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

with his back toward them. He had leaped to his feet now, his face furious, and with another demoniac curse he gave the coal skuttle a kick that sent it with a bang to the far end of the car. The table was littered with playing cards.
"Damn 'em--they beat me this time in ten plays!" he yelled. "They've got the devil in 'em! If they was alive I'd jump on 'em! I've played this game of solitaire for nineteen years--I've played a million games--an' damned if I ever got beat in my life as it's beat me since we left Halifax!"
"Dear Heaven!" gasped Father Roland. "Have you been playing all the way from Halifax?"
The solitaire fiend seemed not to hear, and resuming his seat with a low and ominous muttering, he dealt himself another hand. In less than a minute he was on his feet again, shaking the cards angrily under the Little Missioner's nose as though that individual were entirely accountable for his bad luck.
"Look at that accursed trey of hearts!" he demanded. "First card, ain't it? First card!--an' if it had been the third, 'r the sixth, 'r the ninth, 'r anything except that confounded Number One, I'd have slipped the game up my sleeve. Ain't it enough to wreck any honest man's soul? I ask you--ain't it?"
"Why don't you change the trey of hearts to the place that suits you?" asked David, innocently. "It seems to me it would be very easy to move it to third place in the deck if you want it there."
The baggage-man's bulging eyes seemed ready to pop as he stared at David, and when he saw that David really meant what he had said a look of unutterable disgust spread over his countenance. Then he grinned--a sickly and malicious sort of grin.
"Say, mister, you've never played solitaire, have you?" he asked.
"Never," confessed David.
Without another word the baggage-man hunched himself over his table, dealt himself another hand, and not until the train began slowing up for Thoreau's place did he rise from his seat or cease his low mutterings and grumblings. In response to the engineer's whistle he jumped to his feet and rolled back the car door.
"Now step lively!" he demanded. "We've got no orders to stop here and we'll have to dump this stuff out on the move!"
As he spoke he gave the hundred and ten pounds of beans a heave out into the night. Father Roland jumped to his assistance, and David saw his steamer trunk and his hand-bags follow the beans.
"The snow is soft and deep, an' there won't be any harm done," Father Roland assured him as he tossed out a 50-pound box of prunes.
David heard sounds now: a man's shout, a fiendish tonguing of dogs, and above that a steady chorus of yapping which he guessed came from the foxes. Suddenly a lantern gleamed, then a second and a third, and a dark, bearded face--a fierce and piratical-looking face--began running along outside the door. The last box and the last bag went off, and with a sudden movement the train-man hauled David to the door.
"Jump!" he cried.
The face and the lantern had fallen behind, and it was as black as an abyss outside. With a mute prayer David launched himself much as he had seen the bags and boxes sent out. He fell with a thud in a soft blanket of snow. He looked up in time to see the Little Missioner flying out like a curious gargoyle through the door; the baggage-man's lantern waved, the engineer's whistle gave a responding screech, and the train whirred past. Not until the tail-light of the last coach was receding like a great red firefly in the gloom did David get up. Father Roland was on his feet, and down the track came two of the three lanterns on the run.
It was all unusually weird and strangely interesting to David. He was breathing deeply. There was a warmth in his body which was new to him. It struck him all at once, as he heard Father Roland crunching through the snow, that he was experiencing an entirely new phase of life--a life he had read about at times and dreamed of at other times, but which he had never come physically in contact with. The yapping of the foxes, the crying of the dogs, those lanterns hurrying down the track, the blackness of the night, and the strong perfume of balsam in the cold air--an odour that he breathed deep into his lungs like the fumes of an exhilarating drink--quickened sharply a pulse that a few hours before he thought was almost lifeless. He had no time to ask himself whether he was enjoying these new sensations; he felt only the thrill of them as Thoreau and the Indian came up out of the night with their lanterns. In Thoreau himself, as he stood a moment later in the glow of the lanterns, was embodied the living, breathing spirit of this new world into which David's leap out of the baggage car had plunged him. He was picturesquely of the wild; his face was darkly bearded; his ivory-white teeth shining as he smiled a welcome; his tricoloured, Hudson's Bay coat of wool, with its frivolous red fringes, thrown open at the throat; the bushy tail of his fisher-skin cap hanging over a shoulder--and with these things his voice rattling forth, in French and half Indian, his joy that Father Roland was not dead but had arrived at last. Behind him stood the Indian--his face without expression, dark, shrouded--a bronze sphinx of mystery. But his eyes shone as the Little Missioner greeted him--shone so darkly and so full of fire that for a moment David was fascinated by them. Then David was introduced.
