Business Bothers
For a few days 'Duke Radford appeared to get better with
astonishing rapidity. He left his bed, and crept across the store,
to sit in the rocking-chair by the kitchen stove, and said he was
now quite well. But when he had pulled up thus far towards
strength again, he stopped short, unable to get any farther. In
vain Mrs. Burton plied him with every nourishing food she could
think of: an invalid he remained, weak and depressed, all his old
energy and enterprise under a cloud, and with a settled melancholy
which nothing could lift.
It was then that the burden of life descended with such crushing
force on Katherine. The work of the store must go on, and it was
harder in winter than in summer. She spent long hours burrowing
among the piles of merchandise in the underground chamber beneath
the store, where were kept the goods bought and brought to Roaring
Water Portage when the waters were open. Or, with Miles for a
companion, she went long distances across the snowy wastes,
delivering stores by dog team and sledge. This was all very well
on the still days, when the sun shone with cloudless brilliancy in
a clear sky, and the dogs tore along like mad creatures, and the
whole of the expedition would seem like a frolic; but there were
other days when things were very different. Sometimes a raging
wind would sweep in from the bay, laden with a terrible stinging
damp, which kind of cold pierced like daggers. Or a roaring north
wind would howl through the forests, snapping off big trees from
their roots as if they were only twigs, while earth, air, and sky
were a confusion of whirling snowflakes. These were the dangerous
days, and they never ventured far from home when such blizzards
were raging, unless it was for the three miles' run down to Seal
Cove, where the trail had been dug out, and the snow banked, at the
beginning of winter.
There were a large number of sealing and walrus boats laid up in
ice between Roaring Water Portage and Seal Cove. Most of these had
men living on board, who passed the days in loafing, in setting
traps for wolves, or in boring holes through the ice for fishing.
Many of them spent a great portion of their time in the little
house at the bend of the river, where Oily Dave dispensed bad
whisky and played poker with his customers from morning to night,
or, taking a rough average, for sixteen hours out of the
twenty-four. These were the men whom Katherine most dreaded to
encounter. They looked bold admiration, and roared out compliments
at the top of husky voices, but they ventured nothing further; her
manner was too repressive, and the big dogs which always
accompanied her were much too fierce to be trifled with. Mrs.
Burton had left off lamenting the chances of damage to her sister's
complexion from exposure, for she realized that Katherine must be
breadwinner now, and the stern necessities of life had to be first
consideration for them all.
One day Katherine found to her surprise that some tin buckets of
lard were missing from the store. It was only the day before that,
rummaging in the far corner of the cellar, she had unearthed six of
these buckets, which had apparently been forgotten, as the date
chalked on them was eighteen months old. With much hard work she
hauled four of them to the store above, ripped the cover from one,
so that the contents might be retailed at so much per pound, and
left the other three standing in a row on a shelf which was remote
from the stove. But now two were gone, and looking at the one
which had been opened she saw that it was only half full. For a
moment she supposed that there must have been a considerable run on
lard during the previous evening, while she was teaching night
school, with Miles on duty in the store. It had been such a fine
clear evening that many people were abroad who would otherwise have
been in bed, or at any rate shut up in the stuffy little cabins of
the snow-banked sealers.
A minute of thought, however, showed her that such a demand for
lard would have been so much out of the common as to have elicited
some comment from Miles at closing time. Each bucket would contain
something over thirty pounds in weight, so the sale of over sixty
pounds' weight of lard in one evening would have been something of
a record for Roaring Water Portage. Miles was busy at the wood
pile; she could not leave the store to go and question him then, so
had to wait with what patience she could muster until he came
indoors again. Her father had not left his bed yet; indeed he
rarely did leave it now until noon or later, when he dressed
himself, walked across the kitchen, and sat in the rocking-chair
until it was time for bed again.
The life would have seemed dreary and monotonous enough if it had
not been for the hard and constant work, which made the days of
that winter fly faster for Katherine than any winter had ever flown
before. She did not mind the work. Young, strong, and with plenty
of energy, the daily toil seemed rather pleasant than otherwise.
