The Magnetic North Part 42

"I'm George Benham." They had all heard of the Anvik trader, a man of some wealth and influence, and they made him welcome.

The Indian was his guide, he said, and he had a team outside of seven dogs. He was going to the steamship _Oklahoma_ on some business, and promised Father Wills of Holy Cross that he'd stop on the way, and deliver a letter to Mr. MacCann.

"Stop on the way! I should think so."

"We were goin' to have supper to-night, anyhow, and you'll stay and sleep here."

All Mac's old suspicions of the Jesuits seemed to return with the advent of that letter.

"I'll read it presently." He laid it on the mantel-shelf, between the sewing-kit and the tobacco-can, and he looked at it, angrily, every now and then, while he helped to skin Mr. Benham. That gentleman had thrown back his hood, pulled off his great moose-skin gauntlets and his beaver-lined cap, and now, with a little help, dragged the drill parki over his head, and after that the fine lynx-bordered deer-skin, standing revealed at last as a well-built fellow, of thirty-eight or so, in a suit of mackinaws, standing six feet two in his heelless salmon-skin snow-boots. "Bring in my traps, will you?" he said to the Indian, and then relapsed into silence. The Indian reappeared with his arms full.

"Fine lot o' pelts you have there," said the Colonel.

Benham didn't answer. He seemed to be a close-mouthed kind of a chap.

As the Indian sorted and piled the stuff in the corner, Potts said:

"Got any furs you want to sell?"

"No."

"Where you takin' 'em?"

"Down to the _Oklahoma_."

"All this stuff for Cap'n Rainey?"

Benham nodded.

"I reckon there's a mistake about the name, and he's Cap'n Tom Thumb or Commodore Nutt." The Boy had picked up a little parki made carefully of some very soft dark fur and trimmed with white rabbit, the small hood bordered with white fox.

"That's a neat piece of work," said the Colonel.

Benham nodded. "One of the s.h.a.geluk squaws can do that sort of thing."

"What's the fur?"

"Musk-rat." And they talked of the weather--how the mercury last week had been solid in the trading-post thermometer, so it was "over forty degrees, anyhow."

"What's the market price of a coat like that?" Mac said suddenly.

"That isn't a 'market' coat. It's for a kid of Rainey's back in the States."

Still Mac eyed it enviously.

"What part of the world are you from, sir?" said the Colonel when they had drawn up to the supper table.

"San Francisco. Used to teach numskulls Latin and mathematics in the Las Palmas High School."

"What's the value of a coat like that little one?" interrupted Mac.

"Oh, about twenty dollars."

"The s.h.a.geluks ask that much?"

Benham laughed. "If _you_ asked the s.h.a.geluks, they'd say forty."

"You've been some time in this part of the world, I understand," said the Colonel.

"Twelve years."

"Without going home?"

"Been home twice. Only stayed a month. Couldn't stand it."

"I'll give you twenty-two dollars for that coat," said Mac.

"I've only got that one, and as I think I said--"

"I'll give you twenty-four."

"It's an order, you see. Rainey--"

"I'll give you twenty-six."

Benham shook his head.

"Sorry. Yes, it's queer about the hold this country gets on you. The first year is h.e.l.l, the second is purgatory, with glimpses ... of something else. The third--well, more and more, forever after, you realise the North's taken away any taste you ever had for civilisation.

That's when you've got the hang of things up here, when you've learned not to stay in your cabin all the time, and how to take care of yourself on the trail. But as for going back to the boredom of cities--no, thank you."

Mac couldn't keep his eyes off the little coat. Finally, to enable him to forget it, as it seemed, he got up and opened Father Wills' letter, devoured its contents in silence, and flung it down on the table. The Colonel took it up, and read aloud the Father's thanks for all the white camp's kindness to Kaviak, and now that the sickness was about gone from Holy Cross, how the Fathers felt that they must relieve their neighbours of further trouble with the little native.

"I've said I'd take him back with me when I come up river about Christmas."

"We'd be kind o' lost, now, without the little beggar," said the Boy, glancing sideways at Mac.

"There's nothin' to be got by luggin' him off to Holy Cross," answered that gentleman severely.

"Unless it's clo'es," said Potts.

"He's all right in the clo'es he's got," said Mac, with the air of one who closes an argument. He stood up, worn and tired, and looked at his watch.

"You ain't goin' to bed this early?" said Potts, quite lively and recovered from his cold bath. That was the worst of sleeping in the Little Cabin. Bedtime broke the circle; you left interesting visitors behind, and sometimes the talk was better as the night wore on.

"Well, someone ought to wood up down yonder. O'Flynn, will you go?"

O'Flynn was in the act of declining the honour. But Benham, who had been saying, "It takes a year in the Yukon for a man to get on to himself," interrupted his favourite theme to ask: "Your other cabin like this?"

Whereon, O'Flynn, shameless of the contrast in cabins, jumped up, and said: "Come and see, while I wood up."