HOUSE-WARMING
"There is a sort of moral climate in a household."--JOHN MORLEY.
No idle ceremony this, but the great problem of the dwellers in the
country of the Yukon.
The Colonel and the Boy made up their minds that, whatever else they
had or had not, they would have a warm house to live in. And when they
had got it, they would have a "Blow-out" to celebrate the achievement.
"We'll invite Nicholas," says the Boy. "I'll go to Pymeut myself, and
let him know we are going to have 'big fire, big feed. Oh, heap big
time!'"
If the truth were told, it had been a difficult enough matter to keep
away from Pymeut since the hour Nicholas had vanished in that
direction; but until winter quarters were made, and until they were
proved to be warm, there was no time for the amenities of life.
The Big Cabin (as it was quite seriously called, in contradistinction
to the hut of the Trio) consisted of a single room, measuring on the
outside sixteen feet by eighteen feet.
The walls of cotton-wood logs soared upward to a level of six feet, and
this height was magnificently increased in the middle by the angle of
the mildly gable roof. But before the cabin was breast-high the Boy had
begun to long for a window.
"Sorry we forgot the plate-glass," says Mac.
"Wudn't ye like a grrand-piana?" asks O'Flynn.
"What's the use of goin' all the way from Nova Scotia to Caribou," says
the Boy to the Schoolmaster-Miner, "if you haven't learned the way to
make a window like the Indians, out of transparent skin?"
Mac assumed an air of elevated contempt.
"I went to mine, not to learn Indian tricks."
"When the door's shut it'll be dark as the inside of a cocoa-nut."
"You ought to have thought of that before you left the sunny South,"
said Potts.
"It'll be dark all winter, window or no window," Mac reminded them.
"Never mind," said the Colonel, "when the candles give out we'll have
the fire-light. Keep all the spruce knots, boys!"
But one of the boys was not pleased. The next day, looking for a
monkey-wrench under the tarpaulin, he came across the wooden box a
California friend had given him at parting, containing a dozen tall
glass jars of preserved fruit. The others had growled at the extra bulk
and weight, when the Boy put the box into the boat at St. Michael's,
but they had now begun to look kindly on it and ask when it was to be
opened. He had answered firmly:
"Not before Christmas," modifying this since Nicholas's visit to "Not
before the House-Warming." But one morning the Boy was found pouring
the fruit out of the jars into some empty cans.
"What you up to?"
"Wait an' see." He went to O'Flynn, who was dish-washer that week, got
him to melt a couple of buckets of snow over the open-air campfire and
wash the fruit-jars clean.
"Now, Colonel," says the Boy, "bring along that buck-saw o' yours and
lend a hand."
They took off the top log from the south wall of the cabin, measured a
two-foot space in the middle, and the Colonel sawed out the superfluous
spruce intervening. While he went on doing the same for the other logs
on that side, the Boy roughly chiselled a moderately flat sill. Then
one after another he set up six of the tall glass jars in a row, and
showed how, alternating with the other six bottles turned upside down,
the thick belly of one accommodating itself to the thin neck of the
other, the twelve made a very decent rectangle of glass. When they had
hoisted up, and fixed in place, the logs on each side, and the big
fellow that went all across on top; when they had filled the
inconsiderable cracks between the bottles with some of the mud-mortar
with which the logs were to be chinked, behold a double glass window
fit for a king!
The Boy was immensely pleased.
"Oh, that's an old dodge," said Mac depreciatingly. "Why, they did that
at Caribou!"
"Then, why in--Why didn't you suggest it?"
"You wait till you know more about this kind o' life, and you won't go
in for fancy touches."
Nevertheless, the man who had mined at Caribou seemed to feel that some
contribution from him was necessary to offset the huge success of that
window. He did not feel called upon to help to split logs for the roof
of the Big Cabin, but he sat cutting and whittling away at a little
shelf which he said was to be nailed up at the right of the Big Cabin
door. Its use was not apparent, but no one dared call it a "fancy
touch," for Mac was a miner, and had been to Caribou.
When the shelf was nailed up, its maker brought forth out of his
medicine-chest a bottle of Perry Davis's Pain-killer.
"Now at Caribou," says he, "they haven't got any more thermometers
kicking round than we have here, but they discovered that when Perry
Davis congeals you must keep a sharp look-out for frost-bite, and when
Perry Davis freezes solid, you'd better mind your eye and stay in your
cabin, if you don't want to die on the trail." With which he tied a
string round Perry Davis's neck, set the bottle up on the shelf, and
secured it firmly in place. They all agreed it was a grand advantage to
have been to Caribou!
But Mac knew things that he had probably not learned there, about
trees, and rocks, and beasts, and their manners and customs and family
names. If there were more than a half-truth in the significant lament
of a very different man, "I should be a poet if only I knew the names
of things," then, indeed, Samuel MacCann was equipped to make a mark in
literature.
From the time he set foot on the volcanic shore of St Michael's Island,
Mac had begun his "collection."
Nowadays, when he would spend over "that truck of his" hours that might
profitably (considering his talents) be employed in helping to fortify
the camp against the Arctic winter, his companions felt it little use
to remonstrate.
By themselves they got on rapidly with work on the roof, very much
helped by three days' unexpectedly mild weather. When the split logs
had been marshalled together on each side of the comb, they covered
them with dried moss and spruce boughs.
Over all they laid a thick blanket of the earth which had been dug out
to make a level foundation. The cracks in the walls were chinked with
moss and mud-mortar. The floor was the naked ground, "to be carpeted
with skins by-and-by," so Mac said; but nobody believed Mac would put a
skin to any such sensible use.
