Heart So Hungry (29 page)

The chief then told George, “And when you come to a river coming in on the other side in quite a fall, you are not far from the post.”

It was then Mina remembered the warmth, back on the lake she had named Resolution, of Laddie’s whispered voice in her ear.
Push on!
he had told her.
Push on!
Her throat tightened and her chest ached with the knowledge of how close she had come to giving up.

“Did you see any Indians?” the chief asked.

“Yes,” said George. “We have slept three times since we were in their camp.”

“Were they getting any caribou?”

“No. The men were trading at Davis Inlet.”

“Had they not seen any signs of the crossing?”

“No. But we have seen the caribou. More than all of us could count.”

This news excited the Naskapi enormously. They asked several questions at once as to precisely where the caribou had been seen and how fast they were moving and in which direction. Then they discussed among themselves the likelihood of the herd coming their way.

“Will you go after them?” George asked.

The chief shook his head. He answered in a funereal tone, “Not our country.”

Upon further questioning George learned that the Naskapi men had themselves returned only recently from Davis Inlet. Unfortunately, the trading ship had not yet arrived and the post store was empty, so they had been forced to return empty-handed. All summer long they had been able to take only an occasional caribou, just enough to satisfy their present needs. There had been no meat to put aside for winter. They did not know how they might survive.

“You see the way we live,” an old man told George, “and the way we dress. It is hard for us to live. Sometimes we do not get many
caribou. Perhaps they will not cross our country. We can get nothing from the Englishman, not even ammunition. It is hard for us to live.”

George then asked how far it was to Davis Inlet.

“Five days’ travel,” he was told. “Seven days’ coming back. This year an Englishman travelled part of the way with us.”

When Mina heard this she asked, “An Englishman? That couldn’t be Wallace, could it?”

George explained, “To an Indian any white man is an Englishman. But I don’t know why Wallace would have gone to Davis Inlet unless he got lost or gave up.”

The chief did not recognize the name of Wallace.

“Was it Mr. Cabot?” George asked. Earlier in the year, William Brooks Cabot had told Mina that he would be visiting the Naskapi along the coast, and that he planned to travel the George River in hopes of being the first white man to visit their home camp.

The chief recognized the name. “Cabot, yes, that is the man. He turned back two days’ journey from here. He was going away on a ship.”

Mina had only a moment to savour the accomplishment of besting Cabot, of being the one to find the home camp of his beloved Naskapi. By now many more Naskapi had descended to the shore, and all were pressing close to the canoes. Several old women, grinning toothlessly, held out their hands to Mina and begged for
“Tshistemau, tshistemau.”

“They want tobacco,” George told her.

Mina held out her empty hands and smiled apologetically.

“She is not giving us any tobacco! See? She is not giving us any tobacco!”

“She does not smoke,” George explained. “She has no tobacco to give you. But she has other gifts.”

Now the toothless smiles returned. Quickly George asked Mina if, now that they were so near the post, she would like to share some
of their provisions. “Of course!” she said, and in short order an opened bag of flour was lifted from the canoe and laid on the beach.

“Please hand me some tea and rice too,” she told Job. “We can wrap it in these silk handkerchiefs.”

She saved only enough rice for one more batch of pudding, and just enough tea to provide for five days’ journey. She instructed Joe to fill a tin pail with salt and a slab of bacon. In the meantime she found a few trinkets among her things and distributed these as well.

With the Naskapi now grinning ear to ear and nodding their thanks, Mina brought out her camera and motioned to the chief that she would like to take his picture. He understood immediately and, drawing away from the group, stood up very straight, his shoulders back and chest full, chin lifted high, mouth set in an imperious scowl. Afterward the chief smiled again and told her, “You will come up to our camp now.”

George was not at all comfortable with this invitation, as his expression conveyed when he relayed the information to Mina. But she said, “Oh, yes indeed!” There would be great interest, she knew, in her observations about how the Naskapi lived. How could she justify being a few minutes from the camp and not investigating it? Besides, just imagine how green Mr. Cabot would be when he read of her success! And if Cabot was green with envy, what colour would Wallace be?

Reluctantly, George acquiesced. He would accompany Mina up the hill. But the rest of the crew must remain at the canoes, not only to protect their remaining provisions and gear but to be ready to depart at a moment’s notice.

As Mina walked toward the camp, flanked by the chief on one side and George on the other, a young Naskapi man did everything he could to catch her eye. He preened and strutted, ran ahead, paused, allowed her to catch up, then ran ahead again, all the while putting himself on display for her. His efforts did not go unnoticed. Mina later described the amusing exhibition:

George noticed the blush of her cheeks and her coquettish smile. “It’s probably not a good idea to encourage him,” he said. He laid a light hand on her back and nudged her forward.

Mina couldn’t resist a bit of teasing. “But he’s quite handsome, don’t you think? Perhaps you should tell him I said so.”

She nearly laughed out loud at the look of alarm in George’s eyes. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “He’s not as handsome as you, despite those wonderful red leggings.”

What a wonderful time she was having!

