Spring, when it finally came, brought little improvement. With the warm weather, a plague of mosquitoes and blackflies descended. Clouds of insects swarmed around any warm-bodied thing. The tormented HBC men smeared oil and tar on their exposed skin, but no amount of oil, smoke, or clothing could keep the bugs off. Even the wildlife, stung and bitten incessantly, were desperate. Some animals were unable to eat due to the constant harassment. Caribou and foxes alike swam into the river as they searched for even temporary relief. By midsummer the swarming insects had abated, and the apprentice was again occupied with company business, although trading was much reduced from previous years.
David opened his eyes to the bright cold light of late morning. Dew still glistened on the single blanket covering him. He sat up from the patch of ground and knotted roots that had tormented his sleep. Two packet Indians, the name given to Aboriginal People who carried dispatches between the HBC forts, lay near him, asleep. The part-empty gallon of grog that had kept the two men staggering around the campfire late into the drunken night lay beside them. These two were his guides. For the next ten days their job was to take David from Churchill to York Factory, 240 kilometres on foot along the shore of Hudson Bay.
David had been given the barest of provisions as he was told to follow his two Chipewyan guides. The factor’s instructions were clear on how his Grey Coat apprentice was to be relocated. While David’s provisions for the journey were meagre, Hearne’s men had supplied an overly generous amount of grog to the packets. The effect was predictable. The journey would take days longer than needed. But it was the end of the summer of 1785, and David was now fifteen. Nourished in the past months by an abundance of fresh game and clean air, David had fortunately developed a sturdy build. If he had been sent a year ago, when he first arrived from London, his chances of surviving such a journey would have been far from certain.
He waited hungrily for his guides to rouse themselves and make breakfast. He had no food of his own in his small pack. On hearing their charge get up, the heavy-eyed men stuffed the blankets and the bottle of grog into a pack. They half-heartedly motioned for David to follow, and started on a slow, steady walk. There was no breakfast and no lunch either.
The small party climbed over drift logs, waded through tall shore grasses, and skirted their way around marsh pools and rivulets as they struggled across the vast salt marshes of the coastline. Shorebirds and waterfowl took noisy flight, and in the distance, great white bears turned their heads to watch the intruders pass.
Just before sunset the guides set their packs down on a dry stretch of sand near a meandering stream and wandered off, leaving David with the gear. Within minutes the air erupted with the sound of gunfire and the guides returned, dangling three ducks and a goose. Working with a steady and quiet efficiency the packets piled dry driftwood, and a fire was soon sending its sparks into the darkening sky. The birds were plucked and cleaned. The ducks, roasting on sticks, dripped fat into the sputtering flames. The goose was set sizzling into the fire’s roasting embers. Now in full darkness, each man gnawed hungrily until the bones were picked clean. The rich oily meat satisfied Davids daylong hunger, and it was enough to fuel his body and warm him for the night as he drifted into a deep sleep on the sand.
In the following days the routine continued – long days of slogging along the wet mud near the high-water line. When the mud ended, the ground became uneven. Tufted hummocks and waist-deep channels slowed their march. Seaward, the flats extended to a horizon so distant the sea was hardly visible. Large boulders studded the flats like mute monuments marking the halfway point between low tide and high water. Patches of glistening drift ice still remained trapped among the boulders. Inland, a boggy moor, pockmarked with small ponds, stretched for kilometres before the stunted trees of the sparse woodlands began.
During these days they often passed twelve to fifteen bears a day.
“Don’t look at them,” cautioned the guides.
David was told to keep a steady pace, as if he didn’t notice the bears. When he did sneak a glance, he could see the great white beasts lift their heads to look at them. Often the bears were resting on the flats, with four or five lying in a circle formation with their heads facing the centre.
Avoiding these large predators was not always possible and eventually they came across a bear that was blocking the trail at a stream crossing. It had killed a beluga whale and dragged the carcass onto the bank. They waded in to cross, but the bear gave a threatening growl and showed its fearsome teeth. It would protect its kill from any threat. They moved upstream and crossed at a safer distance.
Several days out of York Factory the guides, now out of grog, decided to take a polar bear hide in for trade. It would fetch them three pints of brandy. David sat on a drift log and watched. Their target, a sow some distance out on the flats, seemed unconcerned by the approaching hunters. When she finally resolved to move away, it was too late. David saw puffs of smoke and heard shots as the bear staggered under the musket fire. The brave animal twisted and turned defiantly towards the shots as the lead musket balls entered her body. When she finally fell, the hunters fired a last shot into her head. That done, they unsheathed their knives and began the long skinning process.
By the time the hide was removed, the tide on the flats had risen to knee level and was soon threatening to engulf the hunters in the frigid water. They quickly severed the head and, dragging it by the ears, waded to shore, leaving the floating hide behind. They placed the head facing seaward on a grassy hummock, and rubbed its nose with red dye. Then the two packets chanted. All of this, they told David, was meant to please the spirit, Manito, so he would cause the hide to drift ashore and not be lost. But it didn’t work. I guess the Manito wants them sober, David reasoned.
Buffalo meat dried in the sun was made into pemmican, the staple food that fuelled the fur trade.
4
South Branch House
An hour before sunset, the rain finally stopped. Daylight was slipping fast from the river as the sodden and weary brigade beached their canoes. The men found a flat place on the undulating granite that stretched from the water’s edge to the dark impenetrable wall of trees above the river. Here on the flat rock the canoes were turned belly-up, laid atop cargo bales, and arranged into a shelter for the night. Someone lit a fire using pitch-wood that had been carefully packed away and kept dry for the purpose. Soon a plume of billowing grey smoke arose like a twisted pillar high above the dank and mouldering forest.
Before long, Mitchel Oman, one of the brigade leaders, handed David a bowl of warm oatmeal and bacon. They both sat in the flickering light of the open fire, and David gratefully leaned his back against a bale and cradled the bowl in his lap. He was hungry, but fatigue overwhelmed him and he fell asleep before he could lift the first spoonful to his mouth. Oman, knowing the boy would need all his food to continue their journey, rescued David’s bowl and tucked it under a bale for the morning.
A month ago, in late July, when York Factory’s chief factor, Humphrey Marten, had told David he was assigned to the fur brigade going inland, the boy had been unable to stifle a joyful “hurrah!” The news was welcome after a monotonous winter and uneventful spring. David’s routine after coming to York Factory was the same as it had been at Churchill, long and tedious hours of clerical work interrupted only by firewood duties. In fact, York Factory and Churchill weren’t much different on any account. During the war with France,