The unreasonable mildness of three or four days and the little surface
thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it
fell. Nobody felt like going far afield just then, even after game, but
they had set the snare that Nicholas told the Boy about on that first
encounter in the wood. Nicholas, it seemed, had given him a noose made
of twisted sinew, and showed how it worked in a running loop. He had
illustrated the virtue of this noose when attached to a pole balanced
in the crotch of a tree, caught over a horizontal stick by means of a
small wooden pin tied to the snare. A touch at the light end of the
suspended pole (where the baited loop dangles) loosens the pin, and the
heavy end of the pole falls, hanging ptarmigan or partridge in the air.
For some time after rigging this contrivance, whenever anyone reported
"tracks," Mac and the Boy would hasten to the scene of action, and set
a new snare, piling brush on each side of the track that the game had
run in, so barring other ways, and presenting a line of least
resistance straight through the loop.
In the early days Mac would come away from these preparations saying
with dry pleasure:
"Now, with luck, we may get a _Xema Sabinii_," or some such fearful
wildfowl.
"Good to eat?" the Boy would ask, having had his disappointments ere
now in moments of hunger for fresh meat, when Mac, with the nearest
approach to enthusiasm he permitted himself, had brought in some
miserable little hawk-owl or a three-toed woodpecker to add, not to the
larder, but to the "collection."
"No, you don't _eat_ Sabine gulls," Mac would answer pityingly.
But those snares never seemed to know what they were there for. The
first one was set expressly to catch one of the commonest birds that
fly--Mac's _Lagopus albus_, the beautiful white Arctic grouse, or at
the very least a _Bonasa umbellus_, which, being interpreted, is ruffed
ptarmigan. The tracks had been bird tracks, but the creature that swung
in the air next day was a baby hare. The Schoolmaster looked upon the
incident as being in the nature of a practical joke, and resented it.
But the others were enchanted, and professed thereafter a rooted
suspicion of the soundness of the Schoolmaster's Natural History, which
nobody actually felt. For he had never yet pretended to know anything
that he didn't know well; and when Potts would say something
disparaging of Mac's learning behind his back (which was against the
unwritten rules of the game) the Colonel invariably sat on Potts.
"Knows a darned sight too much? No, he _don't_, sir; that's just the
remarkable thing about Mac. He isn't trying to carry any more than he
can swing."
At the same time it is to be feared that none of his companions really
appreciated the pedagogue's learning. Nor had anyone but the Boy
sympathised with his resolution to make a Collection. What they wanted
was eatable game, and they affected no intelligent interest in knowing
the manners and customs of the particular species that was sending up
appetising odours from the pot.
They even applauded the rudeness of the Boy, who one day responded to
Mac's gravely jubilant "Look here! I've got the _Parus Hudsonicus_!"--
"Poor old man! What do you do for it?"
And when anybody after that was indisposed, they said he might be
sickening for an attack of Parus Hudsonicus, and in that case it was a
bad look-out.
Well for Mac that he wouldn't have cared a red cent to impress the
greatest naturalist alive, let alone a lot of fellows who didn't know a
titmouse from a disease.
Meanwhile work on the Big Cabin had gone steadily forward. From the
outside it looked finished now, and distinctly imposing. From what were
left of the precious planks out of the bottom of the best boat they had
made the door--two by four, and opening directly in front of that
masterpiece, the rock fireplace. The great stone chimney was the pride
of the camp and the talk before the winter was done of all "the Lower
River."
Spurred on partly by the increased intensity of the cold, partly by the
Colonel's nonsense about the way they did it "down South," Mac roused
himself, and turned out a better piece of masonry for the Big Cabin
than he had thought necessary for his own. But everybody had a share in
the glory of that fireplace. The Colonel, Potts, and the Boy selected
the stone, and brought it on a rude litter out of a natural quarry from
a place a mile or more away up on the bare mountain-side. O'Flynn mixed
and handed up the mud-mortar, while Mac put in some brisk work with it
before it stiffened in the increasing cold.
Everybody was looking forward to getting out of the tent and into the
warm cabin, and the building of the fireplace stirred enthusiasm. It
was two and a half feet deep, three and a half feet high, and four feet
wide, and when furnished with ten-inch hack logs, packed in glowing
ashes and laid one above another, with a roaring good blaze in front of
birch and spruce, that fire would take a lot of beating, as the Boy
admitted, "even in the tat-pine Florida country."
But no fire on earth could prevent the cabin from being swept through,
the moment the door was opened, by a fierce and icy air-current. The
late autumnal gales revealed the fact that the sole means of
ventilation had been so nicely contrived that whoever came in or went
out admitted a hurricane of draught that nearly knocked him down. Potts
said it took a good half-hour, after anyone had opened the door, to
heat the place up again.
"What! You cold?" inquired the usual culprit. The Boy had come in to
put an edge on his chopper. "It's stopped snowin', an' you better come
along with me, Potts. Swing an axe for a couple of hours--that'll warm
you."
"I've got rheumatism in my shoulder to-day," says Potts, hugging the
huge fire closer.
"And you've got something wrong with your eyes, eh, Mac?"
Potts narrowed his and widened the great mouth; but he had turned his
head so Mac couldn't see him.
The Nova Scotian only growled and refilled his pipe. Up in the woods
the Boy repeated the conversation to the Colonel, who looked across at
O'Flynn several yards away, and said: "Hush!"
"Why must I shut up? Mac's _eyes_ do look rather queer and bloodshot. I
should think he'd rather feel we lay it to his eyes than know we're
afraid he's peterin' out altogether."
