Ungava Bob | Page 3

send her to St. Johns to the hospital. They'll fix her all right there with a little operation."
"An' how much will that cost?" asked Mrs. Gray.
"Oh," he replied, "not over fifty dollars--fifty dollars will cover it."
"An' if she don't go?"
"She'll never get well." Then, as a dismissal of the subject, the doctor, turning to Bob, asked: "Well, youngster, what's the outlook for fur next season?"
"We hopes there'll be some, sir."
"Get some silver foxes. Good silvers are worth five hundred dollars cash in St. Johns."
The mail boat steamed away with the doctor, and Bob and his mother, with Emily made as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, turned homeward.
It was hard to realize that Emily would never be well again, that she would never romp over the rocks with Bob in the summer or ride with him on the sledge when he took the dogs to haul wood in the winter. There would be no more merry laughter as she played about the cabin. This was before the days when the mission doctors with their ships and hospitals came to the Labrador to give back life to the sick and dying of the coast. Fifty dollars was more money than any man of the bay save Douglas Campbell had ever seen, and to expect to get such a sum was quite hopeless, for in those days the hunters were always in debt to the company, and all they ever received for their labours were the actual necessities of life, and not always these.
Emily was the only cheerful one now of the three. When she saw her mother crying, she took her hand and stroked it, and said: "Mother, dear, don't be cryin' now. 'Tis not so bad. If God wants that I get well He'll make me well. An' I wants to stay home with you an' see you an' father an' Bob, an' I'd be dreadful homesick to go off so far."
Emily and Bob had always been great chums and the blow to him seemed almost more than he could bear. His heart lay in his bosom like a stone. At first he could not think, but finally he found himself repeating what the doctor had said about silver foxes,--"five hundred dollars cash." This was more money than he could imagine, but he knew it was a great deal. The company gave sixty dollars in trade for the finest silver foxes. That was supposed a liberal price--but five hundred dollars in cash!
He looked longingly towards the blue hills that held their heads against the distant sky line. Behind those hills was a great wilderness rich in foxes and martens--but no man of the coast had ever dared to venture far within it. It was the land of the dreaded Nascaupees, the savage red men of the North, who it was said would torture to a horrible death any who came upon their domain.
The Mountaineer Indians who visited the bay regularly and camped in summer near the post, told many tales of the treachery of their northern neighbours, and warned the trappers that they had already blazed their trails as far inland as it was safe for them to go. Any hunter encroaching upon the Nascaupee territory, they insisted, would surely be slaughtered.
Bob had often heard this warning, and did not forget it now; but in spite of it he felt that circumstances demanded risks, and for Emily's sake he was willing to take them. If he could only get traps, he would make the venture, with his parents' consent, and blaze a new trail there, for it would be sure to yield a rich reward. But to get traps needed money or credit, and he had neither.
Then he remembered that Douglas Campbell had said one day that he would not go to the hills again if he could get a hunter to take the Big Hill trail to hunt on shares. That was an inspiration. He would ask Douglas to let him hunt it on the usual basis--two-thirds of the fur caught to belong to the hunter and one-third to the owner. With this thought Bob's spirits rose.
"'Twill be fine--'twill be a grand chance," said he to himself, "an Douglas lets me hunt un, an father lets me go."
He decided to speak to Douglas first, for if Douglas was agreeable to the plan his parents would give their consent more readily. Otherwise they might withhold it, for the trail was dangerously close to the forbidden grounds of the Nascaupees, and anyway it was a risky undertaking for a boy--one that many of the experienced trappers would shrink from.
The more Bob considered his plan with all its great possibilities, the more eager he became. He found himself calculating the number of pelts he would secure, and amongst them