It was business bothers like this about the missing lard which
tried her patience and temper. Presently Miles came in, his face
red and warm from hard work in the open air, but puckered into a
look of worry, which found a reflection on the countenance of
Katherine.
"We are running out of fish for the dogs, Katherine. Have we been
using it too fast, do you think?" he asked.
"Surely not. The poor creatures cannot work unless they are well
fed, and they have never had more than they could eat. How much
longer will it last?"
"Three days perhaps, not more," Miles answered. "It has seemed to
go all at once."
"Just so. I should fancy the fish has suffered in the same way as
the lard. You had better keep the door of the fish-house locked in
future. I wonder where we can get some more fish? People's stocks
of dried fish will be getting low now, I expect," Katherine said,
wrinkling her brows and trying to think of a likely place where the
want could be supplied.
"I know where we could get fresh fish, pretty nearly any amount of
it, if you didn't mind the bother of catching it. We could freeze
it and keep it so. But what about the lard? You meant it to be
sold, didn't you?"
"Yes, of course; but how much did you sell?" asked Katherine, with
a hope that he really had sold it all and merely forgotten to
mention it.
"Sixteen pounds, all told. Oily Dave seemed uncommonly pleased
with it; though, of course, he wanted to beat me down two cents a
pound, and when he found I would not put up with that, he tried to
palm some bad money off on to me. I'm not so sure that he would
not have had me there, for I'm not half so sharp about money as I
ought to be, but Stee Jenkin called out to me to keep my eyes open,
and then I soon found out there was something on hand, so I made
the old rascal pay up in honest coin."
There was an air of modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he
rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness,
so Katherine's next words were a terrible blow to his pride.
"My dear boy, you had better have let him have his two cents twice
over, and then winked at the money, than have given him such a
chance as he must have made for himself last night," she said
bitterly.
"What do you mean?" he demanded, with the offended air he always
displayed when his pride was wounded.
"I mean that Oily Dave or some of his precious companions walked
off with two whole buckets of that lard from under your nose last
night, unless indeed you took the trouble to carry it into the
cellar again."
"It would not have been possible for anyone to do that, for I was
here all the time," he answered stiffly.
"Quite all the time, or did you have to leave for anything; some
silly little thing, perhaps?" she said in a coaxing tone, anxious
to win him from his show of bad temper, and at the same time get
some clue to the disappearance of the stuff.
"I don't think I went away at all," Miles began, then caught
himself up in a sudden recollection. "Oh yes, I did! I remember I
took a ten-dollar bill, that Jean Doulais brought, indoors for
Father to give me change."
"Then while you were indoors the thief stepped into the store and
walked off with our two pails of lard. Well, I hope the stuff will
make him very sick indeed!" exclaimed Katherine, in a tone of
disgust.
"I wonder who it was? It couldn't possibly have been Jean," said
Miles, "for he was sitting on the counter and banging his heels.
When I went into the kitchen I heard him thumping away all the time
I was there, and he was sitting and banging when I came back."
"Was it Jean Doulais who made all that noise?" said Katherine. "I
was demonstrating on the blackboard, and had to write my
explanations, because I could not make myself heard. One of the
boys volunteered to go and punch the noisy one's head, but this I
forbade for prudent reasons."
"Pity you didn't let the fellow come. He might have happened on
the thief," growled Miles. "If Jean didn't take the things, he
must know pretty well who did. Will you tackle him about it?"
"I think not," replied Katherine, after a pause for consideration.
"He might think we suspected him, which would be bad from a
business point of view. Then he would be certain to tell the
thief, and that would lessen our chances of detecting him."
"What a desperately light-fingered lot they are here this winter!"
Miles exclaimed in a petulant tone. "Just see what a rush we had
to save the stores from your cache the night Father had his
accident."
"But we did save them," replied Katherine with a ripple of
laughter. "And incidentally we also saved the lives of a noble
pair of men."
Miles gave a grunt of disgust. "A regular pity they didn't get
killed, I think; and I shouldn't wonder if they are at the bottom
of this piece of thieving also."
