The Shagganappi Part 16

"Good? I should think so!" a.s.serted Mr. MacIntyre. "Why, boy, do you know you would have been lame all your life if it hadn't been for Five Feathers here? Best Indian in all the Hudson's Bay country!"

"Yes, dearie; the best Indian in all the Hudson's Bay country," echoed Mrs. MacIntyre, with something like a tear in her voice.

"Bet your boots! Best Indian in all the Hudson's Bay country!"

re-echoed Billy, who had arrived, driving the other buckboard. But Five Feathers only sat silent. Then, looking directly at Billy, he said, "You ride day and night, too. You nearly kill that horse?"

"Yes, I nearly did," admitted Billy.

"Good brother you. You my brother, too," said the Indian, holding out his hand; and Billy fairly wrung that slender, brown hand--that hand, small and kind as a woman's.

This all happened long ago, and last year Jerry MacIntyre graduated from McGill University in Montreal with full honors in medicine. He had three or four splendid offers to begin his medical career, but he refused them all, smilingly, genially, and to-day he is back there, devoting his life and skill to the tribe of Five Feathers, "best Indian in all the Hudson's Bay country."

Sons of Savages

Life-Training of the Redskin Boy-child

The redskin boy-child who looks out from his little cradle-board on a world of forest through whose trails his baby feet are already being fitted to follow is not many hours old before careful hands wrap him about with gay-beaded bands that are strapped to the carven and colored back-board that will cause him to stand erect and upright when he is a grown warrior. His small feet are bound against a foot support so that they are exactly straight; that is to start his walk in life aright.

He is but an atom in the most renowned of the savage races known to history, a people that, according to the white man's standard, is uncivilized, uneducated, illiterate, and barbarous. Yet the upbringing of every Red Indian male child begins at his birth, and ends only when he has acquired the learning considered essential for the successful man to possess, and which has been predetermined through many ages by many wise ancestors.

His education is twofold, and always is imparted in "pairs" of subjects--that is, while he is being instructed in the requisites of fighting, hunting, food getting, and his national sports, he takes with each "subject" a very rigid training in etiquette, for it would be as great a disgrace for him to fail in manners of good breeding as to fail to take the war-path when he reaches the age of seventeen.

FIRST, COURAGE

The education of an Iroquois boy is begun before he can even speak. The first thing he is taught is courage--the primitive courage that must absolutely despise fear--and at the same time he is thoroughly grounded in the first immutable law of Indian etiquette, which is that under no conceivable conditions must one ever stare, as the Redskin races hold that staring marks the lowest level of ill-breeding.

SECOND, RELIGIOUS TRAINING

His second subject is religious training. While he is yet a baby in arms he is carried "pick-a-back" in his mother's blanket to the ancient dances and festivals, where he sees for the first time, and in his infant way partic.i.p.ates in, the rites and rituals of the pagan faith, learning to revere the "Great Spirit," and to antic.i.p.ate the happy hunting grounds that await him after death.

At the end of a long line of picturesque braves and warriors who circle gracefully in the wors.h.i.+pping dance, his mother carries him, her smooth, soft-footed, twisting step lulling him to sleep, for his tiny, copper-colored person, swinging to every curve of the dance, soon becomes an unconscious bit of babyhood. But the instant he learns to walk, he learns, too, the religious dance-steps, Then he rises to the dignity of being allowed to slip his hand in that of his father and take his first important steps in the company of men.

Accompanying his religious training is the all-important etiquette of accepting food without comment. No Indian talks of food, or discusses it while taking it. He must neither commend nor condemn it, and a child who remarks upon the meals set before him, however simple the remark may be, instantly feels his disgrace in the sharpest reproof from his parents.

It is one of the unforgivable crimes.

