The Peace of Roaring River

“Who go an’ shoot you?” she asked angrily. “I see de ’ole in de coat an’ de sweater. I know some one shoot. Vat for he shoot?”

“Well, it was just a silly little accident with a pistol,” he acknowledged with much embarrassment. “It–it won’t be anything after it’s washed off. It feels all right enough and I wish you wouldn’t bother about it. I’ll attend to it after I get home. It–it’s stopped hurting now.”

But he was compelled to submit to the washing of his injury and to the application of some sort of a dressing which Mrs. Papineau appeared to put on rather skilfully. Wounds of all sorts are but too common in the wilderness, unfortunately, and doctors few and far between. The children had crowded around him, looking in awe, and their mother kept ordering them away. Madge had risen from her seat and looked at the injury, horrified and trembling. The man had never said a word when that bullet had found its billet in his shoulder, and yet it must have hurt him dreadfully. He–he might have been killed, owing to her clumsiness, she reflected in consternation. And now he said nothing to explain how it had happened–he actually seemed to be trying to shield her.

“I–I’m dreadfully sorry,” said the girl, impulsively. “It–it was all my fault, because I let the revolver fall and it went off. But I didn’t know he was hurt. He never told me, and he insisted on pulling at that sled, with his dog.”

“Yes, it was just a little accident,” admitted Hugo, “and we’re making altogether too much fuss about it. It really doesn’t amount to anything, Miss Nelson, and it feels splendidly now. I’m ever so much obliged to you, Mrs. Papineau. And so I’ll say good-night. I hope you’ll rest well, Miss Nelson. I’ll be here in good time to-morrow, never fear.”

He shook hands with the housewife, who took care to wipe her own upon her apron in preparation for the ceremony. To the children he bade a comprehensive farewell, after which he turned again to Madge, advanced a step and then hesitated. He had doubtless meant to shake hands with her also but, at the last moment, probably feared a rebuff. At any rate he nodded, bringing a smile to his features, and opened the door into the bitter cold. After he had put on his snowshoes again and hitched up Maigan to the toboggan he disappeared into the darkness. For an instant Madge listened, but she heard no sound. Everything was still outside, but for the rare crackings of ice and timber. Seeking her chair again she leaned forward now with her elbows resting on her knees and her face held in the hollow of her hands. At this time a little child came to her and touched her arm. She looked at it. The little girl had long straight black hair, great beady eyes and the prettiest mouth imaginable. The cheeks were like red apples. She lifted the little thing to her knees and the child nestled against her bosom. Madge now looked at the woman, busily engaged with her few pots and pans, and a feeling of envy came to her, a longing for the sweet and kindly motherhood that was becoming a fierce craving for that beautiful peace which appeared to have become so firmly established in these little houses of the frozen wilds. She had elsewhere seen love of children, little ones petted and made much of, husbands coming home to a cheery welcome, but it had not seemed the same. The women so often seemed weary, pale, and worked beyond their strength. Most of them became querulous at times, apt to speak loudly of intolerable wrongs or of ill-doings of neighbors across the dark hallways. Here it looked as if quiet order, cheerful obedience, willingness on the part of all, were ingrained in the people. Indeed, it was ever so different.

By this time the rough table was set and Mrs. Papineau deplored the fact that Hugo had not consented to remain.

“Heem is ’urted more as vat he tink,” she confided to the girl. “To-morrow somebody go to de leetle shack an’ fin’ ’ow he is. One dog heem not much nurse, eh?”

These words made Madge feel uncomfortable. Once or twice the idea had come to her that such a man ought to be punished, that he should be made to suffer, that he deserved anything that could make him realize how heinous his conduct had been. But now she had a vague impression that she was sorry for him, that it was on her account that he had refused to stay and had gone out at once in the gathering darkness that had come so swiftly. But in spite of these thoughts and of all the emotions she had undergone Madge felt again the besetting pangs of fierce hunger. The slices of moose-meat sizzling in the pan filled the place with appetizing odor. The mother placed her brood at the long table but helped her guest first, and plentifully. How these people ate and expected others to eat! Never could they have heard of the scanty meals of working girls, of the cups of blue milk, of bitter tea, or of the little rolls and bits of meat purchased at so-called delicatessen stores. The girl ate hungrily and the meal was soon over, but as soon as it was finished the terrible weariness came upon her again and she was thankful to lie down upon a hard mattress of ticking filled with the aromatic twigs of balsam fir, beneath heavy blankets and a wonderful robe of hareskins.

