So Thompson stopped his building activities long enough to make a trip
to Pachugan. He got Lachlan's oldest son to go with him. His quarterly
salary was due, and he had a rather reluctant report of his work to
make. With the money he would be able to replenish his stock of sugar
and tea and dried fruit and flour. He decided too that he would have to
buy a gun and learn to use it as the source of his meat supply.
His sublime confidence in the organization which had sent him there
suffered a decided shock when he reached Fort Pachugan, and found no
remittance awaiting him. There was a letter from the Board secretary
breathing exhortations which sounded rather hollow in conjunction with
the absence of funds. Mr. Thompson, for the first time in his career,
found himself badly in need of money, irritated beyond measure by its
lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to
suggest a credit on the strength of the cheque which, upon reflection,
he decided was merely delayed in the more or less uncertain mails. He
could make shift with what he had for another month. Nor did he mention
this slight difficulty to MacLeod.
That gentleman had greeted him heartily enough.
"Man, but ye look as if the country agreed wi' you," he observed, after
an appraising glance. "How goes the good work at Lone Moose?"
"There are difficulties," Thompson responded with an unintentional
touch of ambiguity. "But I daresay I'll manage in time to overcome
them."
He discovered in himself a disinclination to talk about his labors in
that field.
MacLeod smiled and forbore to press the subject. There were sundry
parcels for Sam Carr, a letter or two, and a varied assortment of
magazines. Thompson took these, after tarrying overnight at the post,
and started home, refusing MacLeod's cordial invitation to stay over a
day or two. He would be back again when the next mail was due, a matter
of four or five weeks. And late that same evening, by dint of a
favorable breeze that kept the canoe flying, and some hard pulling up
Lone Moose Creek, Thompson and the breed boy reached home.
Young Lachlan went off to his cabin. Mr. Thompson conscientiously lugged
the assortment of parcels and magazines over to Sam Carr's house, duly
delivered the three letters to Carr himself, and--for reasons that he
could not define as anything but an unwarrantable access of
shyness--declining the first invitation he had ever received to break
bread at Carr's table, hurried back to his own primitive quarters.
Perhaps the fact that Sophie Carr, curled up in a big chair, smiled at
him in a way that made his pulses quicken had something to do with his
hasty retreat. He was wary of the impulses and emotions she never failed
to stir in him when he was near her. There were times when he suspected
that she was aware of this power--which in his naïve conception of women
he believed almost uncanny in her--and that she amused herself by
exercising it upon him. And he resented that.