Chapter 12

THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE

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.