The Settlement is upward of three miles from Grier's point. Avoiding
the houses for the present, Garth pitched his camp outside, well off
the trail. The first thing they learned was that the Bishop had gone on.
This time they were not surprised; there seemed to be a fatality in it.
The old problem confronted Garth anew.
"I think you should wait here," he suggested to Natalie; "and let me
ride on for you."
Natalie, as she always did when this question was brought up, merely
looked obstinate.
"It is likely we will miss him again at the Crossing," Garth went on;
"and I have learned there are only one or two cabins there, and no white
woman. It would be difficult for you."
Natalie's silence gave him no encouragement.
"But here," he urged, "you could stay with the wife of the inspector of
the mounted police; while I go on and bring Mabyn back to you. I do not
think you should put yourself in his hands."
"He would not come with you," she said evasively.
"I promise to bring him," said Garth determinedly; "if he is alive."
"No!" she said with manifest agitation. "That is another reason!"
"What is?" he asked mystified.
"I--I could not have any trouble between you," she said in a low tone.
"But I promise to bring him safely," he said doggedly.
She still shook her head.
"I will go to the wife of the inspector," said Garth--"a woman in such
a position is sure to be the right sort--and I will explain our position
frankly. She will be glad to take you in!"
Natalie shot an odd glance at him. "I will not let you," she said
quickly.
"But why?"
"The risk of the humiliation of a refusal is too great," she said. "I
do not doubt she is a good woman; I'm sure she rises splendidly to all
the demands of her position up here. But she _has_ a position to maintain,
you see; no doubt she is bringing up girls. And me!"--Natalie turned
away her head--"consider how extraordinary the story sounds! Only one
woman in a thousand would believe."
Garth turned a distressed face to her. "I have not taken care of you
properly," he cried remorsefully.
Natalie veiled her eyes; and her hand stole to her breast. "Let us not
talk about _that_!" she murmured unevenly.
Garth was perplexed and silent.
Natalie recovered herself presently; and looked at him with a misty
shine in her eyes. "Why do you worry?" she asked. "We're a thousand
times better off than we were yesterday; for you have laid our enemy
by the heels! Why mayn't I go on with you just the same as before?
I cannot trust any one but you!"
How was Garth to resist such an appeal? Besides, there was nothing else
to do.
Garth might have lodged a complaint against Nick Grylls at the barracks;
but any investigation would have seriously delayed their journey; and a
greater reason against it was his care for Natalie's good name. It was
intolerable to him that the dear circumstances of their journey together
should be made the subject of the common gossip of the North. It was
better to let those who saw Natalie on the trail speculate as they
chose, rather than give them an opportunity to put their own coarse
construction upon the truth. He was well assured Nick Grylls would
say nothing.
For the same reason, he decided to avoid the Settlement altogether.
The two of them remained close in camp; and Charley was dispatched to
purchase ponies and saddles, and what was needful to replenish their
stores. He returned with all they required; and during the afternoon
instructed Garth how to pack the ponies and "throw" the immovable
diamond hitch. Natalie in the meantime, constructed a divided skirt
for herself, since side-saddles are unknown in the North.
Their route now lay over the ninety-mile portage to Spirit River
Crossing. The road, Garth learned, was straight, and, for the
North, well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no
possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next
morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was
firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the
easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off
on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away to
hide his tears.
In the mystical gloom which, in northern latitudes, precedes the summer
dawn, Garth and Natalie, each leading a pack pony, rode through the
Settlement, which straggled for several miles around the shore of Moose
Bay, a wide, shallow arm of the lake, once navigable, but now given over
to the wild-fowl. The shacks were infinitely various; for in a land
where every man builds for himself, a house quaintly expresses the
character of its owner. But one thing was common to all; no one wastes
any ornament on his dwelling; and in the luxuriant greenness of the
northern summer, the grim, solid little houses were a reminder of
the coming cold.
Later in the day they passed the long, gradual climb over the height
of land separating the great watersheds of the Miwasa and the Spirit.
