Scarlett of the Mounted Part 9

Evelyn gasped. "And you call that suitable for _me_!"

Scarlett shrugged his shoulders. "This is the wilderness, my lady."

"My dear," interposed Maclane, "you must remember that building is a costly matter. Even unskilled labor, when you can obtain it, commands five dollars a day. Talk of democracy; no man here is looking for a day's wage at carpentering, when any turn of the pick and shovel may make him a Croesus! Make up your mind to it that the Sergeant is offering you the equivalent of New York's most costly hostelry."

"Oh, very well!" Miss Durant condescended to the cabin. "I suppose we can have tents for the servants? I shall need two women besides Sarah."

"Pardon, miss." At her name, the maid's stout form appeared from behind the angle of the veranda, where she had been conducting a discreet flirtation with the waterman, who with a bucket supported by a frame on wheels and drawn by eight frisky little huskies, supplied Perdu with water from the lake at five cents the pail. "Do not count on me, miss.

When my month is up I am looking to settle down on my own account."

"You are going to desert me? You are planning to set up in business, Sarah?" asked Evelyn, dismayed.

"Business!" Sarah laughed, scornfully. "With men growing on the bushes, as one might say."

"You don't mean to say you are going to get married?"

"Why not me as well as the next lady, miss, and sooner than some, in a place where ladies is valued far more for their practical abilities than for mere youth and skin-deep beauty. I am told that two French-Canadian gentlemen, who are starting rival laundries, came to blows about me in the Pioneer Bakery last night; this gentleman with the waterworks concession has just pa.s.sed some extremely gratifying remarks about me--though my own preference is for a Scotch gentleman with religious views and a copper proposition. Dear knows one needs something stable to tie up to in this outlandish place, where day and night get all mixed up!"

"But, Sarah," Evelyn laughed, "you know you haven't changed your watch hands since we left the Grand Central Station."

"Time is time, miss," stated Sarah, "and twisting the hands of a watch don't affect it. I've always heard that mining camps was immoral places, and I'll answer for it this monkeying-with-the-clock business was invented by some scapegrace that wanted to deceive his poor wife about the hour he got home at night. But my choice, whichever I decide on, won't take me in that way!" She shook her umbrella with a mixture of coquetry and warning in the direction of the waterman.

Again Evelyn laughed, rather helplessly. "And I have been so indulgent with you, allowing you to gratify your crude taste for colors, where any other mistress would have insisted on black, serge or alpaca, with at most for your bonnet a quill or wing. However, I mustn't stand in your light, Sarah."

"You can't, miss," the maid informed her, respectfully, but with finality. "As for deserting you, as a married lady I shall only be too happy to chaperon you till your father gets back or till you settle down on your own account. And to start with, though my month isn't up, let me give you a bit of advice as from one lady to another. Policemen," she eyed Scarlett with disparagement, "are all very well in their way, but as from my own experience I know they are apt to be triflers, particularly on promotion. Measured by a New York figure of speech among us below-stairs ladies, miss, I myself wouldn't think of permitting an arm with fewer than three stripes on it round my waist."

On this Scarlett a.s.sured Sarah, to her great indignation, that she, at any rate, would be safe from his advances, his arm not being long enough to meet her figure-of-speech's measurements. When she had returned to the waterman, Evelyn, recovering from the indignant embarra.s.sment into which Sarah's advice had thrown her, sighed: "Such an admirable maid! However will my hair get dressed?"

"Do it yourself," suggested Scarlett. "I always do mine." A girl in a red cloak just then happening to pa.s.s by he beckoned her. "I think after all I can find some one to do your work. Come here, Gelly. Miss Durant wants to talk with you."

Evelyn surveyed the girl's unkempt, though now sober comeliness dubiously. "She doesn't look very---- However, is she willing, clean and honest?"

"No, I ain't," snapped out Gelly, irritated by the inspection. "Not one of 'em. I'm as bad as they make 'em!"

"Do you mean to tell me----" Evelyn's voice dropped to a shocked whisper. "Sergeant, have you dared recommend me a young person who is not--not virtuous?"

"But she has so many other virtues," pleaded Scarlett for his protegee, "I thought ye might give her a chance." He appealed to Sarah, who had drawn near. "Perhaps ye'll let me explain to you as being the older woman."

Sarah pursed her lips primly. "There's some things I'll never be old enough to hear."

"I beg your pardon, heartily," Scarlett was heard quietly to say.

"I am by no means sure that I shall grant it," replied Miss Durant, with a haughty toss of the head.

"Oh, I was addressing Gelly here," he hastened to set her straight. "I had no right to let her be present at her own dissection."

"Wait!" Evelyn had an inspiration. "I spend a week every Lent in a Settlement, and we came up here to do good, so why not----"

"Now, look here!" Confronting her, arms akimbo, Gelly let loose the coa.r.s.ely expressed, though not wholly unjustifiable, anger that in deference to Maclane and Scarlett she had been trying to restrain. "You better just dry up on that good-doin' proposition, else it ull be the worse fer yer round these diggin's! I know yer kind. I was in a Home oncet, and they came and sang to us, sometimes in fine duds ter show thet they regarded us like as their equals, which is lies! And sometimes dressed, oh my! so goody-goody plain, ter show thet rich folk don't reely care fer silk and sealskin--which is lies! And then they sent me to a convent, and the Sisters, they meant all right, but they cheated the doctor about the medicines they put in his prescriptions to save money fer the Church, and kidded to the saints about their souls. Souls!

