The effect was that the gold only gleamed the brighter, and we jubilantly assured ourselves that we had “found.” At once, everyone started planning out the camp, the sluice boxes, and all the necessary paraphernalia connected with placer mining. More pay dirt was washed out, and still more colours found — and wealth and affluence were assuredly ours for the taking! All that remained was to gather up the gold that was lying at our feet, and trek back to civilisation.
About this time the fellow with the gun, gameless as usual, arrived back in camp. Of course the good news was told, and, quite as a matter of form, merely to confirm what we were convinced was already a fact, we suggested the muriatic test. He got the acid out of his pack, and over we went to the gold pan; gave it a little swing, and on the glittering contents poured the muriatic. Result, complete, absolute and utter black out. It was mica. Down went all our hopes and with them our spirits.
However, these disappointments soon wear off, and one is ready again to strike the trail with that buoyant confidence that forever lies in the prospector’s heart. Good pay dirt, he is confident is only a little further on.
To be well bitten with the gold bug is a glorious sensation — always on the verge of the great discovery. The sun is never up early enough, and sets too soon. There would be nothing to beat it, if one only had plenty to eat. Even the scenery alone up in these mountains, almost compensates for the hardships. Everything is wonderful and seems so amazingly near. Even the snow caps of the Rockies, towering thousands of feet above look as if one could leave the sunshine and be tobogganing within an hour, so rarefied and wonderfully clear is the atmosphere. Look up a draw (an opening between mountains). “Oh yes,” you’ll say, “We’ll fetch that tomorrow night,” but maybe it will be three days before you reach it; a spot which seemed at most some ten or fifteen miles away.
A grand country, but a hungry one. At that time, even the Indians themselves were starving, and burning out the forests for game. These mountain Indians are the only tribe left that are not treaty bound; though, nevertheless, they have a wholesome respect for that magnificent body of men, the Canadian Mounted.
Naturally one keeps one’s eyes peeled, and one’s rifle close to hand night and day, but there was never an occasion, or even the remotest approach to a necessity to use it. They are a friendly lot — wonderful, both at hunting and on the trail. Their powers of endurance are almost beyond belief, on foot and on horseback. I’ve known a trained Indian runner, to go for three days and three nights without let or pause, and without food, other than what he was carrying with him. I’ll admit he was making his way with a very urgent message; but for endurance they are mighty hard to beat. Then keep up a glide or lope, doing a steady four miles an hour the whole day through. The pack horses are trained to walk and never break into a trot or canter, but the distances they can cover, with this little short step, would be utterly beyond the power of the horses commonly found in civilisation. Of course, this applies to the pack horse, and should not be confused with the ordinary cayuse, which is the boon companion of other Indian tribes such as Blackfeet, Crows, and Sioux, who are not exactly the chaps to have with one on a pack train. On the other hand they can perform marvels of horsemanship also.
One evening in North Edmonton, there was an argument between a half breed Blackfoot and some white men as to whether a certain tribe of Blackfeet had or had not been wiped out by the Crows, on the banks of the River Saskatchewan near by. There is a place close to the banks of the Saskatchewan known as the Hudson Bay Flats, where an old Hudson Bay Fort used to stand. A flat piece of land, extending over perhaps, fifty or sixty acres. It was claimed, that in a fight between the two tribes, the latter drove the former over the edge of the cliff, into the river and drowned the lot of them. This half-breed Blackfoot maintained that his tribe were neither drowned nor annihilated, but that they went down the cliff on their horses and swam the river. Almost everybody smiled at his claim, for although the cliff consisted of earth, yet it was so utterly sheer, that it seemed impossible for a man to get down, with any degree of safety, let alone a man and a horse. Furthermore, taking into consideration that the Blackfeet rode at it, full tilt, with the Crows in pursuit, one could imagine nothing but sheer annihilation.
To me the smile certainly seemed justified.
Then this half-breed got shirty and said he would ride at that cliff himself for a bottle of whisky, and he was not long in finding a man who would put up the bottle, if he would do it. The next day we all turned up on the flats, and this chap mounted his cayuse, bare back, a good quarter of a mile away from the edge of the cliff, and without pause or hesitation rode straight at it, over the edge, and down the odd hundred feet and into the river. All I can say is, he simply went over and down into the river, and swam back. How he managed it, or why both horse and man didn’t go head over heels, is simply beyond me, but the fact remains that he never left his horse’s back, although he laid full length along it, with his head resting on its rump. I have certainly never seen, and could never have imagined such an amazing feat — but I’ll say he won that whisky.
These fellows are now all Treaty Indians, but whether with either the Crows or the Sioux, there is now very little to fear. The Canadian Mounted Police have brought it home to these tribes (likewise renegade whites) that there is going to be law and order, and they know, for a stonewall certainty, that any break away from this, and somebody will pay the penalty.
The same applies to the white man. There’s none of the wild and woolly west business in Canada. It a man drew a gun he’d probably get his stern kicked, good and hard.
In the past it was the custom for one of the Canadian Mounted to be detailed off to track down and arrest any man who had committed a crime, whether small or great, and the powers of endurance exhibited by the tracker were never less than those of the man he was tracking down. Day after day, and week after week, he would follow his man, and eventually track him down. Of course, if the crime had been such as murder, the man had to be brought back alive, or with very clear evidence of his death. There was a recognised procedure in the latter instance which gives evidence enough when dealing with Indians, the details of which there is no need to go into too closely. In any case there are lots of really good writers who have written up the Canadian Mounted — though the romance has been somewhat dimmed since they mounted them on motor-bikes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NO GAME . . . NO GOLD
We had hit the trail out of Edmonton with little or no meat, and what we had was mainly bacon. We lived in the full expectation of finding lashings of game through the country. The sum total of all we saw, was a moose, a bear, and a porcupine. The moose my chum got, the bear we didn’t get, the porky I got. How Bill got the moose was proof again that his guardian angel was forever alert. The moose is an ugly customer to wound, and has some very nasty habits of kneading a man to death, when sufficiently annoyed. A 44-56 bullet in the stomach, certainly provides an inducement for all the trouble one may be looking for. Bill was a rotten shot at the best of times. I saw this big bull moose — evidently disturbed by some of our would-be hunters, come flashing through the trees, and at the same instant Bill also saw it, and raised his rifle. I thought, “Now we’re for it,” but it was too late to shout at him. He let drive. In my heart of hearts, I half hoped he had missed it altogether, but, to my utter amazement, the beast dropped in his tracks — stone dead — shot through the heart. And I have seen Bill miss a target as big as a haystack!