THE DESERTED CABIN
In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first
meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah
was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and
sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy
chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen
cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the
way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with
exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his
stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate
himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of
eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he
objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being
incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed
to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions
that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode
of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form
of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was
there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance
and a patient heart.
These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been
accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the
accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been
administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a
black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.
Thompson sat back after his supper, fanning himself with an ancient
newspaper, for the day's heat still lingered. Across the table on which
he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his
guest with half-contemptuous pity under cover of the gathering dusk.
MacLeod smoked a pipe. Thompson chewed the cud of reflection.
"And so," the factor began suddenly, "ye are a missionary to the Lone
Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to
tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who--beggin' your
pardon--ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the
needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an'
clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his soul. Ye'll
understand this better when ye ha' more experience in the North. Indeed,
it's no impossible ye might come to the same way of thinkin' in time."
The dusk hid the shocked expression that gathered on Thompson's face.
"'What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world if he knoweth not
God?'" he quoted gravely. "The priests of the Catholic church have long
carried on missionary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant
faith would be lacking if we did not try to extend our field, if we made
no effort to bear light into the dark places. Man's spiritual need is
always greater than any material need can ever be. I hardly expect to
accomplish a great deal at first. But the work will grow."
"I see, I see," MacLeod chuckled dryly. "It's partly a matter of the
Methodist Church tryin' to compete with the fathers, eh? Well, I am no
what ye'd call devout. I ha' had much experience wi' these red folk, an'
them that's both red an' white. An' I dinna agree with ye aboot their
speeritual needs. I think ye sky-pilots would do better to leave them to
their ain gods, such as they are. Man, do ye know that it's better than
a century since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred
years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to
nothin'--an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're
wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material
way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the
struggle for existence--but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do
that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination
to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long
struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna
mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be
Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities,
his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What
right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas doon his gullet?"
MacLeod applied himself to relighting his pipe. Thompson gathered
himself together. He was momentarily stricken with speechless amazement.
He knew there were such things as critical unbelievers, but he had never
encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently
supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does
materialistic philosophy flourish in a theological seminary. Young men
in training for the ministry are taught to strangle doubt whenever it
rears its horrid head, to see only with the single eye of faith.
Neither the bitterness of experience nor a natural gentleness of spirit
had ever permitted Thompson to know the beauty and wisdom of tolerance.
Whosoever disputed his creed and his consecrated purpose must be in
error. The evangelical spirit glowed within him when he faced the factor
across the little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action.
His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more
than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged,
one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was
the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken--if more
calmly and critically so--in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail
struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the
manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The
edge of acrimony crept into the argument.
"The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'" Thompson declared.
"My dear sir, you cannot dispute--"
"Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past," MacLeod
interrupted. "Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in
man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the
way o' provender dinna happen nowadays--although some ither modern
commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a
rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and
fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish.
At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the
same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem
o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's
solved."
With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up
a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.
Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was
roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He
abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going,
Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which
presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject
a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive
enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon
the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more
or less hazy to Thompson.
His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca
had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they
escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's
travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw
Breyette and MacDonald standing by the canoe waiting for him. MacLeod
halted him on the verandah steps to give a brusque last word of counsel.
"Look ye, Mr. Thompson," he said. "An honest bit of advice will do ye no
harm. Ye're startin' out wi' a brave vision o' doin' a great good; of
lettin' a flood o' light into dark places. Speakin' out my ain
first-hand experience ye'll be fairly disappointed, because ye'll
accomplish nought that's in yer mind. Ye'll have no trouble wi' the
Crees. If ye remain among them long enough to mak' them understand yer
talk an' objects they'll listen or not as they feel inclined. They're a
simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that
ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive
character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him,
dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an'
if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond
possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye
meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but
theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But
dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the
proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam'
awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm
forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye
like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a friendly
neighbor at Lone Moose."
"I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one," Thompson
replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do what good
I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man."
"Nor will it," MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, "It a' depends, as
ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o'
doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along
this way."
"I thank you, sir," Thompson smiled, "both for your hospitality, and
your advice."
They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald
MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had
stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on
the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places
fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the
dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at
the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the
first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his
quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible
phrases muttered under his breath.
Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of
Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles
or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a
sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning
hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by
sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the
mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.
At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting
its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at
every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that
split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber
and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable
forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could
not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it
touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at
rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and
the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went
furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her
calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose
like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a
flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed
before the invisible altars of silence.
About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe
sharply into the bank.
The level of the forest floor lifted ten feet above Thompson's head so
that he could see nothing beyond the earthy rim save the tops of trees.
He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of
rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before
evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know
what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him
rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate,
corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would
be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of
Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a
sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the
impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a
log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and
high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter,
humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool,
and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised
that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly
disabused his mind of that.
But he still could not keep out of his mind's eye a somewhat hazy
picture of Lone Moose as a group of houses on the bank of a stream, with
Indians and breeds--no matter how dirty and unkempt--going impassively
about their business, an organized community, however rude. Here he saw
nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since
dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette
and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable
discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the
weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did
not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette
looked down on him from the top of the bank.
"Well, we here, M'sieu Thompson," he said.
"What?" Thompson roused himself. "Here? Where is the village?"
Breyette waved a hand upstream.
"She's 'roun' de nex' bend," said he. "Two-three hundred yard. Dees
w'ere de meeshonaire have hees cabanne."
Thompson could not doubt Breyette's statement. He recalled now that Mike
had once told him the mission quarters were built a little apart from
the village. But he peered up through the screen of birch and willow
with a swift wave of misgiving. The forest enclosed him like the blank
walls of a cell. He shrank from it as a sensitive nature shrinks from
the melancholy suggestiveness of an open grave, and he could not have
told why he felt that strange form of depression. He was wholly
unfamiliar with any form of introspective inquiry, any analysis of a
mental state. He had never held sad intellectual inquest over a dead
hope, nor groped blindly for a ray of light in the inky blackness of a
soul's despair.
Nevertheless, he was conscious that he felt very much as he might have
felt if, for instance, his guides had stopped anywhere in those somber
woods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and
abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe
and ascended the short, steep bank to a place beside Mike Breyette, this
peculiar sense of being forsaken grew, if anything, more acute, more
appalling.
They stood on the edge of the bank, taking a reconnaissance, so to
speak. The forest flowed about them like a sea. On Thompson's left hand
it seemed to thin a trifle, giving a faint suggestion of open areas
beyond. Beginning where they stood, some time in past years a square
place had been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly
burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew
as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was
somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This
half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed
full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat
structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window
faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open,
sagging forlornly upon its hinges.
"Is _that_ the house?" Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely
credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of
some rude jest at his expense.
"Dat's heem," Breyette answered. "Let's tak' leetle more close look on
heem."
Thompson did not miss the faint note of commiseration in the
half-breed's voice. It stung him a little, nearly made him disregard the
spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his
Master's service. He closed his lips on an impulsive protest against
that barren unlovely spot, and stiffened his shoulders.
"I understand it has not been occupied for some time," he said as they
moved toward the cabin.
But even forewarned as he was his heart sank a few degrees nearer to his
square-toed shoes when he stepped over the threshold and looked about.
Little, forgotten things recurred to him, matters touched upon lightly,
airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his
appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his
predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry
together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement
that the North was no place for either God or man.
The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The
swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the
door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the
corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The
floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a
rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on
a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of
peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered
on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds
and rodents.
It was so utterly and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly
arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had
grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he
could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to be his
abode.
He could only stand, with a feeling in his throat that was new in his
experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn habitation
abandoned to wind and weather, to the rats and the birds.