Chief Factor MacKinroy himself would have been the first to assign to
the missionary, the Rev. John Chambers, M.A., Oxon., the position of
premier influence and even of authority, not only in the little
community at the Post but in the whole district tributary to the Post,
with its nondescript population of white traders and trappers,
half-breeds and Indians. And this was due to those mysterious qualities
that go to the making of personality, and to the services which the
possession of these qualities fitted him to render. He was the titular
head of the Anglican Mission, which of course gave him a standing at
once influential and authoritative, but had he not been more his
official position as a dignitary of a great church would have gone but a
small way to win him place and power.
Fifteen years ago, raw from the greatest university in the English
speaking world, he had come up with a Hudson’s Bay Company brigade and
had planted himself here in this far north outpost of civilisation, to
establish a mission in partibus infidelium for his church. Quite a year
before his arrival, his coming had been duly announced by the company
authorities in London to Factor MacKinroy, who received the announcement
with explosive profanity in the “twa langiges” and then speedily forgot
all about the thing.
“And who the deevil will you be?” was the Factor’s greeting, when the
fly-bitten and sorely battered representative of the church disentangled
himself from the motley crew of the brigade and presented himself to the
Factor’s gaze.
“Ah—I beg your pardon. Ah—Chambers is my name——”
“And what the deevil will be your business in these parts?” inquired the
Factor, on the lookout for doubtful characters, rival traders, prying
politicians, globe trotters and the like.
“Before I answer your polite inquiry, sir, may I ask who the devil are
you?”
For quite ten portentous seconds the Factor glared at the little man
whose steady blue eyes twinkled pleasantly at him out of a face brick
red and horribly distorted by the assiduous attentions of the swarms of
various kinds of flies, big and little, black, brown and grey, for the
past six weeks. During those portentous ten seconds the Factor’s keen
eyes had been taking stock of the little man before him, with swift
appraising glances.
“God bless my soul!” said he at length. “And it is yourself will be the
new minister. And I will be asking your pardon, for I can well see you
are a man as well.”
So began a friendship that fifteen years of mutual knowledge and of
common experience of the toils and perils of the wild North land welded
into something that no earthly strain could break.
To John Chambers the wild, rude life brought never an hour of regret,
never but one. That was the hour after the letter had gone south by the
monthly mail, in which he had set free from her engagement the English
girl with whom in earlier days and in happier surroundings he had
planned his life. But the desperate loneliness was wiped clean from his
memory by another hour of ecstatic and delirious joy which followed the
incoming of the English mail some three months later. For that mail
brought him a letter palpitating with indignant scorn of him and his
high-flown and altogether idiotic purpose of self-immolation. “What
about me, you silly boy?” inquired the writer. “Are you the only person
in the world? Now be it known unto you that on or about the thirty-first
of March—for I believe your execrable roads break up in the later
spring, and I cannot and will not brook delay—there will be in Edmonton
a young female person,” here followed a description which the reader of
the letter refused to recognise, “looking for convoy and a convoyer to
the wild North land. If the convoyer happen to be a little man—you know
you are only five feet, eight and three-quarters inches though you
protest five feet nine—red headed and much freckled of face and with
dear, bold, blue eyes, so much the better,” at the reading of which the
said convoyer flung the letter high, kicked over his stool, seized his
stolid and loyal Indian factotum, Thomas by name, and whirled him into a
mad Kai-yai! Hai-yai! war dance.
Together for more than a dozen years they fought the good fight against
ignorance, dirt, disease and all the other varieties of humanity’s ills
in which “the world, the flesh and the devil” manifest themselves and
with varying success winning with other rewards the trust, the
reverence, the love of Indian, half-breed and white man alike and
awakening in all whose love they won the more or less persistent desire
to emulate their deeds and attain their likeness, a truly notable
achievement.
The rescue of the Indian woman and her family was to the missionary a
bit of his ordinary day’s work, as was the daily ministering to the sick
woman, without questioning and without suspicion, such help for body and
soul as she required. The woman’s need was great, and for these good
Samaritans this established a sufficient claim upon the full wealth of
their resources, with never a suggestion or sense of burden. Indeed,
within the missionary’s home the coming of the little blind girl was as
the visit of an angel unawares. It added not a little to the cares of
the missionary’s wife that she was not infrequently called upon to
settle furious strife between her sturdy young sons as to their rights
and privileges in the service of the little maid. Within a week the
whole family had made for themselves an assured place in the little
community about the Post. The only cloud upon the horizon of their
community life was the only too obvious fact that the Indian woman was
travelling her last trail and that the camp ground was in sight.
Upon this shadowed area of peace came breezing from the south Sergeant
Starr on his way to the far north, seeking a runaway half-breed murderer
and thief. A cheery soul was the sergeant, in spite of his seventy-three
inches of gaunt and grim manhood. He had left his corporal a hundred
miles back, nursing, at another Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, a frozen
foot.
“Where has your man gone, Sergeant?” inquired the factor. “Have you any
idea now?”
“Up the Athabasca—among the Chippewayans, I rather guess,” replied the
sergeant, “and they are the very deuce too to work with. Close as clams.
No use for us.”
“But you will be getting him in time, I suppose,” said the factor
dubiously.
“It’s a habit we have,” said the sergeant, as if gravely announcing a
demonstrated fact. “What’s new? Who is the young Apollo?” he added,
nodding in the direction of Paul who was passing.
