* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Peace River Joe
Author: Babcock, John Pease (1855-1936)
Date of first publication: 1924
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Victoria: Litchfield's,1924
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 26 August 2011
Date last updated: 26 August 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #842

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






"PEACE RIVER JOE"


BY

JOHN PEASE BABCOCK



  _The Prize Winning
  Story of the
  Imperial Order
  Daughters of the
  Empire 1924
  competition._




VICTORIA, B. C.

LITCHFIELD'S LIMITED

1924




Copyright, Canada, 1924

By JOHN PEASE BABCOCK




PRINTED IN CANADA

T. H. Best Printing Company, Limited, Toronto, Ont.




  _This little sketch is affectionately dedicated
  to my friends in remembrance of many
  happy days spent on the waters and in the
  woods of British Columbia._

              --_John Pease Babcock._




"PEACE RIVER JOE"

By John Pease Babcock.


I first met Peace River Joe in the fall of 1905 at his log cabin door
on the bank of Clear River, in the Cariboo country of British Columbia.
He was then a short, straight, spare, bronzed, good-looking man with
large blue eyes, a typical Canadian trapper of twenty-four or
twenty-five years of age.  He gave us a warm welcome, with a pleasant
smile and a firm grip of the hand, and assisted in removing the packs
and saddles from the horses, which were then hobbled, belled and turned
loose.

"You have come just in time for supper," he said, as we entered the
cabin.  "I have been expecting you for the last hour or two.  The trail
over the burned flat since the big blow of two weeks ago must be slow.
I should have gone up and cut it out.  It's not easy at any time."

The cabin we entered consisted of one room of some twenty by twelve
feet, and was lighted by three small windows.  There was a cook stove
and a wall table at one end of the room, a rough deal table in the
centre, and a double bed built against the wall in one corner.  There
were two large grizzly bear skins on the log walls; a badly mounted
moose head with good-sized horns; an exceptionally fine pair of caribou
antlers; the small spiked horns of a caribou cow; two gun racks with
several rifles, and a bag or two hanging from the wooden pegs.  A
ladder gave access to a loft above, and tools and traps were stored
under it.

Standing at the cook stove in the corner was a comely, short, stout
young Lillooet Indian woman.  The guide, Tommy, whom I had met some
years before and who had "taken me on to start me off right with Joe,"
greeted her and said, "Mary, we hope you have a good supper ready."
She smiled and nodded, and soon had a meal on the table.

She did not sit down with us.  While we ate she sat on a stool near the
stove and said not a word, in fact during the whole evening she did not
enter the conversation.

Supper over and our pipes lighted we talked of the result of Joe's
trappings; the price of furs; the moose, caribou and bear in the
vicinity; and the salmon that had come up the river that fall.  Then
Tommy and myself took our blankets, climbed the ladder into the loft
and went to bed.  Mary and Joe slept in the room below.

After all was set for the night and the candle out, I lay in the
comfortable bunk and recalled what Tommy had told me of Joe.

"He's a good sort, is Joe," he had said; "he came over here from the
Peace River country some eight years ago.  His father was a trapper who
went into the Peace from Ontario with his wife.  Joe was born there.
His mother died when he was only a small kid.  He lived with his father
and a Peace River squaw who replaced Joe's mother.  When his father
died he came over here with the idea of mining, but the first winter
went back to trapping.  He has three good trap lines, prospects a
little in the summer, and acts as a guide in the fall.  He is a good
hunter and woodsman, and a clever trapper, but cannot read or write.
He has a Lillooet klootchman (squaw) living with him whom he picked up
in Pittsville a year or two ago.  He was brought up by a squaw man and
his squaw, but he is a decent, clean chap.  His 'klootch' is a fair
cook and housekeeper, but 'some Indian' when she gets into town and can
obtain liquor.  Joe is 'some bird' himself when it comes to booze and a
settlement, and Mary goes him one better and, being an Indian, usually
lands in the Skookum house (jail).  This spring Joe left her in
Pittsville with some Indians while he took a look around the Horsefly
country.  When he came back Mary was in the skookum house.  After he
left she took up with a white man, and they both got drunk and were run
in."  Tommy continued, "I thought that would settle it with Joe, but it
didn't.  He paid her fine and took her back to the woods with him,
though she had one eye that was blacker than usual and was otherwise
the worse for her go.  He said she was better than a winter alone, and
no worse than he was."