On the other side they came to a flat country and of the same general
character all the way. It was a shining day; and, being young, they
forgot their cares and rode gaily. For the most part the trail lay in
a straight and lofty nave of aspen trees, rearing their slender, snowy
pillars sixty, eighty--even a hundred feet aloft; and mingling their
clusters of nimble, chattering leaves high overhead in the sun. There
was nothing gloomy about this cathedral; the sun found a thousand
apertures through which to launch his rays against the white pillars;
while the green and mutable roof was bathed in almost intolerable
radiance--it was a temple in green and white, Flora's colours.
Occasionally there were cloistered openings; sunny little meadows
inclining to a spring, where the wild pea-vine, plant beloved of horses,
and infallible sign of a rich soil, grew knee-deep. Such an opening they
learned, however small, was quaintly dignified by the natives with the
name of prairie.
Their ponies, each exhibiting a distinct individuality, afforded the
excuse for their amusement on the way. Garth's mount, that a previous
owner had christened "Cyclops," and who was tall enough and bony enough
to be called a horse, was, like themselves, a stranger in the bush, and
his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity,
under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the
name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging
under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-witted. He would not ride
abreast; but insisted on following; and he screamed with terror,
if for an instant he lost sight of the other horses.
But it was the two pack horses that offered the most diverting study of
character. When they left the Settlement behind, Garth cast off their
leaders. In Emmy, a rotund little mare, they had secured a treasure.
Emmy had an indifferent air toward them, worthy of a breed; but unlike
a breed, she was thoroughly business-like. Where the great mudholes of
unknown depth blocked the trail, and they must strike into the bush, she
required no guidance. They laughed and admired, to see her stop, looking
this way and that, and deliberately pick her way through, always with
due regard to the height and breadth of the pack on her back. Emmy
declined to be hurried; she had an air that said as plainly as words, if
they didn't like her pace, they could leave her behind, and be hanged to
them!
The remaining animal was Emmy's son, a half-broken colt, whose
only virtue was that he would not stray very far from his mother.
Mistatimoosis was his mouthful of a name. He forgot his pack sometimes,
and striking it full tilt against a tree, would be knocked endwise in
the trail, blinking and dismayed, as who should say, "Who hit me?" The
thing that caused them the heartiest laughter was to see Mistatimoosis's
endless attempts to steal the leadership of the caravan from his mother.
It was the only thing that could tempt Emmy out of her sedate pace. On
a fair piece of road the two of them would race at top speed for half a
mile; and the colt was continually making sly detours into the bush to
get around his mother. But she kept him in his place behind.
The riders finding they could safely leave the packhorses to follow, had
ridden ahead to spy out grass and water for the noon spell. They were
walking their horses over the turf bordering the trail, when suddenly
from among the trees came with startling distinctness the sound of a
voice. They reined up, astonished. It was the gentle, ambling voice of
a loquacious old man; and his conversation there in the wilderness was
as quiet and intimate as chimney-corner talk.
"I should say half-past eleven," they heard. "When Mr. Sun sits down on
yonder spruce tree we'll make a break. So work your jaws good, Mother,
old girl; and you Buck, my dear, stop looking around like a fool and get
busy! Meanwhile, we'll pack up the grub-box."
Garth and Natalie smiled at each other. There was nothing very alarming
about this.
"Will you have a pipe of baccy now, Tom Lillywhite?" the same voice
resumed. "Thanks, old man, don't mind if I do! Is there any cut? No?
Well shave it close."
There was a pause here, while the speaker presumably filled his pipe.
Then some one drew an audible sigh of content; and a kind of dialogue
took place--though there was but the one voice full of quaint lifts and
falls. Garth and Natalie, smiling broadly, listened without shame.
"Ah! a fine day, a bellyful of bacon, and a pipeful of tobacco!--would
you change with a moneyed man, Tom Lillywhite?"
"Well I don't know, sir! Mebbe he don't enjoy his grub as much as us,
havin' gen'ally the dyspepsy; but how about the winter, old sport, when
we don't fetch up no stoppin'-house; and has to make a bed in the snow,
hey? It's then a flannel bed-gown looks good to old bones; let alone
woolly slippers and a feather bed! Seems I wouldn't kick agin the
job of takin' care o' money in the winter time!"
