And so at last, after they had gone aboard, it became necessary to part with Alex in turn. Rob called his friends apart for a little whispered conversation. After a time they all went up to Alex carrying certain articles in their hands.
“If you please, Alex,” said Rob, “we want to give your children some little things we don’t need any more ourselves. Here’s our pocket-knives, and some handkerchiefs, and what toffy John has left, and a few little things. Please take them to your boys, and to the girls, if they’ll have them, and say we want to come and see them some time.”
“That’s very nice,” said Alex. “I thank you very much.”
He shook each of them by the hand quietly, and then, dropping lightly into the Jaybird as she lay alongside, paddled off steadily into the darkness, with Indian dignity now, saying no further word of farewell.
XXXII
LEAVING THE TRAIL
Continually there was something new for the travelers, even after they had finished their steamboat journey across the lake on the second day. Now they were passing down through the deep and crooked little river which connects Slave Lake with the Athabasca River. They made what is known as the Mirror Landing portage in a York boat which happened to be above the rapids of the Little Slave River, where a wagon portage usually is made of some fifteen or sixteen miles. Here on the Athabasca they found yet another steamboat lying alongshore, and waiting for the royal mails from Peace River Landing.
This steamer, the North Star, in common with that plying on Little Slave Lake, they discovered to be owned by a transportation company doing considerable business in carrying settlers and settlers’ supplies into that upper country. Indeed, they found the owner of the boat, a stalwart and kindly man, himself formerly a trader among the Indians, and now a prominent official in the Dominion government, ready to accompany them as far as Athabasca Landing, and eager to talk further with Mr. Wilcox regarding coming development of the country which Moise had called the Land of Plenty.