Tommy returned to Pittsville a day or two later to fill an engagement
as guide to some eastern men, leaving me with Joe.  We spent the
following three delightful and eventful weeks in hunting and fishing in
that wonderful, well-watered and wooded big game country.

Late one afternoon, when Joe and myself were caught out through having
tracked a wounded moose unsuccessfully for a long way, it began to rain
hard.  It was too late and too far to return to the main camp.  At
Joe's suggestion we made for an old deserted cabin, which we reached
only through his familiarity with the country and his well-developed
'homing instinct'.  The cabin had been long abandoned and its days of
usefulness were over.  The greater part of the roof had caved in and a
part of the floor had been torn up.  Ashes indicated that a fire had
recently been built there by some former tenants who, like ourselves,
had sought its questionable shelter in a time of need.  We were wet to
the skin, but our matches and tobacco were dry.  Joe soon had a fire
going, its smoke passing out through the uncovered end of the cabin.
Though the rain continued and it was dark, Joe managed to get in wood
enough to keep the fire going for most of the night.  We sat there and
smoked and talked, and notwithstanding the discomfort of our situation,
I, at least, spent an enjoyable evening.

Joe told several good stories, and one, an amusing tale about a titled
Englishman for whom he had acted as guide the year before, gives a
side-light to his character and life that is worth recording here.

From his account Sir Francis was not at all a bad chap but, being
accustomed all his life to the attentions of his valet, who was then at
Joe's cabin, and other personal servants whom he directed in a military
manner, Joe, who had never been under such discipline, took exception
to his "trimmings", though he paid full tribute to his ability to shoot
and fish.

The story related to an occurrence while they were fishing Clear River
below Joe's cabin from a large canoe.  The river there is wide and deep
in places, a rapid stream that drops from one pool to another in short
and long stretches of swift water.  Sir Francis stood in the bow of the
canoe while Joe sat in the stern and regulated its movements with a
long unshod canoe pole.  They were drifting downstream with the
current.  When in suitable water Joe held the canoe stationary while
Sir Francis fished.  They had not been very successful.

As they passed down a stretch which Joe knew did not usually afford any
fish, Sir Francis barked out "Stop".  But Joe did not at once stop, as
the valet would have done under the circumstances.  He let the canoe
drift some little way to water which his experience indicated would
give better results.

After making a few unprofitable casts Sir Francis turned to Joe and
said sharply, "You should have stopped when I told you.  You have
passed over good water that I wished to fish.  When I say "stop", you
must stop.  Do you understand?"  Joe understood but resented the tone
of Sir Francis, though he made no reply.  Then at command Joe let the
canoe drift to water below, where several good fish were hooked and
landed.

Later they drifted into a deep stretch of rapid water.  When about half
way down Sir Francis, who was still standing in the bow, said "Stop
her," Joe, on the instant, anchored his long pole in the rocks of the
bed of the stream and brought the canoe to an abrupt stop.  Sir Francis
and his rod, as Joe had anticipated, shot out of the boat into the
river and were buried from sight.  As he came up to the surface Joe was
alongside in an instant and, grabbing Sir Francis by the back, lifted
him into the boat.  Being a sportsman and a gentleman he took the
incident with such grace as was possible.

"He sat there and dripped and sputtered for a while; he never swore or
raised hell or nothin'," Joe concluded, "and then he said--"Joe, you
most certainly stopped her that time."

We finally talked ourselves out and stretching out on the floor without
cover, were soon asleep.  Towards morning I was awakened by Joe
stirring around.  He was bent over the dying ashes trying to blow them
into a flame.  He succeeded and, as the light grew stronger, it lit
with a ruddy glow his likeable but dirty face.  It lighted also the
dripping, cold cabin and enabled him to see me looking at him.  With a
broad good-natured equal-to-anything grin he said "Aint it hell when it
snows in bed."

