The Magnetic North Part 69

"Oh, it is not we," said Father Brachet; "it is made by ze Sisters. Zey shall know zat you were pleased."

Father Richmond held the Boy's hand a moment.

"I see you go, my son, but I shall see you return."

"No, Father, I shall hardly come this way again."

Father Brachet, smiling, watched them start up the long trail.

"I sink we shall meet again," were his last words.

"What does he mean?" asked the Colonel, a little high and mightily.

"What plan has he got for a meeting?"

"Same plan as you've got, I s'pose. I believe you both call it 'Heaven.'"

The Holy Cross thermometer had registered twenty degrees below zero, but the keen wind blowing down the river made it seem more like forty below. When they stopped to lunch, they had to crouch down behind the sled to stand the cold, and the Boy found that his face and ears were badly frost-bitten. The Colonel discovered that the same thing had befallen the toes of his left foot. They rubbed the afflicted members, and tried not to let their thoughts stray backwards. The Jesuits had told them of an inhabited cabin twenty-three miles up the river, and they tried to fix their minds on that. In a desultory way, when the wind allowed it, they spoke of Minook, and of odds and ends they'd heard about the trail. They spoke of the Big Chimney Cabin, and of how at Anvik they would have their last shave. The one subject neither seemed anxious to mention was Holy Cross. It was a little "marked," the Colonel felt; but he wasn't going to say the first word, since he meant to say the last.

About five o'clock the gale went down, but it came on to snow. At seven the Colonel said decidedly: "We can't make that cabin to-night."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not going any further, with this foot--" He threw down the sled-rope, and limped after wood for the fire.

The Boy tilted the sled up by an ice-hummock, and spread the new canvas so that it gave some scant shelter from the snow. Luckily, for once, the wind how grown quite lamb-like--for the Yukon. It would be thought a good stiff breeze almost anywhere else.

Directly they had swallowed supper the Colonel remarked: "I feel as ready for my bed as I did Sat.u.r.day night."

Ah! Sat.u.r.day night--that was different. They looked at each other with the same thought.

"Well, that bed at Holy Cross isn't any whiter than this," laughed the Boy.

But the Colonel was not to be deceived by this light and airy reference. His own unwilling sentiments were a guide to the Boy's, and he felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to restore the Holy Cross incident to its proper proportions. Those last words of Father Brachet's bothered him.

Had they been "gettin' at" the Boy?

"You think all that mission business mighty wonderful--just because you run across it in Alaska."

"And isn't it wonderful at all?"

The Boy spoke dreamily, and, from force of old habit, held out his mittened hands to the unavailing fire.

The Colonel gave a prefatory grunt of depreciation, but he was pulling his blankets out from under the stuff on the sled.

The Boy turned his head, and watched him with a little smile. "I'll admit that I always _used_ to think the Jesuits were a shady lot--"

"So they are--most of 'em."

"Well, I don't know about 'most of 'em.' You and Mac used to talk a lot about the 'motives' of the few I do know. But as far as I can see, every creature who comes up to this country comes to take something out of it--except those Holy Cross fellas. They came to bring something."

The Colonel had got the blankets out now, but where was the rubber sheet? He wouldn't sleep on it in this weather, again, for a kingdom, but when the thaws came, if those explorer fellas were right--

In his sense of irritation at a conscientious duty to perform and no clear notion of how to discharge it, he made believe it was the difficulty in finding the rubber sheet he didn't want that made him out of sorts.

"It's bitter work, anyhow, this making beds with your fingers stiff and raw," he said.

"Is it?"

Dignity looked at Impudence sitting in the shelter, smiling.

"Humph! Just try it," growled the Colonel.

"I s'pose the man over the fire cookin' supper does _look_ better off than the 'pore pardner' cuttin' down trees and makin' beds in the snow.

But he isn't."

"Oh, isn't he?" It was all right, but the Big Chimney boss felt he had chosen the lion's share of the work in electing to be woodman; still, it wasn't _that_ that troubled him. Now, what was it he had been going to say about the Jesuits? Something very telling.

"If you mean that you'd rather go back to the cookin'," the Boy was saying, "_I'm_ agreeable."

"Well, you start in to-morrow, and see if you're so agreeable."

"All right. I think I dote on one job just about as much as I do on t'other."

But still the Colonel frowned. He couldn't remember that excellent thing he had been going to say about Romanists. But he sniffed derisively, and flung over his shoulder:

"To hear you goin' on, anybody'd think the Jesuits were the only Christians. As if there weren't others, who--"

"Oh, yes, Christians with gold shovels and Winchester rifles. I know 'em. But if gold hadn't been found, how many of the army that's invaded the North--how many would be here, if it hadn't been for the gold? But all this Holy Cross business would be goin' on just the same, as it has done for years and years."

With a mighty tug the Colonel dragged out the rubber blanket, flung it down on the snow, and squared himself, back to the fire, to make short work of such views.

"I'd no notion you were such a sucker. You can bet," he said darkly, "those fellas aren't making a bad thing out of that 'Holy Cross business,' as you call it."

"I didn't mean business in that sense."

"What else could they do if they didn't do this?"

"Ask the same of any parson."

But the Colonel didn't care to.

"I suppose," he said severely, "you could even make a hero out of that hang-dog Brother Etienne."

"No, but he _could_ do something else, for he's served in the French army."

"Then there's that mad Brother Paul. What good would he be at anything else?"

"Well, I don't know."