Before she could fall asleep, however, the experiences of her crowded day passed weirdly before her eyes; yet her despair seemed to be contending with a strange feeling that was certainly not hope. It was perhaps merely a weak acquiescence to conditions that her immense fatigue and wearied brain made her accept, dully, stupidly, since she had lost all power of resistance. It was something like the enforced peace of a wounded thing that has just been able to crawl back into its burrow and has found the rest its body craves for.

In the midst of so large a family one could not aspire to the lone possession of a bed. The little girl she had held in her lap had been placed beside her, not without many apologies from Mrs. Papineau. In the darkness she could feel the little warm body nestling against her, and hear the soft and regular breathing. It was comforting since it brought a feeling that the little one protected her, in some strange way, and was leading her in paths of darkness with a little warm hand and a heart that was unafraid and confident of the morrow’s shining sun. Very soon there came a restless sleep which at first was filled with uncanny visions, from which she awakened once or twice in fear. But at last came entire surcease from suffering as the brain that had been overwrought ceased to toil.

In the meanwhile Hugo had slowly made his way back to his shack. If his arm hurt he had now little consciousness of it. The thing that disturbed him most was that girl’s unshakable belief in his villainy. Was she really insane? He had had no opportunity to communicate that thought to Mrs. Papineau. But then, after her arrival, she had seemed so absolutely rational in all that she had said and done that the idea had, for the time being, passed away from his mind. And what if, at least in part, she had spoken the truth? What if some amazing distortion of reality had truly and honestly given her these beliefs, through evidence that must be all against him? The words she had spoken before starting for the Papineaus’, and the further ones uttered on the tote-road, while he rested, held a drama so poignant that it struck a chill to his heart. She might, after all, have been speaking the truth as she had been misled into believing it! But then there must be some amazing conspiracy at work, some foul doings whose objects utterly escaped him and which left him staring at the little lamp now burning on his table, as if it might perhaps have revealed some key to the amazing problem.

Was it possible that a weak and slender woman could actually be compelled to carry on a fight against hunger and illness, with never a friend on earth, until she was finally so beaten down to the ground that her soul cried in agony for relief? According to her she had seized upon the only resource open to her, in which there was but a dim outlook towards safety. Then she had found herself the victim of a hellish jest, apparently, or of a conspiracy so base that one sickened at the mere thought of it. There was no doubt that those big eyes of the suffering woman haunted the man, while the accents of her despair still rang in his ears and distressed him. The expression of the crucified had been on that pale face of hers, which had reddened so deeply when a sense of shame had overwhelmed her. It was as if he had beheld a drowning woman and been utterly prevented from extending a saving hand to her. More strongly he began to feel that some one had surely sinned against that woman, and feelings of vengefulness, none the less bitter for all their vagueness, began to obsess him.

Once, on his way back from Papineau’s, Maigan had pressed close to him, as if for safety. From the great hardwood ridges of his right he had heard a long and familiar sound. It was the one the Frenchwoman had mentioned, the fitful baying of wolves on the track of a deer. Picturing to himself the overtaking and pulling down of the victim, he shivered, hardened though he was to the unending tragedies of the wilderness, and hurried along faster, although he knew he stood in no danger.

When he had reached his shack by the Roaring River he had entered it and lighted the small lamp. It chanced to be the last match in his pocket that he used for the purpose. There was no need to open the big package that stood on a shelf, since he remembered having left two or three small boxes in his hunting bag. He went over to the corner where he had left it and bent over, somewhat painfully. As he lifted it from the floor he saw an envelope and picked it up. It was addressed to him. Tearing it open he stared at the words “Starting this evening. Please have some one meet me. Madge Nelson.”

With clenched fist he struck the table a blow that startled Maigan, who barked, leaping up to his feet.

