XXII THE INDIAN MINES

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.”