The Magnetic North Part 14

All kinds--apples, shuhg, bacon--no cook him, you no like," he added, basely truckling to the Prince's peculiar taste.

Nicholas rolled his single eye in joyful antic.i.p.ation, and promised faithfully to grace the scene.

This was all very fine ... but Father Wills! The last thing at night and the first thing in the morning the Boy looked the problem in the face, and devised now this, now that, adroit and disarming fashion of breaking the news to Mac.

But it was only when the daring giver of invitations was safely in bed, and Mac equally safe down in the Little Cabin, that it seemed possible to broach the subject. He devised scenes in which, airily and triumphantly, he introduced Father Wills, and brought Mac to the point of pining for Jesuit society; but these scenes were actable only under conditions of darkness and of solitude. The Colonel refused to have anything to do with the matter.

"Our first business, as I see it, is to keep peace in the camp, and hold fast to a good understanding with one another. It's just over little things like this that trouble begins. Mac's one of us; Father Wills is an outsider. I won't rile Mac for the sake of any Jesuit alive. No, sir; this is _your_ funeral, and you're obliged to attend."

Before three of Nicholas's five sleeps were accomplished, the Boy began to curse the hour he had laid eyes on Father Wills. He began even to speculate desperately on the good priest's chances of tumbling into an air-hole, or being devoured by a timely wolf. But no, life was never so considerate as that. Yet he could neither face being the cause of the first serious row in camp, nor endure the thought of having his particular guest--drat him!--flouted, and the whole House-Warming turned to failure and humiliation.

Indeed, the case looked desperate. Only one day more now before he would appear--be flouted, insulted, and go off wounded, angry, leaving the Boy with an irreconciliable quarrel against Mac, and the House-Warming turned to chill recrimination and to wretchedness.

But until the last phantasmal hope went down before the logic of events it was impossible not to cling to the idea of melting Mac's Arctic heart. There was still one course untried.

Since there was so little left to do to the stockade, the Boy announced that he thought he'd go up over the hill for a tramp. Gun in hand and grub in pocket, he marched off to play his last trump-card. If he could bring home a queer enough bird or beast for the collection, there was still hope. To what lengths might Mac not go if one dangled before him the priceless bait of a golden-tipped emperor goose, dressed in imperial robes of rose-flecked snow? Or who, knowing Mac, would not trust a _Xema Sabinii_ to play the part of a white-winged angel of peace? Failing some such heavenly messenger, there was nothing for it but that the Boy should face the ignominy of going forth to meet the Father on the morrow, and confess the humiliating truth. It wasn't fair to let him come expecting hospitality, and find--. Visions arose of Mac receiving the bent and wayworn missionary with the greeting: "There is no corner by the fire, no place in the camp for a pander to the Scarlet Woman." The thought lent impa.s.sioned fervour to the quest for goose or gull.

It was pretty late when he got back to camp, and the men were at supper. No, he hadn't shot anything.

"What's that bulging in your pocket?"

"Sort o' stone."

"Struck it rich?"

"Don't give me any chin-music, boys; give me tea. I'm dog-tired."

But when Mac got up first, as usual, to go down to the Little Cabin to "wood up" for the night, "I'll walk down with you," says the Boy, though it was plain he was dead-beat.

He helped to revive the failing fire, and then, dropping on the section of sawed wood that did duty for a chair, with some difficulty and a deal of tugging he pulled "the sort o' stone" out of the pocket of his duck shooting-jacket.

"See that?" He held the thing tightly clasped in his two red, chapped hands.

Mac bent down, shading his eyes from the faint flame flicker.

"What is it?" "Piece o' tooth."

"By the Lord Harry! so it is." He took the thing nearer the faint light. "Fossil! Where'd you get it?"

"Over yonder--by a little frozen river."

"How far? Any more? Only this?"

The Boy didn't answer. He went outside, and returned instantly, lugging in something brown and whitish, weather-stained, unwieldy.

"I dropped this at the door as I came along home. Thought it might do for the collection."

Mac stared with all his eyes, and hurriedly lit a candle. The Boy dropped exhausted on a ragged bit of burlap by the bunks. Mac knelt down opposite, pouring liberal libation of candle-grease on the uncouth, bony ma.s.s between them.

"Part of the skull!" he rasped out, masking his ecstasy as well as he could.

"Mastodon?" inquired the Boy.

Mac shook his head.

"I'll bet my boots," says Mac, "it's an _Elephas primigenius;_ and if I'm right, it's 'a find,' young man. Where'd you stumble on him?"

"Over yonder." The Boy leaned his head against the lower bunk.

"Where?" "Across the divide. The bones have been dragged up on to some rocks. I saw the end of a tusk stickin' up out of the snow, and I scratched down till I found--" He indicated the trophy between them on the floor.

"Tusk? How long?"

"'Bout nine feet." "We'll go and get it to-morrow."

No answer from the Boy.

"Early, hey?"

"Well--a--it's a good ways."

"What if it is?"

"Oh, I don't mind. I'd do more 'n that for you, Mac."

There was something unnatural in such devotion. Mac looked up. But the Boy was too tired to play the big fish any longer. "I wonder if you'll do something for me." He watched with a sinking heart Mac's sharp uprising from the worshipful att.i.tude. It was not like any other mortal's gradual, many-jointed getting-up; it was more like the sudden springing out of the big blade of a clasp-knife.

"What's your game?"

"Oh, I ain't got any game," said the Boy desperately; "or, if I have, there's mighty little fun in it. However, I don't know as I want to walk ten hours again in this kind o' weather with an elephant on my back just for--for the poetry o' the thing." He laid his chapped hands on the side board of the bunk and pulled himself up on his legs.

"What's your game?" repeated Mac sternly, as the Boy reached the door.

"What's the good o' talkin'?" he answered; but he paused, turned, and leaned heavily against the rude lintel.

"Course, I know you'd be shot before you'd do it, but what I'd _like_, would be to hear you say you wouldn't kick up a h.e.l.l of a row if Father Wills happens in to the House-Warmin'."

Mac jerked his set face, fire-reddened, towards the fossil-finder; and he, without waiting for more, simply opened the door, and heavily footed it back to the Big Cabin.

Next morning when Mac came to breakfast he heard that the Boy had had his grub half an hour before the usual time, and was gone off on some tramp again. Mac sat and mused.

O'Flynn came in with a dripping bucket, and sat down to breakfast shivering.

"Which way'd he go?"