One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness to
Lonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down the
Green River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in a
sort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow,"
he said, "and little fur."
After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, his
purpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to them
to see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a line
of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trap
in his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good forty
miles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look.
His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big
pack, a rifle and a dead marten,--they lay beside him--and out of his
shapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings,
peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand of
blue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile,
and little, squeezed-up eyes.
Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range at
first, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemed
guttural rather than really bad.
He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, and
felt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show how
completely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began a
speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a great
reservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimented
Marjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce a
pause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up the
whole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford
spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.
("I thought, perhaps----" whispered Louis Napoleon.)
"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can get
a sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge--like
_this_. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's old
arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down with
us, grub, blankets--not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of
the heavy gear."
"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.
"I _said_ leave the tent."
"And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins."
"Nearly all of them."
"And the ammunition, there;--except just a little."
"Just enough for the journey down."
"Perhaps a gun?"
"No, not a gun. Though, after all,--well, we'd return one of the guns.
Give it you to bring back here."
"Bring back here?"
"If you liked."
For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke his
voice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and
paused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave will
be mine? Eh?"
Trafford said that was the idea.
Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm.
"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs.
And then I can come back here...."