CHAPTER XVI.
COLINA COMMANDS.
On August 25, well within his schedule, Ambrose arrived at Spirit River
Crossing with ten loaded wagons.
For six long days they had been floundering through the bottomless mudholes of the portage trail and men and horses were alike played out; but the rest of the way to come was easy, and Ambrose paid off his drivers with a light heart.
The york boat and crew he had engaged at the crossing were non-existent, and no explanation forthcoming. He had met with similar small reverses all along the line. This one was not important; it meant three days delay to build a raft.
There was a current of nearly four miles an hour to carry him to his destination, and no rapids in the three hundred miles to endanger his cargo.
Tole Grampierre and his brother Germain were waiting for Ambrose. With two such aides he could afford to smile at the mysterious scarcity of labor which developed on his arrival.
Tole's budget of news from down the river contained nothing startling. John Gaviller had been very sick all summer with pneumonia as a result of his wound. He was getting better: "pale and skinny as an old rabbit in the snow," in Tole's words.
Gaviller had sent up the launch to get what grain had been grown at the crossing; but it was not enough to fill his contracts for flour up north. He had been obliged to pay two dollars a bushel for it. Ambrose smiled at this piece of information.
Ambrose waited eagerly for some word of her who was seldom out of his thoughts, but to Tole the matter was not of such great importance. Ambrose could not bring himself to name her name. Not until Tole had covered everything else did he say casually:
"Colina Gaviller rides all around on her yellow horse. She is proud now. Never speaks to the people."
That was all. Ambrose's heart stirred with compassion for the one, who by her loyalty was forced to embrace the wrong cause.
Another time Tole remarked: "Gordon Strange run the store all summer."
"So!" said Ambrose. "What do the people say about him? What does your father say?"
Tole shrugged. "He say not'ing," he said cautiously. He could not be induced to commit himself further in this direction.
They built their raft, and loading up, started without untoward incident. Traveling day and night, allowing for stoppages and delays, they expected to be nearly five days on the way.
On the third day, Ambrose chafing at their slow progress, put the dugout overboard, and set off ahead to warn the settlement of their coming. He had no hesitation leaving the raft with the Grampierre boys; they could handle it better than himself.
He paddled all day, and at night cut down a tree so that it would fall in the water, and tied his canoe to it, that he might not be blown ashore while he slept.
For hours he lay waiting for sleep, watching the stars circle round his head as his canoe was swung in the eddies, and considering his situation.
He could not rest for his eagerness to be at the end of his journey, though he had no hope of what awaited there—that is to say not much hope; there is always a perhaps.
But how could Colina relent when she beheld him arriving laden with ammunition to make war upon her? Ambrose wondered sadly if any lover before him ever found himself in such a plight.
By ten o'clock next morning he was within a mile or two of Grampierre's place. The river was dazzling in the morning sunlight, the air like wine.
The poplar trees had put on their gorgeous autumn dress of saffron and scarlet, which showed like names against the chocolate colored hills. Suddenly in a grassy ravine on his right, Ambrose saw the "yellow" horse feeding.
His heart set up a furious beating. No power on earth could have prevented him from landing, though common sense told him clearly no good could come of it. That "perhaps" drew him ashore, that hope against hope.
After a short search he found her sleeping under a poplar-tree in a hollow of the bank that was hidden from the river.
She wore her khaki riding-habit, as usual; her head was couched in the crook of her arm, and in the other hand she held her Stetson hat by its strap. Ambrose brooded over her wistfully.
Her face was paler and thinner; evidently she herself had not been having too easy a time these two months past.
These blemishes on her beauty made her seem infinitely more beautiful and dearer to him. And all relaxed and disarmed in sleep as she was, it seemed so easy a thing to gather her up in his arms and make her forget what divided them.
Ambrose's dim thought was: "If somehow I could only send her real self a message while her head-strong, unreasonable self is asleep, maybe she'd confess the truth when she woke."
While he was hungrily gazing at her her eyelids fluttered. He moved back to a more respectful distance. She awoke without alarm. For an instant she lay looking at him as calmly as a babe in its crib.
Then in a flash recollection returned, and she sprang to a sitting position, both hands, womanlike, flying to her hair. She eyed him with a certain discomposure. It was as if she felt that she ought to be furiously angry, and was somewhat dismayed because it did not come.
"What do you want?" she asked coldly.
In her cold eye Ambrose was conscious of a wall between them more impenetrable than granite. His heart gave up hope. "Nothing," he said sullenly.
"It's not exactly agreeable," she said, frowning, "to find oneself spied upon."
Ambrose started and frowned. This construction of his act had not occurred to him. "I saw Ginger from the river," he said indignantly. "I landed to find you."
"What did you want?" she asked coolly.
"I don't know," said Ambrose.
There was a silence between them. Her cold look told him to go. Pride and common sense both urged him to obey—but he could not. He was like a bit of iron filing in the presence of a magnet.
"I—I suppose I wanted to find out how you were," he said at last.
"Was that so extraordinary?"
She ignored the question. "I am well," she said.
"How is your father?" he asked.
She looked at him levelly and did not answer.
A slow red crept up from Ambrose's neck. "I asked you a civil question," he muttered.
