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Updated: May 15, 2025
"Yes. If you'll follow me." He went to his pack, put it swiftly in order, hoisted it, resumed the tump-line, and looked around at Evelyn for his rifle. But she had already slung it across her own shoulders and she pointed at his wounded hand and its blood-black bandage and motioned him forward.
Where the turbid yellow flood began to rise and 'collect' a boatman's phrase the men would scramble ashore, and, by means of a long tump-line tied not to the prow, which would send her sidling to the middle of the first thwart, would tow their craft slowly up-stream.
Lines formed in his face, and in those lines were the travail of the North, the bite of the frost, all that he had achieved and suffered the long, unending weeks of trail, the bleak tundra shore of Point Barrow, the smashing ice-jam of the Yukon, the battles with animals and men, the lean-dragged days of famine, the long months of stinging hell among the mosquitoes of the Koyokuk, the toil of pick and shovel, the scars and mars of pack-strap and tump-line, the straight meat diet with the dogs, and all the long procession of twenty full years of toil and sweat and endeavor.
Here, too, as in the valley beneath, was another great depot of provision piles. Near where Phillips had thrown himself down there was one man whose bearing was in marked contrast to that of the others. He sat astride a bulging canvas bag in a leather harness, and in spite of the fact that the mark of a tump-line showed beneath his cap he betrayed no signs of fatigue.
All the women carried babies in little hammocks slung over the shoulder. One little girl, not more than six years old, was carrying on her back a child of two, in a hammock supported from her head by a tump-line. It will be remembered that forest Indians nearly always use tump-lines so as to allow their hands free play.
Each woman was busily spinning with a hand spindle, but carried her baby and its gear and blankets in a hammock or sling attached to a tump-line that went over her head. These sling carry-alls were neatly woven of soft wool and decorated with attractive patterns. Both women and boys were barefooted.
From them he chose the bowmen, calling each by name, and motioning them to rank beside him; then, in turn, each bowman selected a man for his crew; until, for each of the eight canoes, eight men were chosen. Then work began. Some went off with tump-line in hand to the warehouse, ascended the massive stairs, and entered the fur loft.
We took turns at carryin' the packet, but sometimes I noticed Old-pot-head's son was havin' a good deal of trouble with it. It didn't seem to bother him much when he was climbin' up; for he just swung it on his back with the loop o' the tump-line over his head, an' so he had his hands free.
"Took us a whole day to run their stuff over t' th' camp, 'n' it only a mile across th' lake from th' landin'; 'n' when night come we was 's near dead beat 's if we'd been portagin' a man's load apiece on a tump-line 'n' that's a tub o' pork 'n' a sack 'o flour weighin' two hundred and seventy five pounds over every portage 'tween Pointe a Gatineau 'n' th' Baskatong.
Tom said not one word, but diligently wound his sash round his prisoner's head, shoulders, and arms. He then rose, took the red-headed man's own "tump-line," a leather strap about twelve feet long, which tapered from the middle to both ends, tied this firmly round the angry live mummy, and left him lying on his face.
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