I left there that fall with regret, carrying with me a lasting and
favorable impression of Joe.  Though illiterate, he was a close
observer, knew his country and its game well.  His talk was always
interesting and at times humorous.  He told many good stories of life
in the Peace River country.  On our trips he never talked of Mary nor
of women.  He was never vulgar, and seldom profane.  He was a clean,
healthy-minded, good-natured, energetic, capable, and companionable
woodsman.

When I visited that section again the following fall Joe had an old
Scotchman living with him; Mary had gone.  Tommy had told me so on
reaching Pittsville, stating that Joe and Mary had come into town in
the spring as usual to dispose of his pelts.  The season's catch had
been a good one; fur was high and the return large.  Joe and Mary
celebrated for a day or two in a more or less quiet way, then Joe went
off in one of the new "buzz wagons", as he called the automobile, and
was gone for some days.  On his return he found Mary had departed with
her white friend of the season before.  He told me so himself later,
saying "She went with a white man who lived nearer booze than I do.  I
lived in an Indian country, was mothered by an Indian woman, and have
known no other women.  I was naturally a squaw man, as my father was,
but no more klootches for me.  I want a white woman and wish I knew
where I could get one that would live with a cuss like me, but that is
impossible."

Tommy said "Nothing is impossible."

Joe replied, "You can't sleep with a porcupine."

Either Tommy or myself suggested that he might advertise for a wife,
and Joe, who could neither read nor write, asked how that could be
done.  On its being explained to him it was agreed that Tommy should
take the matter in hand and advertise in some of the weekly newspapers
of the middle western states.  What came from that advertisement is the
burden of this story.

During the following winter Tommy wrote me that in answer to the
advertisement in Joe's name, he had received several replies, and that
Joe, who had come into town twice during the winter over the snow to
learn what was going on, had taken a decided fancy to a woman from
Kansas, and that in reply to the letters he had written and signed for
Joe, the woman had asked for some references as to his character.

"Her letters," Tommy wrote me, "are written with a cramped hand, but
they are well worded and indicate a woman of some education and sense.
I have asked the Government Agent to write to her, and Joe wants you to
write her."

I accordingly wrote encouragingly to the address he gave me, and
endorsed Joe as a good, clean man and an excellent woodsman and
companion, enclosing at the same time photographs I had taken of Joe
and his country.

Later, in the spring, Tommy wrote me that matters had been settled,
that Joe had sent on the passage money, met and married the woman at
Ashcroft, and that they had gone home to his improved cabin.

I found them there in the fall.  "Sue," as Joe called her, I found to
be a large-framed, heavy-boned, comely, self-contained woman of nearly
thirty years of age, with a wealth of well-kept light colored hair
which was drawn close over her well formed head and knotted in a coil
at the nape of her neck.  Beneath a well developed brow her dark grey
eyes were set far apart.  Her prominent nose was wide at the bridge,
with extended nostrils and slightly turned up.  The broad mouth beneath
was cut straight above a determined chin.  The neck was short, and set
on the broad shoulders of a short, muscular frame.  There was rich
color in her bronzed face.  Her hands and feet were large.  A woman, as
Tommy had said, "Not good looking, but good to look at."  She gave us a
warm welcome, speaking with ease in a clear, pleasant voice that gave
one the impression that she could sing.

The cabin had undergone a marked change.  It was a different place.  A
lean-to had added a large bedroom to the lower floor on the east and a
kitchen to the back, and the windows had been enlarged and hung with
cheap curtains.  Bear skins and braided rag rugs covered sections of
the clean new floor.  There were a few unframed prints on the walls,
between the heads and skins that hung there; scalloped papers on the
shelves of the dishes; a stiff paper shade over the tall lamp on the
cloth-covered table; several wicker chairs; and most significant of
all, there were books on a shelf beneath the stairs that had replaced
the ladder to the loft.  Everything about the room was spick and span,
a cheery, well-kept inviting home.  Joe's eyes sparkled and his frank
pleasing face beamed when he said "This is my wife" and, turning to
Sue, "This is my friend that comes for the huntin'.  This is the man
who took the pictures that caught you, and who likes our country so
much he comes every year."

