DECORATING A BIT OF STATUARY
I frequently passed that window above the stoop next day. Once I saw a
face looking down on me with such withering scorn, I wondered if the
disgraceful scene with Louis Laplante had become noised about, and I
hastened to take my exercise in another part of the courtyard.
Thereupon, others paid silent homage to the window, but they likewise
soon tired of that parade ground.
Eastern notions of propriety still clung to me. Of this I had immediate
proof. When our rough crews were preparing to re-embark for the north, I
was shocked beyond measure to see this frail girl come down with her
father to travel in our company. Not counting her father, the priest,
Duncan Cameron, Cuthbert Grant and myself, there were in our party
three-score reckless, uncurbed adventurers, who feared neither God nor
man. I thought it strange of a father to expose his daughter to the bold
gaze, coarse remarks, and perhaps insults of such men. Before the end of
that trip, I was to learn a lesson in western chivalry, which is not
easily explained, or forgotten. As father and daughter were waiting to
take their places in a boat, a shapeless, flat-footed woman, wearing
moccasins--probably the half-breed wife of some trader in the fort--ran
to the water's edge with a parcel of dainties, and kissing the girl on
both cheeks, wished her a fervent God-speed.
"Oh!" growled the young Nor'-Wester, who had been carried from the
banquet hall, and now wore the sour expression that is the aftermath of
banquets. "Look at that fat lump of a bumblebee distilling honey from
the rose! There are others who would appreciate that sort of thing! This
_is_ the wilderness of lost opportunities!"
The girl seated herself in a canoe, where the only men were Duncan
Cameron, her father and the native _voyageurs_; and I dare vouch a score
of young traders groaned at the sight of this second lost opportunity.
"Look, Gillespie! Look!" muttered my comrade of the banquet hall. "The
Little Statue set up at the prow of yon canoe! I'll wager you do
reverence to graven images all the way to Red River!"
"I'll wager we all do," said I.
And we did. To change the metaphor--after the style of Mr. Jack
MacKenzie's eloquence--I warrant there was not a young man of the eight
crews, who did not regard that marble-cold face at the prow of the
leading canoe, as his own particular guiding star. And the white face
beneath the broad-brimmed hat, tied down at each side in the fashion of
those days, was as serenely unconscious of us as any star of the
heavenly constellations. If she saw there were objects behind her canoe,
and that the objects were living beings, and the living beings men, she
gave no evidence of it. Nor was the Little Statue--as we had got in the
habit of calling her--heartless. In spite of the fears which she
entertained for her stern father, her filial affection was a thing to
turn the lads of the crews quite mad. Scarcely were we ashore at the
different encampments before father and daughter would stroll off arm in
arm, leaving the whole brigade envious and disconsolate. Was it the
influence of this slip of a girl, I wonder, that a curious change came
over our crews? The men still swore; but they did it under their breath.
Fewer yarns of a quality, which need not be specified, were told; and
certain kinds of jokes were no longer greeted with a loud guffaw. Still
we all thought ourselves mightily ill-used by that diminutive bundle of
independence, and some took to turning the backs of their heads in her
direction when she chanced to come their way. One young spark said
something about the Little Statue being a prig, which we all invited him
to repeat, but he declined. Had she played the coquette under the
innocent mask of sympathy and all other guiles with which gentle slayers
ambush strong hearts, I dare affirm there would have been trouble enough
and to spare. Suicides, fights, insults and worse, I have witnessed when
some fool woman with a fair face came among such men. "Fool" woman, I
say, rather than "false"; for to my mind falsity in a woman may not be
compared to folly for the utter be-deviling of men.
With our guiding star at the prow of the fore canoe, we continued to
wind among countless islands, through narrow, rocky channels and along
those endless water-ways, that stretch like a tangled, silver chain with
emerald jewels, all the way from the Great Lakes to the plains.
Somewhere along Rainy River, where there is an oasis of rolling, wooded
meadows in a desert of iron rock, we pitched our tents for the night.
The evening air was fragrant with the odor of summer's early flowers. I
could not but marvel at the almost magical growth in these far northern
latitudes. Barely a month had passed since snow enveloped the earth in a
winding sheet, and I have heard old residents say that the winter's
frost penetrated the ground for a depth of four feet. Yet here we were
in a very tropic of growth run riot and the frost, which still lay
beneath the upper soil, was thawing and moistening the succulent roots
of a wilderness of green. The meadow grass, swaying off to the forest
margin in billowy ripples, was already knee-high. The woods were an
impenetrable mass of foliage from the forest of ferns about the broad
trunks to the high tree-tops, nodding and fanning in the night breeze
like coquettish dames in an eastern ball-room. Everywhere--at the river
bank, where our tents stood, above the long grass, and in the
forest--clear, faint and delicate, like the bloom of a fair woman's
cheek, or the pensive theme of some dream fugue, or the sweet notes of
some far-off, floating harmonies, was an odor of hidden flowers. A
trader's nature is, of necessity, rough in the grain, but it is not
corrupt with the fevered joys of the gilded cities. Even we could feel
the call of the wilds to come and seek. It was not surprising,
therefore, that after supper father and daughter should stroll away from
the encampment, arm in arm, as usual. As their figures passed into the
woods, the girl broke away from her father's arm and stooped to the
ground.