"I never said I was afraid--"
"No, you haven't _said_ much." "I haven't opened my head about it."
"No, but you've tried hard enough for five or six days to get Mac to
the point where he would come out and show us how to whip-saw. You
haven't _said_ anything, but you've--you've got pretty dignified each
time you failed, and we all know what that means."
"We ought to have begun sawing boards for our bunks and swing-shelf a
week back, before this heavy snowfall. Besides, there's enough
fire-wood now; we're only marking time until--"
"Until Mac's eyes get all right. I understand."
Again the Colonel had made a sound like "Sh!" and went on swinging his
axe.
They worked without words till the Boy's tree came down. Then he
stopped a moment, and wiped his face.
"It isn't so cold to-day, not by a long shot, for all Potts's howling
about his rheumatics."
"It isn't cold that starts that kind of pain."
"No, siree. I'm not much of a doctor, but I can see Potts's rheumatism
doesn't depend on the weather."
"Never you mind Potts."
"I don't mind Potts. I only mind Mac. What's the matter with Mac,
anyway?"
"Oh, he's just got cold feet. Maybe he'll thaw out by-and-by."
"Did you ever think what Mac's like? With that square-cut jaw and
sawed-off nose, everything about him goin' like this"--the Boy
described a few quick blunt angles in the air--"well, sir, he's the
livin' image of a monkey-wrench. I'm comin' to think he's as much like
it inside as he is out. He can screw up for a prayer-meetin', or he can
screw down for business--when he's a mind, but, as Jimmie over there
says, 'the divil a different pace can you put him through.' I _like_
monkey-wrenches! I'm only sayin' they aren't as limber as willa-trees."
No response from the Colonel, who was making the chips fly. It had cost
his great body a good many aches and bruises, but he was a capital
axeman now, and not such a bad carpenter, though when the Boy said as
much he had answered:
"Carpenter! I'm just a sort of a well-meanin' wood-butcher"; and deeply
he regretted that in all his young years on a big place in the country
he had learnt so little about anything but horses and cattle.
On the way back to dinner they spoke again of this difficulty of the
boards. O'Flynn whistled "Rory O'More" with his pleasant air of
detachment.
"You and the others would take more interest in the subject," said the
Boy a little hotly, "if we hadn't let you fellows use nearly all the
boat-planks for _your_ bunks, and now we haven't got any for our own."
"_Let_ us use 'em! Faith! we had a right to'm."
"To boards out of _our_ boat!"
"And ye can have the loan o' the whip-saw to make more, whenever the
fancy takes ye."
"Loan o' the whip-saw! Why, it's mine," says the Colonel.
"Divil a bit of it, man!" says O'Flynn serenely. "Everything we've got
belongs to all of us, except a sack o' coffee, a medicine-chest, and a
dimmi-john. And it's mesilf that's afraid the dimmi-john--"
"What's the use of my having bought a whip-saw?" interrupted the
Colonel, hurriedly. "What's the good of it, if the only man that knows
how to use it--"
"Is more taken up wid bein' a guardjin angel to his pardner's
dimmi-john--"
The Colonel turned and frowned at the proprietor of the dimmi-john. The
Boy had dropped behind to look at some marten tracks in the
fresh-fallen snow.
"I'll follow that trail after dinner," says he, catching up the others
in time to hear O'Flynn say:
"If it wusn't that ye think only a feller that's been to Caribou can
teach ye annything it's Jimmie O'Flynn that 'ud show ye how to play a
chune on that same whip-saw."
"Will you show us after dinner?"
"Sure I will."
And he was as good as his word.
This business of turning a tree into boards without the aid of a
saw-mill is a thing many placer-miners have to learn; for, even if they
are disposed to sleep on the floor, and to do without shelves, they
can't do sluicing without sluice-boxes, and they can't make those long,
narrow boxes without boards.
So every party that is well fitted out has a whip-saw.
"Furrst ye dig a pit," O'Flynn had said airily, stretched out before
the fire after dinner. "Make it about four feet deep, and as long as
ye'd like yer boards. When ye've done that I'll come and take a hand."
The little job was not half finished when the light tailed. Two days
more of soil-burning and shovelling saw it done.
"Now ye sling a couple o' saplings acrost the durrt ye've chucked out.
R-right! Now ye roll yer saw-timber inter the middle. R-right! An' on
each side ye want a log to stand on. See? Wid yer 'guide-man' on top
sthradlin' yer timberr, watchin' the chalk-line and doin' the pull-up,
and the otherr fellerr in the pit lookin' afther the haul-down, ye'll
be able to play a chune wid that there whip-saw that'll make the
serryphims sick o' plain harps." O'Flynn superintended it all, and even
Potts had the curiosity to come out and see what they were up to. Mac
was "kind o' dozin'" by the fire.
When the frame was finished O'Flynn helped to put the trial-log in
place, having marked it off with charcoal to indicate inch and a
quarter planks. Then the Colonel, down in the pit, and O'Flynn on top
of the frame, took the great two-handled saw between them, and began
laboriously, one drawing the big blade up, and the other down,
vertically through the log along the charcoal line.
"An' _that's_ how it's done, wid bits of yer arrums and yer back that
have niver been called on to wurruk befure. An' whin ye've been at it
an hour ye'll find it goes betther wid a little blasphemin';" and he
gave his end of the saw to the reluctant Potts.
