His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a fair day's travel. So he rose immediately from the breakfast table, when he saw Breyette and MacDonald standing by the canoe waiting for him. MacLeod halted him on the verandah steps to give a brusque last word of counsel.
"Look ye, Mr. Thompson," he said. "An honest bit of advice will do ye no harm. Ye're startin' out wi' a brave vision o' doin' a great good; of lettin' a flood o' light into dark places. Speakin' out my ain first-hand experience ye'll be fairly disappointed, because ye'll accomplish nought that's in yer mind. Ye'll have no trouble wi' the Crees. If ye remain among them long enough to mak' them understand yer talk an' objects they'll listen or not as they feel inclined. They're a simple, law-abidin' folk. But there's a white man at Lone Moose that ye'll do well to cultivate wi' discretion. He's a man o' positive character, and scholarly beyond what ye'd imagine. When ye meet him, dinna be sanctimonious. His philosophy'll no gibe wi' your religion, an' if ye attempt to impose a meenesterial attitude on him, it's no beyond possibility he'd flare up an' do ye bodily damage. I know him. If ye meet him man to man, ye'll find he'll meet ye half-way in everything but theology. He'll be the sort of friend ye'll need at Lone Moose. But dinna wave the Cloth in his face. For some reason that's to him like the proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam' awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a friendly neighbor at Lone Moose."
"I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one," Thompson replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do what good I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man."
"Nor will it," MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, "It a' depends, as ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o' doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along this way."
"I thank you, sir," Thompson smiled, "both for your hospitality, and your advice."
They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible phrases muttered under his breath.
Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.
At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed before the invisible altars of silence.
About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe sharply into the bank.
The level of the forest floor lifted ten feet above Thompson's head so that he could see nothing beyond the earthy rim save the tops of trees. He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate, corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter, humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool, and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly disabused his mind of that.