Now, the trouble about having a man near is that he is always picking up your things and so making you nervous. I prefer to wait till ready to move before regaining my handkerchief, my back-comb, my hand satchel and my scarf. This is why I pretend not to notice the iron-built person with strong white teeth who has seated himself nearby and who is watching a chance to restore something. He is what the Irish call "bold-like." I know what he is thinking about and understand his motive perfectly. He wants to know if I have ever been north before. He is the thirteenth man so to wonder. I am, however, severely purposed not to tell him.
There is a belief, common in the cities, that no questions are asked in the bush; that people may travel for days together without divulging ends. Here is a good place to spend an arrow on this widely droll deception. An uninquisitive man is as hard to find here as an unsociable cockerel. Goodness Divine! the chief use of a stranger in the woods is to keep the denizens of it from dying from ennui and lack of news. They would consider it the essence of uncordiality not to show an interest in the affairs of a stranger, especially as the stranger might possibly have succeeded in smuggling a flash [Transcriber's note: flask?] or two past the police on the prohibition line.
This bush-ranger catches me off my guard when a bulldog fly takes a piece out of my ear. It is his opportunity to produce a vial of collodion for the wound. As he pulls out the cork and finds a match to dip in the mixture, he tells me that the bulldog fly is no sweet angel and equal to ten thousand times its weight in prize-fighters—a statement which I do not think it fit to disbelieve. The collodion having eased the hurt this impudent gentleman draws up his chair and talks with an immense volubility concerning the species, genera, and habits of these flies till one might take him for a professor of entomology.
The long winter nights in this province enable the denizens of it to become well posted in any subject which they may elect to pursue. This was how the late Bishop Bompas, who lived here for over half a century, became the first authority in the world on Syriac, so that the savants of Europe were wont to refer their mooted points to this lonely old prelate for decision, waiting a year, or often longer, for the answer which was carried by Indians for hundreds of miles down the out trail to Edmonton. My new friend declares that, like Montaigne, the bulldog fly has only one virtue and that this one got in by stealth.
"Yes?" say I, with a rising reflection which delicately hints at an answer.
He does not seem to hear me, this cold-chilled, care-hardened northerner, and goes on stuffing his pipe with exit-plug and searching through pocket after pocket for a match as if my remark were of no concernment. He is trying to pretend he has known me for a long time, and that I was the one who took the initiative in this acquaintanceship. This is why I became dumb, and why he repeats his statement. Still I am wordless, whereupon he vouchsafes, with an exasperating drawl, that the fly's one virtue lies in the fact that it prefers picturesque food which is very eatable.
Our parliament should legislate against the cunning arts of these designing northerners, against which no town-bred woman may hope to set up an adequate defence, however perfect may be her poise, or fertile and calculating her brain.
This person tells me that all a man needs to succeed in the North-West Provinces is to keep his head hard and his pores open—a recipe, no doubt, equally applicable in the more southerly regions, and one which I am supposed to deduct he, himself, has proven with very happy success.
He has been south getting people to come to the Peace River Country, the new and unpossessed empire where there are twenty-two hours of daylight and which will, one day, be belted by a string of cities and gridironed by a score of railways. It is good to listen to this fellow talk, for, in his calculations lineal or intellectual, he can measure nothing less than a mile. He is typical of the great and splendid body of Canadian and English pioneers who have absolutely no truck with pessimism. These men and women are opening up this empire and they are under no misapprehensions concerning it. They are people with a vision, which vision they are willing to endorse with the best years of their lives.
Kitemakis, the poor one, who intends writing the book about the white folk, has drawn near to us and is listening to our talk. We invite her to join us and, after awhile, she tells us curious legends of the north in which fear does many times more prevail than love; these, and old superstitions which catch your fancy sharply and fresh the dusty dryness of your spirit.