"Ah! g'long with you, Tom Lillywhite! You'd a been dead long ago if you
had money! Swole up and bust with good eatin', y'old epicoor! You'd be
havin' a pig killed fresh every week if you had money!"
"Say, b'lieve I would cut some dash if I had money! I'd build me a house
of lumber clear through, and I'd paint it all over, paint it blue! And
I'd have sawdust on the settin'-room floor and a brass spittoon in every
corner! 'Have a chair,' I'd say to stoppers, not lettin' on I was puffed
up at all. 'Have a ten-cent seegar. Don't mention it! Don't mention it!
I get a case full in every Fall!'"
Here there was a jolly chuckle.
Their packhorses joining them noisily, the dialogue was cut short.
"Some one comin'," said the voice.
Rounding the clump of bushes, Garth and Natalie found themselves in a
grassy opening in the bush. An untraced wagon stood in the centre; and
two horses browsed. Immediately under the bushes, an old man sat on the
ground. They instinctively looked around for the other persons brought
into his conversation; but, save for the horses, he was alone.
At the sight of them his face lighted up with the pleased naivete of
a child. "How do! How do!" he said immediately, without getting up or
raising his voice at all. "My horses are quiet. They won't tech yours.
The spring is down there at the foot of the spruce. Just blow up my fire
a little and it will do for you." He seemed to take them entirely for
granted; and he spoke as if resuming a dropped conversation.
There was something very troll-like in the old figure, squatting on the
ground; in his bright, glancing eyes, in his incessant, matter-of-fact
loquacity, and the slight, peculiar gesticulation, with which he
illustrated his talk. He was all of a colour; high moccasins, breeches,
shirt and cap were weathered to the same grayish-brown shade--and that
much the colour of his skin. Against a background of withered grass,
only his white hair would have been visible. He was like some
good-tempered, little familiar of the forest.
He stared hard at Natalie in his bright-eyed, impersonal way; and as
soon as Garth, having made his horses comfortable, came to build up the
fire, he started in with his questions.
"Where you going?"
"Spirit River Crossing," said Garth.
"Thinking of settling?"
Garth shook his head.
"No, you don't look like settlers. Company business, maybe?"
"No," said Garth.
"Police? Gov'ment survey?"
"Private business," said Garth--his usual answer to the question direct.
Baffled inquisitiveness, vice of the kindest natures, made the old man's
face ugly; and for a moment he looked like a wicked troll. For a little
while he preserved an offended silence; but then, probably recollecting
that he would hear the whole story at the Settlement, or simply because
he could not keep still any longer, his face cleared, and he resumed his
engaging, inconsequential babble.
"See that horse over there, the buckskin? Best horse I ever had! True
buckskin! Mark the zebra stripes round his legs, Miss; and the black
stripe on his backbone. You can't kill a buck; he's got more lives
than a cat. I call the old one Mother; she's good-natured, she is!"
"You're a freighter, I see," remarked Garth as a leader.
"Sure thing, stranger! Tom Lillywhite and his team is known to every
settler in the country! Been here thirty-five year; and always on the
move! Never sleep in the same place two nights going! That wagon there,
and the grub-box is my home. It's a variegated life!"
Garth bethought himself the old man would likely prove a valuable source
of information. "You must know everybody in the country!" he said,
feeling his way.
"None better!" said Tom Lillywhite, bridling with pride.
"Are there many white men at the Crossing?" asked Garth.
"Quite a crowd," said the old man; "eight or nine at the least. There's
the two traders, and Mert Haywood the farmer, and old Turner the J. P.,
and the priest, and the English missionary, and the school-master;
that's seven. Then there's old man Mackensie but you wouldn't hardly
call him a white man--smoked too deep, and squaw-ridden."
"Is that all?" said Garth, disappointed of his quest.
"Well, there's a sort of another. He doesn't regularly belong to the
Crossing but he comes into the store for his goods once or twict a year.
