CHAPTER IX
DECORATING A BIT OF STATUARY
I frequently passed that window above the stoop next day. Once I saw aface looking down on me with such withering scorn, I wondered if thedisgraceful scene with Louis Laplante had become noised about, and Ihastened to take my exercise in another part of the courtyard.Thereupon, others paid silent homage to the window, but they likewisesoon tired of that parade ground.
Eastern notions of propriety still clung to me. Of this I had immediateproof. When our rough crews were preparing to re-embark for the north, Iwas shocked beyond measure to see this frail girl come down with herfather to travel in our company. Not counting her father, the priest,Duncan Cameron, Cuthbert Grant and myself, there were in our partythree-score reckless, uncurbed adventurers, who feared neither God norman. I thought it strange of a father to expose his daughter to the boldgaze, coarse remarks, and perhaps insults of such men. Before the end ofthat trip, I was to learn a lesson in western chivalry, which is noteasily explained, or forgotten. As father and daughter were waiting totake their places in a boat, a shapeless, flat-footed woman, wearingmoccasins--probably the half-breed wife of some trader in the fort--ranto the water's edge with a parcel of dainties, and kissing the girl onboth cheeks, wished her a fervent God-speed.
"Oh!" growled the young Nor'-Wester, who had been carried from thebanquet hall, and now wore the sour expression that is the aftermath ofbanquets. "Look at that fat lump of a bumblebee distilling honey fromthe rose! There are others who would appreciate that sort of thing! This_is_ the wilderness of lost opportunities!"
The girl seated herself in a canoe, where the only men were DuncanCameron, her father and the native _voyageurs_; and I dare vouch a scoreof young traders groaned at the sight of this second lost opportunity.
"Look, Gillespie! Look!" muttered my comrade of the banquet hall. "TheLittle Statue set up at the prow of yon canoe! I'll wager you doreverence to graven images all the way to Red River!"
"I'll wager we all do," said I.
And we did. To change the metaphor--after the style of Mr. JackMacKenzie's eloquence--I warrant there was not a young man of the eightcrews, who did not regard that marble-cold face at the prow of theleading canoe, as his own particular guiding star. And the white facebeneath the broad-brimmed hat, tied down at each side in the fashion ofthose days, was as serenely unconscious of us as any star of theheavenly constellations. If she saw there were objects behind her canoe,and that the objects were living beings, and the living beings men, shegave no evidence of it. Nor was the Little Statue--as we had got in thehabit of calling her--heartless. In spite of the fears which sheentertained for her stern father, her filial affection was a thing toturn the lads of the crews quite mad. Scarcely were we ashore at thedifferent encampments before father and daughter would stroll off arm inarm, leaving the whole brigade envious and disconsolate. Was it theinfluence of this slip of a girl, I wonder, that a curious change cameover our crews? The men still swore; but they did it under their breath.Fewer yarns of a quality, which need not be specified, were told; andcertain kinds of jokes were no longer greeted with a loud guffaw. Stillwe all thought ourselves mightily ill-used by that diminutive bundle ofindependence, and some took to turning the backs of their heads in herdirection when she chanced to come their way. One young spark saidsomething about the Little Statue being a prig, which we all invited himto repeat, but he declined. Had she played the coquette under theinnocent mask of sympathy and all other guiles with which gentle slayersambush strong hearts, I dare affirm there would have been trouble enoughand to spare. Suicides, fights, insults and worse, I have witnessed whensome fool woman with a fair face came among such men. "Fool" woman, Isay, rather than "false"; for to my mind falsity in a woman may not becompared to folly for the utter be-deviling of men.
With our guiding star at the prow of the fore canoe, we continued towind among countless islands, through narrow, rocky channels and alongthose endless water-ways, that stretch like a tangled, silver chain withemerald jewels, all the way from the Great Lakes to the plains.Somewhere along Rainy River, where there is an oasis of rolling, woodedmeadows in a desert of iron rock, we pitched our tents for the night.The evening air was fragrant with the odor of summer's early flowers. Icould not but marvel at the almost magical growth in these far northernlatitudes. Barely a month had passed since snow enveloped the earth in awinding sheet, and I have heard old residents say that the winter'sfrost penetrated the ground for a depth of four feet. Yet here we werein a very tropic of growth run riot and the frost, which still laybeneath the upper soil, was thawing and moistening the succulent rootsof a wilderness of green. The meadow grass, swaying off to the forestmargin in billowy ripples, was already knee-high. The woods were animpenetrable mass of foliage from the forest of ferns about the broadtrunks to the high tree-tops, nodding and fanning in the night breezelike coquettish dames in an eastern ball-room. Everywhere--at the riverbank, where our tents stood, above the long grass, and in theforest--clear, faint and delicate, like the bloom of a fair woman'scheek, or the pensive theme of some dream fugue, or the sweet notes ofsome far-off, floating harmonies, was an odor of hidden flowers. Atrader's nature is, of necessity, rough in the grain, but it is notcorrupt with the fevered joys of the gilded cities. Even we could feelthe call of the wilds to come and seek. It was not surprising,therefore, that after supper father and daughter should stroll away fromthe encampment, arm in arm, as usual. As their figures passed into thewoods, the girl broke away from her father's arm and stooped to theground.