Potts was about this time as much of a problem to his pardners as was
the ex-schoolmaster. If the bank clerk had surprised them all by his
handiness on board ship, and by making a crane to swing the pots over
the fire, he surprised them all still more in these days by an apparent
eclipse of his talents. It was unaccountable. Potts's carpentering,
Potts's all-round cleverness, was, like "payrock in a pocket," as the
miners say, speedily worked out, and not a trace of it afterwards to be
found.
But less and less was the defection of the Trio felt. The burly
Kentucky stock-farmer was getting his hand in at "frontier" work,
though he still couldn't get on without his "nigger," as the Boy said,
slyly indicating that it was he who occupied this exalted post. These
two soon had the bunks made out of the rough planks they had sawed with
all a green-horn's pains. They put in a fragrant mattress of spring
moss, and on that made up a bed of blankets and furs.
More boards were laboriously turned out to make the great swing-shelf
to hang up high in the angle of the roof, where the provisions might be
stored out of reach of possible marauders.
The days were very short now, bringing only about five hours of pallid
light, so little of which struggled through the famous bottle-window
that at all hours they depended chiefly on the blaze from the great
fireplace. There was still a good deal of work to be done indoors,
shelves to be put up on the left as you entered (whereon the
granite-ware tea-service, etc., was kept), a dinner-table to be made,
and three-legged stools. While these additions--"fancy touches," as the
Trio called them--were being made, Potts and O'Flynn, although
occasionally they went out for an hour or two, shot-gun on shoulder,
seldom brought home anything, and for the most part were content with
doing what they modestly considered their share of the cooking and
washing. For the rest, they sat by the fire playing endless games of
euchre, seven-up and bean poker, while Mac, more silent than ever,
smoked and read Copps's "Mining Laws" and the magazines of the previous
August.
Nobody heard much in those days of Caribou. The Colonel had gradually
slipped into the position of Boss of the camp. The Trio were still just
a trifle afraid of him, and he, on his side, never pressed a dangerous
issue too far.
But this is a little to anticipate.
One bitter gray morning, that had reduced Perry Davis to a solid lump
of ice, O'Flynn, the Colonel, and the Boy were bringing into the cabin
the last of the whip-sawed boards. The Colonel halted and looked
steadily up the river.
"Is that a beast or a human?" said he.
"It's a man," the Boy decided after a moment--"no, two men, single
file, and--yes--Colonel, it's dogs. Hooray! a dog-team at last!"
They had simultaneously dropped the lumber. The Boy ran on to tell the
cook to prepare more grub, and then pelted after O'Flynn and the
Colonel, who had gone down to meet the newcomers--an Indian driving
five dogs, which were hitched tandem to a low Esquimaux sled, with a
pack and two pairs of web-foot snow-shoes lashed on it, and followed by
a white man. The Indian was a fine fellow, younger than Prince
Nicholas, and better off in the matter of eyes. The white man was a
good deal older than either, with grizzled hair, a worn face, bright
dark eyes, and a pleasant smile.
"I had heard some white men had camped hereabouts," says he. "I am glad
to see we have such substantial neighbours." He was looking up at the
stone chimney, conspicuous a long way off.
"We didn't know we had any white neighbours," said the Colonel in his
most grand and gracious manner. "How far away are you, sir?"
"About forty miles above."
As he answered he happened to be glancing at the Boy, and observed his
eagerness cloud slightly. Hadn't Nicholas said it was "about forty
miles above" that the missionaries lived?
"But to be only forty miles away," the stranger went on,
misinterpreting the fading gladness, "is to be near neighbours in this
country."
"We aren't quite fixed yet," said the Colonel, "but you must come in
and have some dinner with us. We can promise you a good fire, anyhow."
"Thank you. You have chosen a fine site." And the bright eyes with the
deep crow's-feet raying out from the corners scanned the country in so
keen and knowing a fashion that the Boy, with hope reviving, ventured:
"Are--are you a prospector?"
"No. I am Father Wills from Holy Cross."
"Oh!" And the Boy presently caught up with the Indian, and walked on
beside him, looking back every now and then to watch the dogs or
examine the harness. The driver spoke English, and answered questions
with a tolerable intelligence. "Are dogs often driven without reins?"
The Indian nodded.
The Colonel, after the stranger had introduced himself, was just a
shade more reserved, but seemed determined not to be lacking in
hospitality. O'Flynn was overflowing, or would have been had the Jesuit
encouraged him. He told their story, or, more properly, his own, and
how they had been wrecked.
"And so ye're the Father Superior up there?" says the Irishman, pausing
to take breath.
"No. Our Superior is Father Brachet. That's a well-built cabin!"
The dogs halted, though they had at least five hundred yards still to
travel before they would reach the well-built cabin.
"_Mush!_" shouted the Indian.
The dogs cleared the ice-reef, and went spinning along so briskly over
the low hummocks that the driver had to run to keep up with them.
The Boy was flying after when the priest, having caught sight of his
face, called out: "Here! Wait! Stop a moment!" and hurried forward.
He kicked through the ice-crust, gathered up a handful of snow, and
began to rub it on the Boy's right cheek.
"What in the name of--" The Boy was drawing back angrily.
"Keep still," ordered the priest; "your cheek is frozen"; and he
applied more snow and more friction. "You ought to watch one another in
such weather as this. When a man turns dead-white like that, he's
touched with frost-bite." After he had restored the circulation: "There
now, don't go near the fire, or it will begin to hurt."
"Thank you," said the Boy, a little shame-faced. "It's all right now, I
suppose?"
"I think so," said the priest. "You'll lose the skin, and you may be a
little sore--nothing to speak of," with which he fell back to the
Colonel's side.
The dogs had settled down into a jog-trot now, but were still well on
in front.
