CHAPTER XII
AT THE PARTING OF THE RIVERS
"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;
Of fur and gun, an' ranch, an' run, an' moose an' caribou,
An' bulldogs eatin' us to death!
Good-bye—Good-luck to you!"
Mirror Landing, where we leave the boat to make the portage to Soto Landing, is on the Lesser Slave River, at its confluence with the Athabasca. Its name has been well chosen, for the Lesser Slave River is a clear stream, and shows a kindly portrait to all who look therein. A telegraph office, an official residence, a stable, and storage sheds are the only buildings. What is to be done with the portaging party, whom we have met here and who go back to Athabasca Landing on our boat, is beyond a mere woman to say. Both parties must spend the night here; there is only one bunk to every twenty persons, and those who hold possession utterly refuse to sleep outside with the mosquitoes and bulldog flies. Once I read a story in the Talmud which I considered wholly fabulous. It was about a mosquito saving the life of David when Saul hunted him upon the mountains. I no longer doubt this story, my incredulity having vanished this day with my courage. A mosquito is big enough to do anything.
A member of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, truly a most formidable appearing man, insisted on searching our luggage for contraband liquor. I was sorely displeased, and could have dealt him a clout with all my might, for the froward manner in which he turned out my things to the public view. He might have known if I carried a flask, it would be in my coat pocket. His only find was an unbroached bottle of elderberry wine which a rancher's wife was bringing home for her dinner-party next Christmas. Be it said to the youth's credit that upon the circumstances being explained to him he returned the wine to her. He had no authority for so doing, but assuredly he had the countenance of a great example Yahveh of the Jews having aforetime "winked at" certain breaches of the law which He considered to be the better kept in their non-observance.
The liquor taken by the police is either given to the hospital at Grouard or poured on the ground as a libation to Bacchus and his woodland troup. It is very foolish to ask the officer in command if his men ever drink themselves, for he will say, "Pooh! Pooh!" and use other argumentative exclamations that will fright you out of your wits. You would almost think the subject was loaded, and it takes a soft look and a wondrously soft answer to turn away his wrath.
Early in the evening I was invited to browse at the official residence, and I had a good time; that is to say, I found it distinctly entertaining. "I would say that you are very welcome," remarked my hostess as she held out both her hands, "were it not that it seems an understanding of the fact. I have read your Sowing Seeds in Danny, and feel that I know you extremely well."
It was fortunate I did not tell her she had confused me with Mrs. McClung, for she gave me eggs to eat that were most cunningly scrambled with cheese; also many hot rolls sopped in butter, and yellow honey in its comb.
This is a ramblesome bungalow and very comfortable. Musical instruments, couches, big cushions, book-shelves and pictures take on a peculiar attractiveness when they are the only ones in a hundred miles or more.
After supper we read Phil-o-rum Juneau, by William Henry Drummond, and discussed its relation to the French Canadian legend, La Chasse-Gallerie. Of all our Canadian legends, I like it the best, and it may happen that you will too. It tells how on each New Year's Night the spirits of the woodsmen and rivermen are carried in phantom canoes from these lonely northlands back to the old homesteads in the south, where, unseen and undisturbed, they mingle with their friends. The father embraces his children; the lover his maiden, the husband his wife, and once more the son lays his head on his mother's lap. All of the voyageurs join the feast, the song, and the dance, so that no man is lonely in those hours, neither is he weary or sad. It is a better thing, I make believe, than even the communion of saints. But just before the dawn comes, the wraith men find themselves back on the Athabasca, the Mackenzie and the Slave, and no one speaks of where he has been, or of what he experienced, for all this he must keep hidden in his heart.
When, over a century ago, the legend first sprang to life, there were none save men to travel like this, but now, of times, a woman may travel too. I know this for a certainty in that each New Year's Night I go myself. In my dug-out canoe—delved from wishful thoughts and things like that—I take my hurried way across prodigious seas of ice where never living foot has fallen; adown ill-noted trails through silver trees; by hidden caverns that are the lairs of the running winds; over dark forests of pine and across uncounted leagues of white prairies which light up the darkness, till I come to the warmer southland, where youths and maidens make wreaths of greenery, and where mellow-voiced bells ring out the dying year.
And when those who are my own people feel their hearts to be of a sudden rifled of love; that some one has brushed their cheek, or that a head is resting on their shoulder, then do they know the exile has come back, for I have told them it will be thus.
And you, O my readers of the Seven Seas, now that we are friends and know each other closely, will you of New Year's Night be keenly watchful too.
