“And who the deevil will you be?” was the Factor’s greeting, when the fly-bitten and sorely battered representative of the church disentangled himself from the motley crew of the brigade and presented himself to the Factor’s gaze.
“Ah—I beg your pardon. Ah—Chambers is my name——”
“And what the deevil will be your business in these parts?” inquired the Factor, on the lookout for doubtful characters, rival traders, prying politicians, globe trotters and the like.
“Before I answer your polite inquiry, sir, may I ask who the devil are you?”
For quite ten portentous seconds the Factor glared at the little man whose steady blue eyes twinkled pleasantly at him out of a face brick red and horribly distorted by the assiduous attentions of the swarms of various kinds of flies, big and little, black, brown and grey, for the past six weeks. During those portentous ten seconds the Factor’s keen eyes had been taking stock of the little man before him, with swift appraising glances.
“God bless my soul!” said he at length. “And it is yourself will be the new minister. And I will be asking your pardon, for I can well see you are a man as well.”
So began a friendship that fifteen years of mutual knowledge and of common experience of the toils and perils of the wild North land welded into something that no earthly strain could break.
To John Chambers the wild, rude life brought never an hour of regret, never but one. That was the hour after the letter had gone south by the monthly mail, in which he had set free from her engagement the English girl with whom in earlier days and in happier surroundings he had planned his life. But the desperate loneliness was wiped clean from his memory by another hour of ecstatic and delirious joy which followed the incoming of the English mail some three months later. For that mail brought him a letter palpitating with indignant scorn of him and his high-flown and altogether idiotic purpose of self-immolation. “What about me, you silly boy?” inquired the writer. “Are you the only person in the world? Now be it known unto you that on or about the thirty-first of March—for I believe your execrable roads break up in the later spring, and I cannot and will not brook delay—there will be in Edmonton a young female person,” here followed a description which the reader of the letter refused to recognise, “looking for convoy and a convoyer to the wild North land. If the convoyer happen to be a little man—you know you are only five feet, eight and three-quarters inches though you protest five feet nine—red headed and much freckled of face and with dear, bold, blue eyes, so much the better,” at the reading of which the said convoyer flung the letter high, kicked over his stool, seized his stolid and loyal Indian factotum, Thomas by name, and whirled him into a mad Kai-yai! Hai-yai! war dance.
Together for more than a dozen years they fought the good fight against ignorance, dirt, disease and all the other varieties of humanity’s ills in which “the world, the flesh and the devil” manifest themselves and with varying success winning with other rewards the trust, the reverence, the love of Indian, half-breed and white man alike and awakening in all whose love they won the more or less persistent desire to emulate their deeds and attain their likeness, a truly notable achievement.
The rescue of the Indian woman and her family was to the missionary a bit of his ordinary day’s work, as was the daily ministering to the sick woman, without questioning and without suspicion, such help for body and soul as she required. The woman’s need was great, and for these good Samaritans this established a sufficient claim upon the full wealth of their resources, with never a suggestion or sense of burden. Indeed, within the missionary’s home the coming of the little blind girl was as the visit of an angel unawares. It added not a little to the cares of the missionary’s wife that she was not infrequently called upon to settle furious strife between her sturdy young sons as to their rights and privileges in the service of the little maid. Within a week the whole family had made for themselves an assured place in the little community about the Post. The only cloud upon the horizon of their community life was the only too obvious fact that the Indian woman was travelling her last trail and that the camp ground was in sight.