The Magnetic North. Elizabeth Robins

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СКАЧАТЬ the ignominy of going forth to meet the Father on the morrow, and confess the humiliating truth. It wasn't fair to let him come expecting hospitality, and find—. Visions arose of Mac receiving the bent and wayworn missionary with the greeting: "There is no corner by the fire, no place in the camp for a pander to the Scarlet Woman." The thought lent impassioned fervour to the quest for goose or gull.

      It was pretty late when he got back to camp, and the men were at supper. No, he hadn't shot anything.

      "What's that bulging in your pocket?"

      "Sort o' stone."

      "Struck it rich?"

      "Don't give me any chin-music, boys; give me tea. I'm dog-tired."

      But when Mac got up first, as usual, to go down to the Little Cabin to "wood up" for the night, "I'll walk down with you," says the Boy, though it was plain he was dead-beat.

      He helped to revive the failing fire, and then, dropping on the section of sawed wood that did duty for a chair, with some difficulty and a deal of tugging he pulled "the sort o' stone" out of the pocket of his duck shooting-jacket.

      "See that?" He held the thing tightly clasped in his two red, chapped hands.

      Mac bent down, shading his eyes from the faint flame flicker.

      "What is it?" "Piece o' tooth."

      "By the Lord Harry! so it is." He took the thing nearer the faint light. "Fossil! Where'd you get it?"

      "Over yonder—by a little frozen river."

      "How far? Any more? Only this?"

      The Boy didn't answer. He went outside, and returned instantly, lugging in something brown and whitish, weather-stained, unwieldy.

      "I dropped this at the door as I came along home. Thought it might do for the collection."

      Mac stared with all his eyes, and hurriedly lit a candle. The Boy dropped exhausted on a ragged bit of burlap by the bunks. Mac knelt down opposite, pouring liberal libation of candle-grease on the uncouth, bony mass between them.

      "Part of the skull!" he rasped out, masking his ecstasy as well as he could.

      "Mastodon?" inquired the Boy.

      Mac shook his head.

      "I'll bet my boots," says Mac, "it's an Elephas primigenius; and if I'm right, it's 'a find,' young man. Where'd you stumble on him?"

      "Over yonder." The Boy leaned his head against the lower bunk.

      "Where?" "Across the divide. The bones have been dragged up on to some rocks. I saw the end of a tusk stickin' up out of the snow, and I scratched down till I found—" He indicated the trophy between them on the floor.

      "Tusk? How long?"

      "'Bout nine feet." "We'll go and get it to-morrow."

      No answer from the Boy.

      "Early, hey?"

      "Well—a—it's a good ways."

      "What if it is?"

      "Oh, I don't mind. I'd do more 'n that for you, Mac."

      There was something unnatural in such devotion. Mac looked up. But the Boy was too tired to play the big fish any longer. "I wonder if you'll do something for me." He watched with a sinking heart Mac's sharp uprising from the worshipful attitude. It was not like any other mortal's gradual, many-jointed getting-up; it was more like the sudden springing out of the big blade of a clasp-knife.

      "What's your game?"

      "Oh, I ain't got any game," said the Boy desperately; "or, if I have, there's mighty little fun in it. However, I don't know as I want to walk ten hours again in this kind o' weather with an elephant on my back just for—for the poetry o' the thing." He laid his chapped hands on the side board of the bunk and pulled himself up on his legs.

      "What's your game?" repeated Mac sternly, as the Boy reached the door.

      "What's the good o' talkin'?" he answered; but he paused, turned, and leaned heavily against the rude lintel.

      "Course, I know you'd be shot before you'd do it, but what I'd like, would be to hear you say you wouldn't kick up a hell of a row if Father Wills happens in to the House-Warmin'."

      Mac jerked his set face, fire-reddened, towards the fossil-finder; and he, without waiting for more, simply opened the door, and heavily footed it back to the Big Cabin.

      Next morning when Mac came to breakfast he heard that the Boy had had his grub half an hour before the usual time, and was gone off on some tramp again. Mac sat and mused.

      O'Flynn came in with a dripping bucket, and sat down to breakfast shivering.

      "Which way'd he go?"

      "The Boy? Down river."

      "Sure he didn't go over the divide?"

      O'Flynn was sure. He'd just been down to the water-hole, and in the faint light he'd seen the Boy far down on the river-trail "leppin" like a hare in the direction of the Roosian mission."

      "Goin' to meet … a … Nicholas?"

      "Reckon so," said the Colonel, a bit ruffled. "Don't believe he'll run like a hare very far with his feet all blistered."

      "Did you know he'd discovered a fossil elephant?"

      "No."

      "Well, he has. I must light out, too, and have a look at it."

      "Do; it'll be a cheerful sort of House-Warming with one of you off scouring the country for more blisters and chilblains, and another huntin' antediluvian elephants." The Colonel spoke with uncommon irascibility. The great feast-day had certainly not dawned propitiously.

      When breakfast was done Mac left the Big Cabin without a word; but, instead of going over the divide across the treeless snow-waste to the little frozen river, where, turned up to the pale northern dawn, were lying the bones of a beast that had trampled tropic forests, in that other dawn of the Prime, the naturalist, turning his back on Elephas primigenius, followed in the track of the Boy down the great river towards Ikogimeut.

      On the low left bank of the Yukon a little camp. On one side, a big rock hooded with snow. At right angles, drawn up one on top of the other, two sleds covered with reindeer-skins held down by stones. In the corner formed by the angle of rocks and sleds, a small A-tent, very stained and old. Burning before it on a hearth of greenwood, a little fire struggling with a veering wind.

      Mac had seen from far off the faint blue banners of smoke blowing now right, now left, then tossed aloft in the pallid sunshine. He looked about sharply for the Boy, as he had been doing this two hours. There was the Jesuit bending over the fire, bettering the precarious position of a saucepan that insisted on sitting lop-sided, looking down into the heart of coals. Nicholas was holding up the tent-flap.

      "Hello! СКАЧАТЬ