“I went home,” he repeated. “Away east to St. Catherine’s. That’s in
Ontario, and ’twas a daisy of a place when I was your number. I went
home. D’rectly ye shift outer any place ye get forgotten. See? Rainin’
yet, I guess?”
“Yes, it’s still raining,” I said.
“Well, it’ll do no harm, maybe. You see, when you come back to an old
home ye expect to find a place kep’ for ye. Understand?” He gave me no
time to reply. “Well now, I left St. Catherine’s when I was a younker,
and got a post north in the Company. ’Twas a far better thing then than
’tis to-day, and I reckoned I’d stop a few years, make a leetle pile,
come home when I was thirty, and marry Maimie Flett, who was waitin’
for me. Pretty little gal, Maimie. Had a way of lookin’ at me sideways.
She was goin’ to wait for me. Wind’s comin’ up again, I guess?”
“Maybe,” I said, though I had not noticed any change.
“You see, those years got slippin’ away as though they’d ben oiled
for it. I worked steady, an’ I saved a bit, but that pile seemed to
be awful slow in mountin’ up. Life was in front of me, anyhow, and I
said, ‘No matter, there’s a fine time a-comin’.’ I wasn’t going east,
not till I was able to marry Maimie. The years got tumblin’ along one
over the other so quick, Rupe, and Maimie she writ slower, and then she
quit. Must have ben tiresome for the gal, and she hadn’t leisure like
me, maybe.” The factor stopped, bent, and rubbed his leg.
“You went home?” I suggested.
He repeated the words after me slowly.
“Came upon me one day sudden,” he went on. “Me muscles had always ben
good and worked easy, and I was comfortable in the wind, and right on
me food and sleep. One evening, I mind it was wet and cold, I made to
pick up a log to carry in to bucksaw. I just gave it a good heave on
to me shoulder, and hot snakes jumped right through me, and run all
along me back, and I let that log drop. I couldn’t have carried that
log, Rupe, not if it had ben a bar of gold. You see, I was comin’ on
fifty, an’ that pain was rheumatics. Old man had ’em bad, and you
mind how Antoine used to rub him wi’ some of his medicine truck. That
night I got smokin’, same as usual, in the Fort, and I stopped over
it longer, ’cause I’d taken a new pipe from the store, and a new pipe
smokes longer than the old ’un, and I got seein’ the smoke a-twistin’
around, and presently I seemed to see Maimie, and she was lookin’ at me
sideways, and she was sayin’, ‘Why! ’tis never you, Andy! They’ll be
callin’ you “old man” when you come down to St. Catherine’s.’ You see,
Rupe, I’d got an old chap sudden, an’ I found it out sudden-like.”