"If you want a truthful answer," said Colina clearly, "I think you have a cheek to ask."
"I didn't shoot him!" Ambrose burst out.
"What is the use of our bandying words?" she asked with cold scorn.
"Nothing you can say to me or I to you can help matters now."
"Good Lord, but women can be stony!" Ambrose cried involuntarily.
Colina took it as a compliment. Her eye brightened with a kind of pride. "I don't know what men are!" she cried. "Apparently you want to fight me with one hand and hold the other out in friendship. Only a man could think of such a thing."
Ambrose gazed at her sullenly. "You are right!" he said abruptly. "I am a fool!"
He left her with his head up, but inwardly beaten and sore. Somehow she had got the better of him, he could not have told how. He was conscious of having intended honestly. This cold parting was worse than the most violent of quarrels.
Simon Grampierre was waiting on a point of his land that commanded a view up and down river. Here he had set up a lookout bench like that at the fort. At sight of Ambrose he shouted from a full breast and hastened down to the waterside. He received him with both hands extended.
"You have come!" he cried. "It is well!"
Ambrose was surprised and a little disconcerted to see the grim old patriarch so moved.
"Where is your outfit?" Simon asked anxiously.
"Half a day behind me," said Ambrose. "It is safe."
"Have you flour?" asked Simon.
"Flour? No!" said Ambrose staring. "With twenty thousand bushels of wheat here?'"
"Have you got a little mill?"
Ambrose shook his head. "There was none in Prince George," he said. "I had to telegraph to the East. It had not arrived when I was ready to start, and I couldn't wait.
"I made arrangements for it to be forwarded; a friend of mine will bring it in. Martin Sellers promised to hold the last boat at the landing until October 1st for it."
"Wa!" said Simon, raising his hands. "That is bad! We need flour. We cannot wait a month for flour."
"What's the matter with the mankiller?"
"Broke," was the laconic answer. "We fix it. Every day it break again. Now it is all broke."
"Well, every family will have to grind for themselves," said Ambrose.
Simon shrugged. "We have a new trouble here."
"What is it?" Ambrose anxiously demanded.
"The Kakisa Indians," Simon said. "They are the biggest tribe around this post, and the best fur bringers. They live beside the Kakisa River, hundred fifty miles northwest.
"All summer they come in two or six or twenty and get a little flour, little sugar, tea, tobacco from me. They want to trade with you because Gaviller is hard to them like us. They are good hunters, but he keep them poor.
"In the late summer they come all together to get a fall outfit. They are here now. They want a hundred bags of flour. They come to me. I say I have got no flour. They go to the fort.
"Gaviller say; 'Ambrose Doane bought all the grain. You want to trade with him; all right. Make him sell you flour now.'
"They are here a week now—sixty teepees. I feed them what I can. It is not much. They are ongry. They begin to talk ugly."
Ambrose would not let Simon see that he was in any way dismayed by this situation. "Where are the Indians camped?" he asked coolly.
"Mile and a half down river. Across from the fort."
"Very well," said Ambrose. "Tell them at your house to keep watch here until Tole and Germain come with the raft. Six men should be ready to help them land and unload. You come with me in the dugout, and we will go down and talk to the Indians."
A gleam of approval shot from under Simon's beetle brows. "Good!" he said. "You go straight to a thing. I like that, me!"
Ambrose found the teepee village set up in the form of a square on a grassy flat beside the river. The quadrangle was filled with the usual confusion of loose horses, quarrelsome dogs, and screaming children.
Simon called his attention to a teepee in the middle of the northerly side distinguished by its size and by gaudy paintings on the canvas.
"Head man's lodge," he said. "Name Joey Providence Watusk."
"A good mouthful," said Ambrose.
"Joey for English, Providence for French, Watusk for Kakisa," explained
Simon.
He called a boy to him, and made him understand that they wished to see the head man.
"I send a message that we are coming," he explained to Ambrose. "He lak to be treated lak big man. It is no harm when you are trading with them."
Ambrose agreed. "So this what's-his-name fancies himself," he remarked while they waited.
"It is so," said Simon, grimly. "Thinks he is a king! All puff up with wind lak a bull frog. He mak' me mad with his foolishness. What would you? You cannot deal with the Kakisas only what he say. Because only Watusk speaks English. He does what he wants."
"And can nobody here speak Kakisa?" Ambrose asked.
"Nobody but Gordon Strange. It is hard talk on the tongue."
"What else about him?"
"Wa! I have told you," said Simon. "You will know him when you see!
All tam show off lak a cock-grouse in mating-time. He is not Kakisa.
He is a Cree who went with them long tam ago. Some say his father was
a black man."
"So!" said Ambrose. "And they stand for that?"
Simon shrugged. "The Kakisas a funny people. Not mix with the whites, not mix with other Indians lak Crees. They keep old ways. They not talk about their ways to other men. So nobody knows what they do at home." Simon lowered his voice. "Some say cannibals."
"Pooh!" said Ambrose, "that yarn is told about every strange tribe!"
"Maybe," said Simon, cautiously. "I do not know myself."
The Indian boy returning, signified that Joey Providence Watusk awaited them.