The men had engaged to build the framework of hut and store shed before
returning, and to this under Trafford's direction they now set
themselves. They were all half-breeds, mingling with Indian with
Scottish or French blood, sober and experienced men. Three were named
Mackenzie, two brothers and a cousin, and another, Raymond Noyes, was a
relation and acquaintance of that George Elson who was with Wallace and
Leonidas Hubbard, and afterwards guided Mrs. Hubbard in her crossing of
Labrador. The fifth was a boy of eighteen named Lean. They were all
familiar with the idea of summer travel in this country; quite a number,
a score or so that is to say, of adventurous people, including three or
four women, had ventured far in the wake of the Hubbards into these
great wildernesses during the decade that followed that first tragic
experiment in which Hubbard died. But that any one not of Indian or
Esquimaux blood should propose to face out the Labrador winter was a new
thing to them. They were really very sceptical at the outset whether
these two highly civilized-looking people would ever get up to the
Height of Land at all, and it was still with manifest incredulity that
they set about the building of the hut and the construction of the
sleeping bunks for which they had brought up planking. A stream of
speculative talk had flowed along beside Marjorie and Trafford ever
since they had entered the Green River; and it didn't so much come to an
end as get cut off at last by the necessity of their departure.
Noyes would stand, holding a hammer and staring at the narrow little
berth he was fixing together.
"You'll not sleep in this," he said.
"I will," replied Marjorie.
"You'll come back with us."
"Not me."
"There'll be wolves come and howl."
"Let 'em."
"They'll come right up to the door here. Winter makes 'em hidjus bold."
Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.
"It's that cold I've known a man have his nose froze while he lay in
bed," said Noyes.
"Up here?"
"Down the coast. But they say it's 'most as cold up here. Many's the man
it's starved and froze."...
He and his companions told stories,--very circumstantial and pitiful
stories, of Indian disasters. They were all tales of weariness and
starvation, of the cessation of food, because the fishing gave out,
because the caribou did not migrate by the customary route, because the
man of a family group broke his wrist, and then of the start of all or
some of the party to the coast to get help and provisions, of the
straining, starving fugitives caught by blizzards, losing the track,
devouring small vermin raw, gnawing their own skin garments until they
toiled half-naked in the snow,--becoming cannibals, becoming delirious,
lying down to die. Once there was an epidemic of influenza, and three
families of seven and twenty people just gave up and starved and died in
their lodges, and were found, still partly frozen, a patient, pitiful
company, by trappers in the spring....
Such they said, were the common things that happened in a Labrador
winter. Did the Traffords wish to run such risks?
A sort of propagandist enthusiasm grew up in the men. They felt it
incumbent upon them to persuade the Traffords to return. They reasoned
with them rather as one does with wilful children. They tried to remind
them of the delights and securities of the world they were deserting.
Noyes drew fancy pictures of the pleasures of London by way of contrast
to the bitter days before them. "You've got everything there,
everything. Suppose you feel a bit ill, you go out, and every block
there's a drug store got everything--all the new rem'dies--p'raps
twenty, thirty sorts of rem'dy. Lit up, nice. And chaps in collars--like
gentlemen. Or you feel a bit dully and you go into the streets and
there's people. Why! when I was in New York I used to spend hours
looking at the people. Hours! And everything lit up, too. Sky signs!
Readin' everywhere. You can spend hours and hours in New York----"
"London," said Marjorie.
"Well, London--just going about and reading the things they stick up.
Every blamed sort of thing. Or you say, let's go somewhere. Let's go out
and be a bit lively. See? Up you get on a car and there you are! Great
big restaurants, blazing with lights, and you can't think of a thing to
eat they haven't got. Waiters all round you, dressed tremendous, fair
asking you to have more. Or you say, let's go to a theatre. Very
likely," said Noyes, letting his imagination soar, "you order up one of
these automobillies."
"By telephone," helped Trafford.
"By telephone," confirmed Noyes. "When I was in New York there was a
telephone in each room in the hotel. Each room. I didn't use it ever,
except once when they didn't answer--but there it was. I know about
telephones all right...."
Why had they come here? None of the men were clear about that. Marjorie
and Trafford would overhear them discussing this question at their fire
night after night; they seemed to talk of nothing else. They indulged in
the boldest hypotheses, even in the theory that Trafford knew of
deposits of diamonds and gold, and would trust no one but his wife with
the secret. They seemed also attracted by the idea that our two young
people had "done something." Lean, with memories of some tattered
sixpenny novel that had drifted into his hands from England, had even
some notion of an elopement, of a pursuing husband or a vindictive wife.
He was young and romantic, but it seemed incredible he should suggest
that Marjorie was a royal princess. Yet there were moments when his
manner betrayed a more than personal respect....
One night after a hard day's portage Mackenzie was inspired by a
brilliant idea. "They got no children," he said, in a hoarse,
exceptionally audible whisper. "It worries them. Them as is Catholics
goes pilgrimages, but these ain't Catholics. See?"
"I can't stand that," said Marjorie. "It touches my pride. I've stood a
good deal. Mr. Mackenzie!... Mr.... Mackenzie."
The voice at the men's fire stopped and a black head turned around.
"What is it, Mrs. Trafford?" asked Mackenzie.
She held up four fingers. "Four!" she said.
"Eh?"
"Three sons and a daughter," said Marjorie.
Mackenzie did not take it in until his younger brother had repeated her
words.
"And you've come from them to _this_.... Sir, what _have_ you come for?"
"We want to be here," shouted Trafford to their listening pause. Their
silence was incredulous.
"We wanted to be alone together. There was too much--over there--too
much everything."
Mackenzie, in silhouette against the fire, shook his head, entirely
dissatisfied. He could not understand how there could be too much of
anything. It was beyond a trapper's philosophy.
"Come back with us sir," said Noyes. "You'll weary of it...."
Noyes clung to the idea of dissuasion to the end. "I don't care to leave
ye," he said, and made a sort of byword of it that served when there was
nothing else to say.
He made it almost his last words. He turned back for another handclasp
as the others under their light returning packs were filing down the
hill.
"I don't care to leave ye," he said.
"Good luck!" said Trafford.
"You'll need it," said Noyes, and looked at Marjorie very gravely and
intently before he turned about and marched off after his fellows....
Both Marjorie and Trafford felt a queer emotion, a sense of loss and
desertion, a swelling in the throat, as that file of men receded over
the rocky slopes, went down into a dip, reappeared presently small and
remote cresting another spur, going on towards the little wood that hid
the head of the rapids. They halted for a moment on the edge of the wood
and looked back, then turned again one by one and melted stride by
stride into the trees. Noyes was the last to go. He stood, in an
attitude that spoke as plainly as words, "I don't care to leave ye."
Something white waved and flickered; he had whipped out the letters they
had given him for England, and he was waving them. Then, as if by an
effort, he set himself to follow the others, and the two still watchers
on the height above saw him no more.