He lashed his dogs on again, while Pat cracked his whip and the party went on. Mrs. Kilrea was looking rather horrified, thought Sophy McGurn. Her turn was coming at last. There would be a scene that would repay her for her trouble, she gleefully decided.
As they went on at a steady pace, over a road which none but horses inured to lumbering could have followed without breaking a leg or getting hopelessly stalled in deep snow, Philippe hurried over to the station and got Joe Follansbee to send a telegram. The young man would have given a good deal to have made one of the party but his official duties detained him.
“Who wants a doctor?” he asked, curiously.
“Hugo,” answered Papineau, impatiently. “You don’t h’ask so moch question, you fellar. Jus’ telegraph quick now an’ h’ask for answer ven dat docteur he come, you ’ear me?”
Joe looked at the Frenchman, intending to resent his sharp orders, but thought better of it. The small, square-built, wide-shouldered man was not one to be trifled with. He was known as a calm, cool sort of a chap with little sense of humor, and the youth reflected that, in this neck of the woods, it was best not to trifle with men who were apt to end a quarrel by fighting over an acre of ground and mauling 214 one another until one or both parties were utterly unrecognizable, even to their best friends.
“Come back in about an hour and I expect I’ll have an answer,” he told the Frenchman, quite meekly.
The latter went into McGurn’s store and purchased some tobacco and a few needed groceries. Suddenly he bethought himself of Stefan.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed. “Heem ought know right avay, sure.”
He drove his team around to Stefan’s smithy but failed to find him. At the house Mrs. Olsen told him that her husband had gone out a half an hour ago. He would probably be at Olaf Jonson’s, at the other end of the village. Thither drove Philippe and found his man.