Sue had a fine supper awaiting us, which was served on a table covered
with a white cloth, consisting of moose meat as was usual in that
house, biscuits "like Mother used to make," and a blueberry pie that
could not be excelled in the world.

Joe refused the Scotch whisky we offered him before sitting down.
"No"; he said, "I've cut it out.  It's no good.  My booze days are
over!"  Sue smiled and nodded.  Joe beamed again, saying, "That's all
right, Sue.  I'll make good on all I said.  No booze for me!"

The next day on a canoe trip to the moose meadows and through the
sloughs at the head of Clear Lake, Joe told me of his wooing and
winning of Sue.

"Tommy did the trick," he said, "he set the trap with his piece in the
paper.  It was well baited with a good lead, and Sue walked in.  She
writ from Kansas that she was a farmer's daughter, and had left home
and hired out as a cook when her people died.  She was tired of the
life, and that flat country.  She wanted to get out into the wild
woods, to the lake and the river that Tommy put in the paper.  She
fancied traps and fish and wild game, and she liked the pictures of me
and the shack.  Gee! man, I liked her face in the picture she sent and
I liked it all at once, and it hasn't been out of my head since.  She
may not be pretty to you, but she looks great to me.  I sent the money
when she writ she would come out, and I was waitin' for her in Ashcroft
for three days before she got there, and she come on time.  I met her
at the cars and knew her face, and she was the only woman that got off.
I walked up to her with heart in my mouth and said, "I am Joe, and glad
you have come."

Her face was mighty red when she said "Yes, I have come."

We took her things to the hotel, left them there, and then walked down
to the treeless bank of the big Thompson River and sat down there and
talked.  I handed her the license I had got to get married, and gave
her an envelope telling her there was three hundred dollars in it.
Then I told her that Tommy had writ all the letters, that I couldn't
read or write.  I told her that I had been a squaw-man, and that Mary
had left me for a man that would buy her more booze.  It came hard to
tell her I'd not always been a white man, but I told her I was ashamed
of it and that I'd go straight and square and break the trail and tote
the load all the way if she would marry me; that if she wouldn't, now
she knew what a poor cuss I'd been she could take the three hundred
dollars and go back home.  She looked me in the eyes all the time I was
sweatin' and talkin', and then she asked if Mary had any children, and
thank God, I could tell her 'No'.  Then she handed me the money and the
license, and said she reckoned that all young men were like I had been,
but that she would go ahead now she had come so far and I'd told her so
much.

"So we went back and got married that afternoon and took a buzz-wagon
and went to Clinton and come on here."

"I've walked on a good trail ever since," he continued.  "She's the
real thing, as you say, and I feel like a real man now.  I am one too;
she done it.  She's a real wife, and when the baby comes we'll be 'some
family', if you hear me talk."

On our trips that fall Joe did not talk all the time of Sue, though she
was never far from his mind or his conversation.  For the first time in
the years I had known him he talked of books.  Sue had read him two
that she had brought from the east--"Davy Crockett" and "Daniel Boone",
and Joe was full of them.  Sue had opened a new world to him.  "Had I
read them?  Were there any more as good?" and he added "Sue tells me
she has read a lot and that there's so many books in the world that we
can't live long enough to read 'em all.  We're going to buy a lot, and
she is showin' me how to read."  And he added, in a voice that was
almost child-like, "Do you think I'll ever make it?"

When they went into Pittsville for their provisions late that fall they
found a case of books from Tommy and myself as an addition to our
wedding gifts.

The first baby came the next spring.  To Joe's joy, and also to Sue's,
it was a boy, and they called him "Little Joe".

