The Courage of Marge ODoone | Page 9

some distance beyond the divisional point ahead--this cabin where
you get off?" he asked.
"Yes, twenty or twenty-five miles. There is nothing but a cabin and two
or three log outbuildings there--where Thoreau, the Frenchman, has his
fox pens, as I told you. It is not a regular stop, but the train will slow
down to throw off my dunnage and give me an easy jump. My dogs
and Indian are with Thoreau."

"And from there--from Thoreau's--it is a long distance to the place you
call home?"
The Little Missioner rubbed his hands in a queer rasping way. The
movement of those rugged hands and the curious, chuckling laugh that
accompanied it, radiated a sort of cheer. They were expressions of more
than satisfaction. "It's a great many miles to my own cabin, but it's
home--all home--after I get into the forests. My cabin is at the lower
end of God's Lake, three hundred miles by dogs and sledge from
Thoreau's--three hundred miles as straight north as a niskuk flies."
"A niskuk?" said David.
"Yes--a gray goose."
"Don't you have crows?"
"A few; but they're as crooked in flight as they are in morals. They're
scavengers, and they hang down pretty close to the line of rail--close to
civilization, where there's a lot of scavenging to be done, you know."
For the second time that night David found a laugh on his lips.
"Then--you don't like civilization?"
"My heart is in the Northland," replied Father Roland, and David saw a
sudden change in the other's face, a dying out of the light in his eyes, a
tenseness that came and went like a flash at the corners of his mouth. In
that same moment he saw the Missioner's hand tighten, and the fingers
knot themselves curiously and then slowly relax.
One of these hands dropped on David's shoulder, and Father Roland
became the questioner.
"You have been thinking, since you left me a little while ago?" he
asked.
"Yes. I came back. But you were asleep."

"I haven't been asleep. I have been awake every minute. I thought once
that I heard a movement at the door but when I looked up there was no
one there. You told me to-day that you were going west--to the British
Columbia mountains?"
David nodded. Father Roland sat down beside him.
"Of course you didn't tell me why you were going," he went on. "I have
made my own guess since you told me about the woman, David.
Probably you will never know just why your story has struck so deeply
home with me and why it seemed to make you more a son to me than a
stranger. I have guessed that in going west you are simply wandering.
You are fighting in a vain and foolish sort of way to run away from
something. Isn't that it? You are running away--trying to escape the one
thing in the whole wide world that you cannot lose by flight--and that's
memory. You can think just as hard in Japan or the South Sea Islands
as you can on Fifth Avenue in New York, and sometimes the farther
away you get the more maddening your thoughts become. It isn't travel
you want, David. It's blood--red blood. And for putting blood into you,
and courage, and joy of just living and breathing, there's nothing on the
face of the earth like--that!"
He reached an arm past David and pointed to the night beyond the car
window.
"You mean the storm, and the snow----"
"Yes; storm, and snow, and sunshine, and forests--the tens of thousands
of miles of our Northland that you've seen only the edges of. That's
what I mean. But, first of all"--and again the Little Missioner rubbed
his hands--"first of all, I'm thinking of the supper that's waiting for us at
Thoreau's. Will you get off and have supper with me at the
Frenchman's, David? After that, if you decide not to go up to God's
Lake with me, Thoreau can bring you and your luggage back to the
station with his dog team. Such a supper--or breakfast--it will be! I can
smell it now, for I know Thoreau--his fish, his birds, the tenderest
steaks in the forests! I can hear Thoreau cursing because the train hasn't
come, and I'll wager he's got fish and caribou tenderloin and partridges

just ready for a final turn in the roaster. What do you say? Will you get
off with me?"
"It is a tempting offer to a hungry man, Father."
The Little Missioner chuckled elatedly.
"Hunger!--that's the real medicine of the gods, David, when the belt
isn't drawn too tight. If I want to know the nature and quality of a man I
ask about his stomach. Did you ever know a man who loved to eat who