Jack Chanty. Footner Hulbert

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СКАЧАТЬ off his tongue. "I like that! What are you doing?"

      Her eyes filled with tears, and the scissors faltered. "Well, I wouldn't do it for—I—I wouldn't do it all the time," she murmured deeply hurt.

      He twisted his head at the imminent risk of impaling an eye on the scissors. The tears astonished him. Everything about her astonished him. In no respect did she coincide with his experience of "native" girls. He was vain enough for a good-looking young man of twenty-five, but he did not suspect that to a lonely and imaginative girl his coming down the river might have had all the effect of the advent of the yellow-haired prince in a fairy-tale. Jack was not imaginative.

      He reached for her free hand. "Say, I'm sorry," he said clumsily. "It was only a joke! It's mighty decent of you to do it for me."

      She snatched her hand away, but smiled at him briefly and dazzlingly. She was glad to be hurt if he would let that tone come into his mocking voice.

      "I was just silly," she said shortly.

      The hair-cutting went on.

      "What do you read?" asked Jack curiously.

      "We get newspapers and magazines three times a year by the steamboat," she said. "And I have a few books. I like 'Lalla Rookh' and 'Marmion' best."

      Jack, who was not acquainted with either, preserved a discreet silence.

      "Father has sent out for a set of Shakespeare for me," she went on. "I am looking forward to it."

      "It's better on the stage," said Jack. "What fun to take you to the theatre!"

      She made no comment on this. Presently the scissors gave a concluding snip.

      "Lean over and look at yourself in the water," she commanded.

      Obeying, he found to his secret relief that his looks had not suffered appreciably. "That's out of sight!" he said heartily, turning to her. "I say, I'm ever so much obliged to you."

      An awkward silence fell between them. Jack's growing intention was clearly evident in his eye, but she did not look at him.

      "I—I must pay you," he said at last, a little breathlessly.

      She understood that very well, and sprang up, the scissors ringing on the hollow deck. They were both pale. She turned to run, but the box was in her way. Leaping from the raft to the barge, he caught her in his arms, and as she strained away he kissed her round firm cheek and her fragrant neck beneath the ear. He roughly pressed her averted head around, and crushed her soft lips under his own.

      Then she got an arm free, and he received a short-arm box on the ear that made his head ring. She tore herself out of his arms, and faced him from the other side of the barge, panting and livid with anger.

      "How dare you! How dare you!" she cried.

      Jack leaned toward her, breathing no less quickly than she. "You're lovely! You're lovely," he murmured swiftly. "I never saw anybody like you before. I'll camp quarter of a mile down river, out of the way. Come down to-night, and I'll sing to you."

      "I won't!" she cried. "I'll never speak to you again! I hate you!" She indicated the unmoved infant Buddha with a tragic gesture. "And before the baby, too!" she cried. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

      Jack laughed a little sheepishly. "Well, he's too young to tell," he said.

      "But what will he think of me?" she cried despairingly. Stooping, she swept the little god into her arms, and, running over the plank, disappeared up the bank.

      "I'll be waiting for you," Jack softly called after her. She gave no sign of hearing.

      Jack sad down on the edge of the barge again. He brushed the cut hair into the water, and watched it float away with an abstract air. As he stared ahead of him a slight line appeared between his eyebrows which may have been due to compunction. Whatever the uncomfortable thought was, he presently whistled it away after the manner of youth, and, drawing his raft up on the stones, set to work to take stock of his grub.

II

       THE COMPANY FROM "OUTSIDE."

       Table of Contents

      The Hudson Bay Company's buildings at Fort Cheever were built, as is customary, in the form of a hollow square, with one side open to the river. The store occupied one side of the square, the warehouse was opposite, and at the top stood the trader's house in the midst of its vegetable garden fenced with palings. The old palisade about the place had long ago disappeared, and nothing military remained except the flagpole and an ancient little brass cannon at its foot, blackened with years of verdigris and dirt. The humbler store of the "French outfit" and the two or three native shacks that completed the settlement lay at a little distance behind the company buildings, and the whole was cropped down on a wide, flat esplanade of grass between the steep bare hills and the river.

      To-day at the fort every one was going about his business with an eye cocked downstream. Every five minutes David Cranston came to the door of the store for a look, and old Michel Whitebear, hoeing the trader's garden, rested between every hill of potatoes, to squint his aged eyes in the same direction. Usually this state of suspense endured for days, sometimes weeks, but upon this trip the river-gods were propitious, and at five o'clock the eagerly listened for whistle was actually heard.

      Every soul in the place gathered at the edge of the bank to witness the arrival. At one side, slightly apart, stood the trader and his family. David Cranston was a lean, up-standing Scotchman, an imposing physical specimen with hair and beard beginning to grizzle, and a level, grim, sad gaze. His wife was a handsome, sullen, dark-browed, half-breed woman, who, unlike the majority of her sisters, carried her age well. In his grim sadness and her sullenness was written a domestic tragedy of long-standing. After all these years she was still a stranger in her own house, and an alien to her husband and children. Their children were with them, Mary and six boys ranging from Davy, who was sixteen, down to the infant Buddha.

      A small crowd of natives in ragged store clothes, standing and squatting on the bank, and spilling over on the beach below, filled the centre of the picture, and beyond them sat Jack Chanty by himself, on a box that he had carried to the edge of the bank. Between him and Mary the bank made in, so that they were fully visible to each other, and both tinglingly self-conscious. In Jack this took the form of an elaborately negligent air. He whittled a paddle with nice care, glancing at Mary from under his lashes. She could not bring herself to look at him.

      While the steamboat was still quarter of a mile downstream, the people began to sense that there was something more than usual in the wind, and a great excitement mounted. We of the outside world, with our telegrams and newspapers and hourly posts, have forgotten what it is to be dramatically surprised. Where can we get a thrill like to that which animated these people as the magic word was passed around: "Passengers!" Presently it could be made out that these were no ordinary passengers, but a group of well-dressed gentlemen, and finally, wonder of wonders! what had never been seen at Fort Cheever before, a white lady—no, two of them!

      Mary saw them first, two ladies, corseted, tailored, and marvellously hatted like the very pictures in the magazines that she had secretly disbelieved in. In another minute she made out that one of them, leaning on the upper rail, smiling and chatting СКАЧАТЬ