Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his mother
tongue. His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans, and followed
his in a keen scrutiny of the river. She was a woman of the Teslin
Country, wise in the ways of her husband's vernacular when it grew
intensive. From the slipping of a snow-shoe thong to the forefront of
sudden death, she could gauge occasion by the pitch and volume of his
blasphemy. So she knew the present occasion merited attention. A long
canoe, with paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was
crossing the current from above and urging in for the eddy. Hay Stockard
watched it intently. Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in
rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, wrapped about the head of one,
caught and held his eye.
"Bill!" he called. "Oh, Bill!"
A shambling, loose-jointed giant rolled out of one of the tents, yawning
and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Then he sighted the strange canoe
and was wide awake on the instant.
"By the jumping Methuselah! That damned sky-pilot!"
Hay Stockard nodded his head bitterly, half-reached for his rifle, then
shrugged his shoulders.
"Pot-shot him," Bill suggested, "and settle the thing out of hand. He'll
spoil us sure if we don't." But the other declined this drastic measure
and turned away, at the same time bidding the woman return to her work,
and calling Bill back from the bank. The two Indians in the canoe moored
it on the edge of the eddy, while its white occupant, conspicuous by his
gorgeous head-gear, came up the bank.
"Like Paul of Tarsus, I give you greeting. Peace be unto you and grace
before the Lord."
His advances were met sullenly, and without speech.
"To you, Hay Stockard, blasphemer and Philistine, greeting. In your
heart is the lust of Mammon, in your mind cunning devils, in your tent
this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these divers sins, even
here in the wilderness, I, Sturges Owen, apostle to the Lord, bid you to
repent and cast from you your iniquities."
"Save your cant! Save your cant!" Hay Stockard broke in testily. "You'll
need all you've got, and more, for Red Baptiste over yonder."
He waved his hand toward the Indian camp, where the half-breed was
looking steadily across, striving to make out the newcomers. Sturges
Owen, disseminator of light and apostle to the Lord, stepped to the edge
of the steep and commanded his men to bring up the camp outfit. Stockard
followed him.
"Look here," he demanded, plucking the missionary by the shoulder and
twirling him about. "Do you value your hide?"
"My life is in the Lord's keeping, and I do but work in His vineyard," he
replied solemnly.
"Oh, stow that! Are you looking for a job of martyrship?"
"If He so wills."
"Well, you'll find it right here, but I'm going to give you some advice
first. Take it or leave it. If you stop here, you'll be cut off in the
midst of your labors. And not you alone, but your men, Bill, my wife--"
"Who is a daughter of Belial and hearkeneth not to the true Gospel."
"And myself. Not only do you bring trouble upon yourself, but upon us. I
was frozen in with you last winter, as you will well recollect, and I
know you for a good man and a fool. If you think it your duty to strive
with the heathen, well and good; but, do exercise some wit in the way you
go about it. This man, Red Baptiste, is no Indian. He comes of our
common stock, is as bull-necked as I ever dared be, and as wild a fanatic
the one way as you are the other. When you two come together, hell'll be
to pay, and I don't care to be mixed up in it. Understand? So take my
advice and go away. If you go down-stream, you'll fall in with the
Russians. There's bound to be Greek priests among them, and they'll see
you safe through to Bering Sea,--that's where the Yukon empties,--and
from there it won't be hard to get back to civilization. Take my word
for it and get out of here as fast as God'll let you."
"He who carries the Lord in his heart and the Gospel in his hand hath no
fear of the machinations of man or devil," the missionary answered
stoutly. "I will see this man and wrestle with him. One backslider
returned to the fold is a greater victory than a thousand heathen. He
who is strong for evil can be as mighty for good, witness Saul when he
journeyed up to Damascus to bring Christian captives to Jerusalem. And
the voice of the Saviour came to him, crying, 'Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me?' And therewith Paul arrayed himself on the side of
the Lord, and thereafter was most mighty in the saving of souls. And
even as thou, Paul of Tarsus, even so do I work in the vineyard of the
Lord, bearing trials and tribulations, scoffs and sneers, stripes and
punishments, for His dear sake."
"Bring up the little bag with the tea and a kettle of water," he called
the next instant to his boatmen; "not forgetting the haunch of cariboo
and the mixing-pan."
When his men, converts by his own hand, had gained the bank, the trio
fell to their knees, hands and backs burdened with camp equipage, and
offered up thanks for their passage through the wilderness and their safe
arrival. Hay Stockard looked upon the function with sneering
disapproval, the romance and solemnity of it lost to his matter-of-fact
soul. Baptiste the Red, still gazing across, recognized the familiar
postures, and remembered the girl who had shared his star-roofed couch in
the hills and forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleak
Hudson's Bay.