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Updated: May 11, 2025
"Uh! young bull, lil fool moose," whispered Simmo, and breathed a soft, questioning Whooowuh? through the bark horn to bring him nearer. He came close to where we were hidden, then entered the woods and circled silently about our camp to get our wind. In the morning his tracks, within five feet of my rear tent pole, showed how little he cared for the dwelling of man.
So said Simmo to me one night in explaining why the loon's cry is so wild and sad. Clote Scarpe, by the way, is the legendary hero, the Hiawatha of the northern Indians. Long ago he lived on the Wollastook, and ruled the animals, which all lived peaceably together, understanding each other's language, and "nobody ever ate anybody," as Simmo says.
First we built a big fire to dry some boughs to sleep upon; then we built our houses, Simmo a bark commoosie, and I a little tent; and I was inside, getting dry clothes out of a rubber bag, when I heard a white-throated sparrow calling cheerily his Indian name, O hear, sweet Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet!
There is a curious Indian legend about Meeko the red squirrel the Mischief-Maker, as the Milicetes call him which is also an excellent commentary upon his character. Simmo told it to me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a woodpecker's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting.
At the other end of the portage I waited for Simmo to come round the bend, and took him back to see the work, denouncing the heartless carelessness of the trapper who had gone away in the spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace to the wild things. At the first glance he pronounced it an otter trap. Then the fear and wonder swept into his face, and the questions into mine.
"Long 'go, O long time 'go," so says Simmo the Indian, Upweekis the lynx came to Clote Scarpe one day with a complaint. "See," he said, "you are good to everybody but me. Pekquam the fisher is cunning and patient; he can catch what he will. Lhoks the panther is strong and tireless; nothing can get away from him, not even the great moose.
Simmo was begging me to shoot, shoot, telling me excitedly that "Ol' Dev'l," as he called him, would be more dangerous now than ever, if I let him get away; but I only drove the canoe in closer to the splashing, grunting uproar among the shadows under the bank. There was a terrific duel under way when I swung the canoe alongside a moment later.
The fishing was poor down in the big lake, and there were signs of civilization here and there, in the shape of settlers' cabins, which we did not like; so we had pushed up river, Simmo and I, thirty miles in the rain, to a favorite camping ground on a smaller lake, where we had the wilderness all to ourselves.
Then, one night as we lay alongside a great rock in deep shadow, watching the puzzled young bull as he ranged along the shore in the moonlight, Simmo grunted softly to call him nearer. At the sound a larger bull, that we had not suspected, leaped out of the bushes close beside us with a sudden terrifying plunge and splashed straight at the canoe. Only the quickest kind of work saved us.
Simmo had gone off at daylight, looking up beaver signs for his fall trapping. I had just returned from the morning fishing, and was getting breakfast, when I saw an otter come out into the lake from a cold brook over on the east shore.
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