When Breyette and MacDonald had so bestowed the canoe that the
diligently foraging dogs of the post could not take toll of their
supplies they also hied them up to the cluster of log cabins ranging
about the Company store and factor's quarters. They were on tolerably
familiar ground. First they made for the cabin of Dougal MacPhee, an
ancient servitor of the Company and a distant relative of Breyette's,
for whom they had a gift of tobacco. Old Dougal welcomed them
laconically, without stirring from his seat in the shade. He sucked at
an old clay pipe. His half-breed woman, as wrinkled and time worn as
himself, squatted on the earth sewing moccasins. Old Dougal turned his
thumb toward a bench and bade them be seated.
"It's a bit war-rm," MacDonald opined, by way of opening the
conversation.
"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us
somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"
"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naïve
candor. "Yon's a meenister."
"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
have som' fon weet heem dees treep."
"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae
be aboot when 'tis forty below--an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd
relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change--eh, Mike?"
The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal
ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward
length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played
such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or
amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and
blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to
make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two
hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.
"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the
Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook
his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays
hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'
the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the
long howl at nicht. I didna believe there was ever sae helpless a
creature. An' for a' that he's the laddie that's here tae show the
heathen--thae puir, sinfu' heathen, mind ye--how tae find grace. No that
he's any doot aboot bein' equal tae the job. For a' that he's nigh
helpless i' the woods he was forever ying-yangin' at me an' Mike for
what he ca's sinfu' pride in oor ain' persons. I've a notion that if yon
had a bit o' that same sinfu' pride he'd be the better able tae make his
way."