"Is 'mush' their food?" asked the Boy.
"_Mush?_ No, fish."
"Why does your Indian go on like that about mush, then?"
"Oh, that's the only word the dogs know, except--a--certain expressions
we try to discourage the Indians from using. In the old days the
dog-drivers used to say 'mahsh.' Now you never hear anything but
swearing and 'mush,' a corruption of the French-Canadian _marche_." He
turned to the Colonel: "You'll get over trying to wear cheechalko boots
here--nothing like mucklucks with a wisp of straw inside for this
country."
"I agree wid ye. I got me a pair in St. Michael's," says O'Flynn
proudly, turning out his enormous feet. "Never wore anything so
comf'table in me life."
"You ought to have drill parkis too, like this of mine, to keep out the
wind."
They were going up the slope now, obliquely to the cabin, close behind
the dogs, who were pulling spasmodically between their little rests.
Father Wills stooped and gathered up some moss that the wind had swept
almost bare of snow. "You see that?" he said to O'Flynn, while the Boy
stopped, and the Colonel hurried on. "Wherever you find that growing no
man need starve."
The Colonel looked back before entering the cabin and saw that the Boy
seemed to have forgotten not alone the Indian, but the dogs, and was
walking behind with the Jesuit, face upturned, smiling, as friendly as
you please.
Within a different picture.
Potts and Mac were having a row about something, and the Colonel struck
in sharply on their growling comments upon each other's character and
probable destination.
"Got plenty to eat? Two hungry men coming in. One's an Indian, and you
know what that means, and the other's a Catholic priest." It was this
bomb that he had hurried on to get exploded and done with before the
said priest should appear on the scene.
"A _what_?" Mac raised his heavy eyes with fight in every wooden
feature.
"A Jesuit priest is what I said."
"He won't eat his dinner here."
"That is exactly what he will do."
"Not by--" Whether it was the monstrous proposition that had unstrung
Mac, he was obliged to steady himself against the table with a shaking
hand. But he set those square features of his like iron, and, says he,
"No Jesuit sits down to the same table with me."
"That means, then, that you'll eat alone."
"Not if I know it."
The Colonel slid in place the heavy wooden bar that had never before
been requisitioned to secure the door, and he came and stood in the
middle of the cabin, where he could let out all his inches. Just
clearing the swing-shelf, he pulled his great figure up to its full
height, and standing there like a second Goliath, he said quite softly
in that lingo of his childhood that always came back to his tongue's
tip in times of excitement: "Just as shuah as yo' bohn that priest will
eat his dinner to-day in my cabin, sah; and if yo' going t' make any
trouble, just say so now, and we'll get it ovah, and the place cleaned
up again befoh our visitors arrive."
"Mind what you're about, Mac," growled Potts. "You know he could lick
the stuffin' out o' you."
The ex-schoolmaster produced some sort of indignant sound in his throat
and turned, as if he meant to go out. The Colonel came a little nearer.
Mac flung up his head and squared for battle.
Potts, in a cold sweat, dropped a lot of tinware with a rattle, while
the Colonel said, "No, no. We'll settle this after the people go, Mac."
Then in a whisper: "Look here: I've been trying to shield you for ten
days. Don't give yourself away now--before the first white neighbour
that comes to see us. You call yourself a Christian. Just see if you
can't behave like one, for an hour or two, to a fellow-creature that's
cold and hungry. Come, _you're_ the man we've always counted on! Do the
honours, and take it out of me after our guests are gone."
Mac seemed in a haze. He sat down heavily on some beanbags in the
corner; and when the newcomers were brought in and introduced, he "did
the honours" by glowering at them with red eyes, never breaking his
surly silence.
"Well!" says Father Wills, looking about, "I must say you're very
comfortable here. If more people made homes like this, there'd be fewer
failures." They gave him the best place by the fire, and Potts dished
up dinner. There were only two stools made yet. The Boy rolled his
section of sawed spruce over near the priest, and prepared to dine at
his side.
"No, no," said Father Wills firmly. "You shall sit as far away from
this splendid blaze as you can get, or you will have trouble with that
cheek." So the Boy had to yield his place to O'Flynn, and join Mac over
on the bean-bags.
"Why didn't you get a parki when you were at St. Michael's?" said the
priest as this change was being effected.
"We had just as much--more than we could carry. Besides, I thought we
could buy furs up river; anyway, I'm warm enough."
"No you are not," returned the priest smiling. "You must get a parki
with a hood."
"I've got an Arctic cap; it rolls down over my ears and goes all round
my neck--just leaves a little place in front for my eyes."
"Yes; wear that if you go on the trail; but the good of the parki hood
is, that it is trimmed all round with long wolf-hair. You see"--he
picked his parki up off the floor and showed it to the company--"those
long hairs standing out all round the face break the force of the wind.
It is wonderful how the Esquimaux hood lessens the chance of
frost-bite."
While the only object in the room that he didn't seem to see was Mac,
he was most taken up with the fireplace.
The Colonel laid great stress on the enormous services of the
delightful, accomplished master-mason over there on the beanbags, who
sat looking more than ever like a monkey-wrench incarnate.
But whether that Jesuit was as wily as the Calvinist thought, he had
quite wit enough to overlook the great chimney-builder's wrathful
silence.
He was not the least "professional," talked about the country and how
to live here, saying incidentally that he had spent twelve years at the
mission of the Holy Cross. The Yukon wasn't a bad place to live in, he
told them, if men only took the trouble to learn how to live here.
While teaching the Indians, there was a great deal to learn from them
as well.
"You must all come and see our schools," he wound up.