"The month before he come," Joe said, in telling me the story the fall
afterwards, as we sat in the new canoe he had finished that summer, "we
hiked and sledded it over the twenty-four miles of the trail to
Pittsville, and Sue, she went to the hospital.  When the time come, I
was sure scared stiff and wanted to hit the booze, but didn't.  I hung
around the hospital, and when it was over and I saw her and the baby in
the white bed I just cried like a fool.  Later I pulled them both to
the shack on a sled, the happiest man in Cariboo.  She's 'some mother',
and he's 'some kid', and if any more like him, or a little girl or two
will come, they'll sure be welcome.  I sure got some woman when I got
Sue.  She'll show the little kid how to read and write as she's showin'
me, but it will be easier I hope.  "We'll go to her school together,"
she says.

When we rowed out of the slough into the lake at dusk of that glorious
afternoon, with the head of a big moose in the centre of the boat, and
headed across, we could see a light in the cabin window.  "They're
waitin' for us.  Gee, man, it's great," he said, and the look on his
face proved how great it was.

The following spring news came that Joe had been badly injured by a
trapped bear, and was in the hospital at Pittsville where little Joe
was born.  I did not get all the story until that fall, and then Joe
told it to me while sitting on the steps leading up to the porch in
front of his cabin door, holding little Joe in his lap while Sue was
busy in the cabin.

"Along last April," he said, "I found tracks of a grizzly in the mud,
on the Grouse Creek trap line some two miles below the cabin, and
facin' the big rock cliff to the west.  You've been there.  It was down
on the cottonwood flat above the river.  He had taken a mink from my
trap.  I got out my big bear trap, and the next day I went down and set
it.  It was the big heavy trap with an eight-foot chain.  I fastened
the chain to the loose butt of a short log, to act as a drag if a bear
got into the trap.  I told Sue where the trap was set.  She had been
over all the lines many times with me and knew them well.  I trapped
two bear down that way last year, and she was down with me when I
skinned one."

"The next morning I took my rifle and went down to the trap, telling
Sue that if we had a big bear it would take me some time to skin it and
lift the traps to the head of Grouse Creek.  When I got down to the
flat I found the trap gone, but the well-marked line of the drag led
towards the cliff.  I followed it up and soon came upon a big grizzly
with its right front foot fast in the trap, and the drag snagged in a
clump of low trees and brush.  With a roar the bear tried to reach me,
but the drag held.  I shot him and he fell.  I sized up the thing and
left him lying there, and went to the head of the trap line, picked up
a few small skins, and came back to the bear.  He lay as I had left
him.  I leaned the gun against a tree, took out my big knife to skin
him and, as I stooped over, he struck me a blow with his free forefoot
and I went down and out."

"Sue waited for me until late in the afternoon, thinkin' I was busy
skinnin' the bear.  Then she put the fire out, fed little Joe, and
placed him in the pen that we had for him on the floor, and started
down the trail to help me along.  She found me and the bear.  The bear
was dead, and she thought I was, as I lay in the brush all crumpled up
and covered with blood.  My scalp, pulled from the top of my head, was
hanging over my eyes; my jacket was stripped off one side, showing a
badly cut shoulder and broken arm, and my left foot was crushed and
bloody.  It was 'some find' for Sue, but she was good for it.  She's a
strong woman, as you know, and she started on as big a job that night
as any man ever done.  She tore up her skirt and bandaged me up, and
somehow she packed me back to the cabin, and it was 'some job'.  I come
to, some time after she picked me up, down by the river, where she
could wash my face.  When I understood matters I helped by clinging to
her with my right arm and standing now and then on my good foot while
she rested.  The early moon gave her light the last part of the way.
It was 'some home-coming'.  The kid had cried himself to sleep and lay
curled up in the fur rug in his pen on the floor.  Poor little Joe, he
had had his first bad time.  She made me a bed on the floor, washed and
bandaged me up, and fed me and the kid with hot soup."

"We then talked matters over and decided that at daylight she was to go
down the river and over the hill to Squaw Creek to the Owens Boys camp,
some twelve miles away, for help, though she had never been over that
ridge.  She fed us again before leaving and placed within my reach the
kid, and some food and water.  She left us at grey daylight, saying
'Don't be afraid, I will come back with help."