I forgot him--most everybody's forgot him now. It's Bert Mabyn."
Garth and Natalie pricked up their ears; and their hearts began to beat.
"I got good cause to know Bert Mabyn, too," continued old Tom innocently;
while the other two listened still as mice, and apprehensive of
disclosures to be made. "But that's all past. I don't bear him no ill-will
now. He's a cur'us chap, a little teched I guess; but as pleasant a spoken
and amoosin' a feller as another feller could want to have with him on the
road! Want to hear about him?"
Garth looked at Natalie dubiously.
"Yes," she said boldly.
"Well, it was three years ago," began Tom Lillywhite, with the zest of
the true story-teller. "The Gov'ment sent four surveyin' parties in; and
I had more'n I could do freightin' from the Settlement to the different
camps. It was rough haulin', you understand, over the lines they cut
through the bush, straight as a string over muskeg and coulee. You
couldn't load over twenty hundredweight, and sometimes you had to dump
half of that, and go back for it. But right good pay, Gov'ment pay is.
"I needed another team bad, and I see a good chance to get one on credit
from Dick Staley, with the wagon and all; but I couldn't get no white
men to drive it for me. A breed, you understand, soon kills your horses
on you!
"Well, it might be I was settin' outside the French outfit, talkin' it
over," he went on tranquilly, little suspecting with what meaning his
story was charged for the two strangers; "when along comes a feller and
asts for me. Say, he was a sight! He was wearin' black clothes, though
it were a workin'-day; and all muddied and tore, showin' the skin under;
and his coat was pinned acrost the neck, with a safety-pin 'cause he
hadn't no shirt. He had a Sunday hat on too--all busted. At the best
he weren't no beauty; his teeth was out."
Natalie shuddered.
Garth, suffering for her, could not bear to meet her eyes. "Perhaps
you'd rather hear another story," he suggested.
She braced herself. "No! Go on!" she said.
"Soon as I see him, I knew who he was," continued old Tom; "for I hear
the fellers talk about a white man that took passage up from the Landing
on Phillippe's boat. He let them pull him all the way; and when they got
to Grier's point, he hadn't no money. They took it out of his skin; and
say, when a white man is beat by a breed it's good-day to him up here!
In a hundred years he couldn't live it down.
"'Do you want to hire a man?' says he mumbling-like; he was too far down
to meet your eye.
"'Hum!' says I thoughtful, 'I want a _man_,' I says.
"You should have heard the fellers laugh at that! They still talk about
it! 'Tom Lillywhite, he wants a man', they say. It's quite a word in the
country. 'Tom Lillywhite wants a _man_!'"
The old freighter went off into an interminable chuckling over the
antique jest.
It was inexpressibly painful to Natalie to have Garth there, a witness
to her humiliation; but she would not stop the story-teller, nor let
Garth stop him.
"However, thinks I, you can sometimes make a man out of unpromisin'
mater'al," he resumed. "And in the end I took him for his grub. That was
Bert Mabyn. For three months I didn't regret it; he was used to horses,
and was first-rate company on the trail. I didn't give him no money--said
he didn't want none--but I fed him up good, and he soon got fat and sassy.
I give him other things too. I couldn't stand for the poor wretch a
shiverin' by my fire in his buttoned-up coat, so I give him blankets;
and afterward an outfit of clothes.
"What do you think was the first thing he ever ast me for?--a razor
and a glass! And every day after that he used to shave hisself--every
day mind you, if we was in the thickest part of the bush! And forever
trimmin' of his nails, and polishin' 'em to make 'em shine! Wasn't
that remarkable?
"He was a great talker. Nights around the fire he used to tell me all
about himself. Seems he comes of real high-toned folks outside; but went
to the bad young. Said he come West three years before that again, full
of good resolutions, which lasted just so long as his money. Since then
he'd been a grub-rider 'round the ranches, and dish-washer in hotels,
and, 'scusin' your presence, Miss, worse than that--but he hadn't no
shame about it!
