Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

XXIV

MOUNTAIN CABINS

IT would be easy to sentimentalize, for there is everything here—the echo of mountains, and soaring skies, and small rushing streams (that we see in the movies, and read of in best-sellers made in the United States about Canada). And this cabin-house fits in so perfectly. It is log built and raftered, with a pointed barn roof, and a typical huge stone fireplace. Skins of cariboo, timber wolf, and marmot hang on the walls, and an enormous burdash robe, rarest of possessions, is the hearthrug. Over the fireplace is the head of an antelope, the last one legally killed in British Columbia; above it is a queer old Buffalo skull; a sheep’s head is over the door. Tawny striped denim is hung on the windows; and there are saffron cushions, making the rustic furniture comfortable as well as picturesque; wrought iron candelabra, and stray gleams of light from copper bowls and bits of rock crystal. The front door opens directly into the living-room, and there is a short curved staircase of jack pine, leading to a little gallery from which you can watch sunlight or open fire warm the savage little place.
     Major Fred Brewster and his wife, its owners, are trail riders of the Rockies. To them the mountains [page 195] are an open book. They live in the village of Jasper, which lies in the heart of the old Athabaska country, on the northerly way through the Rockies, originally chosen by the first surveying party for the projected railroad.
     The very early history of the district has never been accurately known and never will be written. The oldest settlers have scant data and only vague memories of their immediate predecessors. There are few records of the loneliest trails, and the stories of stray adventurers, living, heaven knows how long ago, are legends, passed by word of mouth from tribe to tribe.
     But if there is meagre record as to the mountains they can afford to ignore the fact. For the movies have them. One of the great American film companies was here a week ago, working on a picture up on Maligne lake. So, presently in London and New York and Chicago, and in a score of foreign countries, people will sit in hot and crowded cinemas waiting for a sight of the mountains just outside this door.

     We left the cabin behind us and motored down the valley. Beside our hurrying car marched the Colin range, very stern and cold, behind us rose Pyramid Mountain, and Edith Cavell with her attendant, Angel Glacier. The little Miëtte River [page 196] ran noisily beside us. We were nearing Henry House.
     “Speaking of old people’s places, and their habit of disappearing,” said our host, “if we should stop just here I could take you down there among mounds of stubble and earth and stone, and we should find remains of clay ovens, well built, and apparently very old. They may have had some connection with Henry House; they may be more ancient. Who knows? The whole thing is lost in indistinct beginnings!…I am taking you to a place that I do know , the remnant of the Swift ranch. Louis Swift, the old stage driver, came up from the south-west, and became the best known trapper and trader of this part. He was a great provider, and probably fed and rested all the stray expeditions bound for the Punch Bowl—the meeting place of the Athabaska Trail…Here is his old location.”
     We left the car and walked over rough grass, and up a long slope beyond a little chicken run and some outbuildings to where a small log house stood facing the mountains. In front of it was a canvas-protected stoop under which were gathered a few home-made chairs, and grindstone and some implements. Over its entrance a sun-dried antler hung, white as a bone.
     “This is not the first shack,” said Major Brewster, “but its predecessor was probably exactly like [page 197] it. On a stoop like this, or that, old Swift has entertained most of the white people coming this way for more than a quarter of a century. His wife, a French half-breed, was no less hospitable than he. I want you to come up and see the water-mill.”
     We climbed further, accompanied by a million mosquitoes, to where silver of water was heard through branches of immense firs. Near it lay the abandoned mill which Swift had made with his own hands out of one or more of this very group of trees, and where he ground corn for the Indians and the few settlers about him, with no charge to any of them.
     It is a lovely place. Besides the towering firs, hemlock and birch and cottonwood are refreshed by the clear stream. Indian Paint-Brush pricks the grass with colour, and there are bushes of Saskatoon berries, that grow in clusters like grapes, and are loved by the Indians and the mountain bears. But the railroad runs now—we could see it from our point of vantage—between Swift’s deserted cabin and his barn. He and his wife have moved to Jasper village.

     Old Mrs. Swift can weave her baskets and beadwork in great comfort now. She can see her grandchildren passing to and fro to school on a good sidewalk, that so shortly ago was a bit of mountain trail. Yet, as we talked I found that she was not so [page 198] much interested in the things of to-day as in those of the distant past. Her mind went back repeatedly to ancient stories, especially to one about wild horses, and the days of Moberly, a trader, which had impressed itself vividly on her memory. But a mixture of mountain French and Cree is hard to understand, and there was no interpreter. Besides, one of Mrs. Swift’s first questions was: “How many languages you speek? I speek five. I speek Soto, Stoney, Cree, and French and English.”
     That naturally upset me…I hesitated to reveal a mind so empty that a reply from her, in any one of four of her languages, would leave it a blank. She promised that the next time I came she would relate the story of the wild horses more fully, in English. She wore a trail-rider’s badge,—and told me that she and her husband were the first applicants in this valley for admission to the order.
     “Times all change,” she said. “In my day we had no, what you call Clubs, for riders. One by one, one by one, they went over the mountains. Now they go a lot altogether, and it is good fun for them. For us it was business, all business, long ago. But I not speek so much with you to-day,” she ended sadly, “because my son, he is very sick—for him my heart is sore.”
     A bell rang through the village street. She crossed herself in prayer. [page 199]

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