Two on the Trail Part 14

"Don't you like him?" asked Charley in concern. "I always thought he was a pretty smart one. No!" he added suddenly. "I don't like him either.

He's coa.r.s.e!"

Supper was an affair of joint contributions; Garth's jam for Charley's bread. In the meantime Charley had surrept.i.tiously swept up the chips; and had then slipped away to the river bank, for a wash and a tidy-up.

He reappeared with his hair well "slicked," his tip-tilted nose as pink as his shiny cheeks, and a smile that extended to the furthest confines of his face. But he was distressed that he had no white collar to honour the board; and his grat.i.tude was silent and boundless, when Garth produced one for him from his duffle-bag.

It was a jovial meal that followed; the spirit of youth presided; and wisdom and grave speech were thrust under the table. Charley recovered of his bashfulness so far that he could occasionally nerve himself to look at Natalie. For all the boy's giddy jollity, his blue eyes had a kind of stricken look when they rested on her face. But his appet.i.te did not suffer appreciably; and it did Garth's and Natalie's hearts good to see the bread and jam disappear between Charley's business-like jaws.

Jam, they agreed, had surely never before been so successful in tickling the human palate. "Just do without it for a couple of years and see for yourself," Charley rejoined.

Afterward the cabin was further swept and garnished for Natalie's use; and a heap of fragrant hay brought from the stable on which to spread her blankets. The house was to be yielded up to her for the night. Garth and Charley shared the little tent outside. Garth, with his simplicity, and his air of quiet understanding, was above all one to win a boy's confidence; and by bedtime they were as friendly as brothers--or perhaps more like a very young father and his oldest son.

When they rolled up side by side in their blankets Charley seemed to put off several years. He hunched closer to his bedfellow; and pressed his shoulder warmly against Garth's.

"Are you sleepy?" he asked diffidently.

Garth's heart warmed to the act and the speech. "Why, no!" he said.

"Believe I'll have another smoke before dropping off. Fire away, old boy!"

"Say, it's simply great to have somebody young to talk to," said poor Charley. "Somebody that understands; and that you can let yourself go with, and say whatever comes into your head to. Say, I never had such a good time in all my life as to-night. All the fellows up here--they're a good sort all right--but they're a rough, cursing lot. And of course, a fellow has to curse too; and talk big just to keep his end up--chuck a bluff, you know, or they'll think you're a molly. And I just love to laugh, and act foolish; and I always have to hold myself in. Sometimes I near bust!"

"I get like that myself," said Garth encouragingly.

There was something else on Charley's mind; but for a long time his tongue sheered off at every approach to it. Finally, rolling over, he hid a hot cheek on Garth's shoulder; and it came out with a rush.

"Say! I think she's the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on!"

Garth's arm tightened about the boy's shoulders "She's the first white girl I've seen in nearly two years," he floundered on; "and girls meant nothing to me then. But I know darned well she's no ordinary white girl.

Isn't it wonderful, the different ways she looks; and all that her voice seems to mean besides the words she says; and the way she walks and sits down; and the way she lifts her arm? Isn't it a pretty arm? And the finest thing about her is, she deals plain with you like a fellow; no silly fuss and make-believe, and hanging-back about her!"

If Garth liked the boy before, he was prepared to love him for this.

"Did you mark how she called me Mr. Landrum?" continued Charley eagerly.

"She just did that to please me, I know. Didn't it sound funny? My chest expanded two inches, I swear it did! Wasn't she kind to me? She had no call to be so kind to me. It just makes me want to do something terrific! Oh, if I could only do something for her!--wouldn't I just be glad of the chance!"

He was silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say, there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the sh.o.r.e, her name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and she was young, like me--"

Garth let him see that he understood--and he did understand, both the pitiful little tale, and the boy's reason for wishing to tell him.

"And to think of _her_ asleep in there now!" he continued remorsefully.

"It makes me sick and disgusted with myself. I'd give anything if it hadn't happened! You bet I'll have no truck with them in future!"

"Every man makes mistakes, old boy," said Garth.

Charley, his mind relieved by confession, in the midst of further rhapsodies, suddenly fell asleep.

In the morning he awoke all of a piece, as boys do, and rolling over, said instantly:

"Natalie is sure the prettiest name there is!"

Later in the day in the middle of their somewhat hopeless deliberations upon the repairing of the half-submerged _Flat-iron_--her flimsily hung planks had been started even by her gentle journey on the river--there was a hail from down-stream. Looking, they saw four swart figures bending one after another in a tracking-harness, crawling around the edge of the cut-bank below. Presently a sharp prow nosed around the bend; and a long, low, double-ended galley swung into view, floating lazily on the current like a gigantic duck.

"A York boat!" cried Charley in surprise. "Didn't know any was due!

Here's your chance to cross the lake!"

"Hm!" said Garth doubtfully. "We'll find out, first, what news she brings from below."

At the sight of the open water ahead, the breeds redoubled their shouting, and hit up their pace. It was interesting to see how, once having got her under way, they could allow nothing to stop them; but needs must crash through obstructions regardless; slipping scrambling, literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was the part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it, without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man; but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came down. In the stern stood the helmsman, pulling her head around, with a mighty sweep, extending astern; and the other four of the crew, resting from their spell of tracking, fended her off the bank with poles. The York boat, pointed bow and stern, low amidships, and undecked, reminded Garth of the pictures he had seen of ancient Norse galleys.

Arriving opposite the cabin, they all leaped aboard; and poling across, landed in front of where Garth and Charley stood. Natalie, not caring to run the gauntlet of another battery of stupid stares, had retired to the cabin. On the prow of the boat, which had a dingy, weather-beaten look, very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company," was crookedly painted the name _Loseis_. Making her fast, the breeds, with furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs.

It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom, was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of _met-o-wan_, a sort of Cree equivalent for Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-b.u.t.ton, started on the sh.o.r.e.

The steersman, pausing only to put on a gold-embroidered waistcoat, approached Garth with a disposition to be friendly--too friendly by half, Garth thought. He was an undersized man of not more than thirty, but already somewhat withered; a specimen of the unwholesome, weedy breed of the settlements.

"Well, Charley," he said affably.

They shook hands with the touch of impressiveness that always marks this ceremony in the North; and then Hooliam, with a shifty glance, extended his hand to Garth. At the same time he said something in Cree.

"He says: 'You want to go up the lake,'" translated Charley.

"How does he know that?" asked Garth quickly.

Hooliam answered in Cree without waiting for Charley to translate.

Evidently, like most of the breeds, he understood more English than he cared to confess.

"He says that Pierre Toma told him," said Charley.

"Ask him how it is he comes up with such a small load," suggested Garth.

Charley repeated the question in Cree. Hooliam's answer was prompt and glib. "He says that the water was too low to bring a full load,"

translated Charley.

"Ask him when he means to go on," said Garth.

Hooliam gave a glance at the still tossing lake. "As soon as the wind dies or changes. This wind would blow him right back on the sh.o.r.e," such the gist of his answer by way of Charley.

"Tell him to let me know before he starts; and I'll tell him if we wish to go along," said Garth coolly.

"I want to have a talk with you," he added in a lower tone for Charley's benefit.

They sat down apart on the sand.

"What do you think of this outfit, Charley?" asked Garth.

The boy was surprised at the question. "Well," he said, "it does look a bit queer, their coming all this way with half a load. But you never can tell about these crazy n.i.g.g.e.rs; they may have dumped out half their stuff on the bank somewhere, and left it to rot. A French range for the inspector has been lying on the point across the river for two months."

"Who is this Hooliam?" Garth asked.