away and Yuti not as sociable as he would have liked him to be, that life did not have much attraction for him. His mandibles did not serve him with the same dexterity that they had possessed when he was younger, when he tried to seize his prey and squeeze it: this depressed him. There were also symptoms of rheumatism in two or three of his many legs, causing troublesome and disagreeable pains; and having many legs and long ones, the chances were that his suffering would be much more serious than if they had been fewer and shorter.

Knowing that these symptoms without doubt meant the approach of age, he became very blue at times, and for days would not stir from his quarters to see if his snare held any food for him.

For two days and as many nights he slept with his long slender legs wrapped about him. The fall was coming on and he would often wake himself by chilly shudders, the nights being very, very cold. On the morning of the third day he was wakened by a strange noise. The sound came from the direction of his snare, but knowing that the young fox and the lynx made noises like real babies he paid little heed. Changing his position because three of his hind legs had gotten tangled, he settled again for another sleep of a day or two. Again the sounds like those of a crying child disturbed him, and again he said to himself:

“It’s only a young thing that has strayed from its mother.”

Before he had finished thinking, the cries became louder and more appealing; so Spot, being of a kindly nature, though age had hardened him as it does so many, decided to investigate.

He had been in one position so long that his legs, or a half-dozen of them, refused to work as he would like to have had them; but being very hungry from his long fast, he drew himself together, and with a big effort and a bigger grunt, stood up, stretched himself, and walked to the entrance to his den.

Just as he poked his face out Yuti, who was gathering fagots to make a fire to roast a fat rabbit he had snared the night before, called out:

“You’ve got a fine catch this morning.”

[Illustration: “You’ve got a fine catch this morning”]

Spot did not answer. Turning in the direction of his snare that was stretched from either side of the trail, attached to as fine a pair of white birches as ever plumed a wood, he beheld two creatures with great, tapering wings, beating and struggling for freedom, making at the same time, wee, shrill cries that caused Spot to hurry his pace.

His first thought was for the safety of his snare.

“Here’s a pretty mess,” thought he. “How shall I ever repair it?”

All the time Spot was hobbling toward the strange, struggling things, their cries increased. They were real heart-piercing cries. The more they shrieked the more they struggled, and alas, poor Spot’s snare was being torn to ribbons.

The cries were so terrifying that Spot was just a bit frightened, but having been always very courageous, he rather resented the feeling of timidity, and, quickening his steps, he approached the destroyers and the destroyed.

“Bears and beetles!” ejaculated Spot, “What have I caught this time?”

Fast in the lashings of his great web a brace of Cupids were beating their splendid wings vigorously against his snare. As he came near they cried more lustily.

“Where does so much sound come from?” thought Spot, looking at their rosy, plump little bodies.

Seeing Spot approaching them, they cried all the louder; but observing his venerable and kindly face, they suddenly became quiet, waiting to see what was to be their fate.

“Well, my children,” said Spot in a gentle tone, “you’ve made a pretty kettle of fish of my only means of securing food. Where did you come from, and what are your names?”

“Get us out of this tangle and we’ll tell you all about it,” said the Cupids in chorus.

Old Spot gathered the end of a long strand of spider silk that was floating with the wind, and began to wind.

“Hurry!” said one of the little prisoners. Spot hurried as fast as he could, but the faster he worked his spinner the oftener he broke the thread.

“Be patient,” said Spot, “The more haste the less speed.”

“Yes, but I’m cramped,” said the Cupid who was bound tighter than his mate, as he struggled to free himself. Part of the great web fastened to the birches began to sag from the weight of the chubby little victims.

“Have a heart,” commanded Spot in a sterner voice than before. “There will be nothing left of my trap if you don’t keep quiet.”

“But you are so slow,” observed the one with four dimples on his hand.

At last the sticky threads were tightly bound on Spot’s spinners, and the poor tired little chubs, being free, stood up, slowly moving their wings that had been so ruffled and mussed by old Spot’s food-catcher.

“You asked our names and where we came from,” straightening out their wings and adjusting a few shaggy feathers.

“Yes,” said Spot, scratching his head with his hindermost leg in meditation.

“Cupid is our name. We have no home.”

“No home?” echoed Spot. “What is your other name?”

“We have no other name, it’s just Cupid.”

“That’s news to me,” said Spot thoughtfully, adding:

“Aye, aye! You’re the little chaps that make a lot of trouble in the world. I’ve heard of you very often.”

“Yes, and a lot of happiness,” they replied timidly, in a voice not bigger than a wren’s.

Again the little fellows flapped their splendid wings, that were gradually getting back to their original form.

“Not quite so much breeze; I’m very sensitive to drafts,” pled Spot, eyeing the pair with a feeling of pity.

“No father or mother? Poor kiddies,” thought he.