CHAPTER XI.
ALEXANDER SELKIRK AND FAMILY.
Again Ambrose was awakened by a furious barking from Job. It was even earlier than on the preceding morning. The sun was not up; the river was like a gray ghost.
Ambrose, expecting Tole, looked for a dugout. There was none in sight.
Job's agitated barks were addressed in the other direction.
Issuing from his tent, Ambrose beheld a quaint little man squatting on top of the bank like an image. He had an air of strange patience, as if he had been waiting for hours, and expected to wait.
His brown mask of a face changed not a line at the sight of Ambrose.
"What do you want?" demanded the white man.
"Please, I want spik wit' you," the little man softly replied.
"Come down here then," said Ambrose.
The early caller looked at Job apprehensively. Ambrose silenced the dog with a command, and the man came slowly down the bank, cringing a little.
The quaintness of aspect was largely due to the fact that he wore a coat and trousers originally designed for a tall, stout man. Ambrose suspected he had a child to deal with until he saw the wrinkles and the sophisticated eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I Alexander Selkirk, me," was the answer.
Ambrose could not but smile at the misapplication of the sonorous
Scotch name to such a manikin.
"You Ambrose Doane?" the other said solemnly.
"Everybody seems to know me," said Ambrose.
Alexander stared at him with a sullen, walled, speculative regard, exactly, Ambrose thought, like a schoolboy facing an irate master, and wondering where the blow will fall.
To carry out this effect he was holding something inside his voluminous jacket, something that suggested contraband.
"What have you got there?" demanded Ambrose.
Without changing a muscle of his face, Alexander undid a button and produced a gleaming black pelt.
Ambrose gasped. It was a beautiful black fox. Such a prize does not come a trader's way once in three seasons. The last black fox Minot & Doane had secured brought twelve hundred dollars in London—and it was not so fine a specimen as this.
Lustrous, silky, black as anthracite; every hair in place, and not a white hair showing except the tuft at the end of the brush.
"Where did you get it?" Ambrose asked, amazed.
"I trap him, me, myself," said Alexander.
"When?"
"Las' Februar'."
"Are you offering it to me?" asked Ambrose, eying it desirously.
"'Ow much?" demanded Alexander, affecting a wall-eyed indifference.
Ambrose made a more careful examination. There was no doubt of it; the skin was perfect. He thrilled at the idea of returning with such a prize to his partner. He made a rapid calculation.
"Five hundred and fifty cash," he said. "Seven hundred fifty in trade."
A spark showed in Alexander's eyes.
"It is yours," he said.
"How can we make a trade?" asked Ambrose, perplexed. "John Gaviller would never honor any order of mine. I have no goods here to give you in trade."
"All right," said Alexander imperturbably. "I go to Moultrie to get goods."
"You, too," said Ambrose. "I can't import you all."
"I got go Moultrie, me," said Alexander. "I got trouble wit' Gaviller.
He starve me and my children. They sick."
"Starve you!"
"Gaviller say give no more debt till I bring him my black fox," Alexander went on apathetically. "Give no flour, no sugar, no meat, no tea. My brot'er feed us some. Gaviller say to him better not. So now we have nothing. We ongry."
This promised difficulties. Ambrose frowned. "Tell me the whole story," he said.
The little man was eying the grub-box wolfishly. Throwing back the cover, Ambrose offered him a cold bannock.
"Here," he said. "Eat and tell me."
Alexander without a word turned and scrambled up the bank and disappeared, clutching the loaf to his breast. The white man shouted after him without effect. He left the precious pelt behind him.
Ambrose shrugged philosophically. "You never can tell."
Presently Alexander came back, his seamy brown face as blank as ever. He vouchsafed no explanation. Ambrose affected not to notice him. He had long since found it to be the best way of getting what he wanted. The breed squatted on the stones, prepared to wait for the judgment-day, it seemed.
After a while he said with the wary, defiant look of a child beggar who expects to be refused, perhaps cuffed: "Give me 'not'er piece of bread."
Ambrose without a word broke his remaining bannock in two and gave him half. Alexander bolted it with incredible rapidity and sat as before, waiting.
Ambrose, wearying of this, dropped the pelt on his knees, saying: "Take your black fox. I cannot trade with you."
It had the desired effect. Alexander arose and put the skin inside the tent. "It is yours," he said. "Give me tobacco."
Ambrose tossed him his pouch.
When the little man got his pipe going, squatting on his heels as before, he told his tale. "Me spik Angleys no good," he said, fingering his Adam's apple, as if the defect was there. "Las' winter I ver' poor. All tam moch sick in my stummick. I catch him fine black fox. Wa! I say. I rich now.
"I tak' him John Gaviller. Gaviller say: 'Three hunder twenty dollar in trade.' Wa! That is not'in'. I am sick to hear it. Already I owe that debt on the book. Then I am mad. Gaviller t'ink for because I poor and sick I tak' little price. I t'ink no!
"So I tak' her home. The men they look at her. Wa! they say, she is miwasan—what you say, beauty? They say, don' give Gaviller that black fox, Sandy. He got pay more. So I keep her. Gaviller laugh. He say: 'You got give me that black fox soon. I not pay so moch in summer.'"
