Burned Bridges | Page 7

souls. So far it had not occurred to him that aught else might be
required of a man before he could command a respectful hearing.
Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a
score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in
scope and structure. More than a century had passed since the first
foundation logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company,
to the Company's glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the
name implies throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a
brass cannon which commanded the great gates that swung open to
friendly strangers and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last
remnant of Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the corridors
of time. The Company was still as strong, stronger even in power more
sure and subtle than ever lay in armed retainers and absolute monopoly.
But Fort Pachugan had become a mere collecting station for the lesser
furs, a distributing center for trade goods to native trappers. There were
no more hostile tribes. The Company no longer dealt out the high
justice, the middle, and the low. The stockade and the brass cannon
were traditions. Pachugan sprawled on the bank of the lake, open to all
comers, a dimming landmark of the old days.
What folk were out of doors bent their eyes upon the canoe. The factor
himself rose from his seat on the porch and came down to have speech
with them. Thompson, recognizing authority, made known his name
and his mission. The burly Scot shook hands with him. They walked
away together, up to the factor's house. On the threshold the Reverend
Wesley paused for a backward look, drew the crumpled linen of his
handkerchief across his moist brow, and then disappeared within. Mike
Breyette and Donald MacDonald looked at each other expressively.
Their swarthy faces slowly expanded in a broad grin.

In the North, what with the crisp autumn, the long winter, and that
bleak, uncertain period which is neither winter nor spring, summer--as
we know it in softer lands--has but a brief span to endure. But Nature
there as elsewhere works out a balance, adheres to a certain law of
proportion. What Northern summers lack in length is compensated by
intensity. When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains
follow through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with
magic swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf;
berries form hard on the blossoming. Overnight, as it were, the woods
and meadows, the river flats and the higher rolling country, become
transformed. And when August passes in a welter of flies and heat and
thunderstorms, the North is ready once more for the frosty segment of
its seasonal round. July and August are hot months in the high latitudes.
For six weeks or thereabouts the bottom-lands of the Peace and the
Athabasca can hold their own with the steaming tropics. After
that--well, this has to do in part with "after that." For it was in late July
when Wesley Thompson touched at Fort Pachugan, a Bible in his
pocket, a few hundred pounds of supplies in Mike Breyette's canoe,
certain aspirations of spiritual labor in his head, and little other
equipment to guide and succor him in that huge, scantily peopled
territory which his superiors had chosen as the field for his labors.
When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the
diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their supplies
they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging about the
Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably familiar
ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an ancient
servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's, for whom
they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them laconically,
without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at an old clay
pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as himself,
squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his thumb
toward a bench and bade them be seated.
"It's a bit war-rm," MacDonald opined, by way of opening the
conversation.

"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us
somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"
"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naïve
candor. "Yon's a meenister."
"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
have som' fon weet heem dees treep."
"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
pipe.