| PETER
OTTERTAIL was a full-blooded Mohawk Indian, who, notwithstanding
his almost eighty years, still had the fine, thin features,
the upright shoulders, and the keen, bright eyes of
the ancient, warlike tribe to which he belonged. He
was a great favorite with Mr. Duncan, the earnest Scotch
minister, who had made a personal companion of Peter
all through the years he had been a missionary on the
Indian Reserve; and as for the two Duncan boys, they
had literally been brought up in the hollow of the old
Indian’s hands. How those boys had ever acquired
the familiar names of “Tom” and “Jerry”
no one seemed to remember; they really had been christened
Alexander and Stuart by their own father in his own
church. Then Peter Ottertail had, after the manner of
all Indians, given them nicknames, and they became known
throughout the entire copper-colored congregation as
“The Pony” and “The Partridge.”
Peter had named Alexander, alias “Tom,”
“The Pony,” because of his sturdy, muscular
back and firm, strong little mouth, that occasionally
looked as if it could take the bit right in its teeth
and bolt; and Stuart, alias “Jerry,”
was named “The Partridge,” because of his
truly marvellous habit of disappearing when you tried
to drum him up to go errands or carry wood. Fortunately
for the boys themselves, they were made of the good
stuff that did not mind nicknames and jests; and when,
at the ages of ten and twelve, they were packed off
to school in a distant city, they were the very first
to tell their schoolfellows Peter’s pet names,
which, however, never “took root” [Page
230] on the school playground, “Tom”
and “Jerry” being far more to the taste
of young Canadian football and lacrosse players.
During
the school terms, old Peter Ottertail would come to
the parsonage every Sunday after church, would dine
seriously with Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, and, when saying
good-bye, would always shake his head solemnly, and
say, “I’ll come no more until my Pony and
Partridge come home.” But the following Sunday
saw him back again, and the first day of vacation was
not hailed with greater delight by the boys than by
their old friend Peter. The nearest railway station
was eleven miles distant, but rain or shine, blood-heat
or zero, Peter always hitched up his own team and set
out hours too early to meet the train. On arriving at
the station, he would tie up his horses and sit smoking
his black stone pipe for a long time. The distant whistle
of the incoming train alone aroused him from rapt thought,
and presently his dark old face was beaming on his boys,
who always surprised him by having grown greatly during
the term, and who made as much fuss and hilarious welcome
over him as if Mr. Duncan himself had come to drive
them home. So this delightful comradeship went on, year
in, year out. The boys spent every day of their holidays
in the woods or on the river with Peter. He taught them
a thousand things few white boys have the privilege
of learning. They could hollow canoes, shape paddles,
make arrows and “feather” them, season bows,
distinguish poisonous plants from harmless ones, foretell
the wind and the weather, the various moons, and the
habits of game and fish, and they knew every tale and
superstition on the reserve.
One
day, just before the Christmas holidays, old Peter appeared
at the parsonage. Mrs. Duncan herself opened the door,
smiling, sweet and a little younger-looking than when
he had seen her the previous Sunday.
“Come
in! Come in, Peter!” she cried, brightly. “We’re
all in a turmoil, but happy as kittens! Tom [Page
231] and Jerry are coming to-morrow, and bringing
two friends with them, nice boys from Jamaica, who are
too far away from their home to return for Christmas.
They’ve never seen snow in their lives until this
winter, and we must all try to give the little fellows
a good time, Peter. I’m busy already with extra
cooking. Boys must eat, mustn’t they?”
“Yes, Mis’ Duncan,”
answered the old man, slowly, “and these snow-seers
will eat double in the north country. Yes, I’ll
go and fetch them with my big lumber sleigh, and take
plenty of buffalo robes and wolf skins to keep these
children of the sun warm.”
Mrs. Duncan smiled. She could
already hear Peter nicknaming the little chaps from
Jamaica “The Snow-Seer” and “The Sun
Child,” in his own beautifully childlike and appropriate
fashion. And she was quite right. Peter had hardly shaken
hands and tucked the four boys snugly into his big bob-sleigh,
before the names slipped off his tongue with the ease
of one who had used them for a lifetime.