"Pickin' flowers," was the laconic remark of the trader, who had helpedme with Louis Laplante on the beach; and the man lay back full lengthagainst a rising knoll to drink in the delicious freshness of the night.Every man of us watched the vanishing forms.
"Smell violets?" asked a heterogeneous combination of sun-brown andbuckskin.
"This ground's a perfect wheat-field of violets," exclaimed thewhiskered youngster.
"Lots o' Mayflowers and night-shades in the bush," declared a raggedman, who was one of the worst gamblers in camp, and was now aimlesslyshuffling a greasy, bethumbed pack of cards.
"Oh!" came simultaneously from half a dozen. Personally, it struck meone might pick flowers for a certain purpose in the bush without beingobserved.
"Mayflowers in June!" scoffed the boy.
"Aye, babe! Mayflowers in June! May is June in these here regions,"asserted the man. "Ladies-and-gentlemen, too, many's you could pick inthe bush!"
"Ladies-and-gentlemen! Sounds funny in this desert, don't it?" asked thelad. "What _are_ ladies-and-gentlemen?"
"Don't you know?" continued the gambler, unfolding a curious lore offlowers. "Those little potty, white things, split up the middle with agreen head on top--grow under ferns. Come on. Cards are ready! Who'sgoing to play?"
"Durn it! Them's Dutchman's breeches!" exclaimed the sun-brownedtrapper. "O Goll! If that Little Stature finds any Dutchman's breeches,she that's so scared of us men! O Goll! Won't she blush? Say, babe, whydon't y'r fill y'r hat with 'em and put 'em in her tent?" and the bigtrapper set up a hoarse guffaw which led a general chorus. Then the mengathered round, to play.
"Faith, lads!" interrupted the voice of the Irish priest, who had comeupon the group so quietly the gambler scarcely had time to tuck thetell-tale cards under his buckskin smock, "I'm thinking ye've alldeveloped a mighty sudden interest in botany. Are there any bleedinghearts in the bush?"
"There may be here," suggested the boy.
"It all comes of the Little Statute!" declared the big trapper.
"Oh! You and your Stature and Statute! Why can't you say Statue?" askedthe lad with the pompous scorn of youthful knowledge.
"Because, oh, babe with the chicken-down," answered the man, giving hiscorrector a thud with his broad palm and sticking heroically by his slipof the tongue, "I says the words I means and don't play no prig. Shedon't pay more attention to you than if you wuz a stump, that's whyshe's a statue, ain't it? And the fellows've got to str
etch their necksto come up to her ideas of what's proper, that's why she's a stature,ain't it? And not a man of us, if His Reverence'll excuse me for sayingso, dare let out a cuss afore her. That's why she's a statute, ain'tit?"
And when I walked off to the bush with as great a show of indifferenceas I could muster, I heard the priest crying "Bravo!" to the man'sdefence. How came it that I was in the woods slushing through damp moldup to my ankles in black ooze? I no longer had any fear of an ambushedenemy; for Le Grand Diable, the knave, had forfeited his wages anddeserted at Fort William. He was not seen after the night of the meetingwith the Hudson's Bay canoe off the flats. I drew Father Holland'sattention to this, and the priest was no longer so sceptical about thatphantom boat. But it was not of these things I thought, as I tore agreat strip of bark from the trunk of a birch tree and twisted the pieceinto a huge cornucopia. Nor had I the slightest expectation ofencountering father and daughter in the woods. That marble face was toomuch in earnest for the vainest of men to suppose its indifferenceassumed; and no matter how fair the eyes, no man likes to be looked at,by eyes that do not see him, or see him only as a blur on the landscape.Still that marble face stood for much that is dear to the roughest ofhearts and about which men do not talk. So I went on packing damp mossinto the bottom of the bark horn, arranging frail lilies and nightshades about the rim and laying a solid pyramid of violets in thecentre. The mold, through which I was floundering, seemed to merge intoa bog; but the lower reaches were hidden by a thicket of alder bushesand scrub willows. I mounted a fallen tree and tried to get cautiouslydown to some tempting lily-pads. Evidently some one else on the otherside of the brush was after those same bulbs; for I heard the suckingsound of steps plunging through the mire of water and mud.
"Why, Gillespie," called a voice, "what in the world are you doinghere?" and the boy emerged through the willows gaping at me inastonishment.
"Just what I want to know of you," said I.
He presented a comical figure. His socks and moccasins had been tied andslung round his neck. With trousers rolled to his knees, a hatful ofwater-lilies in one hand and a sheaf of ferns in the other, he waswading through the swamp.
"You see," he began sheepishly. "I thought she couldn't--couldn'tconveniently get these for herself, and it would be kind of nice--kindof nice--you know--to get some for her----"
"Don't explain," I blurted out. "I was trying that same racket myself."
