The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

over from Christmas, for their first meal, and that night beat David at seven games of cribbage in a row. He wasn't married, he said; didn't even have an Indian woman. Hated women. If it wasn't for breeding a future generation of trappers he would not care if they all died. No good. Positively no good. Always making trouble, more or less. That's why, a long time ago, there was a fort at Chippewyan--sort of blockhouse that still stood there. Two men, of two different tribes, wanted same woman; quarrelled; fought; one got his blamed head busted; tribes took it up; raised hell for a time--all over that rag of a woman! Terrible creatures, women were. He emphasized his belief in short, biting snatches of words, as though afraid of wearing out his breath or his vocabulary or both. Maybe his teeth had something to do with it. Where the two were missing he carried the stem of his pipe, and when he talked the stem clicked, like a Castanet.
David had come at a propitious moment--a "most propichus moment," Hatchett told him. He had done splendidly that winter. His bargains with the Indians had been sharp and exceedingly profitable for the Company and as soon as he got his furs off to Fort McMurray on their way to Edmonton he was going on a long journey of inspection, which was his reward for duty well performed. His fur barges were ready. All they were waiting for was the breaking up of the ice, when the barges would start up the Athabasca, which meant _south_; while he, in his big war canoe, would head up the Peace, which meant _west_. He was going as far as Hudson's Hope, and this was within two hundred and fifty miles of where David wanted to go. He proved that fact by digging up an old Company map. David's heart beat an excited tattoo. This was more than he had expected. Almost too good to be true. "You can _work_ your way up there with me," declared Hatchett, clicking his pipe stem. "Won't cost you a cent. Not a dam' cent. Work. Eat. Smoke. Fine trip. Just for company. A man needs company once in a while--decent company. Ice will go by middle of May. Two weeks. Meanwhile, have a devil of a time playing cribbage."
They did. Cribbage was Hatchett's one passion, unless another was--beating the Indians. "Rascally devils," he would say, driving his cribbage pegs home. "Always trying to put off poor fur on me for good. Deserve to be beat. And I beat 'em. Dam-if-I-don't."
"How did you lose your teeth?" David asked him at last. They were playing late one night.
Hatchett sat up in his chair as if stung. His eyes bulged as he looked at David, and his pipe stem clicked fiercely.
"Frenchman," he said. "Dirty pig of a Frenchman. No use for 'em. None. Told him women were no good--all women were bad. Said he had a woman. Said I didn't care--all bad just the same. Said the woman he referred to was his wife. Told him he was a fool to have a wife. No warning--the pig! He biffed me. Knocked those two teeth out--_down_! I'll get him some day. Flay him. Make dog whips of his dirty hide. All Frenchmen ought to die. Hope to God they will. Starve. Freeze."
In spite of himself David laughed. Hatchett took no offense, but the grimness of his long, sombre countenance remained unbroken. A day or two later he discovered Hatchett in the act of giving an old, white-haired, half-breed cripple a bag of supplies. Hatchett shook himself, as if caught in an act of crime.
"I'm going to kill that old Dog Rib soon as the ground's soft enough to dig a grave," he declared, shaking a fist fiercely after the old Indian. "Beggar. A sneak. No good. Ought to die. Giving him just enough to keep him alive until the ground is soft."
After all, Hatchett's face belied his heart. His tongue was like a cleaver. It ripped things generally--was terrible in its threatening, but harmless, and tremendously amusing to David. He liked Hatchett. His cadaverous countenance, never breaking into a smile, was the oddest mask he had ever seen a human being wear. He believed that if it once broke into a laugh it would not straighten back again without leaving a permanent crack. And yet he liked the man, and the days passed swiftly.
It was the middle of May before they started up the Peace, three days after the fur barges had gone down the Athabasca. David had never seen anything like Hatchett's big war canoe, roomy as a small ship, and light as a feather on the water. Four powerful Dog Ribs went with them, making six paddles in all. When it came to a question of Baree, Hatchett put down his foot with emphasis. "What! Make a dam' passenger of a dog? Never. Let him follow ashore--or die."
This would undoubtedly have been Baree's choice if he had had a voice in the matter. Day after day he followed the canoe, swimming streams and working his way through swamp and forest. It was no easy matter. In the deep, slow waters of the Lower Peace the canoe made thirty-five miles a day; twice it made forty. But Hatchett kept Baree well fed, and each night the dog slept at David's feet in camp. On the sixth day they reached Fort Vermilion, and Hatchett announced himself like a king. For he was on inspection. Company inspection, mind you. Important! A week later they arrived at Peace River landing, two hundred miles farther west, and on the twentieth day came to Fort St. John, fifty miles from Hudson's Hope. From here David saw his first of the mountains. He made out their snowy peaks clearly, seventy miles away, and with his finger on a certain spot on Hatchett's map his heart thrilled. He was almost there! Each day the mountains grew nearer. From Hudson's Hope he fancied that he could almost see the dark blankets of timber on their sides. Hatchett grunted. They were still forty miles away. And Mac Veigh, the factor at Hudson's Hope, looked at David in a curious sort of way when David told him where he was going.
