Because of the necessity of obtaining food, it was not likely that the trip to the southwest end of Minong could be made continuously, but Nangotook and the boys agreed to start in that direction on the following morning and go as far as they could. They paddled up the bay they had named Pickerel Cove, but the fish were not biting. The head of the cove was separated from the open lake by a narrow bit of land, so they went ashore and carried the canoe across. Jean remarked that there was one advantage in having no food or equipment. Portaging was made easy.

When they reached the lake they found the water rough, but they managed to go on along the shore, and across the mouth of a small bay. Rounding a point beyond, they came to the entrance of another larger bay. After one swift glance about him, Nangotook gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“Know this place,” he said over his shoulder. “Place where copper is. We get some for arrow-*heads.”

The boys were ready to agree to the proposal, especially when the Indian explained that beyond the bay lay a stretch of steep, continuous cliffs, affording no shelter and perilous to skirt in the increasing north wind. Entering the bay was difficult enough, for treacherous reefs and rocks surrounded and extended into its mouth. Nangotook picked the channel wisely, however, and piloted the canoe safely through the dangerous entrance. He had said that copper stones could be picked up from the beaches, so a landing was made on a stretch of gravel protected by the point they had just rounded.

The beach was disappointing. Bits and grains of pure copper were strewn about, both above and below the water line, but they were all so small that a great many would have to be melted together to make one arrowhead. After searching for larger pieces and failing to find them, the Ojibwa shook his head, muttered the one word “Ka-win-ni-shi-shin,” “no good,” and turned back to the canoe.

Jean and Ronald followed him, and they paddled along the beach, rounded another point and landed on the other side of it, on the north shore of a little inlet that opened from the large bay and ran at right angles to it. This place was evidently an old camping ground, for bleached and decaying lodge-poles were standing a little back from the shore. Nangotook was sure they were the remains of the wigwam he and his companions had built on his former visit to the island. After examining the ground carefully, he said he did not think any one had camped there since. The summit of the hill, that rose to the north of the camping ground, had been a good place for hares, he added. He would go and set some snares, while the boys fished.

The lads were disappointed at not being shown at once the rich stores of copper that Nangotook had led them to believe were to be found in this place, but food was always a necessity. When the canoe had been overturned in the surf, they had saved the gun and one bow, but they had no ammunition and no arrows. So they went to fishing cheerfully enough. By the time the Indian returned from setting his snares, they had caught two small lake trout. They cleaned and cooked their catch, but to their surprise Nangotook refused to touch the food. He did not want anything to eat, he said.

After the meal, the three took to the canoe and went on up the bay. It proved to be a long and narrow cove, which cut at an angle through alternating wooded ridges and valleys. The long bays they had visited before had lain between ridges, that stretched parallel with the waters, but this one occupied a break in the hills, as if it had been cut through them. Landing on the west side, the Indian led the boys up a thickly forested ridge. As they neared the top, Jean caught sight of something that aroused his interest. He turned from Nangotook’s trail, and began pushing through a thicket. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and disappeared. Ronald, who was only a few paces ahead of his friend, turned back at once. Making his way through the underbrush more cautiously than Jean had done, Ronald found himself balancing on the very edge of a deep hole. At the bottom Jean was just picking himself up, more surprised than hurt.

“Tonnerre,” he exclaimed indignantly, “who would have looked for such a pit on the side of a hill? I was going along all right, and then, all of a sudden, I was down here.”

“You are in too much haste to dig for the red metal, little brother,” Nangotook called to him. The Indian had reached the edge of the hole almost as quickly as Ronald, and stood grinning down on Jean.

“What do you mean by that, Etienne?” the lad answered, as he began to climb up the steep and ragged slope. “What has digging for copper to do with my falling into this pit?”

The Ojibwa made no answer until Jean had reached the top. Then with a gesture that embraced the hole and its sides, he asked abruptly: “What think my brothers of this place?”

Puzzled by his question, the boys glanced around. The pit was roughly oval in shape, and perhaps thirty feet deep. Its steep sides were of rock, bare in some places, in others clothed with bushes and moss. In the bottom grew a clump of good sized birch trees, that partly concealed the opposite side of the depression.

“’Tis a queer looking hole to be found on the side of a hill as Jean says,” Ronald remarked, as his eyes took in the details. “It looks almost as if it had been dug by the hand of man.”

“And so it was,” Nangotook replied, “by the hand of man or manito, I know not which. This is one of the pits where, many winters ago, my people took out the red metal that the white man calls copper.”

“Do you mean this is a savage mine?” cried Jean excitedly. “Surely no one has worked it for years. See how the trees and bushes have covered it.”

