The Fur Bringers | Page 2

Ambrose squirming a little and blushing
under Peter's calm, speculative gaze.
"Have you anything against me?" Peter finally inquired. "If you have,
out with it!"
The young man shook his head unhappily.
"Forget it then!" cried Peter with a scornful, kindly grin. "You ornery
worthless Slavi, you! You Shushwap! You Siwash! Change your face
or you'll give the dog distemper!"
Ambrose laughed sheepishly and stole a glance at his partner. There
was pain in his bold eyes, and the wish to bare it to his friend as to a
surgeon; but he dreaded Peter's laughter.
There was another long silence. The atmosphere was now much
clearer.
Peter, having come to a conclusion, removed his pipe and spoke again:
"I know what's the matter with you."
"What?" muttered Ambrose.
"You've got the June fever."

Ambrose made no comment.
"I mind it when I was your age," Peter continued; "when the ice goes
out of the lake and the poplar-trees hang out their little earrings, that's
when a man catches it--when Molly Cottontail puts on her brown jacket
and Skinny Weasel a yellow one. The south wind brings the microbe
along with it, and it multiplies in the warm earth. Gee! It makes even an
old feller like me poetical. After six months of winter it's hell!"
Still Ambrose kept his eyes down and said nothing.
Peter smoked on, and his eyes became reminiscent. "I mind it well," he
continued, "the second spring I was in the country. The first year I
didn't notice it so much, but the second year--when the warm weather
come I was like a wild man. I saw red! I wanted to fight every man I
laid eyes on. I felt like I would go clean off my head if I couldn't smash
something!"
Ambrose broke in on Peter's reminiscences. He seemed scarcely to
have heard.
"I don't know what's the matter with me!" he cried bitterly. "I can't
seem to settle down to anything lately. I've got no use for myself at all.
I get so cranky, anybody that speaks to me I want to punch them. God
knows I need company, too. It is certainly square of you to put up with
me the way you do. I appreciate it--"
"Aw, bosh!" muttered Peter.
"I've tried to work it off!" cried Ambrose. "You know I've worked,
though I've generally made a mess of things because I can't keep my
mind on anything. My head goes round like a top. Half the time I'm in a
daze. I feel as if I was going crazy. I don't know what is the matter with
me!"
"Twenty-five years old," murmured Peter; "in the pink of condition!
I'm telling you what's the matter with you. It's a plain case of June fever.
Ask any of the fellows up here."

"What am I going to do?" said Ambrose. "As it is, I work till I'm ready
to drop."
"I mind when I had it," said Peter, "I came to a camp of French
half-breeds on Musquasepi, and I saw Eva Lajeunesse for the first time.
It was like a blow between the eyes. You do not know what she looked
like then. I didn't think about it this way or that; I just up and married
her. I was glad to get her!
"Man to man I'll not deny I ain't been sorry sometimes," he went on;
"who ain't, sometimes? But, on the whole, after all these years, how
could I have done any better? She's good enough for me. A man
worries about his children sometimes; but I guess if they go straight
there's a place for them, though they are dusky. Eva, she has her bad
points, but she's been real good to me. How can I be but grateful!"
This was a rare and unusual confidence for Peter to offer his young
partner. Ambrose, flattered and embarrassed, did not know what to say,
and said nothing.
He was right, for if he had referred to it, Peter would have been obliged
to turn it into a joke. As it was, they smoked on in understanding
silence. Finally Peter went on:
"You see, I gave right in. You're different; you want to fight the thing.
Blest if I know what to tell you."
"Eva and I don't get on very well," said Ambrose shamefacedly. "She
doesn't like me around the house. But I respect her. You know that."
"Sure," said Peter.
"I couldn't do it, Peter," Ambrose went on after a while with seeming
irrelevance--howsoever Peter understood. "God knows it's not because
I think myself any better than anybody else, or because I think a man
does for himself by marrying a--by marrying up here. But I just
couldn't do it, that's all."

"No offense," said Peter. "Every man must chop