"You're the first white man to do it," he said--an inflection of doubt in his voice. "It's not bad going up the Finly as far as the Kwadocha. But from there...."
He shook his head. He was short and thick, and his jaw hung heavy with disapproval.
"You're still seventy miles from the Stikine when you end up at the Kwadocha," he went on, thumbing the map. "Who the devil will you get to take you on from there? Straight over the backbone of the Rockies. No trails. Not even a Post there. Too rough a country. Even the Indians won't live in it." He was silent for a moment, as if reflecting deeply. "Old Towaskook and his tribe are on the Kwadocha," he added, as if seeing a glimmer of hope. "_He might._ But I doubt it. They're a lazy lot of mongrels, Towaskook's people, who carve things out of wood, to worship. Still, he _might_. I'll send up a good man with you to influence him, and you'd better take along a couple hundred dollars in supplies as a further inducement."
The man was a half-breed. Three days later they left Hudson's Hope, with Baree riding amidships. The mountains loomed up swiftly after this, and the second day they were among them. After that it was slow work fighting their way up against the current of the Finly. It was tremendous work. It seemed to David that half their time was spent amid the roar of rapids. Twenty-seven times within five days they made portages. Later on it took them two days to carry their canoe and supplies around a mountain. Fifteen days were spent in making eighty miles. Easier travel followed then. It was the twentieth of June when they made their last camp before reaching the Kwadocha. The sun was still up; but they were tired, utterly exhausted. David looked at his map and at the figures in the notebook he carried. He had come close to fifteen hundred miles since that day when he and Father Roland and Mukoki had set out for the Cochrane. Fifteen hundred miles! And he had less than a hundred more to go! Just over those mountains--somewhere beyond them. It looked easy. He would not be afraid to go alone, if old Towaskook refused to help him. Yes, alone. He would find his way, somehow, he and Baree. He had unbounded confidence in Baree. Together they could fight it out. Within a week or two they would find the Girl.
And then...?
He looked at the picture a long time in the glow of the setting sun.


CHAPTER XVI
It was the week of the Big Festival when David and his half-breed arrived at Towaskook's village. Towaskook was the "farthest east" of the totem-worshippers, and each of his forty or fifty people reminded David of the devil chaser on the canvas of the Snow Fox's tepee. They were dressed up, as he remarked to the half-breed, "like fiends." On the day of David's arrival Towaskook himself was disguised in a huge bear head from which protruded a pair of buffalo horns that had somehow drifted up there from the western prairies, and it was his special business to perform various antics about his totem pole for at least six hours between sunrise and sunset, chanting all the time most dolorous supplications to the squat monster who sat, grinning, at the top. It was "the day of good hunting," and Towaskook and his people worked themselves into exhaustion by the ardour of their prayers that the game of the mountains might walk right up to their tepee doors to be killed, thus necessitating the smallest possible physical exertion in its capture. That night Towaskook visited David at his camp, a little up the river, to see what he could get out of the white man. He was monstrously fat--fat from laziness; and David wondered how he had managed to put in his hours of labour under the totem pole. David sat in silence, trying to make out something from their gestures, as his half-breed, Jacques, and the old chief talked.
Jacques repeated it all to him after Towaskook, sighing deeply, had risen from his squatting posture, and left them. It was a terrible journey over those mountains, Towaskook had said. He had been on the Stikine once. He had split with his tribe, and had started eastward with many followers, but half of them had died--died because they would not leave their precious totems behind--and so had been caught in a deep snow that came early. It was a ten-day journey over the mountains. You went up above the clouds--many times you had to go above the clouds. He would never make the journey again. There was one chance--just one. He had a young bear hunter, Kio, his face was still smooth. He had not won his spurs, so to speak, and he was anxious to perform a great feat, especially as he was in love with his medicine man's daughter Kwak-wa-pisew (the Butterfly). Kio might go, to prove his valour to the Butterfly. Towaskook had gone for him. Of course, on a mission of this kind, Kio would accept no pay. That would go to Towaskook. The two hundred dollars' worth of supplies satisfied him.
A little later Towaskook returned with Kio. He was exceedingly youthful, slim-built as a weazel, but with a deep-set and treacherous eye. He listened. He would go. He would go as far as the confluence of the Pitman and the Stikine, if Towaskook would assure him the Butterfly. Towaskook, eyeing greedily the supplies