The Big Otter by R. M. Ballantyne

Author:R. M. Ballantyne [Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-16T19:10:39+00:00

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Chapter Seventeen.

Describes a Tremendous Visitation—A Feast—A Surprise—And an Attempt at Murder.

I must beg the reader now to leap with me into the middle of winter.

It is New Year’s Day. That festive season of the year is not less marked and honoured in the Great Nor’-west than it is in civilised lands, though there are comparatively few to honour it, and their resources are somewhat meagre. These facts do not however, diminish the hearty zeal of the few—perchance they tend rather to increase it.

Be that as it may, I now convey the reader to an ice-bound forest. Deep snow has buried the frozen ground. Masses of snow weigh down the branches of the leafless trees; and evergreens, which are not leafless, are literally overwhelmed, almost obliterated, by the universal covering. But the scene is by no means dismal. A blue sky overhead and a bright sun and calm frosty air render it pre-eminently cheerful. The ground is undulating, and among these undulations you may see two men and a couple of sledges slowly making their way along.

The sledge in rear is the ordinary provision-sled used by winter travellers in that land; it is hauled by an Indian. The one in front is styled a cariole. It resembles a slipper-bath in form, is covered with yellow parchment, gaily painted, and drawn by four fine wolf-like dogs. The rider in that cariole is so whelmed in furs as to be absolutely invisible. The man who beats the track has a straight, stalwart frame, and from what of his countenance is left exposed by his fur cap and whiskers, one may judge that he is a white man.

Slowly and silently they plod along through the deep snow—the sleigh-bells on the dog’s harness tinkling pleasantly. Ere long they come out upon a lake, where, the snow being beaten pretty hard, they proceed rapidly—the dogs trotting, and the leader, having changed to the rear, holding on to the cariole-line to restrain them.

Towards the afternoon the travellers draw towards the end of the lake, and then a spirit of mischief seems to enter into the wolf-like dogs, for, on turning round a point which reveals a wide reach of hard snow stretching away towards a distant group of buildings more than half buried in drift, they make a sudden bound, overturn the stalwart white man, jerk the tail-line from his grasp, and career away joyously over the ice, causing their bells to send up an exceeding merry and melodious peal.

From certain incomprehensible growls that escape the stalwart white man as he picks himself up, it might be conjectured that he had taken to the Chipewyan tongue; perhaps a Scotsman might have been led by them to recall the regions that lie north of the Grampians.

Lumley and I were sitting in the hall of Fort Wichikagan, awaiting the advent of dinner, when the sound of the sleigh-bells just referred to broke upon our ears. We bounded from our seats as if galvanised, seized our caps and rushed out.

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