TRICKS OF FOOD-GETTING

His third subject is to master the tricks of food-getting. His father, or more often his grandfather, takes him in hand at an early age, and minutely trains him in all the art and artifice of the great life-fight for food both for himself and for those who may in later years be dependent on him. He is drilled a.s.siduously in hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, trapping, in game calls, in wood and water lore; he learns to paddle with stealth, to step in silence, to conceal himself from the scent and sight of bird and beast, to be swift as a deer, keen as an eagle, alert as a fox.

He is admonished under no conditions, save in that of extreme hunger or in self-defence, to kill mating game, or, in fact, to kill at all save for food or to obtain furs for couch purposes. Wanton slaying of wild things is unknown among the uncivilized Red Indians. When they want occupation in sport or renown, they take the warpath against their fellow-kind, where killing will flaunt another eagle-feather in their crest, not simply another pair of antlers to decorate their tepee.

With this indispensable lesson in the essentials of living always comes the scarcely less momentous one of the utter unimportance of youth. He is untiringly disciplined in the veneration of age, whether it be in man or woman. He must listen with rapt attention to the opinions and advice of the older men. He mast keep an absolute silence while they speak, must ever watch for opportunities to pay them deference.

AGE BEFORE LINEAGE

If he happen, fortunately, to be the son of a chief of ancient lineage, the fact that he is of blood royal will not excuse him entering a door before some aged "commoner." Age has more honor than all his patrician line of descent can give him. Those lowly born but richly endowed with years must walk before him; he is not permitted to remain seated if some old employee is standing even at work; his privilege of birth is as nothing compared with the honor of age, even in his father's hireling.

The fourth thing he must master is the thorough knowledge of medicinal roots and herbs--antidotes for snake-bite and poison--also the various charms and the elementary "science" of the medicine man, though the occupation of the latter must be inherited, and made in itself a life study. With this branch of drilling also is inculcated the precept of etiquette never to speak of or act slightingly of another's opinion, and never to say the word "No," which he is taught to regard as a rude refusal. He may convey it by manner or action, but speak it--never.

And during the years he is absorbing this education he is unceasingly instructed in every branch of warfare, of canoe-making, of fas.h.i.+oning arrows, paddles and snow-shoes. He studies the sign language, the history and legends of his nation; he familiarizes himself with the "archives" of wampum belts, learning to read them and to value the great treaties they sealed. He excels in the national sports of "lacrosse,"

"bowl and beans," and "snow snake," and when, finally, he goes forth to face his forest world he is equipped to obtain his own living with wisdom and skill, and starts life a brave, capable, well-educated gentleman, though some yet call him an uncivilized savage.

Jack o' Lantern

I

Everybody along the river knew old "Andy" Lavergne; for years he had been "the lamplighter," if such an office could exist in the rough backwoods settlement that bordered that treacherous stream in the timber country of northern Ontario. He had been a great, husky man in his time, who could swing an axe with the best of the lumbermen, but an accident in a log jam had twisted his st.u.r.dy legs and hips for life, and laid him off active service, and now he must cease to accompany the great gangs of choppers in the lumber camps, and do his best to earn a few honest dollars about the settlement and the sawmill. So the big-hearted mill hands paid him good money for doing many odd jobs, the most important of which was to keep a lantern lighted every dark night, both summer and winter, to warn them of the danger spot in the Wildcat river, that raced in its treacherous course between the mill and their shanty homes on the opposite sh.o.r.e.

This danger spot was a perfect snarl of jagged rocks, just below the surface of the black waters that eddied about in tiny whirlpools, deadly to any canoe in summer, and still more deadly in winter, for the ice never formed here as in the rest of the river. Only a thin, deceptive coating ever bridged that death hole, and the man who mistook it for solid ice would never live to cross that river again. So, on the high bank above this death trap old Andy lighted his lantern, year in and year out. Sometimes he was accompanied by his old grey horse, who followed him about like a dog. Sometimes little Jacky Moran, his young neighbor, went to help him on very stormy or windy nights. Sometimes both Jacky and the horse would go, and as a reward for his a.s.sistance old Andy would always lift the boy to the grey's back and let him ride home. Then one wet spring old Andy got rheumatism in his poor, twisted legs, and the first night he was unable to leave his shanty Jacky came whistling in at nightfall and offered to take the lantern up stream alone. Andy consented gratefully, and, with the horse at his heels, Jacky set out for the bank above the dangerous spot.

