Then, like small boys who have thrown only too
accurately at the delivery wagon, they scuttled back home again.
Since that time they have lived in deadly fear of retribution. The
Iroquois have long since disappeared from the face of the earth, but
even to-day the Georgian Bay Indians are subject to periodical spasms
of terror. Some wild-eyed and imaginative youth sees at sunset a canoe
far down the horizon. Immediately the villages are abandoned in haste,
and the entire community moves up to the head-waters of streams, there
to lurk until convinced that all danger is past. It does no good to
tell these benighted savages that they are safe from vengeance, at
least in this world. The dreaded name of Iroquois is potent, even
across the centuries.
XVII.
THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH.
We settled down peacefully on the River, and the weather, after so much
enmity, was kind to us. Likewise did the flies disappear from the woods
utterly.
Each morning we arose as the Red Gods willed; generally early, when the
sun was just gilding the peaks to the westward; but not too early,
before the white veil had left the River. Billy, with woodsman's
contempt for economy, hewed great logs and burned them nobly in the
cooking of trout, oatmeal, pancakes, and the like. We had constructed
ourselves tables and benches between green trees, and there we ate. And
great was the eating beyond the official capacity of the human stomach.
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