Read Online Born Naked by Farley Mowat - Free Book Online Page B

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    Oh, the rails they is made of tempered steel,
    And so’s the hearts of the Bosses,
    But the rails ain’t never half so hard
    As their hearts when they cuts their losses.
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    I didn’t understand this until Hughie’s father explained it to me.
    â€œIt means, laddie, that when things get tough the owners cut off the working stiffs, ye ken?”
    It was an early but salutary lesson for me in the way the capitalist economy works.
    Considering the limitations imposed on ten- or twelve-year-olds today, our parents accorded us an enormous degree of freedom. Nobody seemed overly concerned about where we might go or what we might be doing. Years later I asked my father whether he and Helen had worried about our tendencies to wander far afield.
    â€œCertainly we worried. The way a mother cat does about a kitten that wanders off after a chipmunk. But we felt that keeping you in a nice safe cage would leave you with only the vaguest and perhaps the wrongest ideas of what life was really about. Chances have to be took even by the young.”
    My reading had now taken me into James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, and other tales of the Red Men. Indian lore fascinated me but it was not until I fell under the spell of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages that I decided to become an Indian myself. I enlisted Hughie and we formed a tribe of two. We tried to emulate Jan, the hero of Two Little Savages, in learning and in practising Indian ways.
    In the late spring of 1931 the Mowats had discovered Point Pelee, the most southerly point in Canada. Here, on the shore of Lake Erie, was a relatively untouched wilderness of forest, sandy beaches, dunes, and marshes. My family visited Pelee often thereafter, usually with Hughie in tow, and we two little savages were allowed to camp out in our own home-made wigwam to savour life au naturel. It is true that my parents camped within hailing distance but they made a point of keeping out of our sight and, as far as possible, out of our Indian lives. When we were in need of food (which was frequently) or of reassurance (as when a thunderstorm came roaring in off the lake), we went to them.
    One July day the tribe went hunting. For an hour we slipped through the forest glades, soundless as shadows, in pursuit of the elusive moose. We found none because there were none on Point Pelee. Tired and hot, we eventually decided to have a swim but were outraged to find our favourite strip of sandy shore pre-empted by invading white men who had driven their covered wagon (a big Buick) along the hard-packed beach and were noisily setting up an encampment on our tribal land ! To make matters worse, the licence plates on the covered wagon told us the invaders were Americans.
    This was not to be tolerated. Wiggling through the dunes and taking cover behind tufts of tussock grass, we stalked the unsuspecting pale-faces. When we were within range, we let fly two blunt-headed arrows at their big tent.
    This was not mere childish posturing. We were both practised bowmen and, moreover, our equipment had been designed and its construction overseen by Angus. An enraged howl from within the tent announced that we had made a point. We swiftly withdrew over the dunes into the woods and headed back to our lodge, well satisfied that we had struck a telling blow in defence of our native land.
    That evening a pair of policemen appeared at my parents’ tent, enquiring about the presence of archers in the area. It appeared that a stray arrow had penetrated the tent of some tourists and had struck one of them in the ribs. No real harm had been done but the Americans had departed breathing fire and brimstone. Which, the policemen solemnly noted, was bad for the tourist business.
    My parents kept their peace, so the police departed none the wiser. Then it was Hughie’s and my turn to be interrogated. I knew that a flat denial would only get me a licking for having told