"I liked the feller. He wasn't no good, but he had that persuasive way
with him! And he knew so much more than me! You'd think a man 'ud feel
shame to tell such stories on himself; but no! he'd make out as you
ought to like him for bein' such a good-for-nothing waster; and by Gum!
in the end you did! Never see such a feller!
"Well, all summer we travelled, me and him; him always behind me on the
trail; and I hadn't any fault to find. But come September I had a rush
lot up to Whitefish Lake; and at the same time there was some stuff
wanted in a hurry in Pentland's camp over on the Great Smoky. So for the
first time we divided. I sent him to Pentland's over this very trail!
"I got back long before he did. After a while word come from Pentland,
where in thunder were the goods? It was after the first snow before
Mabyn come back. He was a wreck and the horses were just alive, and no
more. He told a story how his wagon capsized in the river, and he lost
everything; but the whiskey gave the lie to that. By and by we found
he'd buried a keg of it, outside the Settlement. In the Spring when it
was too late to do anything, it all come out through a breed. Seems away
up by Fort St. Pierre, he met one of them crooked traders, that
sometimes sneaks acrost the mountains; and he sold him the stuff for a
keg of rot-gut. When I hear that I was thankful he brought back the
horses at all. The business near busted me; for I had to make good three
hundred worth of groceries to Pentland; and sacrificed the second team,
'count of the shape they were in. That was what Bert Mabyn cost _me_!"
"Didn't you have him arrested?" asked Garth indignantly.
Tom shrugged. "What were the use of that? The inspector was after me to
prosecute; but it was too late to get my money back, and put flesh on
the horses--besides, I was too busy. Of course, it weren't just the same
as robbin' me in cold blood," he added in the tone of one who must be
fair; "for it were the whiskey, you see."
Natalie kept her face averted from the old man. "And what has become of
this man since?" she asked, steadily controlling her voice.
"Oh, he hung around the Settlement, sponging on one and another till he
were kicked out; then he come down to the breeds. It was a great honour
for them to have a white man of any kind runnin' after them, you see, so
they put up with him. Then he drifted West, up Ostachegan way; and
lately, I understand, he's taken up a deserted shack he found on
Clearwater Lake, away up on the bench there, northwest of the Spirit.
There they tell me he lives all alone; but no one's seen him in a dog's
age."
* * * * *
Garth and Natalie avoided everything beyond the merest commonplaces to
each other until they were alone; and even after Tom Lillywhite, bidding
them farewell, had driven off, chirping to his horses, it was a long
time before either had the courage to make a move toward overcoming the
ghastly constraint his story had caused between them.
"Haven't we heard enough?" said Garth quietly at last. "Need you go any
further?"
Natalie in the interim had had time to pass her emotional crisis. She
was very pale, and her eyes were big; but she was now calmer than he. "I
have heard enough, surely," she said; "but after coming all this way it
would seem cowardly, wouldn't it, to be satisfied with hearsay
evidence?--and there is still my promise to his mother."
Her tone impressed Garth with the utter hopelessness of trying to
dissuade her. "But how can I let you expose yourself to--to what we may
find!" he groaned.
"I am not a child," said Natalie quietly. "And I shall not quail at the
mere sight of ugliness." She turned away from him. "Besides," she added
in a lower tone, "you know the worst now; and that was the hardest thing
to bear--your hearing it I mean. No," she went on, facing him again,
wistfully and valorously; "it promises to be _very_ ugly, but then I
undertook it, you see. I am going on."
They could not bear to meet each other's eyes; and miserably turning
their backs, affected to busy themselves with small tasks. Natalie,
quivering with the shame of the lash all unwittingly applied by old Tom,
longed with an inexpressible longing to have Garth with a hint or a look
assure her that he loved her, and so, thrusting the wretch Mabyn out of
their charmed circle, reinstate her in her self-respect. But poor Garth
in his clumsy, masculine delicacy thought that to obtrude himself at
such a moment would only hurt her more. He kept silent, and he averted
his eyes, and Natalie, misunderstanding, tasted the very dregs of
shame.