"Pickin' flowers," was the laconic remark of the trader, who had helped
me with Louis Laplante on the beach; and the man lay back full length
against a rising knoll to drink in the delicious freshness of the night.
Every man of us watched the vanishing forms.
"Smell violets?" asked a heterogeneous combination of sun-brown and
buckskin.
"This ground's a perfect wheat-field of violets," exclaimed the
whiskered youngster.
"Lots o' Mayflowers and night-shades in the bush," declared a ragged
man, who was one of the worst gamblers in camp, and was now aimlessly
shuffling a greasy, bethumbed pack of cards.
"Oh!" came simultaneously from half a dozen. Personally, it struck me
one might pick flowers for a certain purpose in the bush without being
observed.
"Mayflowers in June!" scoffed the boy.
"Aye, babe! Mayflowers in June! May is June in these here regions,"
asserted the man. "Ladies-and-gentlemen, too, many's you could pick in
the bush!"
"Ladies-and-gentlemen! Sounds funny in this desert, don't it?" asked the
lad. "What _are_ ladies-and-gentlemen?"
"Don't you know?" continued the gambler, unfolding a curious lore of
flowers. "Those little potty, white things, split up the middle with a
green head on top--grow under ferns. Come on. Cards are ready! Who's
going to play?"
"Durn it! Them's Dutchman's breeches!" exclaimed the sun-browned
trapper. "O Goll! If that Little Stature finds any Dutchman's breeches,
she that's so scared of us men! O Goll! Won't she blush? Say, babe, why
don't y'r fill y'r hat with 'em and put 'em in her tent?" and the big
trapper set up a hoarse guffaw which led a general chorus. Then the men
gathered round, to play.
"Faith, lads!" interrupted the voice of the Irish priest, who had come
upon the group so quietly the gambler scarcely had time to tuck the
tell-tale cards under his buckskin smock, "I'm thinking ye've all
developed a mighty sudden interest in botany. Are there any bleeding
hearts in the bush?"
"There may be here," suggested the boy.
"It all comes of the Little Statute!" declared the big trapper.
"Oh! You and your Stature and Statute! Why can't you say Statue?" asked
the lad with the pompous scorn of youthful knowledge.
"Because, oh, babe with the chicken-down," answered the man, giving his
corrector a thud with his broad palm and sticking heroically by his slip
of the tongue, "I says the words I means and don't play no prig. She
don't pay more attention to you than if you wuz a stump, that's why
she's a statue, ain't it? And the fellows've got to stretch their necks
to come up to her ideas of what's proper, that's why she's a stature,
ain't it? And not a man of us, if His Reverence'll excuse me for saying
so, dare let out a cuss afore her. That's why she's a statute, ain't
it?"
And when I walked off to the bush with as great a show of indifference
as I could muster, I heard the priest crying "Bravo!" to the man's
defence. How came it that I was in the woods slushing through damp mold
up to my ankles in black ooze? I no longer had any fear of an ambushed
enemy; for Le Grand Diable, the knave, had forfeited his wages and
deserted at Fort William. He was not seen after the night of the meeting
with the Hudson's Bay canoe off the flats. I drew Father Holland's
attention to this, and the priest was no longer so sceptical about that
phantom boat. But it was not of these things I thought, as I tore a
great strip of bark from the trunk of a birch tree and twisted the piece
into a huge cornucopia. Nor had I the slightest expectation of
encountering father and daughter in the woods. That marble face was too
much in earnest for the vainest of men to suppose its indifference
assumed; and no matter how fair the eyes, no man likes to be looked at,
by eyes that do not see him, or see him only as a blur on the landscape.
Still that marble face stood for much that is dear to the roughest of
hearts and about which men do not talk. So I went on packing damp moss
into the bottom of the bark horn, arranging frail lilies and night
shades about the rim and laying a solid pyramid of violets in the
centre. The mold, through which I was floundering, seemed to merge into
a bog; but the lower reaches were hidden by a thicket of alder bushes
and scrub willows. I mounted a fallen tree and tried to get cautiously
down to some tempting lily-pads. Evidently some one else on the other
side of the brush was after those same bulbs; for I heard the sucking
sound of steps plunging through the mire of water and mud.
"Why, Gillespie," called a voice, "what in the world are you doing
here?" and the boy emerged through the willows gaping at me in
astonishment.
"Just what I want to know of you," said I.
He presented a comical figure. His socks and moccasins had been tied and
slung round his neck. With trousers rolled to his knees, a hatful of
water-lilies in one hand and a sheaf of ferns in the other, he was
wading through the swamp.
"You see," he began sheepishly. "I thought she couldn't--couldn't
conveniently get these for herself, and it would be kind of nice--kind
of nice--you know--to get some for her----"
"Don't explain," I blurted out. "I was trying that same racket myself."
"You know, Gillespie," he continued quite confidentially, "when a man's
been away from his mother and sisters for years and years and years----"
"Yes, I know, babe; you're an octogenarian," I interrupted.
