“After the city it’s a relief to let them out,” he said. “I did this kind of thing for a living once. The mine was way back in the bush, leagues from anywhere, and I hired out as special store and despatch carrier. There was red-hot trouble unless I got through on time when the mail came in.”
He drove the team furiously at an unguarded log bridge which was barely wide enough to let the wheels pass.
“It’s quite a way to the lake yet, and we want to make the camp before it’s dark,” he explained. “Know anything about sailing a boat?”
Weston said that he did, and Stirling nodded.
“That’s good,” he observed somewhat dryly, “so does the major man.”
Weston ventured to smile at this, and once more his employer’s eyes twinkled.
“Some of you people from the old country are quite hard to amuse; though I’m open to admit that we have a few of the same kind on this side,” he said. “My daughter seemed to fancy they wouldn’t find a lake camp quite right without a boat, so I sent along and bought one at Toronto. Had her put on a flat car, and hired half the teams in the district to haul her to the lake. Now, I guess there are men in this country who, if they wanted a boat, would just take an ax and whipsaw and build one out of the woods.”
Weston laughed. He was commencing to understand the man better, for he had met other men of Stirling’s description in Canada. As a matter of fact, they are rather common in the Dominion, men who have had very little bestowed on them beyond the inestimable faculty of getting what they want at the cost of grim self-denial and tireless labor. Still, as it was in Stirling’s case, some of them retain a whimsical toleration for those of weaker fiber.
“It’s a bush camp?” Weston asked.
Stirling smiled good-humoredly.