“It’s all right, boy,” said his master. “Men are pretty big fools, excepting when they’re nothing but infernal cowards. I tell you, boy, some one will have to pay heavily for this. Good Lord! Who would have thought of such a thing? I–I think I must be getting crazy! But no–she’s over there at Papineau’s, and some one wrote to her, and everything she said was the plain truth, as she understood it. Great Heavens! It’s no wonder she looked at me as if I’d been the dirt under her feet. That thing’s got to be straightened out, somehow, but first I must see Stefan, of course.”

For a moment a wild idea came to him of going over to Carcajou in the darkness. Such an undertaking was by no means particularly difficult for a strong man, who knew the way, but suddenly he realized that he was played out and would never reach his destination that night. This irked his soul, unbearably, until he had recourse to his old briar pipe. In spite of the fact that his arm was beginning to hurt him badly he sat near the stove, where he had kindled a fire again, thinking hard. He was racking his brain to seek some motive that could have impelled any one he knew to play such a frightful joke. One after another he named every man he had ever known or even merely met in Carcajou and the surrounding, sparsely settled country. But they were nearly all friends of his, he knew, or at least had no reason to bear him ill-will. There was one chap he had had quite a scrap with one day, over a dog-fight in which the man had urged his animal first and then kicked Maigan when he saw his brute having by far the worst of it. But soon afterwards they had shaken hands and the matter had been forgotten. Besides, the fellow was now working in Sudbury, far east down the line. No, that wasn’t a trail worth following. The more he thought the matter over the more utterly mysterious it seemed to become. But of one thing he was determined. He was going to move heaven and earth to get at the bottom of all this, and when he found out who was responsible the fur would fly.

It was perhaps fortunate for her that the idea of the red-headed girl in old McGurn’s store never entered his head for a moment. She had always been friendly, perhaps even a little forward in her attentions to him, though he had always paid her rather scant notice. He had never been more than decently civil to her.

When he sought his bunk, an hour or two later, a long time elapsed before he could fall asleep. It seemed to him that his head throbbed a good deal, and that shoulder was growing mightily uncomfortable. He hoped it would be better in the morning. Finally he fell asleep, restlessly. Upon the floor, stretched out upon an old deerskin close to the stove, Maigan was sleeping more profoundly, though now and then he whined and sighed in his slumber, perhaps dreaming of hares and porcupines. A cricket ensconced beneath the flat stones under the stove began to chirp, shrilly. Outside a big-horned owl was hooting, dismally, while the big falls continued to roar out their eternal song. And thus the long night wore out till a flaming crimson and copper dawn came up, with flashing rays that stabbed the great rolling clouds while the trees kept on cracking in the intense frost and the ice in the big pool churned and groaned under the torment of waters seeking to burst their shackles.

CHAPTER VII

Carcajou Is Shocked

After Stefan had started away with Madge, Miss Sophy McGurn, who had been on the watch, was delighted to see Mrs. Olsen coming to the store. She greeted her customer more pleasantly than ever and served her with a bag of beans, two spools of black thread and a pound of the best oleo-butter. The older woman was nothing loath to talk, and confirmed the girl’s suspicion that Stefan had taken that young woman to Hugo’s. Mrs. Olsen insisted on the fact that her visitor was a real pretty girl, though awfully thin and looking as if a breath would blow her over. She also commented on the lack of suitable clothing for such dreadful weather, and on the utter ignorance Madge seemed to display of anything connected with Carcajou or, in fact, any part of Ontario. When questioned, cautiously, she admitted that she knew no reason whatever for the girl’s coming, but she hastened to assert that Stefan had said it was all right, which settled the question, and, with her rather waddling gait, started off for her house again.

As soon as Stefan returned Sophy saw that he still had a woman on his toboggan. She hurried to meet him and was grievously disappointed when she found out it was Mrs. Carew. But she boldly went up to Stefan.

“Hello! Stefan!” she said. “Where did you leave your passenger of this morning?”

“Hello! Sophy!” he answered, placidly. “I leaf de yong leddy vhere she ban going, I tank.”

“She isn’t coming back to-night?”

“Mebbe yes, mebbe no,” he answered, grabbing Mrs. Carew’s bag and hurrying with her into the station, for the engine’s whistle announced that he had made the journey with little or no time to spare.

