Burned Bridges - Page 11/167

When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the

diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their

supplies they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging

about the Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably

familiar ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an

ancient servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's,

for whom they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them

laconically, without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at

an old clay pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as

himself, squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his

thumb toward a bench and bade them be seated.

"It's a bit war-rm," MacDonald opined, by way of opening the

conversation.

"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us

somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"

"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naïve

candor. "Yon's a meenister."

"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.

He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're

have som' fon weet heem dees treep."

"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his

pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae

be aboot when 'tis forty below--an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd

relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change--eh, Mike?"

The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal

ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward

length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played

such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or

amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and

blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to

make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two

hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.

"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the

Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook

his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays

hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'

the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the

long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a

creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the

heathen--thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye--how tae find grace. No that

he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh

helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for

what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon

had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his

way."