_The Ice Raft._
The beginning of Winter found Cameron and LeClare comfortably settled
in the refitted home of Laughing Donald; and under the gentle yet
queenly direction of his wife the members of the new household lived
amidst surroundings of comfort and domestic happiness.
In one end of the house a small room with windows looking out upon the
great river had been furnished as an office for business. In this room
many conferences with strangers to The Front had been held of late, and
here LeClare and the architect from the city carefully examined the
plans from which would be builded the House of Cariboo. To his friend
Cameron had given in charge that part of his project which required
the experience of one who was familiar with the accompaniments of homes
builded for beauty of architecture, displaying a refinement of taste;
but for himself, as he explained, he wished to reserve the privilege
of dispensing among his neighbors the expenditures for materials which
could be supplied from their farms while building the mansion as
proposed.
In this same little room during the Winter days Cameron and LeClare
often visited together. They talked of their plans for the future, of
the task before them in the Springtime, but never of the camp in the
Cariboo, nor their returning, which so sadly had been ended. At one
of these conferences, on a stormy day of early Winter, as LeClare,
seated before the fire in the grate, was reading from a selection of
new books he had bought while upon one of his recent trips to the city,
he was suddenly interrupted by his friend, who till then had been idly
standing, one hand upon the window pane, the other fumbling the watch
chain at his vest.
“I have just thought, Edmond,” he began, “as I have looked out upon
this icebound expanse, this great river which for months of the year
is the busy highway of so much traffic, that now it is bound, like
ourselves, to await the pleasure of the season, inactive, only waiting.
Perhaps you may think my deductions commonplace, Edmond; but hear me
through. Since the beginning of Glengarry’s history there have been,
to my knowledge at least, no innovations to disturb the serenity of
the established customs of our people, and these customs are few to
relate. In the Summer we labor a little and house our crops, that in
the Winter we may comfortably live to consume them. The following year,
and the years to come, the same highly exciting programme is certain to
be followed. For the coming Summer we have provided the diversion of
the building of our mansion, but for the lonesome days of our snowbound
season we have not provided. Why not advertise our Summer engagement at
The Nole, and interest our friends in advance?”
Soon after the conversation held in the library at Laughing Donald’s
a team hitched to a farmer’s sled was slowly passing in the roadway.
The driver, carefully selecting an opening between the deep snowdrifts
piled high on the river embankment, turned his horses abruptly to the
left and drove them down the incline and out upon the frozen river.
Quickly he dumped the load of cobblestones in a heap upon the snow and
ice. Thus returning at intervals of an hour each day, Bill Blakely
was engaged throughout the week, till irregular lines of stone heaps
covering a considerable area of the river fronting Cameron’s house
stood as monuments to his labors.
Since Cameron and LeClare had taken up their residence with Laughing
Donald speculation over their reported doings was at fever heat in
the neighborhood. Fraser, the carpenter, was frequently called on by
his friends from The Gore, but his own lack of information concerning
Cameron’s future plans aroused to a greater curiosity the contingent
from the adjoining town, of which Nick Perkins was the acknowledged
leader. Still smarting from the humiliating blow over his failure to
secure the Cameron homestead, Perkins nursed his wrath in silence.
A resolve had already formed in his evil mind to pursue even to the
finish the destinies of the Camerons at The Front, and already his
machinations could be seen at work in the questions he directed at
those he met as he drove along the snow-heaped roads.
It was on a Saturday, and Perkins was on his way to the county town,
when he met Bill Blakely coming up into the roadway, after having
deposited a load of stones upon the ice. Filled with wonderment at what
he saw, he inquired of Bill in his blandest tones what he was drawing
the stones for.
“Well, Perkins,” replied Bill, “to be truthful with you, it’s for a
dollar a load I am doing it principally, but another good reason is
that Cameron has asked me to do it. If you think you’d like the job,
go ask Cameron. They say his credit is good. Even you ought to know
that, Mr. Perkins,” and Bill passed on without saying good-day to him.
Perkins bit his lip and made no reply, but drove on to the village.
Other farmers from the neighborhood soon began hauling to the dumping
grounds on the river facing the farm at The Nole. Angus Ferguson had
hauled to Cameron’s ice raft, as he called it, the old stone wall which
had for so long disfigured the view in front of his house. Stopping
each evening at the little office at Laughing Donald’s, he received,
like the rest, a dollar a load for the number of trips he had made
during the day.