The apathetic way in which this was told affected Ambrose strongly. His face reddened with indignation. The story bore the hall-marks of truth.
Certainly the man's hunger was not feigned; likewise his eagerness to accept the moderate price Ambrose had offered him was significant. Ambrose scowled in his perplexity.
"Hanged if I know what to do for you!" he said. "I'll give you a receipt for the skin. I'll give you a little grub. Then you go home and stay until I can arrange something."
Alexander received this as if he had not heard it.
"You hear," said Ambrose. "Is that all right?"
"I got go Moultrie," the little man said stolidly.
"You can't!" cried Ambrose.
Alexander merely sat like an image.
This was highly exasperating to the white man. "You've got to go home,
I tell you," he cried.
"I not go home," the native said with strange apathy. "Gaviller kill me now."
"Nonsense!" cried Ambrose. "He has got to respect the law."
Alexander was unmoved. "He not give me no grub," he said. "I starve here."
This was unanswerable. Ambrose, divided between annoyance and compassion, fumed in silence. He himself had only enough food for a few days. The breed wore him out with his stolidity.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked at last.
"Give me little flour," said Alexander. "I go to Moultrie."
"What will you do with your family?"
"I tak' them."
"How many?"
"My woman, my boy, my two girl, my baby."
"Good Lord!" cried Ambrose. "Have you a boat?"
"Non! There is timber down the river. I mak' a raf, me."
"It would take you two weeks to float down," cried Ambrose. "I have only thirty pounds of flour."
Alexander shrugged. "We ongry, anyway," he said. "We lak be ongry on the way."
Ambrose swore savagely under his breath. This was nearly hopeless. He strode up and down, thrashing his brains for a solution.
Alexander, squatting on his heels, waited apathetically for the verdict. He had shifted his burden to the white man.
"Where is your family?" demanded Ambrose.
Alexander looked over his shoulder and spoke a word in Cree. Instantly four heads appeared over the edge of the bank. Job barked once in startled and indignant protest, and went to Ambrose's heels.
Ambrose could not forbear a start of laughter at the suddenness of the apparition. It was like the genii in a pantomime bobbing up through the trapdoors.
"Come down," he said.
A distressful little procession faced him; they were gaunt, ragged, appallingly dirty, and terrified almost into a state of idiocy. First came the mother, a travesty of womanhood, dehumanized except for her tragic, terrified eyes.
A boy of sixteen followed her, ugly and misshapen as a gargoyle; he carried the baby in a sling on his back. Two timorous little girls came last.
They lugged their pitiful belongings with them—a few rags of bedding and clothes, some traps and snowshoes, and cooking utensils. The smaller girl bore a holy picture in a gaudy frame.
Ambrose's heart was wrung by the sight of so much misery. He stormed at Alexander. "Good God! What a state to get into. What's the matter with you that you can't keep them better than that? You've no right to marry and have children!"
Somehow they apprehended the compassion that animated his anger, and were not afraid of him. They lined up before him, mutely bespeaking his assistance.
Their faith in his power to rescue them was implicit. That was what made it impossible for him to refuse.
"Here," he said roughly. "You'll have to take my dugout. I'll get another from Grampierre. You can make Moultrie in six days in that if you work. That'll give you five pounds of flour a day—enough to keep you alive."
The word "dugout" galvanized Alexander into action. Without a glance in Ambrose's direction, he ran to the craft, and running it a little way into the water rocked it from side to side to satisfy himself there were no leaks.
Turning to his family he spoke a command in Cree, and forthwith they began to pitch their bundles in.
Ambrose was accustomed to the thanklessness of the humbler natives. They are like children, who look to the white man for everything, and take what they can get as a matter of course. Still he was a little nonplused by the excessive precipitation of this family.
It occurred to him there was something more in their desperate eagerness to get away than Alexander's tale explained. But having given his word, he could not take it back.
From father down to babe their faces expressed such relief and hope he had not the heart to rebuke them. Alexander came to him for the food, and he handed over all he had.
"Wait!" he said. "I will give you a letter for Peter Minot. Lord!" he inwardly added. "Peter won't thank me for dumping this on him!"
On a leaf of his note-book he scribbled a few lines to his partner explaining the situation.
"You understand," he said to Alexander, "out of your credit for the black fox, John Gaviller must be paid what you owe him."
Alexander nodded indifferently, mad to get away.
As Alexander's squaw was about to get in the dugout she paused on the stones and looked at Ambrose, her ugly, dark face working with emotion. Her eyes were as piteous as a wounded animal's. She flung up her hands in a gesture expressing her powerlessness to speak.
It seemed there was some gratitude in the family. Moved by a sudden impulse she caught up Ambrose's hand and pressed it passionately to her lips. The white man fell back astonished and abashed. Alexander paid no attention at all.
In less than ten minutes after Ambrose had given them the dugout the distressed family pushed off for a new land. Father and son paddled as if the devil were behind them.
"I wonder if I done the right thing?" mused Ambrose.
The Selkirks had not long disappeared down the river when Ambrose received another visitor. This was a surly native youth who, without greeting, handed him a note, and rode back to the fort. Ambrose's heart beat high as he examined the superscription.
He did not need to be told who had written it. But he was not prepared for the contents:
DEAR:
Come to me at once. Come directly to the house. I am in great trouble.