Rolf in the Woods

Rolf was lying by a fire when he came to, Quonab bending over him with a look of grave concern. When he opened his eyes, the Indian smiled; such a soft, sweet smile, with long, ivory rows in its background.

Then he brought hot tea, and Rolf revived so he could sit up and tell the story of the morning.

“He is an evil Manito,” and he looked toward the dead buck; “we must not eat him. You surely made medicine to bring Skookum.”

“Yes, I made medicine with my mouth,” was the answer, “I called, I yelled, when he came at me.”

“It is a long way from here to the cabin,” was Quonab’s reply. “I could not hear you; Skookum could not hear you; but Cos Cob, my father, told me that when you send out a cry for help, you send medicine, too, that goes farther than the cry. May be so; I do not know: my father was very wise.”

“Did you see Skookum come, Quonab?”

“No; he was with me hours after you left, but he was restless and whimpered. Then he left me and it was a long time before I heard him bark. It was the ’something-wrong’ bark. I went. He brought me here.”

“He must have followed my track all ’round the line.”

After an hour they set out for the cabin. The ravens “Ha-ha-ed” and “Ho-ho-ed” as they went. Quonab took the fateful horn that Rolf had chopped off, and hung it on a sapling with a piece of tobacco and a red yam streamer ’, to appease the evil spirit that surely was near. There it hung for years after, until the sapling grew to a tree that swallowed the horn, all but the tip, which rotted away.

Skookum took a final sniff at his fallen enemy, gave the body the customary expression of a dog’s contempt, then led the procession homeward.

Not that day, not the next, but on the first day of calm, red, sunset sky, went Quonab to his hill of worship; and when the little fire that he lit sent up its thread of smoke, like a plumb-line from the red cloud over him, he burnt a pinch of tobacco, and, with face and arms upraised in the red light, he sang a new song:

“The evil one set a trap for my son,
But the Manito saved him;
In the form of a Skookum he saved him.”

Chapter 34. The Birch-bark Vessels

Rolf was sore and stiff for a week afterward; so was Skookum. There were times when Quonab was cold, moody, and silent for days. Then some milder wind would blow in the region of his heart and the bleak ice surface melted into running rills of memory or kindly emanation.

Just before the buck adventure, there had been an unpleasant time of chill and aloofness. It arose over little. Since the frost had come, sealing the waters outside, Quonab would wash his hands in the vessel that was also the bread pan. Rolf had New England ideas of propriety in cooking matters, and finally he forgot the respect due to age and experience. That was one reason why he went out alone that day. Now, with time to think things over, the obvious safeguard would be to have a wash bowl; but where to get it? In those days, tins were scarce and ex-pensive. It was the custom to look in the woods for nearly all the necessaries of life; and, guided by ancient custom and experience, they seldom looked in vain. Rolf had seen, and indeed made, watering troughs, pig troughs, sap troughs, hen troughs, etc., all his life, and he now set to work with the axe and a block of basswood to hew out a trough for a wash bowl. With adequate tools he might have made a good one; but, working with an axe and a stiff arm, the result was a very heavy, crude affair. It would indeed hold water, but it was almost impossible to dip it into the water hole, so that a dipper was needed.

When Quonab saw the plan and the result, he said: “In my father’s lodge we had only birch bark. See; I shall make a bowl.” He took from the storehouse a big roll of birch bark, gathered in warm weather (it can scarcely be done in cold), for use in repairing the canoe. Selecting a good part he cut out a square, two feet each way, and put it in the big pot which was full of boiling water. At the same time he soaked with it a bundle of wattap, or long fibrous roots of the white spruce, also gathered before the frost came, with a view to canoe repairs in the spring.

While these were softening in the hot water, he cut a couple of long splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the ends of some sticks which had a knot at one end.

Now he took out the spruce roots, soft and pliant, and selecting a lot that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, scraped off the bark and roughness, until he had a bundle of perhaps ten feet of soft, even, white cords.

The bark was laid flat and cut as below.