The Red Pirogue: A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian Wilds

Young Ben O’Dell emerged from the woodshed into the dew and the dawning day with a paddle in his hand, crossed a strip of orchard, passed through a thicket of alders and choke cherries and between two great willows and descended a steep bank to a beach of sand and pebbles. Thin mist still crawled in wisps on the sliding surface of the river. Eastward, downstream, sky and hills and water were awash and afire with the pink and gold and burnished silver of the new day.

Ben was as agreeably conscious of the scents of the place and hour as of the beloved sights and sounds. He sniffed the faint fragrance of running water, the sweeter breath of clover blooms, the sharper scent of pennyroyal. He could even detect and distinguish the mild, dank odors of dew-wet willow bark, of stranded cedar blocks and of the lush-green stems of black rice and duck grass.

He crossed the beach to the gray sixteen-foot pirogue which was used for knocking about between the point and the island and for tending the salmon net. It wasn’t much of a craft—just a stick of pine shaped by ax and draw knife and hollowed by ax and fire—but it saved Uncle Jim McAllister’s canvas canoe much wear and tear. It was heavy and “crank,” but it was tough.

Ben launched the pirogue with a long, grinding shove, stepped aboard and went sliding out across the current toward the stakes and floats of the net. The upper rim of the sun was above the horizon by now and the shine and golden glory of it dazzled his eyes.

It was now that Ben first noticed the other pirogue. He thought it was a log, but only for a moment. Shading his eyes with his hand he made out the man-cut lines and the paint-red glow. It was a pirogue sure enough and the largest one Ben had ever seen. It was fully twenty-five feet long, deep and bulky in proportion and painted red from end to end. It lay motionless on the upper side of the net, caught lengthwise against the stout stakes.

Ben, still standing, dipped his long paddle a dozen times and in a minute he was near enough to the strange pirogue to look into it. The thing which he saw there caused him to step crookedly and violently backward; and before he realized what he had done the crank little dugout had rolled with a snap and he was under water.

He came to the surface beside his own craft which had righted but was full of water and no more than just afloat. He swam it into shallow water, pushed it aground, threw his paddle ashore and then turned again to the river and the big red pirogue lying motionless against the net stakes.

“Nothing to be scared of,” he said. “Don’t know why I jumped like that. Fool trick!”

He kicked off his loose brogans one by one, dipped for them and threw them ashore.

The sun was up now and the light was brighter. The last shred of mist was gone from the river.

“It startled me, that was all,” he said. “It would startle any man—Uncle Jim himself, even.”

He waded until the swift water was halfway between his belt and his shoulders, then plunged forward and swam out and up toward the red pirogue. He hadn’t far to go, but now the current was against him. He made it in a few minutes, however. He gripped a gunnel of the big dugout with both hands and hoisted himself high and looked inboard. At the same moment the occupant of the strange craft sat up and stared at him with round eyes. For a few seconds the two gazed in silence.

“Who are you?” asked the occupant of the red pirogue.

“I’m Ben O’Dell,” replied the youth in the water, smiling encouragingly and brushing aside a bang of wet hair. “I live on the point when I’m not away downriver at school. I was surprised when I first saw you—so surprised that I upset and had to swim.”

“Is that O’Dell’s Point?” asked the other.

“Yes. You can’t see the house for those big willows on the bank.”

“Are you Mrs. O’Dell’s boy?”

“Yes, I’m her son. I’m not so small as I look with just my head out of water. I guess I’d better climb in, if you don’t mind, and paddle you ashore.”

“You may climb in, if you want to—but I can paddle myself all right.”

“Is she steady? Can I put all my weight on one side, or must I get in over the end?”

“She’s steady as a scow.”

Ben pulled himself up and scrambled in. A paddle lay aft. He took it up and stroked for the shore.

“It was a funny place to find you,” he ventured.

“Why funny?” she asked gravely.

“Well—queer. A little girl all alone in a big pirogue and caught against the net stakes.”

“I’m eleven years old. I caught the pirogue there on purpose because I thought I was getting near to O’Dell’s Point and I was afraid to land in the dark.”

“Do you know my mother?”

“No-o—not herself—but I have a letter of intr’duction to her.”

They stepped ashore and crossed the beach side by side. Ben felt bewildered, despite his eighteen years of life and six feet of loosely jointed height. This small girl astonished and puzzled him with her gravity that verged on the tragic, her assured and superior manners, her shabby attire and her cool talk of “a letter of intr’duction.” He possessed a keen sense of humor but he did not smile. Even the letter of introduction struck him as being pathetic rather than funny. He was touched by pity and curiosity and profoundly bewildered.

They climbed the steep, short bank.

“You are big,” she remarked gravely as they passed between the old apple trees. “Bigger than lots of grown men. I thought you were just a little boy when I couldn’t see anything but your head. You must be quite old.”

“I’m eighteen; and I’m going to college this fall—if mother makes me. But I’d sooner stop home and work with Uncle Jim,” he replied.

At that moment they cleared the orchard and came upon the ell and woodshed of the wide gray house and Mr. James McAllister in the door of the shed. McAllister backed and vanished in the snap of a finger.

“He is shy with strangers, but he’s a brave man and a good one,” said Ben.

Mrs. O’Dell appeared in the doorway just then.

“Mother, here’s a little girl who came from somewhere or other in a big red pirogue,” said Ben. “I found her out at the net. She has a letter for you.”

Mrs. O’Dell was a tall woman of forty, slender and strong, with the blue eyes and warm brown hair of the McAllisters. She wore a cotton dress of one of the changing shades of blue of her eyes, trim and fresh. The dress was open at the throat and the sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. She stepped forward without a moment’s hesitation and laid a strong hand lightly on one of the little girl’s thin shoulders. She smiled and the blue of her eyes darkened and softened.

“A letter for me, dear?” she queried.

“Yes Mrs. O’Dell—from dad,” replied the stranger.

“You are Richard Sherwood’s little girl?”