The Doctor Part 26

"An extremely gratifying record," said the Superintendent, "especially when one considers its disorganized condition a year ago."

"Yes, it's a good report," a.s.sented the Convener. "We had practically no support a year ago. Our strongest man--"

"Fink?"

"Yes. You know Hank, I see. Well, Hank's enthusiasm and devotion were hardly of what you would call the purest type. But whatever his motive, he stood by the missionary, and, do you know, it is a splendid testimony of the power of the Gospel to see the change in that same shrewd old sinner. Yes, sir, give the Gospel a chance and it will do its work." The Convener, who hated all cant and canting phrases with a perfect hatred, rarely allowed himself the luxury of an emotional outbreak. But the case of Hank Fink seemed to reach the springs of feeling that he kept hidden in the deep heart of him.

"So Boyle has done well?" said the Superintendent. "I am very glad of it. Very glad of it, for his own sake, for his mother's, and for the sake of another."

"Yes," replied the Convener, "Boyle has done a fine bit of work. He lived all summer on his horse's back and in his canoe, followed the prospectors up into the gulches and the miners to their mines, if you can call them mines, left a magazine here, a book there, a New Testament next place. And once he got his grip on a man, he never let him go. Hank told me how he found a man sick in a camp away up in a gulch and how he stayed with him for more than a week, then brought him down on his horse's back to the Forks. Yes, it's a good record. A church built at the north end of the field, another almost completed at the Forks.

Really, it was very fine," continued the Convener, allowing his enthusiasm to rise. "It renews one's faith in the reality of religion to see a man jump into his work like that. They didn't pay him his salary the first half year, but he omitted to mention that in his report."

The Superintendent sat up straight. "Is he behind yet?"

"No. I mentioned the matter to Fink and explained that if the field failed it was Boyle that would suffer. His language--well," the Convener laughed reminiscently, "you have seen Hank?"

"Yes. I've seen him, I've heard him, and I've read him. But let us hope that his deeds will atone in a measure for his broken English. But,"

continued the Superintendent, "you have had Boyle ordained, have you not?"

"Yes. We got him ordained," replied the Convener, beginning to chuckle.

A delighted, choking chuckle it was. Any missionary who had worked in his Presbytery would recognize the Convener in the dark by that chuckle.

It began, if one were quick to observe, with a wrinkling about the corners of the sharp blue eyes, then became audible in a succession of small explosions that seemed to have their origin in the region of the esophagus and to threaten the larynx with disruption, until relief was found in a wide-throated peal that subsided in a second series of small explosions and gradually rumbled off into silence somewhere in the region of the diaphragm, leaving only the wrinkles about the corners of the blue eyes as a kind of warning that the whole process might be repeated upon sufficient provocation. "Yes, we got him ordained," he repeated when the chuckle had pa.s.sed. "I was glad of your explanatory note about him. It guided us in our arrangements for examination."

"What happened?" inquired the Superintendent, leaning forward. He dearly loved a yarn, and he sorely hated to lose any of the more humorous incidents of missionary life, not only for the joy they brought him, but also because they furnished him with ammunition for his Eastern campaigns.

"Well, it was funny," said the Convener, his lips twitching and his eyes wrinkling, "though at one time it looked like an a.s.sembly case with all seven of us up before the bar. You know McPherson, our latest importation in the way of ordained men? Somehow he had got wind of Boyle's trouble with the Presbytery in the East. McPherson is a fine fellow and doing good work."

"Yes," a.s.sented the Superintendent, "he's a fine fellow, but his conscience gives him a hard time now and then and works over time for other People."

"Well," continued the Convener, "McPherson came to me about the matter in very considerable anxiety. I put him off, consulted with McTavish and Murray, and we decided that Boyle was too good a man to lose, and as to his heresy, it was not hurting Windermere as far as we could learn. So it happened"--here the Convener pulled himself up short to suppress the chuckle that threatened--"it happened that just as the examination was beginning McPherson was called out, and before he had returned the trials for license and ordination had been sustained. I think on the whole McPherson was relieved, but there were some funny moments after he came back into court."

"Heresy-hunting doesn't flourish in the West," said the Superintendent.

"There's no time for it. Some of the Eastern Presbyteries have too many men with more time on their hands than sense in their heads."

"Certainly there was no time lost in this case," replied the Convener.

"We knew Boyle's scholarship was right. We knew his heart was sound. We knew he was doing good work for us and we knew we wanted him. We were not anxious to know anything else."

"What we want for the West," said the Superintendent, his voice vibrating in a deeper tone, "is men who have the spirit of the Gospel with the power to preach it and the love of their fellowmen, with tact to bring it to bear upon them. A little heresy, more or less, won't hurt them. Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy the other fellow's."

"In Boyle's case, I believe he was helped by his touch of heresy. It gave him a kind of brotherly feeling with all heretics. It was that more than anything else that broke up the Freethinkers' Club."

"Ah," said the Superintendent, bending eagerly forward, again on the scent, "I didn't hear that."

"Yes," said the Convener, "Fink told me about it. Boyle went to their meetings. He found them revelling in cheap scepticism of the Ingersollian type. He took the att.i.tude of a man seeking after a working theory of life, and that att.i.tude he stuck to--his real att.i.tude, mind you. He encouraged them to talk, combated none of their positions and, as Hank said, 'coaxed them out into deep water and had them froggin' for their lives. He was the biggest Freethinker in the bunch.' They invited him to give a series of lectures. He did so, and that settled the Freethinkers' Club. He never blamed them for doubting anything, and I believe that's right." The Convener was a bit of a heretic himself and, consequently, carried a tender heart toward them. "Let a man doubt till he finds his faith. And that was Boyle's line. He let them doubt, but he insisted that they should have something positive to live by."