"I am happy to meet you, m'sieu," said the Frenchman. His race was softly polite, even in the forests, and Thoreau's voice, now mildly subdued, came strangely from the bearded wildness of his face. The grip of his hand was like Father Roland's--something David had never felt among his friends back in the city. He winced in the darkness, and for a long time afterward his fingers tingled.
It was then that David made his first break in the etiquette of the forests; a fortunate one, as time proved. He did not know that shaking hands with an Indian was a matter of some formality, and so when Father Roland said, "This is Mukoki, who has been with me for many years," David thrust out his hand. Mukoki looked him straight in the eye for a moment, and then his blanket-coat parted and his slim, dark hand reached out. Having received his lesson from both the Missioner and the Frenchman, David put into his grip all the strength that was in him--the warmest hand-shake Mukoki had ever received in his life from a white man, with the exception of his master, the Missioner.
The next thing David heard was Father Roland's voice inquiring eagerly about supper. Thoreau's reply was in French.
"He says the cabin is like the inside of a great, roast duck," chuckled the Missioner. "Come, David. We'll leave Mukoki to gather up our freight."
A short walk up the track and David saw the cabin. It was back in the shelter of the black spruce and balsam, its two windows that faced the railroad warmly illumined by the light inside. The foxes had ceased their yapping, but the snarling and howling of dogs became more bloodthirsty as they drew nearer, and David could hear an ominous clinking of chains and snapping of teeth. A few steps more and they were at the door. Thoreau himself opened it, and stood back.
"_Apres vous, m'sieu_," he said, his white teeth shining at David. "It would give me bad luck and possibly all my foxes would die, if I went into my house ahead of a stranger."
David went in. An Indian woman stood with her back to him, bending over a table. She was as slim as a reed, and had the longest and sleekest black hair he had ever seen, done in two heavy braids that hung down her back. In another moment she had turned her round, brown face, and her teeth and eyes were shining, but she spoke no word. Thoreau did not introduce his wild-flower wife. He had opened his cabin door, and had let David enter before him, which was accepting him as a friend in his home, and therefore, in his understanding of things, an introduction was unnecessary and out of place. Father Roland chuckled, rubbed his hands briskly, and said something to the woman in her own language that made her giggle shyly. It was contagious. David smiled. Father Roland's face was crinkled with little lines of joy. The Frenchman's teeth gleamed. In the big cook-stove the fire snapped and crackled and popped. Marie opened the stove door to put in more wood and her face shone rosy and her teeth were like milk in the fire-flash. Thoreau went to her and laid his big, heavy hand fondly on her sleek head, and said something in soft Cree that brought another giggle into Marie's throat, like the curious note of a bird.
In David there was a slow and wonderful awakening. Every fibre of him was stirred by the cheer of this cabin builded from logs rough-hewn out of the forest; his body, weakened by the months of mental and physical anguish which had been his burden, seemed filled with a new strength. Unconsciously he was smiling and his soul was rising out of its dark prison as he saw Thoreau's big hand stroking Marie's shining hair. He was watching Thoreau when, at a word from Marie, the Frenchman suddenly swung open the oven door and pulled forth a huge roasting pan.
At sight of the pan Father Roland gave a joyous cry, and he rubbed his hands raspingly together. The rich aroma of that pan! A delicious whiff of it had struck their nostrils even before the cabin door had opened--that and a perfume of coffee; but not until now did the fragrance of the oven and the pan smite them with all its potency.
"Mallards fattened on wild rice, and a rabbit--my favourite--a rabbit roasted with an onion where his heart was, and well peppered," gloated the Little Missioner. "Dear Heaven! was there ever such a mess to put strength into a man's gizzard, David? And coffee--this coffee of Marie's! It is more than ambrosia. It is an elixir which transforms a cup into a fountain of youth. Take off your coat, David; take off your coat and make yourself at home!"
As David stripped off his coat, and followed that with his collar and tie, he thought of his steamer trunk with its Tuxedo and dress-coat, its pique shirts and poke collars, its suede gloves and kid-topped patent leathers, and he felt the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He was sorry now that he had given the Missioner the check to that trunk.
A minute later he was sousing his face in a big tin wash-basin, and then drying it on a towel that had once been a burlap bag. But he had noticed that it was clean--as clean as the pink-flushed face of Marie. And the Frenchman himself, with all his hair, and his beard, and his rough-worn clothing, was as clean as the burlap towelling. Being a stranger, suddenly plunged into a life entirely new to him, these things impressed David.
When they sat down to the table--Thoreau sitting for company, and Marie standing behind them--he was at a loss at first to know how to begin. His plate was of tin and a foot in diameter, and on it was a three-pound mallard duck, dripping with juice and as brown as a ripe hazel-nut.