The work of the farmers whom Cameron had seen fit to employ, and who
seemed to vie one with another in quickly disposing of the useless
materials collected about their farm-yards and disfiguring their homes,
progressed so rapidly that ere long whole acres of the frozen river
front resembled a congested lumber yard. The fabulous prices paid to
them by Cameron for the worthless accumulations of their farm-yards,
which he had placed upon the ice to be carried away with the floods in
the Spring, caused a storm of comment, the echo of which came over from
The Gore in volumes of inquiries.
“Where did Cameron get his money?” they queried. “And why can’t we get
a share of it while it lasts?” For Nick Perkins was heard to remark
that “a fool from his money was soon parted.”
While the commotion among those engaged in hauling at The Front
was still in progress, Bill Blakely and Cameron were paying their
respects to certain residents of The Gore. To many of these gentlemen
favored by a call Bill was attached by tender recollections of former
fistic encounters at the four corners. His welcome, of course, was
not always the most cordial, but when Cameron announced very quietly
that Mr. Blakely wished to buy a few thousand of their best cedar
fence posts at a price which could not be disputed, they soon became
more communicative. “Deliver the posts at Mr. Blakely’s, beginning
to-morrow,” said Cameron, continuing without any further parleying:
“You will be paid by the hundred. We will drive, Bill,” and Cameron was
through with the bargaining.
During the next week or two, from his old-time enemies at The Gore,
Blakely had purchased for himself, for Angus Ferguson and for Davy
Simpson a supply of the best fence posts the county could boast.
“Enough,” as Bill said, “to keep Nick Perkins busy for three months
a-countin’ them, the next time he found a mortgage due on a Cameron’s
farm over by the way of The Front.”
In all the transactions of Cameron thus far since his return Nick
Perkins was able to discover a piercing dart, truly thrown at the
hypocrisy of his own career. The subjects he had chosen from among
the people upon whom to lavish such expenditures of money were always
certain to be those who had either been oppressed by him in the past
or else considered themselves his natural enemies. Perkins knew of
the housebuilding to commence in the Spring at The Nole, for already
Blakely was completing the contract he held to supply the stone for
the masonry of the foundation walls. Another fact which galled Perkins
to madness was that the farmers who had been kept constantly employed
were, in every case, those against whom he himself held a mortgage, and
he saw very plainly his prospects for eventually gaining their property
daily slipping more surely from his grasp.
The Spring season had now arrived, and up at The Nole a small army of
workmen were engaged in removing the buildings which had once been
occupied by Cameron as his home. The return of April’s hot sun and warm
winds had loosened the grip which for months held the icebound river
captive between the islands and shore, and suddenly one day, as the
workmen had quit for midday lunch, the long-delayed alarm was sounded
that the river was breaking up. Down the main boat channel, as far as
the eye could see, a forward movement was on. Great squares and chunks
of ice lunged and dipped, then plunged forward again like the wheeling
and turning of an army of soldiers. Over on the shores of Castle Island
mammoth cakes the size of the roofs of the buildings climbed upward
till they broke and toppled over by their own weight, crunching and
thumping and groaning, till a dull, rumbling noise like the approach of
an earthquake could plainly be heard.
Opposite to The Nole, extending in a zig-zag course through the piles
of debris, ran gaping cracks in the ice. All the Winter the irregular
heaps of ugliness which composed the freight on what was now called
“Cameron’s Charity Raft” had reminded those who passed that way of
the original methods employed by one man to relieve the condition of
his brother workers. The useless stone heaps served no purpose upon
the farms from whence they were taken, and the discarded wagon parts
and dilapidated farm implements which Cameron had purchased from his
neighbors had served them only as an encumbrance and nuisance. Now they
soon would be beyond annoying the sight, and their last opportunity for
usefulness had brought joy and peacefulness into many a home along The
Front. As the immense ice floe passed almost intact down the channel,
beating its way amidst the warring, jamming ice cakes, a ringing cheer,
led by old Bill Blakely and joined by the company of workmen, went up
for the man who had brought fortune and good cheer into their midst.