Burned Bridges | Page 8

children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.
"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i' the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the heathen--thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye--how tae find grace. No that he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his way."
Old MacPhee took the blackened clay pipe from his mouth and puffed a blue spiral into the dead, sultry air. A sour expression gathered about his withered lips.
"Dinna gibe at yon puir mortal," he rebuked. "Ye canna keep fools frae wanderin'. I've seen manny's the man like him. It's likely that once he's had a fair taste o' the North he'll be less a saint an' more a man."
The afternoon was far spent when they landed. Breyette and MacDonald made themselves comfortable with their backs against the wall. Supper came and was eaten. Evening closed in. The bold, scorching stare of the sun faded. Little cooling breezes fluttered along the lake shore, banishing the last trace of that brassy heat. Men who had lounged indoors, or against shaded walls roamed about, and half-breed women chattered in voluble gutturals back and forth between the cabins.
CHAPTER III
THE DESERTED CABIN
In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance and a patient heart.
These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.
Thompson sat back after his supper, fanning himself with an ancient newspaper, for the day's heat still lingered. Across the table on which he rested an elbow MacLeod, bearded, aggressive, capable, regarded his guest with half-contemptuous pity under cover of the gathering dusk. MacLeod smoked a pipe. Thompson chewed the cud of reflection.
"And so," the factor began suddenly, "ye are a missionary to the Lone Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who--beggin' your pardon--ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an' clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his soul. Ye'll understand this better when ye ha' more experience in the North. Indeed, it's no impossible ye might come to the same way of thinkin' in time."
The dusk hid the shocked expression that gathered on Thompson's face.
"'What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world if he knoweth not God?'" he quoted gravely. "The priests of the Catholic church have long carried on missionary work among these tribes. We of the Protestant faith would be lacking if we did