Sophy made her way back to the store, meeting Mrs. Kilrea on her way. To this lady she confided that a young woman had gone up to Hugo Ennis’ shack and had not returned. Wasn’t it queer? And Mrs. Olsen had said that she wasn’t Hugo’s wife or sister. Wasn’t it funny? But of course she supposed it was all right.

Mrs. Kilrea called on old Mrs. Follansbee, who told Mrs. McIntosh. This lady was a Cree Indian that had become more or less civilized. The white women would speak to her on account of her husband Aleck, who was really a very nice man. At any rate all the ladies of Carcajou were soon aware of the unusual happening, scenting strange news and perhaps even a bit of scandal.

Big Stefan, having urged his team to their utmost, now fed them carefully and locked them up in his shed, a local habit providing against bloody fights that were objected to not so much on moral principle as because these contests often resulted in the disabling of valuable animals. It also prevented incursions among the few sheep of the neighborhood or long hunts in which dogs indulged by themselves, returning with sore feet and utterly unable to move for a day or two. The animals, before falling asleep, were biting off the crackling icicles that had formed in the hair growing between their padded toes. The journey had not exhausted them in the slightest and on the morrow they would be perfectly fit for further travel, if need be.

Neither was Stefan weary. After supper he quietly strolled over to the store where some of Carcajou’s choicest spirits were gathered, since the village boasted no saloon. Here the news was discussed, as spread out by the few who got a daily or weekly paper from Ottawa or Sudbury, or gathered in the immediate neighborhood by the local gossips.

“Hello, Stefan!” exclaimed Miles Parker, who was supposed to watch over the sawmill and see that the machinery didn’t suffer too much during the long period of disuse. “How did ye find the travelin’ to-day? See ye didn’t manage ter freeze them whiskers off’n yer face, did ye?”

“Dey’re yoost vhere dey belongs, I tank,” answered Stefan, quietly. “Miss Sophy, if you haf time I take two plugs Lumberman’s Joy terbacker.”

“Stefan he’s so all-fired big he got to keep a chew on each side of his face,” explained Pat Kilrea, a first-rate mechanic who was then busy with the construction of a little steamer that was to help tow down to the mill some big booms of logs, as soon as the lake opened. “He ain’t able to get no satisfaction except from double action.”

At this specimen of local wit and humor the others grinned but Stefan remained quite unmoved. Miss Sophy waited on him, scanning his face, eager to ask more questions, while she feared to say a word. It may have been her conscience which made her uneasy. Of course she believed that the precautions she had taken rendered it impossible for any one to accuse her, or at any rate to prove anything. Still, a certain anxiety remained, which she was unable to restrain. She would have given a good deal to know what had taken place. Never had she doubted that the scene would occur right there at the station in Carcajou. That telegram had badly upset her plans, apparently. And then it was queer that Hugo had not come down after receiving it, if only to try to find out what it meant. Finally, one of the men, having none of her reasons for keeping still, came forth with a direct question.

“I reckon you got out to Roarin’ Falls all safe with that there pooty gal, didn’t ye?” he asked.

It was Joe Follansbee who had sought this information, being only too eager to hint at something wrong on the part of a man he had long deemed a rival. At his words, however, Sophy sniffed and turned up her nose.

“I didn’t see anything very pretty about her,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t see as how she was so real awful pretty,” Joe hastened to observe. “She ain’t the style I admire, by no manner of means.”

This strategic withdrawal was destined to meet with entire failure, however. Sophy turned to the boxes of plug that were stored on the shelves and pretended to busy herself with their order and symmetry. But she was again listening, eagerly.

“What d’ye say, Stefan?” joined Pat Kilrea. “How’d she stand the trip? Did ye see if her nose was still on her face when ye got there?”

“I tank so,” opened Stefan, gravely, “but it wouldn’t matter so much vith de leddy. Maybe she ain’t so much use for it like you haf for yours, to stick into oder people’s pusinesses.”