“That is true, little brother. I can show you many such holes on the hills around this inlet of the waters, and I know of but one where copper has been taken out either in my time or in my father’s. They are very old, these holes, and no one knows surely who first made them. There is a tale that they were dug by the manitos of the island. One of my people, many winters ago, did a service to the manitos, and in return they showed him how to break up the rock and take out the red metal. Then they gave to him and to those who should come after him the right to carry it away. The good fathers say that such tales are not true, but I know not. This I know, only a certain brotherhood of my people has the privilege of breaking off the copper, though any one may gather the pieces that lie about the shores. Of that brotherhood I am a member.”

It occurred to Jean to wonder what the manitos, if there were such beings, would think of Nangotook’s bringing to the copper mines two white men, who according to the Indian opinion had no right whatever to touch the metal. But he did not put his thought into words. If the idea had not occurred to Nangotook, the lad certainly did not wish to put it into his head. Instead he asked: “But how do your people work these mines without tools?”

The Ojibwa picked up from the edge of the pit a smooth, rounded boulder and handed it to Jean. It was hard and heavy, weighing about ten pounds. “This is one of the tools,” he remarked briefly.

“You make game of us,” Jean retorted. “How can you mine copper by means of a stone like this?”

“That I will show you to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?” cried Ronald. “Why wait so long, when we need copper for our arrowheads? Isn’t there some place about here where we can dig out or pick up enough at once, so we can be on our way to-morrow?”

The Indian shook his head. “Pieces on the shore all little and no good,” he said. “I will show you more holes like this. Then we go back to camp. I will make ready, and to-morrow we come again for copper.”

The boys knew from his tone that he had made up his mind, and that argument would be of no use whatever, so they followed him silently around the edge of the pit. He led them up the ridge and across the summit, calling their attention to other holes, varying in size and depth. Many were mere shallow depressions almost filled with soil, and all were more or less overgrown with trees and bushes. The boys would not have recognized most of these places as ancient mines, if Nangotook had not pointed them out. In some of them grew spruces of a height and girth to prove that the pits had not been mined for at least a hundred, perhaps several hundred, years. Round boulders, more or less embedded in earth and leaf mold, showed here and there among the underbrush, and the boys dug up several to examine them. They found them all of the same hard, dark stone. Many were broken and chipped, and the lads concluded that they must have been used as hammers to break up the rock.

The pits seemed to run in rows across the ridge top, following veins of metal, and the boys marveled at the patient labor that had been spent on them. With the primitive tools the savages had used, many, many years must have been consumed in excavating the holes, especially if, as Nangotook had said, mining operations had been confined to some one brotherhood or society of medicine men. It seemed unlikely that even the chosen clan had ever spent all of its time in mining. Probably its members only visited the island occasionally and stayed for a few days or weeks, taking out a little of the metal and carrying it away in their canoes. Utensils and ornaments of copper were not uncommon among the Indians, and the metal must have been much more in demand before the white man introduced iron kettles and steel knives.

The explorers did not go down the other side of the ridge, which was steep and abrupt, but turned back and descended the more gradual slope they had come up, finding old pits most of the way to the base. The place was of great interest to the boys and they were reluctant to leave it, but Nangotook seemed to have some urgent reason for getting back to camp. When they arrived there, he borrowed the knife he had given to Ronald, saying he wanted to make something, and then told the lads that he wished to be left alone and that they had better go fish.

Understanding that his preparations for mining, whatever they might be, were of some secret nature, connected undoubtedly with the superstitions and ritual of the mining clan, Ronald and Jean launched the canoe again and paddled up the cove. Their fishing was successful, and, after they had caught enough for supper and breakfast, they decided to explore the cove to its head. A little beyond the place where they had landed with Nangotook, Jean called Ronald’s attention to a big, white-headed eagle perched on a dead limb of a tall, isolated pine near the shore. While they were watching the bird, it suddenly spread its great wings, left its perch and sailed away. As the boys drew near the spot, they could see, far up in the tall tree, a solid mass of something. “An eagle’s nest,” cried Ronald. “I never had a good look at one.” And he turned the canoe towards shore.

“There will be no young. They have flown long ere this,” Jean answered, “and the nest is only a collection of sticks.”

