AT THE SETTLEMENT
On the fourth day thereafter the long tedium of existence in the settlement began to be broken in earnest. Before they could digest the flavour of one event, something else happened. In the afternoon word came down to Stiffy and Mahooley that the bishop had arrived at the French Mission, bringing the sister of the company trader's wife under his care.
Likewise the Indian agent and the doctor had come to the police post. The whole party had arrived on horseback from the Tepiskow Lake district, where they had visited the Indians. Their boat was held up down the lake by adverse winds.
Before Stiffy and Mahooley had a chance to see any of these arrivals or hear their news, quite an imposing caravan hove in view across the river from the store, and shouted lustily for the ferry.
There were four wagons, each drawn by a good team, beside half a dozen loose horses. The horses were in condition, the wagons well laden. The entire outfit had a well-to-do air that earned the traders' respect even from across the river. Of the four men, one carried his arm in a sling.
Stiffy and Mahooley ferried them across team by team in the scow they kept for the purpose. The four hardy and muscular travellers were men according to the traders' understanding. They used the same scornful, jocular, profane tongue. Their very names were a recommendation: Big Jack Skinner, Black Shand Fraser, Husky Marr, and Young Joe Hagland, the ex-pugilist.
After the horses had been turned out to graze, they all gathered in the store for a gossip. The newcomers talked freely about their journey in, and its difficulties, avoiding only a certain period of their stay at Nine-Mile Point, and touching very briefly on their meeting with the Bishop. Something sore was hidden here.
When the bell rang for supper they trooped across the road. The kitchen in reality consisted of a mess-room downstairs with a dormitory overhead; the actual kitchen was in a lean-to behind. When the six men had seated themselves at the long trestle covered with oilcloth, the cook entered with a steaming bowl of rice.
Now, the cook had observed the new arrivals from the kitchen window, and had hardened himself for the meeting, but the travellers were unprepared. They stared at him, scowling. An odd silence fell on the table.
Mahooley looked curiously from one to another. "Do you know him?" he demanded.