Tom and Jerry had fully prepared
their Southern friends for everything. They had talked
for hours with great pride of their father’s devotion
to his Indian congregation, of their mother’s
love for the mission, of the Indians’ responsive
affection for them, of the wonderful progress the Mohawks
had made, of their beautiful church, with its city-like
appointments, its stained windows, its full-toned organ
and choir of all Indian voices, until the Jamaica boys
began to feel they were not to see any “wild”
Indians at all. Peter, however, reassured them somewhat,
for, although he was not clad in buckskin and feathers,
he wore exquisitely beaded moccasins, a scarlet sash
about his waist, a small owl feather sticking in his
hat band, and his ears were pierced, displaying huge
earrings of hammered silver. Yes, they decided that
Peter Ottertail was unmistakably a Mohawk Indian.
Tom and Jerry had never entertained
any boys before, [Page 232] and, after
the first day at home, they began to fear things would
be dull for their friends at Christmas, who always spent
such gay city holidays. They need not have worried,
however, for the boys found too much novelty even in
this forest home ever to feel the lack of city life.
They, of course, fell in love with old Peter at once,
and not a day passed but all four of them could be seen
driving, snowshoeing, tobogganing, skating, with the
old Mohawk looming not very far distant; and, as Christmas
approached, with all its church interests, they swung
into the festivities of the remote mission with all
the zest that boys in their early teens possess.
The young Southerners had never
visited at a minister’s house before, and at first
they were very sedate, laughed not too loudly, and carried
themselves with the dignity of little old gentlemen;
but within a day they learned that, because a man was
a great, good, noble missionary, it did not necessarily
mean that he must look serious and never enjoy any fun
with the boys. Mr. Duncan always made it a rule that
no house in existence must be more attractive to Tom
and Jerry than their own home, and that it depended
very largely upon their father as to whether they longed
to stay in their own home and bring their young friends
in, too, or whether they longed to go outside their
father’s house to meet their playfellows. Needless
to say that, with such a father, Tom and Jerry had a
pretty good time at home, and it was only what they
expected when, the day before Christmas, as all four
boys were racketing around the kitchen and nearly convulsing
Mrs. Duncan with laughter by their antics, while she
tried almost vainly to finish cooking the last savory
dainties for the morrow, that Mr. Duncan should suddenly
appear in the doorway, and say:
“Now, boys, to-night will
be Christmas Eve. You know in the heart of the forest
we can’t get much in the way of entertainment,
and I don’t want our young [Page 233]
Jamaica friends to feel homesick for their beautiful,
Southern country to-night of all nights. I’ve
racked my brains to think of some amusement after supper
this Christmas Eve, but I seem to have failed. Can’t
you, Tom and Jerry, help me out?”
There was a brief silence; then,
of course, the sweet busy mother spoke:
“Peter Ottertail and I
have schemed together for that. I have invited him to
supper, and we are to have a roaring fire built here
in the kitchen, and Peter is to tell the four boys some
Indian stories, while you and I, father, finish the
Christmas tree in the parlor. What do you think of my
idea?”
She need not have asked, for
such a clamor of delight went up that her own words
were drowned.
“Excellent!” cried
Mr. Duncan, when finally he could be heard. “Excellent,
for we don’t want you young mischiefs in the parlor
at all, seeing your presents the day before; and the
only one I know who could keep you out is Peter. Splendid
idea of yours, Mary. Boys, it’s these mothers
who have the real Christmas things in their hearts.”
“Yes, and in the oven,
too!” laughed Mrs. Duncan, extracting therefrom
a big pan of deliciously light cake, whose spicy fragrance
assailed the boys’ nostrils temptingly. “This,”
she continued, “is to be eaten here in the kitchen
to-night. It goes with Peter’s stories.”
“Jolly!” said someone,
and the four youthful voices immediately swung into:
“For
mother’s a jolly good fellow,
For mother’s a jolly good fellow,
For mother’s a jolly good fellow,
Which nobody can deny!”
And, joining
in the last line, there boomed a fifth voice which sounded
suspiciously like Mr. Duncan’s. [Page
234]
*
* *
* *
*
A
crackling wood fire was roaring up the chimney from
the large stove in the kitchen. On the spotlessly white
pine floor were spread soft, gray lynx skins, one or
two raccoon skins with their fluffy, ringed tails, and
a couple of red fox pelts. On these sprawled the four
boys in various and intricate attitudes. In the corner
back of the stove lounged Peter Ottertail, on a single
brown buffalo robe. With a bit of sharp-edged flint
he scraped tiny curls of shavings from a half-formed
ashwood arrow, which, from time to time, he lifted even
with one eye to look along its glimmering length toward
the light, to see that it was straight and flawless,
his soft, even voice warbling out the strangely beautiful
Indian tradition of
“THE
SHADOW TRAIL.”
