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An expert mascalonge fisherman Davis by name happened to take board at the farm house where I was staying, and he had a notion that he could "beat some of them big fellows;" and he did it; with three large cod hooks, a bit of fine, strong chain, twelve yards of cod-line, an eighteen-foot tamarack pole and a twelve inch sucker for bait.
An open piece of swamp land, fringed by tamarack and slim-bodied spruce, promised fair for his scheme. Back and forth, back and forth over its cushion of deep moss he passed, seeking for a treacherous place a place wherein Shag would sink to the belly; where the sand-mud would grasp his legs like soft chains and hold him to his death, but not engulf the body that must remain for A'tim's eating.
And now the farmers having learned that birds are their friends wholesale slaughter has been abolished. We seldom saw deer, though their tracks were common. The Yankee explained that they traveled and fed mostly at night, and hid in tamarack swamps and brushy places in the daytime, and how the Indians knew all about them and could find them whenever they were hungry.
They come to it about the level of the heather, but they have no such affinity for dampness as the tamarack pines. Scarcely any bird-note breaks the stillness of the timber-line, but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be guessed by the gnawed ruddy cones of the pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks come down to the water.
Then she thrust one dear little slipper through the moss into black water. Three times the stiff straight rods of the tamarack whipped her smartly across the face. When finally she emerged on the other side of the hundred feet of that miserable cedar-swamp, she had ceased to hold up the chiffon skirt, and was most vexed.
Tamarack seemed willing to feed that idea, and admitted apart to Lescott that, while he obeyed the dictates of the truce, he found them galling, and was straining at his leash. "I don't take nothin' offen nobody," he sullenly confided. "The Hollmans gives me my half the road."
Near at hand a tiny rivulet was tinkling, from which the kettle was filled. Sammy and Yves cut down some tamarack sticks while the doctor undid one of the packs and brought out a frying-pan and some tin cups and plates. In a very few minutes the kettle was boiling and bacon frying with a pleasant sputtering. There was bread and butter, and a jar of marmalade.
Talking almost incessantly to distract the other's attention, A'tim led the way straight for his muskeg trap. "There is some lovely blue-joint grass on the other side of this beautiful little plain," he said as they came to the tamarack border of the swamp. "Is it safe crossing?" asked Shag. "Quite safe," answered the Dog-Wolf; "there is not a mud spot to be seen you will scarce wet a shin.
George made a big fire of tamarack, and we lay before it on a couch of spruce boughs and ate tough boiled venison and drank the broth; and, feeling we had made some progress, we were happy, despite the fact that we were in the midst of a trackless wilderness with our way to Michikamau and the Indians as uncertain as ever. We made an early start; for every hour had become precious.
I knew that she needed all my courtesy, but it was hard to speak to her just then. The men wandered for perhaps five minutes, then ranged themselves before me. They bore a curious collection of grasses, mutilated tamarack boughs, and crushed brakes. They eyed my sword hilt, and looked ready for flight. Yet I was master, and they remembered it.
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