“I’m going to have a look at it though,” was Ronald’s reply. And he did, climbing at least fifty feet up the tall pine to examine the nest of sticks and moss. He found it to be five feet or more across the top and at least as many deep, and he guessed from its construction that it had been used for several years, additions having been built on every year. Before he descended, he took a long look from his high perch over water, shore and woods. As he glanced about, his eye was arrested by something that surprised him greatly. From a clump of birches at the foot of a slope across the cove, a slender thread of smoke was ascending. It was a very faint wisp of white, as if from a small, clear flamed cooking fire, but the lad’s eyes were keen and he was sure he could not be deceived. As soon as he had made certain that it was really smoke he saw, he descended quickly and told Jean of the discovery.

“It may be merely an Indian or two come here for copper,” he said.

“And it may be Le Forgeron Tordu still on our track,” Jean added.

“If it is, he’ll gain nothing by following us now,” Ronald replied. “We shall not lead him to the Island of Yellow Sands this year, that is certain.”

“No,” answered Jean with a laugh, “if he is following us for that, we have cheated him sorely. We may take that much comfort for not having found the island ourselves. He will be in a fine rage when he discovers he has had his journey all for nothing.”

“He will surely,” Ronald chuckled, “but,” he added more seriously, “he’ll seek some way to make us smart for the trick we’ve played him, we may be sure of that. He’ll hate us more deeply, and Le Forgeron’s hate is not to be despised.”

“It were best for us to keep out of his way then,” the French youth replied soberly. “It may be that he does not know yet that we are anywhere near. Instead of going on to the end of this bay, we will return and tell Etienne what we have seen. If he chooses, he can spy upon that camp. We had best leave such spying to him, who is more skilled at it than we are.”

For once Ronald agreed to the more cautious course. As they returned down the cove, they caught a glimpse of three caribou on an open slope, and the sight almost drove the thought of the Twisted Blacksmith out of their heads. The hillside was probably a regular feeding ground, for, even from the water, the light colored patches of reindeer moss could be seen plainly among the dark green trailing juniper. A caribou would furnish a good supply of meat for the three, as soon as they had the means to shoot it. To secure such large game with bow and arrow would not be easy, for they would have to creep up very close for a good shot, but they had confidence in Etienne’s skill with the bow, if not in their own.

The lads reached their camping ground just as the sun was setting, eager to tell the Ojibwa of the wisp of smoke and the caribou, but they did not have a chance that night. He was nowhere to be seen when they landed. On searching for him, they came upon a small lodge of bark and poles concealed behind a clump of birches, several hundred yards from their camp. The lodge was tightly closed, and steam was issuing in wisps from little interstices between the bark sheets. The Indian had built a sweating lodge, and had sealed himself up in it. On red hot stones he had thrown water to make a steam bath. His tunic, leggings and moccasins hanging on a tree were further proof of what he was about.

“This is why he would not eat,” said Jean. “He was fasting, and now he is purifying himself after the savage custom. That is what he meant by preparing for the mining. It is doubtless part of the ceremony performed by the savage miners whenever they come to Minong.”

Ronald shook his head. “If all the savages, who pretend to be Christians, go back to their old heathen customs whenever occasion offers, as Etienne does, I fear they’re not very well converted,” he said.

Jean nodded. “The good fathers thought him one of the best,” he replied, “and indeed he is. My father says Etienne comes nearer to living a Christian life than any other savage convert he has ever known. But I am afraid it takes many years and much care and teaching to purge out the old heathen notions from the heart of a savage. Their people have been heathens for so long, you see, and they have so many customs and ceremonies and traditions that have come down from generation to generation. Perhaps we need not wonder that they are not made into new men in a few years.”

XXIII
MINING AND HUNTING

When Etienne emerged from the sweating lodge, he took a swift dip in the lake, but refused to eat, and went at once to his couch of balsam branches. It was not until morning that the boys told him about the smoke wisp Ronald had seen and the caribou on the ridge. He made no comment and again refused food. While the lads were preparing breakfast, he went to examine his snares, and returned with two hares. The appearance of the animals was a strong reminder that winter was not far off, for they had begun to change their grayish-brown summer coats for the winter white. The feet, ears, nose, front of the head and part of the legs of one of them were conspicuously white, though the rest of its fur remained brown. The coats of the others did not show so much change.

After the lads had finished their breakfast, the three launched the canoe, putting into it a cedar shovel and three large birch buckets the Indian had made. They went ashore not far from their former place of landing, and Nangotook led them to the foot of a ridge, where a stream flowed through a narrow, swampy valley. There they filled the buckets, and then climbed up a well defined and partly cleared trail to the summit. Close to the edge they came upon a pit that showed plain signs of having been worked in recent years. It was without trees or bushes, though the sides were partly covered with moss and trailing plants. On the bottom, surrounded by leaves, sticks and earth, and standing in shallow water, which, that morning, bore a thin coating of ice, was a detached mass of rock that might have weighed two tons. Even from the edge of the hole, Jean and Ronald could see that the rock was composed largely of copper. A primitive ladder, made of a single pole with cross pieces tied on with strips of rawhide, rested against the side of the pit. Though grayed and stained by the weather, the ladder seemed perfectly sound, and the boys scrambled down, eager to examine the rock mass.