"I believe, old Grey, it's the lantern you love as much as you love Andy," laughed the boy as he struck a match and sheltered its flame from the wind. "Here you are following me and the lantern just as if you belonged to us, or as if Andy were here. How's that?" But the old grey only stood watching the lamp-lighting. His long, pathetic face was very expressive, but, try as he would, he could not speak and tell the boy that he had learned to love him as well as Andy. So he only put his soft nose down to Jacky's shoulder, and in his own silent way coaxed the boy to mount and ride home, which Jacky promptly did, bursting into the old Frenchman's shanty with the news that the grey had followed the lantern.

"Don't you believe it, Jacky," chuckled Andy. "The grey loves the lantern, I know, but it's you he's followed. You see that horse knows a lot, and he knows that his old master is never likely to light that lantern again, and he wants you for his master now."

"Well, he may have me," smiled the boy. "We'll just light up together after this." Which they certainly did, for that was the beginning of the end. Andy could never hobble much further than his own door, and Jacky took upon his young shoulders the duties of both lamp-lighting and feeding and caring for his now constant companion, the grey.

"I see your Jacky is helping old Andy since he's been laid up," said Alick Duncan, the big foreman, some weeks later, as he paddled across the river with the boy's father.

"Oh, he likes Andy," replied Mr. Moran, "and he likes the old horse, and he likes the work, too. He feels important every time he lights that lantern to steer the mill hands off danger.

"Speaking of the horse," went on the big foreman, "they're short one up at the lumber camp. The boss sent down yesterday that we had to get him an extra horse by hook or crook. They've started hauling logs. It would be a great thing if Andy could sell that nag at a good figure. It would help him out. He's hard up for cash, I bet. I'll speak to him to-night about it."

At supper Tom Moran mentioned what a fine thing it was for Andy that there was an urgent demand for a horse at the lumber camp; that he could get twice the money for old Grey that the animal was worth. Mrs. Moran agreed that it would be a great help to old Andy, but Jacky's small face went white, he ceased his boyish chatter, and his little throat refused to swallow a mouthful of food.

As soon as he could, he escaped, slipped outside, and made for Andy's shanty as fast as his young legs could carry him. With small ceremony he flung open the door, to find the old Frenchman sitting in his barrel chair, a single tallow candle on the shelf above his head, his ever present pipe between his lips, and his lame leg stuck up on a bench before the tumbledown stove, where a good spruce fire crackled and burned. For the first time the extreme poverty of the place struck Jacky's senses. He realized instantly, but for the first time, how much in need of money the poor old cripple must be, but, nevertheless, his voice shook as he exclaimed, "Oh, Andy, you won't sell old Grey? Oh, you won't, will you?"

"Why not, youngster?" asked a deep voice from the gloom beyond the stove, and Jacky saw with a start that Alick Duncan was already there with his offer to buy.

"Because," began the boy, "because--well, because he helps us, Andy and me; he helps us light up at night." It was a lame excuse, and poor Jacky knew it.

"It appears to me Andy ain't doing much lighting up these days," went on the foreman. "And you know, kid, Andy's old and sick, and money don't come easy to him. If he gets one square meal of pork and beans a day, he's getting more than I think he does. The horse is no use to him now.

He can't even pay for its keep when next winter comes. He can't use it, anyhow, and Andy needs the money."

But the boy had now recovered his balance.

"But timber hauling would kill old Grey. He wouldn't last any time at it; he's too old," he argued.

"That's so, sunny," said the foreman; "he sure can't last long at that work, but don't you see Andy will have his money, even if the horse does peg out?"

"But--but Grey will die," said the boy tremulously.