At the top of the hill she could see several miles to the north. The river lay “like a great, broad river guarded on either side by the mountains.” The camp itself consisted of two large wigwams, the poles covered with deerskins sewn together. But the skins were worn and weathered, much like the faces of the Naskapi who stood around the wigwams, watching her approach:

Initially the women hung back from Mina, too shy to speak to her. She wondered how best to approach them. Then she spotted a young mother holding a baby bundled in a blanket. “I stepped towards her,” she wrote, “and touching the little bundle I spoke to her of her child and she held it so that I might see its face. It was a very young baby, born only the day before, I learned later, and the mother herself looked little more than a child. Her face was pale, and she looked weak and sick. Though she held her child towards me there was no lighting up of the face, no sign of responsive interest.”

Mina took a few photographs of the group and did her best to communicate by gesture with the women who crowded around her. It wasn’t long before George’s restlessness got the better of him. He motioned to her that they should return to the canoes.

“A while longer,” she said. “We don’t have to hurry now, do we?”

Considering how desperate the Naskapi were, how bereft of winter provisions, George did not trust their geniality to last forever. But he did not want to frighten Mina unnecessarily, so instead he told her, “We don’t know about the
Pelican
. It might come early. Even an hour’s delay on our part could make us miss it.”

The prospect of gliding triumphantly into Ungava only to see the
Pelican
steaming off, irretrievable, was all the encouragement Mina needed. Quickly she made her goodbyes. Most of the Indians walked as far as the edge of the hill with her and George.

“Send us a fair wind,” George told them.

“Yes,” the chief assured him. “A fair wind all the way.”

Minutes later, feeling a bit light-headed from the events of the past hour, Mina again seated herself in the centre of the canoe.
From there she looked back up the hillside. The Naskapi were standing just as she and George had left them, looking still and sombre. How she regretted that she had not been able to give them more! Wistfully, she took out her handkerchief and waved it back and forth over her head. In an instant the hillside blossomed with colour and movement as the women slipped off their shawls and kerchiefs and waved them in response.

After George shoved the canoe out into the river again and the rhythmic slap and dip of paddles began, Mina felt like crying. She had done so much she had never expected to do. Michikamau. The Height of Land. The Montagnais. The Naskapi. And soon, in just five short days, Ungava. She should have been exultant, but instead she felt overwhelmed with sorrow.

What she had thought unattainable was now close at hand. Why could she not rejoice? Because she was not worthy of the accomplishments. The one who had been worthy had been denied, stymied at every turn, while her way had been easy in comparison. While Laddie had fully expected to succeed, she had fully expected to fail, had even hoped, in her darkest moments, to experience the same hardships, the same fate, as had befallen him.

George kept a close eye on her. He seemed to understand what she was thinking. He too was experiencing the bittersweet taste of their success. He too felt the guilt that was eating away at her.

But young Gilbert Blake’s enthusiasm remained untainted. “On to Ungava!” he cried out.

George flinched. To his mind the moment deserved, at the least, humility. Still, he could not chide the boy for brimming with youthful energy. He only said, “We have to make it through the rapids yet.”

“Will they be bad?” Mina asked.

“As bad as any we’ve seen so far.”

She did not know if she was more frightened or excited by the prospect.

Indian House Lake glittered calm and serene in the morning sunshine, and the pull of the current made paddling easy. After lunch a gentle breeze blew up from the south, so George called for the sails to be rigged and soon the canoes were speeding along gracefully, pushed by wind and pulled by current.

In most places the lake appeared to be approximately two miles wide. Occasionally a wedge of sand stretched into the water from one shore or another, and frequently a stream came pouring down from the hills. In the afternoon the eastern and western shores closed toward one another, and where the lake was only a quarter-mile wide the party saw their last caribou of the trip, a single animal walking along the shore on their right.

“It’s a female,” George said.

Joe agreed. “Maybe three years old or so.”

“Let’s take the sails down and see if we can get close to it.”

The doe stood at the water’s edge some fifty yards ahead, alert and watching as the canoes drew closer. Mina said, “You’re not going to shoot it, are you? Surely we don’t need the meat now.”

“We just want to play with it,” George told her.

The canoes were kept in the shallows as they continued their approach. Only at the last minute did the caribou show any fear at all, and even then it seemed not the least bit skittish. Almost daintily it stepped into the water and started to swim toward the opposite shore.

“Now!” George told the others. “Paddle hard!”

They came toward the caribou at an angle, cutting it off. The moment the doe reversed direction, so did one of the canoes, with George and Job herding the caribou from the east, Gilbert and Joe from the west. Laughing and shouting directions at one another, the men set the doe on a zigzag course northward up the lake.

“Oh, please stop tormenting her!” Mina cried.

George, in the bow, told Job, “Get me up as close as you can.” Job did so. And a minute later George leaned forward as far as he could,
reached into the water and seized the caribou by her tail. Mina felt the canoe being jerked forward. The other men cheered. Job, content to be towed all the way to Ungava, laid his paddle across his lap, leaned back, crossed his arms and grinned like a sultan.