Katherine shook her head. "Oily Dave may be, for pilfering seems
to be second nature with him. But Stee Jenkin is made of better
stuff, and I believe he is really grateful because we saved him
that night. Then remember how kind he and his wife were to us when
Father was so ill. Oh, I've got a better opinion of Stee than to
think he would steal our things now!"
Miles grunted again in a disbelieving fashion, but he did not
attempt to upset Katherine's convictions by argument; only they
agreed that for the future a more vigilant watch should be kept
both indoors and out. A padlock and chain were put on the door of
the fish-house, everything that could be locked up was carefully
made fast; then Katherine and Miles set themselves to the task of
keeping their eyes open to find out who had stolen the lard.
Later in that same day a miserable-looking Indian came in with a
lot of dried fish which he wanted to trade off for provisions, and,
after a good deal of bargaining, Katherine took the lot in exchange
for a small barrel of flour and a packet of tobacco.
"No need for us to go fishing to-morrow, Miles. I have got enough
fish to last the dogs for a fortnight, if we are careful," she said
to her brother, when he came back from a journey down to Seal Cove.
"Where did you get it from?" he asked.
"From an Indian who called himself Waywassimo, so I think he must
have been reading Longfellow's Hiawatha, for you know Waywassimo
was the lightning, and Annemeekee the thunder," Katherine replied.
"Only there was nothing grand nor terrible about this Waywassimo.
He was simply a miserable-looking Indian with a most dreadful
cough."
Miles began to laugh in a hugely delighted fashion, but it was some
time before Katherine could get from him the cause of his mirth.
At length, with many chuckles, he commenced to explain.
"There has been a wretched-looking Indian hanging about Seal Cove
for the last two or three days, stealing pretty nearly everything
he could lay his hands on, and Mrs. Jenkin told me that last night
he broke into Oily Dave's fish-house and cleared off with every bit
of dried fish there was."
"So I have been buying stolen goods. How horrid!" exclaimed
Katherine with a frown. "Now I suppose it is my duty to hand at
least a part of that fish back to Oily Dave. Oh dear, I would
rather it had been anyone else, for I do dislike him so much!"
"Don't fret yourself; wait until you hear the end of my story, and
then you will see that for once the biter has been bitten,"
answered Miles, with so much chuckling and gurgling that he seemed
to be in a fair way to choke himself. "Mrs. Jenkin says she is
quite positive that Oily Dave stole that fish, because his
fish-house was quite empty a week ago, as she saw with her own
eyes, but yesterday, when she was cleaning his house for him, she
saw that he had a lot of fish. He told her then that he had bought
it to sell again. She knew how much of that to believe, however,
and asked me if we had missed any of our fish."
"What did you say?" asked Katherine, who then began to wonder if
their fish had really wasted through being stolen, instead of
having merely been used too fast.
"Oh, I didn't commit myself! Mrs. Jenkin has a good heart, but her
head is as soft as blubber, so I was pretty careful not to say
much," Miles answered, with a wag of his own head, which he thumped
with his fist to show that at least he was not topped with blubber.
"It is maddening whichever way one looks at it!" cried Katherine.
"If Oily Dave stole our fish, and Waywassimo stole it from him
again, then I have been buying our own property, and paying for it
at a rather stiff price. I simply could not beat that poor wretch
down, he looked so sad and hungry. Oh, Miles, what shall we do?
If this business leaks out we shall just be the laughing-stock of
the whole place."
"It is not going to leak out; I'll take good care of that,"
retorted the boy, squaring his jaws. "If we say nothing about it,
who is to be any the wiser? Was there anyone here when you bought
the fish?"
"Not a soul. How very fortunate!" cried Katherine, beginning to
smile again. "It is quite bad enough to be taken in by such a
trick, but it would be simply intolerable to have other people
knowing about it and laughing at our misfortunes."
Miles nodded. This was just his own opinion, and he would have
suffered tortures if the wits of Seal Cove had been able to taunt
him about his clever sister having bought her own fish. Then he
said slowly, as if he had been giving the matter profound
consideration; "There isn't a scrap of doubt in my mind that if
Oily Dave took the fish he took the lard as well."
"Then I wish Waywassimo would steal that too!" said Katherine with
a laugh.