The Indians had erected a huge lean-to of birch bark, from the ribs of
which hung clothes and the little bags of food. The cooking-fire was
made in front of it between two giant birch trees. At evening the light
and heat reflected strongly beneath the shelter, leaving the forest in
impenetrable darkness. To the very edge of mystery crowded the strange
woods noises, the eerie influences of the night, like wolves afraid of
the blaze. We felt them hovering, vague, huge, dreadful, just outside
the circle of safety our fire had traced about us. The cheerful flames
were dancing familiars who cherished for us the home feeling in the
middle of a wilderness.
Two days we lingered, then took the back track. A little after noon we
arrived at the camp, empty save for Johnnie Challan. Towards dark the
fishermen straggled in. Time had been paid them in familiar coinage.
They had demanded only accustomed toll of the days, but we had returned
laden with strange and glittering memories.
XIX.
APOLOGIA.
The time at last arrived for departure.
Deep laden were the canoes; heavy laden were we. The Indians shot away
down the current. We followed for the last time the dim blazed trail,
forded for the last time the shallows of the river. At the Burned Rock
Pool we caught our lunch fish from the ranks of leviathans. Then the
trodden way of the Fur Trail, worn into a groove so deep and a surface
so smooth that vegetation has left it as bare as ever, though the Post
has been abandoned these many years.
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