"Our friend Hank," said the Superintendent, "would be delighted."

"Delighted? I should say so. But Hank 'joins trembling with his mirth,'

for Boyle got after him with the same demands."

The Superintendent was filled with delighted pride in his missionary.

"That's the kind of man we want. He ought to do well in your railroad field."

"Yes," replied the Convener hesitatingly. "You think he ought to go?

Windermere will be furious. I wouldn't care to go in there after Boyle is removed."

"It is hard on Windermere, but Windermere mustn't be selfish. That railroad work is most pressing, and only a man like Boyle will do. There will be from three to five thousand men in there this winter between Macleod and Kuskinook. We dare not neglect them. I have had correspondence with Fahey, the General Manager for the Crow's Nest line, and he is not unfriendly, though he would prefer us to send in medical missionaries. But that work he and his contractors ought to look after."

"There is a terrible state of things in the eastern division, I fear, from all reports," replied the Convener. "By the way, there is a young English doctor working on that eastern division from the MaCleod end who is making a great stir. Bailey is his name, I believe. He began as a navvy, but finding a lot of fellows sick, and the doctor a poor drunken fellow, Bailey, it appears, stood it as long as he could, then finally threw him out of the camp and installed himself in his place. The contractor backed him up and he has revolutionized the medical work in that direction. Murray told me the most wonderful tales about him. He must be a remarkable man. Gambles heavily, but hates whiskey and won't have it near the camp. You ought to look him up when you go in."

"I will. These camp doctors are a poor lot and the railroad people ought to feel disgraced in employing them. They draw their fifty cents per man a month, but their practice is shameful. It is a delicate matter, but I shall take this up with Fahey when I see him. He is a rough diamond, but he is fair and he won't stand any nonsense."

"And you think Boyle ought to go in?"

"Yes. On the whole, I think Boyle must go. These are a fine body of men and must be looked after. A weaker man would make a mess of things.

Boyle is the man for the work. How did he seem? Cheerful?"

"No, I shouldn't call him so. But he is vastly better than when he came to us. He was low in health, I think, and his face haunted me for weeks.

He strikes me as a man with a tragedy in his life."

The Superintendent said nothing. He had, in large degree, the rare gift of silence. Even with his trusted lieutenants he would break no confidence. But before he slept that night he wrote two letters, and after he had sealed and stamped them he placed them, with a pile already written, on the table and sat back in his chair indulging himself in a few moments of reverie. He saw the orderly, well-kept kitchen in the Old Stone Mill and, bending over his letter a woman, dark-faced and stern, her wavy, black hair heavily streaked with white, for during the past years the sword had pierced her heart. He saw the light break upon her tragic Highland face as she read of her boy and his well doing. With glad heart she had given him up, and now, with humble joy, she would read that her offering had been accepted.

The other letter brought to him the Macdougalls' drawing-room with all its beautiful appointments and the face of a young girl pleading for her friend. He still could see the quivering lips and hear the words of her invincible faith, "I know that if he got at his own work again it would save him." He could still feel the grateful, timid pressure of her fingers as he had pledged her his word that her desire should be fulfilled. He had kept his word and her faith had not been put to shame.

XVI

THE CHALLENGE OF DEATH

"Be aisy now, ye little divils. Sure ye'd think it wuz the ould Nick himself ye're dodgin'."

Thus Tommy Tate, teamster along the Tote road between the Maclennan camps, admonished his half-broken bronchos.

"Stiddy now. The saints be good t'us! Will we iver git down this hill alive? Hould back, will yez? There, now. The saints be praised! that's over. How are ye now, Scotty? If ye're alive, kick me fut. Hivin be praised! He's there yit," said Tommy to himself. "We're on the dump now, Scotty, an' we won't be long, me bhoy, till we see the lights av Swipey's saloon. Git along there, will ye!"

The bronchos after their fifteen-mile drive along the unspeakable bush roads, finding the smooth surface of the railway grade beneath their feet, set off at a good lope. It was now quite dark. The snow was driving bitterly in Tommy's face, but that stout little Irishman cared nothing for himself. His concern was for the man lying under the buffalo robes in the sleigh. Mile after mile the bronchos kept up their tireless lope, encouraged by the cheery admonitions and the cracking whip of their driver.

"Begob, but it's cowld enough to freeze the tail aff a bra.s.s monkey.

I'll jist be afther givin' the lad a taste."

He tied the reins to the seat, gave his bronchos a parting lash, took a flask from his pocket, and got down on his knees beside the sick man.

"Here, Scotty," he said coaxingly, "take another taste. It'll put life into ye." The sick man tried to swallow once, twice, choked hard, then shook his head. "Now, G.o.d be merciful! an' can't ye swally at all? An'

the good stuff it is, too! Thry once more, Scotty darlin'. Ye'll need it an' we're not far aff now." Once more the sick man made a desperate effort. He got a little of the whiskey down, then turned away his head. The tender-hearted little Irishman covered him over carefully and climbed into his seat. "He couldn't swally it," he said to himself in an awed voice, putting the flask to his own lips, "Begorra, an' it's near the Kingdom he must be!" To Tommy it appeared an infallible sign of approaching dissolution that a man should reject the contents of his flask. He gave himself to the business of getting out of the bronchos all the speed they had. "Come on, now, me bhoys!" he shouted through the gale, "what are ye lookin' at? Sure, there's nothin' purtier than yerselves can be seen in the dark. Hut, there! Kick, wud ye? Take that, thin, an' larn manners! Now ye're beginin' to move! Hooray!"

So with voice and lash Tommy continued to urge his team till they came out into a clearing at the far end of which twinkled the lights of the new railroad town being built about Maclennan's camp No. 1.