It was here that our conversation wheeled off from the consideration of this legend to the northern postman. In the final summary he must be classed among those peerless fellows who, because of their courage and incredible endurance, have won for Canada this myriad-acred but hitherto waste heritage. No man here who puts his hand to the mail bags must ever look back; he must have the quality of keeping on against the odds. He is the modern young Lord Lochinvar, who stays not for brake and stops not for stone. Often his route is stretched out to hundreds of miles, and there is no corner grocery where he may thaw out his extremities while mumbling driftless things about the weather and the government.
Presently the railways will have taken over his perilous profession, and he will exist only as a memory of pioneer days. For this reason I took great heed while my host talked concerning him and of the qualities which go into making a successful postie under the aurora. He must be agile, light of weight, abstemious, trustworthy, tireless, thewed and sinewed like a lynx, and, above all, he must have wire-strung nerves. In a word, his profession requires a strong will in a sound body.
"Does it ever happen that the mail is not delivered?" I asked.
My host hesitated, and made three rings of smoke while he considered the answer, as though he would be sure-footed as to his facts.
"Sometimes it is not delivered, Madam," said he; "there may be an untoward happening, in which event its delivery depends upon the recovery of the carrier's body."
When he made another three rings of smoke he proceeded with the story. "Yes! the mail-carrier in this country is a special person and must not be judged as general. He deserves a much better reward than he gets. To my thinking, it is a vast pity poetic justice so frequently fails. It may be that some day you will write a story about us Northmen, and if you do, be sure you set down how Destiny so often blue-pencils our lives in the wrong places. We will read your book down here, all of us, just to see if you have been true to us instead of laying up for yourself royalties on earth."
"And where do you bury a postman who dies with his mail-bags?" I further pursued.
"Holy Patriarch!" he ejaculated. "You don't think he is carried back to Athabasca Landing? His body is cached in a tree and the police are notified. When they give their permission, and when the ground is thawed out in the spring, we bury him just where he died. It may, however, interest you to know that the letters 'O.H.M.S.' are cut on his tombstone."
"'O.H.M.S.'" I repeated. "Don't you mean 'I.H.S.,' Iesous Hominum Salvator, the same as we write over our altars and on our baptismal fonts?"
"No!" he replied, "I mean 'O.H.M.S.'; the same as they stamp on government letters which are franked 'On His Majesty's Service.' You see the work of delivering the mails down this way, while extremely arduous, must never for a moment be considered as menial. The carrier is a servant to none save His Imperial Majesty, George the Fifth, of England."
They are all gamblers, these Northmen: they play for love, for money or for the mere pleasure of the play, and Boys of our Heart, like the mail-couriers and the striplings of the Mounted Police, gamble with the elements for life itself.
"Ah, well!" remarked my host, as he put away his pipe for the night, "these fellows know the rules and dangers of the game when they 'sit in,' and while twenty-six of the cards are black, it is just as well to bear in mind that there are an equal number of reds."
On my return to the ship at midnight, I found that some one had seized and was occupying my state-room on the nine-tenths of the law idea. She seemed to be a woman turbulent in spirit, and, accordingly I left her in possession: also, I left her door open to the mosquitoes, who are evil whelps and more tutored in crime than you could believe.
The purser, a very agreeable and well-behaved man, gave up his office to me, but I did not rest well, in that a whirligig of jubilant mosquitoes was occupying it conjunctively. Being full-blooded and sometimes inclined to be rather mean, I endeavoured to accept this retributory plague as a chastening which might prove beneficial to both body and soul.
In the morning all the reckonings of the trip were settled at a desk beside my bunk, the men moving around with the prehensile tread of the villain who goes round a corner in the moving-picture films. I pretended they had not awakened me, and breathed with much regularity, but all the while I was stealthily peeping. They would not have understood if I had made objections to their entering, for here, at the edge of things, all men are gentlemen, or are supposed to be. Conventionality would be actual boorishness, and a woman must try and earn for herself the title of a good scout, it being the highest encomium the North can pass upon her.
Before leaving the ship for the portage, we backed into the Athabasca, and, after travelling two or three miles, unloaded a vast deal of freight at a little tent town on the bank. Here and there, through this country, you come upon these white encampments, which mean that the iron furrows of the railway are steadily pushing the frontier farther and farther north. This was the first load of freight to be brought down the Athabasca for the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. It was only rough hardware truck, but, withal, amiable to my eyes, standing, as it did, for the end of a long rubber between fur and wheat. You would like the looks of the young engineers who took charge of the stuff. They were no muffish sick-a-bed fellows, but brown with wind and sun, hardy-moulded and masterful. One of them has written something about life on the right-of-way, which he intends sending me to touch up a bit for a paper. It augurs well for a country when its workers love it and want to write about it.
And even so, My Canada, should I forget thee, may my pen fingers become sapless and like to poplar twigs that are blasted by fire. And may it happen in like manner to any of thy breed who are drawn away from love of thee.