"We'd like to awfully," said the Boy, and all but Mac echoed him. "We
were so afraid," he went on, "that we mightn't see anybody all winter
long."
"Oh, you'll have more visitors than you want."
"_Shall_ we, though?" Then, with a modified rapture: "Indians, I
suppose, and--and missionaries."
"Traders, too, and miners, and this year cheechalkos as well. You are
directly on the great highway of winter travel. Now that there's a good
hard crust on the snow you will have dog-trains passing every week, and
sometimes two or three."
It was good news!
"We've already had one visitor before you," said the Boy, looking
wonderfully pleased at the prospect the priest had opened out. "You
must know Nicholas of Pymeut, don't you?"
"Oh yes; we all know Nicholas"; and the priest smiled.
"We _like_ him," returned the Boy as if some slighting criticism had
been passed upon his friend.
"Of course you do; so do we all"; and still that look of quiet
amusement on the worn face and a keener twinkle glinting in the eyes.
"We're afraid he's sick," the Boy began.
Before the priest could answer, "He was educated at Howly Cross, he
_says_," contributed O'Flynn.
"Oh, he's been to Holy Cross, among other places."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Nicholas is a most impartial person. He was born at Pymeut, but
his father, who is the richest and most intelligent man in his tribe,
took Nicholas to Ikogimeut when the boy was only six. He was brought up
in the Russian mission there, as the father had been before him, and
was a Greek--in religion--till he was fourteen. There was a famine that
year down yonder, so Nicholas turned Catholic and came up to us. He was
at Holy Cross some years, when business called him to Anvik, where he
turned Episcopalian. At Eagle City, I believe, he is regarded as a
pattern Presbyterian. There are those that say, since he has been a
pilot, Nicholas makes six changes a trip in his religious convictions."
Father Wills saw that the Colonel, to whom he most frequently addressed
himself, took his pleasantry gravely. "Nicholas is not a bad fellow,"
he added. "He told me you had been kind to him."
"If you believe that about his insincerity," said the Colonel, "are you
not afraid the others you spend your life teaching may turn out as
little credit to you--to Christianity?"
The priest glanced at the listening Indian. "No," said he gravely; "I
do not think _all_ the natives are like Nicholas. Andrew here is a true
son of the Church. But even if it were otherwise, _we_, you know"--the
Jesuit rose from the table with that calm smile of his--"we simply do
the work without question. The issue is not in our hands." He made the
sign of the cross and set back his stool.
"Come, Andrew," he said; "we must push on."
The Indian repeated the priest's action, and went out to see to the
dogs.
"Oh, are you going right away?" said the Colonel politely, and O'Flynn
volubly protested.
"We thought," said the Boy, "you'd sit awhile and smoke and--at least,
of course, I don't mean smoke exactly--but--"
The Father smiled and shook his head.
"Another time I would stay gladly."
"Where are you going now?"
"Andrew and I are on our way to the _Oklahoma_, the steamship frozen in
the ice below here."
"How far?" asked the Boy.
"About seven miles below the Russian mission, and a mile or so up the
Kuskoquim Slough."
"Wrecked there?"
"Oh no. Gone into winter quarters."
"In a slew?" for it was so Father Wills pronounced s-l-o-u-g-h.
"Oh, that's what they call a blind river up in this country. They come
into the big streams every here and there, and cheechalkos are always
mistaking them for the main channel. Sometimes they're wider and deeper
for a mile or so than the river proper, but before you know it they
land you in a marsh. This place I'm going to, a little way up the
Kuskoquim, out of danger when the ice breaks up, has been chosen for a
new station by the N. A. T. and T. Company--rival, you know, to the
old-established Alaska Commercial, that inherited the Russian fur
monopoly and controlled the seal and salmon trade so long. Well, the
younger company runs the old one hard, and they've sent this steamer
into winter quarters loaded with provisions, ready to start for Dawson
the instant the ice goes out."
"Why, then, it's the very boat that'll be takin' us to the Klondyke."
"You just goin' down to have a look at her?" asked Potts enviously.
"No. I go to get relief for the Pymeuts."
"What's the matter with 'em?"
"Epidemic all summer, starvation now."
"Guess you won't find _any_body's got such a lot he wants to give it
away to the Indians."
"Our Father Superior has given much," said the priest gently; "but we
are not inexhaustible at Holy Cross. And the long winter is before us.
Many of the supply steamers have failed to get in, and the country is
flooded with gold-seekers. There'll be wide-spread want this
year--terrible suffering all up and down the river."
"The more reason for people to hold on to what they've got. A white
man's worth more 'n an Indian."
The priest's face showed no anger, not even coldness.
"White men have got a great deal out of Alaska and as yet done little
but harm here. The government ought to help the natives, and we believe
the Government will. All we ask of the captain of the _Oklahoma_ is to
sell us, on fair terms, a certain supply, we assuming part of the risk,
and both of us looking to the Government to make it good."
"Reckon you'll find that steamer-load down in the ice is worth its
weight in gold," said Potts.
"One must always try," replied the Father.
He left the doorpost, straightened his bowed back, and laid a hand on
the wooden latch.
"But Nicholas--when you left Pymeut was he--" began the Boy.
"Oh, he is all right," the Father smiled and nodded. "Brother Paul has
been looking after Nicholas's father. The old chief has enough food,
but he has been very ill. By the way, have you any letters you want to
send out?"
"Oh, if we'd only known!" was the general chorus; and Potts flew to
close and stamp one he had hardly more than begun to the future Mrs.
Potts.
The Boy had thoughtlessly opened the door to have a look at the dogs.