They found that the copper rock rested on poles, and was held away from the farther wall of the pit by the trunk of a tree wedged behind it. Around it, in the shallow water and leaves, were many stone hammers, most of them broken, and heaps of charred and blackened sticks. Jean, poking about in the rubbish to get out one of the round stones, uncovered a large bowl of cedar wood, that had been almost entirely buried. Nangotook had not followed the lads down into the pit. Looking up, they noticed that he had kindled a small fire almost on the edge, and was carefully placing something in the flames.

“He is making a sacrifice,” whispered Jean to Ronald, “that is what he brought the fish head for.”

Nangotook had carried with him from camp a fish’s head carefully wrapped in a bit of birch bark. From the odor that drifted down to them, the boys knew he had also offered up some of his precious kinni-kinnik, tobacco mixed with bearberry leaves. Standing on the edge of the pit as the burnt offering was consumed, he gazed down at the copper rock and said a few words in his own language. Then, apparently satisfied that the required ceremonies had all been performed, he climbed down the ladder and prepared to begin work.

With the cedar shovel, he scraped off the rubbish that had accumulated on top of the rock. The pure copper showed plainly in a number of places, but it was evident that much work had been done on the mass, for all the knobs and projections had been hammered away, leaving the surface almost smooth. There seemed to be no place where any of the metal could be broken off, and the boys wondered how Nangotook would manage without steel tools. The Indian did not seem concerned, however. He examined the surface carefully, then ordered the lads to collect kindling and fuel. One side of the mass was composed of what appeared to be a thin sheet of dark rock. On top, just where the free copper and this dark rock came together, Nangotook made a fire, feeding it until it burned hot and clear. When he thought the surface had been heated sufficiently, he hastily scraped off the embers, and picking up a bucket of water he had placed within reach, dashed it quickly over the hot rock. A cloud of steam arose, there was a sharp, cracking report, and a thin piece of rock split off from the mass and fell into the puddle below. Seizing the second pail, which Ronald swung up to him, the Indian emptied it, then followed with the third. The cold water striking the hot surface had split off a part of the sheet of dark rock, but had not exposed enough of the copper to satisfy the Indian miner. Twice he repeated the process, making a hot fire, raking it off when the rock was thoroughly heated, and throwing cold water on it. After the third operation he gave a grunt of satisfaction. A ledge of copper lay exposed.

Raising one of the heavy stones, he struck it against the exposed metal and broke off a small corner. Pure copper is a comparatively soft metal, and heating and dashing with cold water anneals or softens it still more. With a heavy stone maul and, part of the time, with the aid of a wedge-shaped piece of hard rock used as a chisel, Nangotook hammered and split off pieces of the metal. The boys would gladly have helped him with his laborious mining, but he would not let them take part in the actual operations. They might carry water from the stream, gather fuel for the fire, find and hand him another stone sledge when he splintered the one he was using, but the actual processes of fire making, rock splitting and beating off copper, he would not permit them to share. Evidently by Ojibwa tradition, this peculiar mining had something of a sacred or mysterious character, and, to his mind, must be performed by one of his own medicine clan, duly appointed, initiated and trained for the work. The boys knew enough of Indian customs to understand this, so they did not urge their help upon him, but merely obeyed orders.

Such mining was slow work. The rock had to be heated and cooled several times, and the wielding of the stone maul was heavy labor, but at last Nangotook obtained copper enough for his immediate purpose. As they were returning down the cove, he told the boys that the pit where they had been working was the same he and his companions had taken metal from on his previous visit to the island, and the only one he knew of that had been worked in recent years. Jean had picked up a stone hammer with a groove around it, and he showed it to the Indian and asked him what the groove was for. Nangotook answered that a handle of some sort had been attached to the boulder. One of the party he had come to the island with had used such a hammer, he remembered, with a withe twisted about it to hold it by, but he had broken the stone and had thrown it aside. Nangotook thought this might be the very stone. It was not customary to use handles, he said, but he did not know why. Ronald asked how the copper mass came to be in the bottom of the pit. Had it been split off from the side, or was it found by digging down? Nangotook could not answer the question. The rock had been in the same place when he was there before, though then it was well covered with moss and earth, as if it had not been disturbed for a number of years. The tree trunk wedged behind it had been there too, but he and his companions had made the ladder.

