Waters Like the Sky by Nikki Rajala & Nikki Rajala

Author:Nikki Rajala & Nikki Rajala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
Published: 2014-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The next days passed in a blur. There were leave-takings as the men bound for far-flung posts started up the nearly nine-mile carry that gave Grand Portage its name, and the “pork-eaters” started back to Montreal with the great canoes, this time laden with furs.

André was busy with the clerks in the stockade, recording Antoine’s affairs. As before, there were surprises: brown sugar? and loaf sugar? Needles, too—he had never thought of needles as items to be paid for with fur. Trousers, candles, flints, fancy garters, hats! Blankets, guns, gunpowder, musket balls, knives! These made sense, but buttons? Feathers? Calico cloth? Even looking glasses! Fishhooks—of course the natives had fishhooks of their own making.

And why was tobacco such a large item, when Indians were the ones who had first grown tobacco? Vermilion, pipes, stockings, raisins, beads, shoe buckles. I wonder, he thought, how do the Natives use these things?

The neat lists in his best writing told all the goods Antoine would be taking to his own fur post, in bales that were now made up for this, the last leg of the trip. The North canoe that would take them to their final home was loaded.

Antoine again took the bow of the canot du nord, Emile the stern, and he and Pretty Mouse settled themselves in the middle as they started. The canoe seemed small after the huge Montreal freighter. It felt even smaller as they skimmed beneath the rocky cliffs on one side and, on the other, the huge expanse of lake with no sight of the far shore. The water slapped and whipped against the side of their craft, but its steadiness soon quieted André’s uneasiness.

The “mother of lakes” was in a kind mood, so they sped like otters. They sang much less often, their paddles keeping the rhythm almost without thought. André’s mind wandered over the last days. Where, he wondered, had Basile Roche gone? He hoped never to see him again. Was he, too, searching for Denis? And how should he, himself, now go about continuing his own search? He had asked at the stockade—carefully, not showing too much anxiety lest people become too curious, or it somehow reach the ears of his enemy. But no one at Grand Portage remembered seeing such a person in recent years.

Antoine, too, had kept his promise, making quiet inquiries. He had questioned men from distant places: Lac Du Bois—what the English called the Lake of the Woods— Athabaska, the Mackenzie, even places like York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. Men shook heads in regret, with a reluctant “no.” Well, they had known the search would not be easy.

That, after all, was why he needed to spend a year in the wilds. Surely, in that time, somewhere, from someone, they would hear word of Denis.

He roused from his musings to find they had reached Fond du Lac, the end of the lake. Their journey again changed, as they entered the St. Louis River. Portages, too, were different—one man, not four, carried the canoe, while the others handled the goods.

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