"Shut that da--Don't keep the door open!" howled Potts, trying to hold
his precious letter down on the table while he added "only two words."
The Boy slammed the door behind him.
"With all our trouble, the cabin isn't really warm," said the Colonel
apologetically. "In a wind like this, if the door is open, we have to
hold fast to things to keep them from running down the Yukon. It's a
trial to anybody's temper."
"Why don't you build a false wall?"
"Well, I don't know; we hadn't thought of it."
"You'd find it correct this draught"; and the priest explained his
views on the subject while Potts's letter was being addressed. Andrew
put his head in.
"Ready, Father!"
As the priest was pocketing the letter the Boy dashed in, put on the
Arctic cap he set such store by, and a fur coat and mittens.
"Do you mind if I go a little way with you?" he said.
"Of course not," answered the priest. "I will send him back in half an
hour," he said low to the Colonel. "It's a hitter day."
It was curious how already he had divined the relation of the elder man
to the youngest of that odd household.
The moment they had gone Mac, with an obvious effort, pulled himself up
out of his corner, and, coming towards the Colonel at the fireplace, he
said thickly:
"You've put an insult upon me, Warren, and that's what I stand from no
man. Come outside."
The Colonel looked at him.
"All right, Mac; but we've just eaten a rousing big dinner. Even
Sullivan wouldn't accept that as the moment for a round. We'll both
have forty winks, hey? and Potts shall call us, and O'Flynn shall be
umpire. You can have the Boy's bunk."
Mac was in a haze again, and allowed himself to be insinuated into bed.
The others got rid of the dinner things, and "sat round" for an hour.
"Doubt if he sleeps long," says Potts a little before two; "that's what
he's been doing all morning."
"We haven't had any fresh meat for a week," returns the Colonel
significantly. "Why don't you and O'Flynn go down to meet the Boy, and
come round by the woods? There'll be full moon up by four o'clock; you
might get a brace of grouse or a rabbit or two."
O'Flynn was not very keen about it; but the Jesuit's visit had stirred
him up, and he offered less opposition to the unusual call to activity
than the Colonel expected.
When at last he was left alone with the sleeping man, the Kentuckian
put on a couple more logs, and sat down to wait. At three he got up,
swung the crane round so that the darting tongues of flame could lick
the hot-water pot, and then he measured out some coffee. In a quarter
of an hour the cabin was full of the fragrance of good Mocha.
The Colonel sat and waited. Presently he poured out a little coffee,
and drank it slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes. But when he had
set the granite cup down again, he stood up alert, like a man ready for
business. Mac had been asleep nearly three hours. The others wouldn't
be long now.
Well, if they came prematurely, they must go to the Little Cabin for
awhile. The Colonel shot the bar across door and jamb for the second
time that day. Mac stirred and lifted himself on his elbow, but he
wasn't really awake.
"Potts," he said huskily.
The Colonel made no sound. "Potts, measure me out two fingers, will
you? Cabin's damn cold."
No answer.
Mac roused himself, muttering compliments for Potts. When he had
bundled himself out over the side of the bunk, he saw the Colonel
seemingly dozing by the fire.
He waited a moment. Then, very softly, he made his way to the farther
end of the swing-shelf.
The Colonel opened one eye, shut it, and shuffled in a sleepy sort of
way. Mac turned sharply back to the fire.
The Colonel opened his eyes and yawned.
"I made some cawfee a little while back. Have some?"
"No."
"Better; it's A 1."
"Where's Potts?"
"Gone out for a little. Back soon." He poured out some of the strong,
black decoction, and presented it to his companion. "Just try it.
Finest cawfee in the world, sir."
Mac poured it down without seeming to bother about tasting it.
They sat quite still after that, till the Colonel said meditatively:
"You and I had a little account to settle, didn't we?"
"I'm ready."
But neither moved for several moments.
"See here, Mac: you haven't been ill or anything like that, have you?"
"No." There was no uncertain note in the answer; if anything, there was
in it more than the usual toneless decision. Mac's voice was
machine-made--as innocent of modulation as a buzz-saw, and with the
same uncompromising finality as the shooting of a bolt. "I'm ready to
stand up against any man."
"Good!" interrupted the Colonel. "Glad o' that, for I'm just longing to
see you stand up--"
Mac was on his feet in a flash.
"You had only to say so, if you wanted to see me stand up against any
man alive. And when I sit down again it's my opinion one of us two
won't be good-lookin' any more."
He pushed back the stools.
"I thought maybe it was only necessary to mention it," said the Colonel
slowly. "I've been wanting for a fortnight to see you stand up"--Mac
turned fiercely--"against Samuel David MacCann."
"Come on! I'm in no mood for monkeyin'!"
"Nor I. I realise, MacCann, we've come to a kind of a crisis. Things in
this camp are either going a lot better, or a lot worse, after to-day."
"There's nothing wrong, if you quit asking dirty Jesuits to sit down
with honest men."
"Yes; there's something worse out o' shape than that."
Mac waited warily.
"When we were stranded here, and saw what we'd let ourselves in for,
there wasn't one of us that didn't think things looked pretty much like
the last o' pea time. There was just one circumstance that kept us from
throwing up the sponge; _we had a man in camp."_
The Colonel paused.
Mac stood as expressionless as the wooden crane.
"A man we all believed in, who was going to help us pull through."
"That was you, I s'pose." Mac's hard voice chopped out the sarcasm.
