"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.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE PORTAGE
We sing the open road, good friends,
But here's a health to you.—WILLIAM GRIFFITH.