No wisp of smoke, was to be seen where Ronald had noticed it the day before, but caribou were again discovered feeding on the ridge, near the spot where the lads had caught a glimpse of them.

The rest of the day and evening were spent in bow and arrow making. Laying a piece of copper on a hard, smooth stone, Nangotook hammered it out with another stone, heating the metal and plunging it in water from time to time, to keep it soft enough to be worked without cracking. When it was hammered out thin at the edge, he could cut it with a knife. After an arrowhead had been properly shaped, he went over it carefully with light, quick blows, to harden it as much as possible without getting it out of shape. Even at the best, copper heads were somewhat soft, but they did not split and warp like bone tips. Their main advantage over stone ones was that they could be made in much less time. Moreover flints suitable for arrowheads were difficult to find. Nangotook made a few sharp pointed bone tips in addition to the copper ones. The latter were attached to shafts of serviceberry wood in the same way as the flint and bone heads, and the shafts were straightened by being pulled through the hole in the piece of bone the Indian had used in his former arrow making. A gull, which Jean caught in a snare, baited with a piece of fish and set on the rocks, furnished feathers for the arrows. Hawk or eagle feathers would have been better, Nangotook insisted, but he had no way of obtaining either without ammunition or finished arrows. He also made another bow, using hare sinew well twisted and braided.

The weather next day was favorable for continuing the journey, but the lads were eager for a caribou hunt, not only for the sake of the sport, but because they sorely needed the nourishing meat. So departure was postponed. When the three reached the place where the animals had been seen the day before, they found distinct trails running in two directions. As they had guessed, the rocky ridge, where the reindeer lichen grew in abundance, was a favorite caribou resort. The hunters decided to separate, Nangotook following one trail and the boys the other. They had only two bows, so Ronald was without a weapon.

Along the top of the ridge, the lads followed the trail, going quietly and cautiously not to disturb the game, if it should happen to be near by. As Jean, who was in advance with the bow, rounded a thicket of leafless bushes, he came upon a place where fire, kindled perhaps by lightning striking a tree, had swept the ridge summit. Small birches, alders and low bushes had grown up among the fallen and standing skeletons of the evergreens, and, scratching about among the underbrush and fallen leaves, were a flock of birds. With a backward gesture, Jean motioned to Ronald, who was just behind him, to stand still. Creeping forward a little to get within range, he fitted an arrow to the string, drew it back and let fly. So swiftly and noiselessly did the arrow pierce the bird, that the rest of the flock did not take fright, and Jean had a chance to make a second shot. That time the whistling of the shaft alarmed the birds. Some of them ran off into the brush, while three rose with a loud whirring noise and a swift direct flight that carried them out of range in a moment. However, Jean had secured two plump, full grown, sharp-tailed grouse. The hunting expedition had begun well.

Not far beyond the spot where Jean killed the grouse, the boys came to a fresh caribou trail, made that morning they were sure, which crossed the older one. They followed the new track, going more cautiously than ever, for the beast might be just ahead. The trail led them down the side of the ridge, and across a bog covered with sphagnum moss stiff with the frost of the night before. There the animal had stopped several times to feed. After a somewhat winding course through the bog, it had climbed another hill beyond.

Jean had a feeling that, when he came to the top of that hill, he would find his game sunning itself in the open. So he bade Ronald keep back, and went very carefully. Through a leafless bush he caught sight of spreading antlers. Cautiously he crept around the bush. He could see the animal’s head and horns above a clump of tiny balsams, but the little trees hid the body. Moreover the range was too great for Jean’s skill and strength. Etienne might have sent a shaft from that distance with a strong enough pull to pierce his game, but Jean felt sure that he could not do so. He must go nearer. Fortunately the wind was blowing towards the hunter, and the beast was wholly unaware of the danger threatening. It lowered its head to graze, and Jean crept forward towards the clump of balsams. He reached them safely, without betraying himself by so much as a snapped twig or the rustle of a dry leaf. Crouching behind the little trees, he peeped around them.

The caribou’s body was plainly exposed, and so close that the boy felt he could not miss. Straightening himself suddenly but noiselessly, he drew back his bowstring and let fly. He struck the beast squarely, but though he had aimed for the heart, his arrow evidently did not pierce that vital spot. The caribou felt the sting of the wound, sprang into the air and was off at a great pace. After it sped Jean, his moccasined feet scarcely seeming to touch the rocks, moss and intervening low bushes, as he cleared them.