Stefan continued to shave off curly bits from his plug, while the laughter turned against the engineer. Carcajou, like a good many other places, commonly favored the top-dog when it came to betting. The answering grin in Pat’s face was a rather sour one. If any other man had spoken to him thus there might have been a lively fight, but no one in Carcajou, and a good many miles around it, cared to engage in fisticuffs with the Swede. A story was current of how he had once manhandled four drunken lumberjacks, in spite of peavies and sticks of cordwood.

“Well, you’re getting to be a good deal of a lady’s man, Stefan,” said Aleck McIntosh, a fellow who was supposed to be a scion of Scottish nobility receiving remittances from his country. The most evident part of his income, however, appeared to be contributed by his Cree wife, who took in the little washing Carcajou indulged in and made the finest moccasins in Ontario. “Going off with one and coming back with another. I dare say you prefer carrying females to lugging the mails around.”

“Mebbe I likes it better but it’s more hard on dem togs,” asserted Stefan, judicially.

“And–and ye left her at Hugo’s shack, did ye?” ventured Pat again, whereat Stefan nodded in assent and lighted his pipe.

“Did she say she was anyways related to him? His sister or something like that?” persisted the engineer.

“Well, I tank she say somethin’ about bein’ his grandmother,” retorted Stefan, “but I can tell you something, Pat. If you vant so much know all about it vhy you not put on your snowshoes an’ tak’ a run down there. It ban a real nice little valk.”

As Pat Kilrea suffered from the handicap of having been born with a club-foot, which didn’t prevent him from being an excellent man with machinery but made walking rather burdensome for him, the others guffawed again while the Swede opened the door and walked off, the crusted snow crackling under his big feet.

“In course it’s none of my business, like enough,” said Pat, virtuously, as he scratched a match on his trousers’ leg, “but such goings on don’t seem right, nohow. ’Tain’t right an’ proper, because it gives a bad example. I’ve knowed folks rid on a rail or even tarred and feathered for the like of that.”

Carcajou’s sterling sense of propriety, as represented by half a dozen male gossips, immediately agreed with him. The matter, they decided, should be looked into.

“And–and what d’ye think about it, Miss Sophy?” asked Joe, desirous of opening conversation again with the young woman and redeeming himself.

“Things like that is beneath me to talk about,” she asserted, coldly. “And what’s more, I don’t care to hear about ’em. It–it’s time ye got back to the depot, Joe Follansbee and I’m goin’ to close up anyways and give ye all a chance to burn your own oil.”

At this delicate invitation to vacate the premises the men rose and trooped out. Once outside, however, they felt compelled in spite of the bitter cold to comment a little further on the situation.

Sophy McGurn put up the large iron bar that was used to secure the front door, when the store was closed. Then she put some papers away in the safe under the counter and went up to the family sitting room, where her mother was knitting and her father, with an open paper on his lap and his spectacles pushed up over his forehead, was fast asleep in a big and highly varnished oaken rocker trimmed with scarlet plush.

“I’m goin’ to bed,” she announced; “good-night.”

The old gentleman awoke with a start and the mother, looking over her glasses, bade her good-night and sweet dreams, according to a long-established formula.

“Don’t know what’s the matter with Sophy, she’s that restless an’ nervous,” said her mother.

“She always was, fur’s I know,” answered McGurn. “If she’s gettin’ the complaint worse she must be sickenin’ for something.”

The subject of these remarks, once in her room, was in no hurry to woo the slumber she had expressed a desire for. In her mind anxiety was battling with anger and disappointment. Whether or not she really loved Ennis, or had turned to him merely because his general ways and appearance showed him to be a man of some breeding, with education superior to the usual standard of Carcajou, such as she would have been glad to marry, at any rate her brow narrowed, her lips closed into a thin straight line and her hands were clenched tight. What she had done would probably utterly prevent any renewal of the friendship she had tried to establish, since Hugo would perhaps be run out of the place. Moreover, that girl was really very pretty, in spite of what she had said downstairs, and this stranger was now over there. Sophy had expected to see her return with Stefan, perhaps also with Hugo, and the girl’s face would have shown marks of tears, and Hugo would have been in a towering rage, and gradually the people of Carcajou would have been made aware, somehow, of what had happened, and the settler of Roaring Falls would be the butt of laughter, if not of scurrilous remarks. But now the dark night had come and Carcajou was very still under the starlight.