“You
young palefaces that are within my heart know well what
a path through the forest is, or what a track across
the valley means, but the Indian calls these footways
‘a trail,’ and some trails are hard to follow.
They hide themselves in the wilderness, bury themselves
in the swamps and swales, and sometimes a man or a buffalo
must beat his own trail where never footstep has fallen
before. The Shadow Trail is not of these, and at some
time every man must walk it. I was a very small, very
young brave when I first heard of it. My grandsire used
to tell me, just as I tell you now, of the wonder country
through which it led, of the wise and knowing animals
that had their lairs and dens beside it, of the royal
birds that had their nests and eyries above it, of the
white stars that hovered along its windings, of the
small, whispering creatures of the night that made music
with their cobweb wings. These things all talk with
a man as he takes the Shadow Trail; and the oftener
they speak and sing to him, the higher climbs the trail;
and, if he listens long enough to their voices, he will
find the trail has [Page 235] lifted
its curving way aloft until it creeps along the summit
of the mountains, not at their base. It is here that
the stars come close, and the singing is hushed in the
great, white silence of the heights; but only he who
listens to the wise animals and the eagles and the gauzy-winged
insects will ever climb so high. This is the Shadow
Trail the wild geese take on their April flight to the
north, as, honking through the rain-warm nights, they
interweave their wings with the calling wind. They leave
no footprints to show whither they go, for the northing
bird is wise.
“This is the Shadow Trail
that countless buffaloes thundered through when, hunted
by the white men, they journeyed into the great unknown.
Wise men who are nearing the height of the trail say
they can hear the booming of myriad hoofs, and see the
tossing of unnumbered horns as the herds of bison yet
travel far ahead. This is the Shadow Trail the Northern
Lights dance upon, shimmering and pale and silvery.
We Indians call them the ‘Dead Men’s Fingers,’
though sometimes they pour out in great splashes of
cold blue, of poisonous-looking purple, of burning crimson
and orange. We speak of them then as the ‘Sky
Flowers of the North,’ that scatter their deathless
masses along the lifting way.
“And this is the Shadow
Trail the red man has followed these many, many moons.
His moccasined feet have climbed the heights silently,
slowly, firmly. He knows it will lead beyond the canyons,
beyond the crests; that behind the mountains it merges
into a vast valley of untold beauty. We Indians call
it ‘the Happy Hunting Grounds.’
“Only one person ever
returns from the ‘Shadow Trail,’ and he
comes once a year on this night—Christmas Eve.
The stars wake and sing as he passes, the Sky Flowers
of the North surround him on his journey from the summits
to this valley where we live. He is a little Child,
who was born hundreds of years ago in a manger [Page
236] beneath the Eastern stars, in the Land
of Morning. Many times I have met him on the Shadow
Trail, for I have travelled towards its heights for
nearly eighty years. Perhaps I shall see the little
Child again to-night, for Indian eyes can see a long
way. Indian ears catch oftenest the singing of the stars,
and the Indian heart both sees and hears.”
Peter Ottertail’s voice
ceased. The boys lay very silent, the soft fur rugs
half hiding their rapt faces. No one spoke, for each
was watching the “Shadow Trail.” Then the
deep-toned clock struck one—two—three—four—evenly
on to twelve—midnight!
The door opened from the inner
hall.
“Merry Christmas, dears!
Merry Christmas!” came the hearty, loving voices
of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, as they bustled into the kitchen,
the boys and Peter all scrambling to their feet to meet
them.
“Merry Christmas! And
off to bed with the whole lot of you, or we’ll
have a nice pack of sleepy-heads in the morning! Peter,
you’re surely not going home to-night!”
as the old Indian began to get into his overcoat and
scarlet sash.
“Yes,” he said,
“I’ll go.” And, after gay good wishes
and handshakes, the old man went out into the night,
perhaps to watch for the Christmas Child coming down
the Shadow Trail! [Page 237]
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