"You know, Gillespie," he continued quite confidentially, "when a man'sbeen away from his mother and sisters for years and years and years----"
"Yes, I know, babe; you're an octogenarian," I interrupted.
"And feels himself going utterly to the bow-wows without any stop-gearto keep him from bowling clean to the bottom, a person feels like doingsomething decent for a girl like the Little Statue," and the youthplucked half a dozen yellow flowers as well as the coveted white ones."Have some for your basket," said he. His face was puckered intopathetic gravity. "It's so hanged easy to go to the bow-wows out here,"he added.
"Not so easy as in the towns," I interjected.
"Ah! but I've been there, gone all through 'em in the towns," heexplained. "That's why the pater packed me off to this wilderness."
And that, thought I, is why the west gets all the credit for the wildoats gathered in old lands and sown in the new world. I pulled him up tothe log on which I was balanced, and seating himself he dangled his feetdown and began to souse the mud off his toes.
"Say!" he exclaimed. "How are you going to get 'em to her?"
"Take them to the tent."
"Well, Gillespie, when you take yours up, take mine along, too, willyou? There's a good fellow! Do!" He was drawing on his socks.
"Not much I will. If there's any proxy, you can take mine," I returned.
"Say! Do you think Father Holland would take 'em up?" He had tied hismoccasins and was standing.
"Can't say I think he would."
"He'd let you hear about it to all eternity, too, wouldn't he?"reflected the lad. "Come on, then; but you go first." And he followed meup the log, both of us feeling like shame-faced schoolboys. We stoleinto the tent, the one tent of all others that had interest for us thatnight, and deposited our burden of flowers on the couch of buffalorobes.
"Hurry," whispered my companion. "Stack these ferns round somewhere!Hurry! She'll be back." And leaving me to do the arranging he bolted forthe tent flaps. "Oh! Open earth and swallow me!" he almost screamed, andI heard the sound of two persons coming in violent collision at theentrance.
"The babe, as I live! The rascally young broth of a babe! Ye rogue, ye!"burred the deep bass tones of the trader whom I had met over LouisLaplante. "What are ye doin' here?"
"Oh, is it only you? Thank fortune!" ejaculated the boy, dodging back."What are you doing yourself? Great guns! You scared the wits out ofme! Ho! Here's a lark! Gillespie, my pal, look here!" I turned to seethe sheepish, guilty, smirking faces of the trader, the rough-tongued,sunburned trapper and the ragged gambler grouped at the entrance, andeach man's arms were full of flowers.
"Well, I'm durned!" began the rough man.
"As she's jack-spotted us all," drawled the gentle, liquid tones of thegambler, "we'd better go ahead and----"
"And decorate a bit of statuary," shouted the lad with a laugh.
It was a long tent, like the booth of a fair, with supports at each end,and we were festooning it from pole to pole with moss and ferns whensomebody rasped at the door. "Mon alive! What's goin' on here?" Westarted from our work with the guilty alacrity of burglars. There stoodFrances Sutherland's father, much aghast at the proceedings, and by hisside was a face with cheeks flaming poppy red and lips twitching inmerriment. There was a sudden snow-storm of flowers being tossed down,and five men brushed past the two spectators and dashed into the hidingof gathering dusk. At the foot of the knoll I ran against the priest.
"That," roared Father Holland, shaking with laughter. "That's what Icall good stuff in the rough! Faith, but ye'll give me good stuff in therough. I want none o' yer gilded chivalry from the tinsel towns!"
There was a wreath of night-shades in the Little Statue's hat when thecanoes set out next morning. Mayflowers were at her throat, violets inher girdle and I know not what in a basket at her feet. The face wasunconscious of us as ever, but about the downcast eyelids played atender gentleness which was not there before. Once I caught her glancingback among us as if she would pick out the culprits; and when her eyesfor a moment rested on me, my heart set up a silly thumping. But shelooked just as pointedly at the others, and I know every man's heart ofthem responded; for the boy began such a floundering I thought he wouldspill his canoe. A quick trip brought us to the mouth of Red River,where the Hudson's Bay _voyageurs_ under Colin Robertson were resting.Here I was surprised to learn that Eric Hamilton had not waited but hadhastened up Red River to Fort Douglas. I could not but connect thissouthward move of his with the sudden flight of Le Grand Diable fromFort William.
After brief pause at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, our brigade turnedsouthward and made speed up the Red through the rush-grown sedgy swampswhich over-flood the river bed. Farther south the banks towered high andsmoke curled up from the huts of Lord Selkirk's settlers. Women withnets in their hands to scare off myriad blackbirds that clouded the air,and men from the cornfields ran to the river edge and cheered us as wepassed. Here the Sutherlands landed. Some of the traders thought it agood omen, that Hudson's Bay settlers cheered Nor'-Wester brigades; butin one bend of the muddy Red, the bastions of Fort Douglas, whereGovernor McDonell of the rival company ruled, loomed up and the gunspointing across the river wore anything but a welcome look.
We passed Fort Douglas unmolested, followed the Red a mile farther toits junction with the Assiniboine and here disembarked at FortGibraltar, the headquarters of the Nor'-Westers in Red River.