"You know mighty well who it was. The Boy's all right, but he's young
for this kind o' thing--young and heady. There isn't much wrong with me
that I'm aware of, except that I don't know shucks. Potts's petering
out wasn't altogether a surprise, and nobody expected anything from
O'Flynn till we got to Dawson, when a lawyer and a fella with capital
behind him may come in handy. But there was one man--who had a head on
him, who had experience, and who"--he leaned over to emphasise the
climax--"who had _character_. It was on that man's account that I
joined this party."
Mac put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. His face
began to look a little more natural. The long sleep or the coffee had
cleared his eyes.
"Shall I tell you what I heard about that man last night?" asked the
Colonel gravely.
Mac looked up, but never opened his lips.
"You remember you wouldn't sit here--"
"The Boy was always in and out. The cabin was cold."
"I left the Boy and O'Flynn at supper-time and went down to the Little
Cabin to--"
"To see what I was doin'--to spy on me."
"Well, all right--maybe I was spying, too. Incidentally I wanted to
tell you the cabin was hot as blazes, and get you to come to supper. I
met Potts hurrying up for his grub, and I said, 'Where's Mac? Isn't he
coming?' and your pardner's answer was: 'Oh, let him alone. He's got a
flask in his bunk, swillin' and gruntin'; he's just in hog-heaven.'"
"Damn that sneak!"
"The man he was talkin' about, Mac, was the man we had all built our
hopes on."
"I'll teach Potts--"
"You can't, Mac. Potts has got to die and go to heaven--perhaps to
hell, before he'll learn any good. But you're a different breed. Teach
MacCann."
Mac suddenly sat down on the stool with his head in his hands.
"The Boy hasn't caught on," said the Colonel presently, "but he said
something this morning to show he was wondering about the change that's
come over you."
"That I don't split wood all day, I suppose, when we've got enough for
a month. Potts doesn't either. Why don't you go for Potts?"
"As the Boy said, I don't care about Potts. It's Mac that matters."
"Did the Boy say that?" He looked up.
The Colonel nodded.
"After you had made that chimney, you know, you were a kind of hero in
his eyes."
Mac looked away. "The cabin's been cold," he muttered.
"We are going to remedy that."
"I didn't bring any liquor into camp. You must admit that I didn't
intend--"
"I do admit it."
"And when O'Flynn said that about keeping his big demijohn out of the
inventory and apart from the common stores, I sat on him."
"So you did."
"I knew it was safest to act on the 'medicinal purposes' principle."
"So it is."
"But I wasn't thinking so much of O'Flynn. I was thinking of ... things
that had happened before ... for ... I'd had experience. Drink was the
curse of Caribou. It's something of a scourge up in Nova Scotia ... I'd
had experience."
"You did the very best thing possible under the circumstances." Mac was
feeling about after his self-respect, and must be helped to get hold of
it. "I realise, too, that the temptation is much greater in cold
countries," said the Kentuckian unblushingly. "Italians and Greeks
don't want fiery drinks half as much as Russians and
Scandinavians--haven't the same craving as Nova Scotians and
cold-country people generally, I suppose. But that only shows,
temperance is of more vital importance in the North."
"That's right! It's not much in my line to shift blame, even when I
don't deserve it; but you know so much you might as well know ... it
wasn't I who opened that demijohn first."
"But you don't mind being the one to shut it up--do you?"
"Shut it up?"
"Yes; let's get it down and--" The Colonel swung it off the shelf. It
was nearly empty, and only the Boy's and the Colonel's single bottles
stood unbroached. Even so, Mac's prolonged spree was something of a
mystery to the Kentuckian. It must be that a very little was too much
for Mac. The Colonel handed the demijohn to his companion, and lit the
solitary candle standing on its little block of wood, held in place
between three half-driven nails.
"What's that for?"
"Don't you want to seal it up?"
"I haven't got any wax."
"I have an inch or so." The Colonel produced out of his pocket the only
piece in camp.
Mac picked up a billet of wood, and drove the cork in flush with the
neck. Then, placing upright on the cork the helve of the hammer, he
drove the cork down a quarter of an inch farther.
"Give me your wax. What's for a seal?" They looked about. Mac's eye
fell on a metal button that hung by a thread from the old militia
jacket he was wearing. He put his hand up to it, paused, glanced
hurriedly at the Colonel, and let his fingers fall.
"Yes, yes," said the Kentuckian, "that'll make a capital seal."
"No; something of yours, I think, Colonel. The top of that tony
pencil-case, hey?"
The Colonel produced his gold pencil, watched Mac heat the wax, drop it
into the neck of the demijohn, and apply the initialled end of the
Colonel's property. While Mac, without any further waste of words, was
swinging the wicker-bound temptation up on the shelf again, they heard
voices.
"They're coming back," says the Kentuckian hurriedly. "But we've
settled our little account, haven't we, old man?"
Mac jerked his head in that automatic fashion that with him meant
genial and whole-hearted agreement.
"And if Potts or O'Flynn want to break that seal--"
"I'll call 'em down," says Mac. And the Colonel knew the seal was safe.
* * * * *
"By-the-by, Colonel," said the Boy, just as he was turning in that
night, "I--a--I've asked that Jesuit chap to the House-Warming."
"Oh, you did, did you?"
"Yes."
"Well, you'd just better have a talk with Mac about it."
"Yes. I've been tryin' to think how I'd square Mac. Of course, I know
I'll have to go easy on the raw."
"I reckon you just will."
"If Monkey-wrench screws down hard on me, you'll come to the rescue,
won't you, Colonel?"
"No I'll side with Mac on that subject. Whatever he says, goes!"
"Humph! _that_ Jesuit's all right."
Not a word out of the Colonel.