Shucks! Thar was a missioner oncet who thought she'd got a holt of me all right, all right. She were a-prospectin' ter launder my soul and show it tied up with baby-blue ribbons and sashayed with sanct.i.ty as a prize sample to the Lord. Want ter know what I done ter her? Not a thing, you betcherlife! Only smashed her face with a sody-water bottle!

Soft drinks, cos thet kind puts most heft in the bottle and least ter the booze. See? Now you better get busy and earn your own salt, virtuous ef you're so plumb struck on virtue, and ef not, anyway----"

A firm hand on her shoulder cut her short, as, wheeling her right-about-face, Scarlett sternly bade her, "Come!" And, like a little cowering dog about to be whipped for a victory in which, while half ashamed of it, it wholly glories, Gelly meekly followed him.

The color which the girl's attack had driven from Evelyn's face came flooding back as she turned reproachfully upon Maclane: "And you never said a word to stop her!"

"Ah," replied the minister, "I have learned that I always gain so much from listening to the other fellow's point of view."

"But surely"--for Miss Durant was not a little proud of her capacity for "emanating gracious influences," as the dilettanti of her kind were apt to phrase it--"surely you believe in missionary work; in doing good?"

Before replying, Maclane stooped forward and drew back a spray of vine that was spreading itself obtrusively over a little pink-faced daisy making a st.u.r.dy effort to look up to the G.o.d of light. "The best we can do is to try to give created things their chance. And in the end, my dear," he patted Evelyn's hand kindly, "it's the missionaries, the good-doers, to whom the good is done."

"Gelly," Scarlett meanwhile was admonishing his stubborn charge, "in all this lowdown district there isn't a man so mean he could be hired to tell that poor girl yonder the truth about her father till we've made her feel at home among us and somehow fitted her to bear it. Now, Gelly, are you, a girl that has known trouble, going to be meaner than the men?"

Gelly looked at him. "Better hev yer uniform let out fer the wings ter sprout," she advised him, with unfeigned homage, if with mocking tongue. "As fer thet thar stuck-up piece----" A rude grimace completed her estimate of Evelyn, but in the midst of it she paused suddenly, her ill-bred thumb dropping from her saucy nose. "I'm jiggered ef I don't b'lieve yer gone on her!"

"That's neither here nor there," answered the young soldier. "I'll lock up your tongue in jail if it disturbs the peace, but I'd so much sooner put you on your honor, Gelly."

"Till next time," promised Gelly, "yer kin let it go at that!" Then, as she went down the road, she burst into loud sobbing: "And I cud be decent ef some decent woman ud believe in me!"

Maclane, who had been considering, had a new idea. "I wonder if Chilkat Jo couldn't be persuaded to help you, Miss Durant; that is, if you feel you must have service."

"Of course I must," said Evelyn. "The orphans have been brought up to work, and make themselves useful, but they are my guests, my partners in this expedition; and naturally I cannot expect them to do things that I should not do myself."

"Naturally," Maclane agreed with her, more readily than she deemed politeness required. Going to the door he opened it, and called to some one within. "O Joseph! Chilkat Jo!"

The trader, who had been enjoying the hospitality of the mission, came forth with alacrity. Seeing Maclane, "G.o.dam you! what do you want?" he asked, in tones at once amiable and fraught with high respect.

"Oh, Joseph, what expressions!" The minister shook his head. "You see,"

he explained to Evelyn, "like all the Indians, he learned bad habits from the white traders before the missionaries came his way. I sometimes wonder, if any Indians survive civilization, whether morally they will recover from contact with the whites. But, come, Joseph, our friends here are looking for a handy man to----"

"Mally them, eh?" inquired the Indian, nimbly. After a quick glance at Evelyn he shook his head disparagingly. "d.a.m.n pletty gal, but not good business ploposition!" He then turned a considering attention upon Sarah, and nodded his head approvingly. "She all light. Fat squaw!

Skuk.u.m squaw. Not lightfoot gadabout! Damfine cook, eh?" he inquired of the maid. "Squat by fire, fly venison, leady chiefs leturn flom hunting?

Shake!" He held out a covenanting hand.

"What, me become the bride of a heathen!" shrieked Sarah, horrified.

"Me no heathen," indignantly protested Chilkat Jo. "Me swear, gamble, dlink like h.e.l.l, plenty wives, laise Cain, all same as white man."

"Joseph, my son, I will revise your code later," Maclane told him.

"Meanwhile, this is not a marriage proposition. Are you willing to help Miss Durant here with her household ch.o.r.es--as a favor, you know," he hastened to add.

"Not as a favor at all," broke in Evelyn, in a high, hard voice. "I wish to engage a man-servant, at good wages; one who knows his place and can take orders, and----"

Her voice died before the Indian's fixed regard. "No squaw say to me, Mush! Get up, there! like dog. Mush! Lie down like dog. Me d.a.m.n high muckamuck Skuk.u.m chief!" Wrapping more closely about him the blanket that, with a boiled shirt and store trousers, formed his costume, he re-entered the mission with the unsurpa.s.sable dignity of his race.

Evelyn rose without a glance in the direction of Scarlett, who had rejoined them. "Come, Sarah. Thank you very much for all your good offices, Mr. Maclane. I antic.i.p.ate the suggestion you and the Sergeant are obviously about to make: that I cook, wash, scrub, sew for myself."