“Yon lad is one of a party rescued by Chambers from the teeth of the
last blizzard, a week or so ago.”
“Chambers is at his old tricks, eh?”
“Aye. And this time he made a very fine catch whatever. Four of them,
one a woman, an Indian with a blind little child——”
“What?” exclaimed Starr, arrested in his unloading operations. “A blind
girl? An Indian?”
“Half-breed Scotch. Indian mother.”
“What name?” enquired the sergeant sharply.
“Name? That I do not know. We don’t bother with the names of our guests
much,” said the factor.
The sergeant nodded. “Quite right, quite right, Mr. MacKinroy. But I am
interested in this family. Fine young fellow that. And blind child, eh?”
“And what will you be after, Sergeant?” asked the factor, knowing his
man.
“Not much, except that I may say to you, Mr. MacKinroy, that I am of the
opinion that I have hit upon something that the commissioner has been
asking us to dig up for the past six years.” The sergeant’s deliberate
voice and manner were quite impressive.
“And what will you be meaning now, Sergeant?”
“Six years ago a family corresponding in numbers and personnel to your
rescued party disappeared from the Windermere Valley, vanished into
space, absolutely into thin air—quite unbelievable, but actually did,
you know. Head’s all terribly up in the air about it. Reputation of
force and all that, you know. Of course, they had a week’s start. Fellow
refused to lay information.”
“Now then, Sergeant, if you will tell me what you are discoursing upon I
will be obliged, but if not you may as well shut your gab,” said
MacKinroy, athirst for news from the outside and annoyed at the
sergeant’s scrappy and wholly unsatisfactory account of what offered
mystery.
“Oh, I beg pardon, MacKinroy. Forgot you were out of it. The bones of it
I’ll give you. Chap, Gaspard by name, rancher, artist, tangled up with
Indian girl—Athabascan chief’s daughter—after his wife died went dippy,
married Indian girl, brought her back to ranch with two children, both
his, youngest blind girl—my clue, see?—neighbor rancher, Sleeman by
name, bad lot, hanging round, monkeying round with Indian woman, Gaspard
and his son, this young fellow here I fancy, came on the scene, found
her fighting off Sleeman, jumped for his gun, the woman grabbed him to
prevent murder, in the struggle Gaspard was shot, died; woman goes quite
mad, moons round giving out signs of dementia, one night Sleeman’s house
goes up in smoke, Sleeman himself pulled out of the fire by one of ours
with an ugly knife wound in the ribs, at first charged Indian woman with
crime, later refused to make any formal deposition; same night woman and
whole bunch vamoose utterly, fade off the landscape, trail lost
completely. Of course, every Indian in the North Country sets himself to
mix that trail. For two years search actively carried on, then slacked
off—Sleeman’s influence, I suspect—but all the same it will be _kudos_
for the man that lands ’em, and I fancy that’s me.”
“Huh! It will be good for you to see Chambers,” said MacKinroy in a
doubtful tone.
“I shall see him,” said Sergeant Starr. “He has sense.”
The sergeant was right. Chambers had sense, as he made abundantly
evident after hearing the officer’s story.
“You won’t get her, Starr,” he said. “You will lose your _kudos_, old
chap.”
“You mean she is——”
“There’s another call come for her, a call which takes precedence over
that of the North-West Mounted Police.”
“Hard luck, eh, Chambers? What about them, the youngsters I mean?”
“Don’t know. No plans yet. Must have a talk with her and with Paul.
Pretty much of a man, that young chap.”
“Let me in on that, Chambers. I might help and it might clear things up
a bit.”
“I shall see about it,” said Chambers. “No use worrying her.”
“Shan’t worry her. Does she know she didn’t kill the man, for instance?”
asked the sergeant.
“True enough. I shall see Paul.”
Paul’s answer when the missionary broached the subject was a prompt and
decisive negative.
“She is not to be worried. Let the policeman talk to me if he wishes,
but he is not to see her. She has for six years been haunted by a dread
of the police. Her whole tribe have covered the trail all this time. Let
her go in peace. Let him talk to me.”
The following morning it was that the sergeant, sauntering about the
Post, came to the hut placed by the factor at the disposal of the Indian
woman and her family. He was met at the door by Paul, who immediately
stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
“You can’t come in,” he said, facing the sergeant.
“No?”
“No!”
“It would be good that I should see the sick woman,” said the sergeant
in a courteous voice.
“You will not see her,” said the youth. The sergeant noted, as it was
his business to note, the glitter as of steel in the blue grey eye, the
lips thin to a line, the muscles stiffen as for a spring.
“Steady, young man,” he said in a quiet voice. “Don’t do anything rash.
I don’t want to hurt her or you. But I must interview her.”
“No!” said Paul.
“Young man, I must do my duty.” At the word Paul wavered.
“Your duty? Yes, you must do your duty. But she is very ill. She is
dying. Ask Mr. Chambers. He knows.” The distress in his face touched the
sergeant’s heart.
“I shall see the missionary,” he said.
“Oh, thank you,” said Paul, impulsively offering his hand. “She is very
ill. She would be afraid of you, and she must not be troubled. It will
be only a few days.”
“All right, young man. We won’t do anything to hurt her. You are all
right.” He shook hands warmly and went on his way.