"And feels himself going utterly to the bow-wows without any stop-gear
to keep him from bowling clean to the bottom, a person feels like doing
something decent for a girl like the Little Statue," and the youth
plucked half a dozen yellow flowers as well as the coveted white ones.
"Have some for your basket," said he. His face was puckered into
pathetic gravity. "It's so hanged easy to go to the bow-wows out here,"
he added.
"Not so easy as in the towns," I interjected.
"Ah! but I've been there, gone all through 'em in the towns," he
explained. "That's why the pater packed me off to this wilderness."
And that, thought I, is why the west gets all the credit for the wild
oats gathered in old lands and sown in the new world. I pulled him up to
the log on which I was balanced, and seating himself he dangled his feet
down and began to souse the mud off his toes.
"Say!" he exclaimed. "How are you going to get 'em to her?"
"Take them to the tent."
"Well, Gillespie, when you take yours up, take mine along, too, will
you? There's a good fellow! Do!" He was drawing on his socks.
"Not much I will. If there's any proxy, you can take mine," I returned.
"Say! Do you think Father Holland would take 'em up?" He had tied his
moccasins and was standing.
"Can't say I think he would."
"He'd let you hear about it to all eternity, too, wouldn't he?"
reflected the lad. "Come on, then; but you go first." And he followed me
up the log, both of us feeling like shame-faced schoolboys. We stole
into the tent, the one tent of all others that had interest for us that
night, and deposited our burden of flowers on the couch of buffalo
robes.
"Hurry," whispered my companion. "Stack these ferns round somewhere!
Hurry! She'll be back." And leaving me to do the arranging he bolted for
the tent flaps. "Oh! Open earth and swallow me!" he almost screamed, and
I heard the sound of two persons coming in violent collision at the
entrance.
"The babe, as I live! The rascally young broth of a babe! Ye rogue, ye!"
burred the deep bass tones of the trader whom I had met over Louis
Laplante. "What are ye doin' here?"
"Oh, is it only you? Thank fortune!" ejaculated the boy, dodging back.
"What are you doing yourself? Great guns! You scared the wits out of
me! Ho! Here's a lark! Gillespie, my pal, look here!" I turned to see
the sheepish, guilty, smirking faces of the trader, the rough-tongued,
sunburned trapper and the ragged gambler grouped at the entrance, and
each man's arms were full of flowers.
"Well, I'm durned!" began the rough man.
"As she's jack-spotted us all," drawled the gentle, liquid tones of the
gambler, "we'd better go ahead and----"
"And decorate a bit of statuary," shouted the lad with a laugh.
It was a long tent, like the booth of a fair, with supports at each end,
and we were festooning it from pole to pole with moss and ferns when
somebody rasped at the door. "Mon alive! What's goin' on here?" We
started from our work with the guilty alacrity of burglars. There stood
Frances Sutherland's father, much aghast at the proceedings, and by his
side was a face with cheeks flaming poppy red and lips twitching in
merriment. There was a sudden snow-storm of flowers being tossed down,
and five men brushed past the two spectators and dashed into the hiding
of gathering dusk. At the foot of the knoll I ran against the priest.
"That," roared Father Holland, shaking with laughter. "That's what I
call good stuff in the rough! Faith, but ye'll give me good stuff in the
rough. I want none o' yer gilded chivalry from the tinsel towns!"
There was a wreath of night-shades in the Little Statue's hat when the
canoes set out next morning. Mayflowers were at her throat, violets in
her girdle and I know not what in a basket at her feet. The face was
unconscious of us as ever, but about the downcast eyelids played a
tender gentleness which was not there before. Once I caught her glancing
back among us as if she would pick out the culprits; and when her eyes
for a moment rested on me, my heart set up a silly thumping. But she
looked just as pointedly at the others, and I know every man's heart of
them responded; for the boy began such a floundering I thought he would
spill his canoe. A quick trip brought us to the mouth of Red River,
where the Hudson's Bay _voyageurs_ under Colin Robertson were resting.
Here I was surprised to learn that Eric Hamilton had not waited but had
hastened up Red River to Fort Douglas. I could not but connect this
southward move of his with the sudden flight of Le Grand Diable from
Fort William.
After brief pause at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, our brigade turned
southward and made speed up the Red through the rush-grown sedgy swamps
which over-flood the river bed. Farther south the banks towered high and
smoke curled up from the huts of Lord Selkirk's settlers. Women with
nets in their hands to scare off myriad blackbirds that clouded the air,
and men from the cornfields ran to the river edge and cheered us as we
passed. Here the Sutherlands landed. Some of the traders thought it a
good omen, that Hudson's Bay settlers cheered Nor'-Wester brigades; but
in one bend of the muddy Red, the bastions of Fort Douglas, where
Governor McDonell of the rival company ruled, loomed up and the guns
pointing across the river wore anything but a welcome look.
We passed Fort Douglas unmolested, followed the Red a mile farther to
its junction with the Assiniboine and here disembarked at Fort
Gibraltar, the headquarters of the Nor'-Westers in Red River.