“He couldn’t help lettin’ him,” said Mowat, “for he didn’t know he was goin’ till he was gone.”
“You did not tell me that,” said the trader sharply.
“Well, perhaps I did not,” returned the interpreter, with an amiable smile. “It is not easy to remember all that an Indian says, an’ a good deal of it is not worth rememberin’.—Would you like me to set-to an’ clean up the store to-day, or let the men go on cuttin’ firewood?”
“Let them do whatever you think best, Tonal’,” replied MacSweenie, with a sigh, as he rose and re-entered his house, where he busied himself by planning and making elaborate designs for the new “fort,” or outpost, which he had been instructed to establish on the Ukon River. Afterwards he solaced himself with another pipe and another dip into the well-worn pages of the Penny Magazine.
Not long after the conversation just narrated, the boat arrived with the gentleman appointed to relieve MacSweenie of his charge on Great Bear Lake, and with the supplies for the contemplated new post.
Action is not usually allowed to halt in those wild regions. A few days sufficed to make over the charge, pack up the necessary goods, and arrange the lading of the expedition boat; and, soon after, MacSweenie with Donald Mowat as steersman, Bartong as guide and bowman, and eight men—some Orkney-men, some half-breeds—were rowing swiftly towards the Arctic shore.
Passing over the voyage in silence, we raise the curtain again on a warm day in summer, when animal life in the wild nor’-west is very lively, especially that portion of the life which resides in mosquitoes, sand-flies, and such-like tormentors of man and beast.
“We should arrive at the Ukon to-morrow, if my calculations are right—or nixt day, whatever,” said MacSweenie to his interpreter and steersman, as he sat smoking his pipe beside him.
“Bartong is of the same opeenion,” returned Mowat, “so between you we should come right. But Bartong is not quite sure about it himself, I think. At least he won’t say much.”
“In that respect the guide shows himself to be a wise man,” returned MacSweenie sententiously. “It iss only geese that blab out all they think to everybody that asks them questions.”