The Peace of Roaring River

by George Van Schaick

Doubts

It was with a violent start that Hugo awoke, feeling chilled to the bone in spite of his heavy blankets. His injured shoulder was so stiff that for some minutes he was scarcely able to move it. He got out of his bunk, his whole frame shaking with the cold, and managed to kindle a fire in the stove. But presently he felt warm again, rather unaccountably warm, in fact, and his face grew quite red. Curiously enough, for a man with the vast appetite of hard workers in cold regions, he did not at all feel inclined to eat. Yet he prepared some food, according to custom, and sat before a tin pint dipper of strong hot tea. This he managed to swallow, with some approach to comfort, but when he tried to eat the first few mouthfuls satiated him and he pushed the remainder away.

He had opened the door to let Maigan go out, and when the dog returned after a good roll in the snow Hugo swept his breakfast of 166 rolled oats and bread into a pan and fed it to his companion.

“You’re certainly not going hungry because my own grub doesn’t taste right, old boy,” he commented.

Men of the wilderness learn to speak to their dogs, or even to think out aloud, when no living thing chances to be near. It answers to the inherited need of speech, to an instinct so long inbred in man that he must needs, at times, hear the sound of a voice, even if it be but his own, or go crazy.

Maigan wagged his tail and gobbled up the food. When he saw his master fastening on his snowshoes he barked loudly. Hugo allowed him to romp about for a few minutes before hitching him up to the toboggan.

A few minutes later they were on their way to Papineau’s. An attempt to smoke his pipe was immediately abandoned by the young man. For some reason it tasted wretchedly. While the start was made at a good pace little more than a couple of hundred yards had been covered before Hugo realized that he was going ever so slowly. Maigan was stopping all the time and waiting for him. What on earth was the matter? He judged that the poor night’s sleep had had some ill effect upon him. It couldn’t be his shoulder. Certainly 167 not! The pain in it was no more than any chap could bear, even if he had to make a wry face over it at times. He wondered whether anything he had eaten on the previous day could have disagreed with him. He decided that it probably was some canned meat he had bought at McGurn’s. That explained the thing quite satisfactorily to him. Anyway, it was bound to wear off soon. Such things always did. With this cheering thought he sought to lengthen his stride again, but a moment later he was dragging himself along, dully, wondering what was the matter with him.

He was anxious to see Madge again. He must tell her of the finding of her message. Surely he would be able to talk to her, calmly and quietly, and to obtain from her all that she knew of this strange jumble of mysteries. He hoped that she had been able to rest, that he would find her less weary and overwrought. This girl had been badly treated, sinned against most grievously. If there was anything he could do he would offer his services eagerly.

“I expect she’ll want to turn right back to Carcajou,” he told himself. “I wish I were feeling more fit for the journey. If Papineau is home from his trapping he will help me 168 out. But I’ll feel all right soon. This is bound to pass off. If I get too tired when I reach Carcajou, Stefan will put me up for the night. It––it seems a pity that girl will have to go.”

He trudged along behind the toboggan. He could have ridden on it, most of the way, but wanted to keep Maigan fresh for the trip to Carcajou, for the trunk would have to go also. The light sled was nothing for the dog to pull, of course, and sometimes he dashed ahead so that his pace became too great for his master. Then he would stop and sit down in his traces, to wait until he was overtaken. The road was unaccountably long, that morning, but at last they came in sight of the Papineau homestead and the cleared land upon which some crops of oats and potatoes had already been raised, amid the short stumps of the half-cleared land. In summer the river ran very slowly at this place, and big trout were ever making rings on the surface which they broke in their dashes after all sorts of flies and beetles. On the land opposite, where there had once been a forest fire, the red weeds that follow conflagrations grew strong and rank in the summer time and little saplings sprouted up among the charred and wrecked trunks of the brulé. But at this time it all looked very bleak and desolate.