the backs of men. Our mail was delivered once a month by a carrier who
made the journey in alternate stages of horseback riding and canoeing.
But we had health, youth, enthusiasm, good appetites, and the
wherewithal to satisfy them, and at night in our primitive bunks we sank
into abysses of dreamless slumber such as I have never known since.
Indeed, looking back upon them, those first months seem to have been a
long-drawn-out and glorious picnic, interrupted only by occasional hours
of pain or panic, when we were hurt or frightened.

Naturally, our two greatest menaces were wild animals and Indians, but
as the days passed the first of these lost the early terrors with which
we had associated them. We grew indifferent to the sounds that had made
our first night a horror to us all--there was even a certain homeliness
in them--while we regarded with accustomed, almost blase eyes the
various furred creatures of which we caught distant glimpses as they
slunk through the forest. Their experience with other settlers had
taught them caution; it soon became clear that they were as eager to
avoid us as we were to shun them, and by common consent we gave each
other ample elbow-room. But the Indians were all around us, and every
settler had a collection of hair-raising tales to tell of them. It was
generally agreed that they were dangerous only when they were drunk; but
as they were drunk whenever they could get whisky, and as whisky was
constantly given them in exchange for pelts and game, there was a
harrowing doubt in our minds whenever they approached us.

In my first encounter with them I was alone in the woods at sunset with
my small brother Harry. We were hunting a cow James had bought, and our
young eyes were peering eagerly among the trees, on the alert for any
moving object. Suddenly, at a little distance, coming directly toward
us, we saw a party of Indians. There were five of them, all men, walking
in single file, as noiselessly as ghosts, their moccasined feet causing
not even a rustle among the dry leaves that carpeted the woods. All the
horrible stories we had heard of Indian cruelty flashed into our minds,
and for a moment we were dumb with terror. Then I remembered having been
told that the one thing one must not do before them is to show fear.
Harry was carrying a rope with which we had expected to lead home our
reluctant cow, and I seized one end of it and whispered to him that we
would "play horse," pretending