The Fur Bringers Part 19

Alexander without a word turned and scrambled up the bank and disappeared, clutching the loaf to his breast. The white man shouted after him without effect. He left the precious pelt behind him.

Ambrose shrugged philosophically. "You never can tell."

Presently Alexander came back, his seamy brown face as blank as ever.

He vouchsafed no explanation. Ambrose affected not to notice him. He had long since found it to be the best way of getting what he wanted.

The breed squatted on the stones, prepared to wait for the judgment-day, it seemed.

After a while he said with the wary, defiant look of a child beggar who expects to be refused, perhaps cuffed: "Give me 'not'er piece of bread."

Ambrose without a word broke his remaining bannock in two and gave him half. Alexander bolted it with incredible rapidity and sat as before, waiting.

Ambrose, wearying of this, dropped the pelt on his knees, saying: "Take your black fox. I cannot trade with you."

It had the desired effect. Alexander arose and put the skin inside the tent. "It is yours," he said. "Give me tobacco."

Ambrose tossed him his pouch.

When the little man got his pipe going, squatting on his heels as before, he told his tale. "Me spik Angleys no good," he said, fingering his Adam's apple, as if the defect was there. "Las' winter I ver' poor. All tam moch sick in my stummick. I catch him fine black fox. Wa! I say. I rich now.

"I tak' him John Gaviller. Gaviller say: 'Three hunder twenty dollar in trade.' Wa! That is not'in'. I am sick to hear it. Already I owe that debt on the book. Then I am mad. Gaviller t'ink for because I poor and sick I tak' little price. I t'ink no!

"So I tak' her home. The men they look at her. Wa! they say, she is _miwasan_--what you say, beauty? They say, don' give Gaviller that black fox, Sandy. He got pay more. So I keep her. Gaviller laugh.

He say: 'You got give me that black fox soon. I not pay so moch in summer.'"

The apathetic way in which this was told affected Ambrose strongly.

His face reddened with indignation. The story bore the hall-marks of truth.

Certainly the man's hunger was not feigned; likewise his eagerness to accept the moderate price Ambrose had offered him was significant.

Ambrose scowled in his perplexity.

"Hanged if I know what to do for you!" he said. "I'll give you a receipt for the skin. I'll give you a little grub. Then you go home and stay until I can arrange something."

Alexander received this as if he had not heard it.

"You hear," said Ambrose. "Is that all right?"

"I got go Moultrie," the little man said stolidly.

"You can't!" cried Ambrose.

Alexander merely sat like an image.

This was highly exasperating to the white man. "You've got to go home, I tell you," he cried.

"I not go home," the native said with strange apathy. "Gaviller kill me now."

"Nonsense!" cried Ambrose. "He has got to respect the law."

Alexander was unmoved. "He not give me no grub," he said. "I starve here."

This was unanswerable. Ambrose, divided between annoyance and compa.s.sion, fumed in silence. He himself had only enough food for a few days. The breed wore him out with his stolidity.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked at last.

"Give me little flour," said Alexander. "I go to Moultrie."

"What will you do with your family?"

"I tak' them."

"How many?"

"My woman, my boy, my two girl, my baby."

"Good Lord!" cried Ambrose. "Have you a boat?"

"_Non_! There is timber down the river. I mak' a raf, me."

"It would take you two weeks to float down," cried Ambrose. "I have only thirty pounds of flour."

Alexander shrugged. "We ongry, anyway," he said. "We lak be ongry on the way."

Ambrose swore savagely under his breath. This was nearly hopeless. He strode up and down, thrashing his brains for a solution.

Alexander, squatting on his heels, waited apathetically for the verdict. He had shifted his burden to the white man.

"Where is your family?" demanded Ambrose.

Alexander looked over his shoulder and spoke a word in Cree. Instantly four heads appeared over the edge of the bank. Job barked once in startled and indignant protest, and went to Ambrose's heels.

Ambrose could not forbear a start of laughter at the suddenness of the apparition. It was like the genii in a pantomime bobbing up through the trapdoors.

"Come down," he said.

A distressful little procession faced him; they were gaunt, ragged, appallingly dirty, and terrified almost into a state of idiocy. First came the mother, a travesty of womanhood, dehumanized except for her tragic, terrified eyes.

A boy of sixteen followed her, ugly and misshapen as a gargoyle; he carried the baby in a sling on his back. Two timorous little girls came last.

They lugged their pitiful belongings with them--a few rags of bedding and clothes, some traps and snowshoes, and cooking utensils. The smaller girl bore a holy picture in a gaudy frame.

Ambrose's heart was wrung by the sight of so much misery. He stormed at Alexander. "Good G.o.d! What a state to get into. What's the matter with you that you can't keep them better than that? You've no right to marry and have children!"

Somehow they apprehended the compa.s.sion that animated his anger, and were not afraid of him. They lined up before him, mutely bespeaking his a.s.sistance.

Their faith in his power to rescue them was implicit. That was what made it impossible for him to refuse.

"Here," he said roughly. "You'll have to take my dugout. I'll get another from Grampierre. You can make Moultrie in six days in that if you work. That'll give you five pounds of flour a day--enough to keep you alive."

The word "dugout" galvanized Alexander into action. Without a glance in Ambrose's direction, he ran to the craft, and running it a little way into the water rocked it from side to side to satisfy himself there were no leaks.