"Me and the kid had some little time while she was gone.  He, poor
little chap, didn't know what was up, and I couldn't tell him.  After
she left I lay there and in my mind followed her down the trail that
was so long the night before, to the bend in the river below the flat
where the bear lay, and on up Grouse Creek, and wondered if she would
find the only ford near the burnt log, and how she would get across
that swollen creek.  I could see her waist-deep struggling in that
fierce water, and using the canoe pole she had taken with her from the
cabin to help her across.  Then I reckoned she had made it, and was
across and going up the ridge towards the white rocks that was her
direction.  I followed her then up and down through that tangle of
woods and devil's club brush on the Squaw Creek side to the flat where
the Owens boys lived.  Would she find them at home, and if not, how
long must she wait, and when would they come back?  Would she ever come
back?  What if she was washed down in the creek and drowned, and no
help ever come to the kid and me?  I knew I couldn't last many days as
I was, and what of little Joe?  Must he lay there and starve as I raved
and was helpless?  Then I remembered how strong she was, and that she
had said 'Don't be afraid, I will come back with help.'  Then I just
knew she would come back.  I kept telling the kid she would come
back--'Muddy will come back', though the poor kid did not understand.

"The fire went out and the cabin grew cold, though we were wrapped up.
It sure broke me up to have the kid cry so, for 'he is no cry baby' as
Sue says.  And I cried too, and the kid fell asleep again.  Then my
mind went back to the Peace River days.  How quiet and strong my father
was, and how good his squaw was to me!  And then his death, and my trip
out up the Peace and the Parsnip rivers to Fort McLeod and on to
Giscombe Portage, Fort George, Quesnel, and into Pittsville.  And then
of you and Tommy, and how he would curse me for a fool for bein' hit by
the bear!  And then back to Sue, went my head.  Where was she now?  And
then to the books she read to me,--'Lorna Doone', 'Bob, Son of Battle',
'The Call of the Wild', and most of all to 'Rab and his Friends' and
how brave that little woman was when the good doctor cut off her
breast, and how she thanked him and said she was sorry to give so much
trouble!"

"And then, thank God, I heard someone run up the trail and Bill Owens
came into the cabin.  Sue had made it!  Gee, he looked good to me, and
I lay there and sobbed with the kid.  Bill soon had the fire going and
gave us a hot drink, and then the kid and I slept."

"Later on Sue and the older Owens brother came.  He had made Sue rest
at their cabin to eat, dry her shoes and stockings, and then travel
back slow for the big job ahead."

"They soon put things to rights.  They put splints on my arm and left
leg.  During the night they made Sue rest on the bed while they made up
a long sled.  Early next mornin' they bundled me up in blankets and
cinched me on the sled.  The kid was made in a pack for Sue, and we
started for Pittsville.  There was still some snow on the north side of
the trail, and the Owens boys packed and dragged the sled and the eats,
and Sue, she packed the kid."

"I don't remember much of that trip but the start.  The next thing I
knew I was in the white bed in the white room where little Joe was
born, and Sue sat beside me smiling.  Gee, man, I'll never forget that
face!  There was colour in it.  It was different than the wet one I
looked into on that trail from the flat to the cabin the night she
packed me home.  Gee, man she was 'some woman' on those trails! and she
sure was 'some angel' there by my bed when she leaned over me and said
'Oh, Joe, do you know me?'"

"Man," he continued, while little Joe played with his strong scarred
hand as he talked, and the western sky was lit with gold, "in the years
you have been coming here you have put a lot of notions into my old
head, but none so good as the night you told me to advertise for a
wife.  Sue, thank God, answered me and came out and married me though I
was an ignorant cuss and had been a squaw man.  She has made me white.
She learned me to read and write, and she's made me a new world from
those books, and she gave me the kid.  Gee, man, she's 'some woman'."

Then Sue came to the door and, lifting little Joe in her arms, smiled,
and called us in to supper.




[End of Peace River Joe, by John Pease Babcock]
