On the following morning (Sunday), MacCaskill took me into the Star
saloon, the foregathering place-in-chief of the lumbermen, in order to
introduce me to some human character. The bar was filled with men who
had religious scruples against working on Sunday, all in peaceful mood,
reading the newspapers that had come with the _Carillon_, or commenting
upon the doings of many a country and many a personage whose names I
now heard for the first time. It was not etiquette to gamble before
noon. A regular gale was blowing at the time, and heavy rain lashed the
tin roofing.
Overhead, a lighted lamp swayed, its yellow glass fogged in smoke,
which wreathed everything; the odour of this smoke, combined with
that of the liquors, and the chewing of black tobacco, was sufficient
to almost intoxicate a saloon tyro; but, fortunately, my manner of
life had been so healthy that I experienced no inconvenience beyond
a certain unpleasantness in getting my breath. The factor paid our
footing, and we were established and introduced as good citizens of the
town of Gull by the simple process of drinking with the crowd.
Presently my companion nudged me.
“Do ye mind yon feller?” he said, nodding towards the end of the bar,
where two men, one tall and elderly, the other fat and middle-aged,
stood smoking very black cigars. “The feller wi’ black and white hair?
That’s Bob Lennie, captain of the _Carillon_. Come across.”
We joined the two men, and the factor introduced me.
“What’ll ye have?” said the captain at once.
A bottle was pushed across the sloppy bar, and we helped ourselves,
although I did little more than flavour the water with the hot corn
whisky, which I thought the most nauseous compound I had ever tasted.
By this time I began to understand why men would run mad at the
suggestion of gold; but that they should care to wreck their bodies for
the sake of such horrible stuff as that biting liquor, as the factor
assured me they did, was to me incredible.
“This is my mate,” Lennie was saying. “Sandy, boy, here’s Andy
MacCaskill and Rupe Petrie from Yellow Sands. You’re comin’ across, eh?
Well, we’re going north quite a piece, an’ comin’ back wi’ a cargo of
fish. We’ll be gettin’ away for the Little Peace in maybe five days’
time, if this dirty weather don’t hold.”
I had seen few men, but I could not have imagined any stranger-looking
than Bob Lennie. His cadaverous face was cross-hatched with innumerable
lines, his eyes were dark and wild, his hair partly coal-black, and
partly silver-grey. He stooped a good deal, but he was well over sixty.
He was the father of north-west navigators, and nearly every part of
the treacherous inland sea of Lake Peace, its hidden reefs and shoals
and silt-bars, were to him an open book.
“Not many passengers these days, I guess?” hinted MacCaskill, when we
had found a corner to ourselves.
Sandy, the mate, smuggled beside me, and launched himself into a
discussion of something which he called the silver question in the
United States; but I could do nothing except listen, throwing in a
monosyllable of sheer ignorance occasionally. He was quite content to
monopolise the conversation, while I listened to the captain and my
partner. The former was saying, in answer to the latter’s question:
“A few new hands comin’ out to the fisheries, and a preacher once in
a while. Say, we picked up Father Lacombe yesterday morning, and he’s
paid on to the Little Peace.”
“Where did ye strike him, anyhow?” asked MacCaskill.
“We was passin’ White River, an’ he signalled. Said he’d packed down
to the coast after a mission-airy journey upland, wi’ a couple of
nitchies, who took themselves off in the night wi’ all his supplies.
I said to him, ‘Don’t ye want to find them thieves, father?’ ‘Course
not,’ he said. ‘It’s a punishment to me for havin’ taught ’em badly.’
Lord, Mac! don’t these preachers talk soft!”
The two men laughed together.
“He’s quite a priest down east, they tell me,” went on Lennie.
“Saw him come ashore,” said MacCaskill. “He don’t look strong on
fasting Fridays.”
“They do say the less some men do eat the fatter they do get. It’s one
of those things they call a parridox. But what’s the father wantin’
around Gull at all?”
“No, siree!” shouted the little mate at my ear. “What’s the silver
standard? Explain to me the value of free silver. In what way, sir, is
the silver dollar better than the paper? Tell me that.”
It was impossible for me to enlighten him, and I said so.
“I guess you’re right,” the captain said. “The father’s come to look
around, wi’ the idea of startin’ a mission. There ain’t enough of his
religion hereabouts to make it a going concern.”
“Lots of half-breeds,” suggested the factor.
“Well, but they ain’t got religion. Maybe the father’ll be preaching
some place to-night. I ain’t religious meself, but I like an opera, and
I wonderful well like to hear a sermon, if there’s lots o’ blood and
fire about it.”
“Say, Mister Petrie, are ye a Republican or a Democrat?” demanded the
rasping voice I had almost come to ignore.