The Magnetic North. Elizabeth Robins

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СКАЧАТЬ the Boy only laughed at Nicholas's struggles to get started. He hung on to the loaded sled, examining, praising, while the dogs, after the merest affectation of trying to make a start, looked round at him over their loose collars and grinned contentedly.

      "Me got to mush. Show nex' time. Mush!"

      "What's here?" the Boy shouted through the "mushing"; and he tugged at the goodly load, so neatly disposed under an old reindeer-skin sleeping-bag, and lashed down with raw hide.

      That? Oh, that was fish. "Fish! Got so much fish at starving Pymeut you can go hauling it down river? Well, sir, we want fish. We must have fish. Hey?" The Boy appealed to the others.

      "Yes."

      "R-right y'arre!"

      "I reckon we just do!"

      But Nicholas had other views.

      "No, me take him—" He hitched his body in the direction of Ikogimeut.

      "Bless my soul! you've got enough there for a regiment. You goin' to sell him? Hey?"

      Nicholas shook his head.

      "Oh, come off the roof!" advised the Boy genially.

      "You ain't carryin' it about for your health, I suppose?" said Potts.

      "The people down at Ikogimeut don't need it like us. We're white duffers, and can't get fish through the ice. You sell some of it to us." But Nicholas shook his head and shuffled along on his snow-shoes, beckoning the dog-driver to follow.

      "Or trade some fur—fur tay," suggested O'Flynn.

      "Or for sugar," said Mac.

      "Or for tobacco," tempted the Colonel.

      And before that last word Nicholas's resolve went down. Up at the cabin he unlashed the load, and it quickly became manifest that Nicholas was a dandy at driving a bargain. He kept on saying shamelessly:

      "More—more shuhg. Hey? Oh yes, me give heap fish. No nuff shuhg."

      If it hadn't been for Mac (his own clear-headed self again, and by no means to be humbugged by any Prince alive) the purchase of a portion of that load of frozen fish, corded up like so much wood, would have laid waste the commissariat.

      But if the white men after this passage did not feel an absolute confidence in Nicholas's fairness of mind, no such unworthy suspicion of them found lodgment in the bosom of the Prince. With the exception of some tobacco, he left all his ill-gotten store to be kept for him by his new friends till he should return. When was that to be? In five sleeps he would be back.

      "Good! We'll have the stockade done by then. What do you say to our big chimney, Nicholas?"

      He emitted a scornful "Peeluck!"

      "What! Our chimney no good?"

      He shrugged: "Why you have so tall hole your house? How you cover him up?"

      "We don't want to cover him up."

      "Humph! winter fin' you tall hole. Winter come down—bring in snow—drive fire out." He shivered in anticipation of what was to happen. "Peeluck!"

      The white men laughed.

      "What you up to now? Where you going?"

      Well, the fact was, Nicholas had been sent by his great ally, the Father Superior of Holy Cross, on a mission, very important, demanding despatch.

      "Father Brachet—him know him heap better send Nicholas when him want man go God-damn quick. Me no stop—no—no stop."

      He drew on his mittens proudly, unjarred by remembrance of how his good resolution had come to grief.

      "Where you off to now?"

      "Me ketchum Father Wills—me give letter." He tapped his deerskin-covered chest. "Ketchum sure 'fore him leave Ikogimeut."

      "You come back with Father Wills?"

      Nicholas nodded.

      "Hooray! we'll all work like sixty!" shouted the Boy, "and by Saturday (that's five sleeps) we'll have the wall done and the house warm, and you and"—he caught himself up; not thus in public would he break the news to Mac—"you'll be back in time for the big Blow-Out." To clinch matters, he accompanied Nicholas from the cabin to the river trail, explaining: "You savvy? Big feast—all same Indian. Heap good grub. No prayer-meetin'—you savvy?—no church this time. Big fire, big feed. All kinds—apples, shuhg, bacon—no cook him, you no like," he added, basely truckling to the Prince's peculiar taste.

      Nicholas rolled his single eye in joyful anticipation, and promised faithfully to grace the scene.

      This was all very fine … but Father Wills! The last thing at night and the first thing in the morning the Boy looked the problem in the face, and devised now this, now that, adroit and disarming fashion of breaking the news to Mac.

      But it was only when the daring giver of invitations was safely in bed, and Mac equally safe down in the Little Cabin, that it seemed possible to broach the subject. He devised scenes in which, airily and triumphantly, he introduced Father Wills, and brought Mac to the point of pining for Jesuit society; but these scenes were actable only under conditions of darkness and of solitude. The Colonel refused to have anything to do with the matter.

      "Our first business, as I see it, is to keep peace in the camp, and hold fast to a good understanding with one another. It's just over little things like this that trouble begins. Mac's one of us; Father Wills is an outsider. I won't rile Mac for the sake of any Jesuit alive. No, sir; this is your funeral, and you're obliged to attend."

      Before three of Nicholas's five sleeps were accomplished, the Boy began to curse the hour he had laid eyes on Father Wills. He began even to speculate desperately on the good priest's chances of tumbling into an air-hole, or being devoured by a timely wolf. But no, life was never so considerate as that. Yet he could neither face being the cause of the first serious row in camp, nor endure the thought of having his particular guest—drat him!—flouted, and the whole House-Warming turned to failure and humiliation.

      Indeed, the case looked desperate. Only one day more now before he would appear—be flouted, insulted, and go off wounded, angry, leaving the Boy with an irreconciliable quarrel against Mac, and the House-Warming turned to chill recrimination and to wretchedness.

      But until the last phantasmal hope went down before the logic of events it was impossible not to cling to the idea of melting Mac's Arctic heart. There was still one course untried.

      Since there was so little left to do to the stockade, the Boy announced that he thought he'd go up over the hill for a tramp. Gun in hand and grub in pocket, he marched off to play his last trump-card. If he could bring home a queer enough bird or beast for the collection, there was still hope. To what lengths might Mac not go if one dangled before him the priceless bait of a golden-tipped emperor goose, dressed in imperial robes of rose-flecked snow? Or who, knowing Mac, would not trust a Xema Sabinii to play the part of a white-winged angel of peace? Failing some such heavenly messenger, there was nothing for it but that СКАЧАТЬ