The Young Fur Traders by R. M. Ballantyne (funny books to read txt) 📖

friend Charles Kennedy, whom you so often talk about, and many other young fellows we know, who have been sent to the Saskatchewan, and to the Columbia, and to Athabasca, and to a host of other capital places, where they have enough of society—male society, at least—and good sport.”

The young men had climbed a rocky eminence which commanded a view of the lake on the one side, and the fort, with its background of woods, on the other. Here they sat down on a stone, and continued for some time to admire the scene in silence.

“Yes,” said Harry, resuming the thread of discourse, “you are right: we have a good chance of seeing some pleasant parts of the country. But suspense is not pleasant. O man, if they would only send me up the Saskatchewan River! I’ve set my heart upon going there. I’m quite sure it’s the very best place in the whole country.”

“You’ve told the truth that time, master,” said a deep voice behind them.

The young men turned quickly round. Close beside them, and leaning composedly on a long Indian fowling-piece, stood a tall, broad-shouldered, sunburned man, apparently about forty years of age. He was dressed in the usual leathern hunting-coat, cloth leggings, fur cap, mittens, and moccasins that constitute the winter garb of a hunter; and had a grave, firm, but good-humoured expression of countenance.

“You’ve told the truth that time, master,” he repeated, without moving from his place. “The Saskatchewan is, to my mind, the best place in the whole country; and havin’ seen a considerable deal o’ places in my time, I can speak from experience.”

“Indeed, friend,” said Harry, “I’m glad to hear you say so. Come, sit down beside us, and let’s hear something about it.”

Thus invited, the hunter seated himself on a stone and laid his gun on the hollow of his left arm.

“First of all, friend,” continued Harry, “do you belong to the fort here?”

“No,” replied the man; “I’m stayin’ here just now, but I don’t belong to the place.”

“Where do you come from, then, and what’s your name?”

“Why, I’ve comed d’rect from the Saskatchewan with a packet o’ letters. I’m payin’ a visit to the missionary village yonder”—the hunter pointed as he spoke across the lake—“and when the ice breaks up I shall get a canoe and return again.”

“And your name?”

“Why, I’ve got four or five names. Somehow or other, people have given me a nickname wherever I ha’ chanced to go. But my true name, and the one I hail by just now, is Jacques Caradoc.”

“Jacques Caradoc!” exclaimed Harry, starting with surprise. “You knew a Charley Kennedy in the Saskatchewan, did you?”

“That did I. As fine a lad as ever pulled a trigger.”

“Give us your hand, friend,” exclaimed Harry, springing forward and seizing the hunter’s large, hard fist in both hands. “Why, man, Charley is my dearest friend, and I had a letter from him some time ago in which he speaks of you, and says you’re one of the best fellows he ever met.”

“You don’t say so,” replied the hunter, returning Harry’s grasp warmly, while his eyes sparkled with pleasure, and a quiet smile played at the corners of his mouth.

“Yes I do,” said Harry; “and I’m very nearly as glad to meet with you, friend Jacques, as I would be to meet with him. But come; it’s cold work talking here. Let’s go to my room; there’s a fire in the stove.—Come along, Hammy;” and taking his new friend by the arm, he hurried him along to his quarters in the fort.

Just as they were passing under the fort gate, a large mass of snow became detached from a housetop and fell heavily at their feet, passing within an inch of Hamilton’s nose. The young man started back with an exclamation, and became very red in the face.

“Hollo!” cried Harry, laughing, “got a fright, Hammy! That went so close to your chin that it almost saved you the trouble of shaving.”

“Yes; I got a little fright from the suddenness of it,” said Hamilton quietly.

“What do you think of my friend there?” said Harry to Jacques in a low voice, pointing to Hamilton, who walked on in advance.

“I’ve not seen much of him, master,” replied the hunter. “Had I been asked the same question about the same lad twenty years agone, I should ha’ said he was soft, and perhaps chicken-hearted. But I’ve learned from experience to judge better than I used to do. I niver thinks o’ formin’ an opinion o’ any one till I’ve seen them called to sudden action. It’s astonishin’ how some faint-hearted men will come to face a danger and put on an awful look o’ courage if they only get warnin’; but take them by surprise—that’s the way to try them.”

“Well, Jacques, that is the very reason why I ask your opinion of Hamilton. He was pretty well taken by surprise that time, I think.”

“True, master; but that kind o’ start don’t prove much. Hows’ever, I don’t think he’s easy upset. He does look uncommon soft, and his face grew red when the snow fell, but his eyebrow and his under lip showed that it wasn’t from fear.”

During that afternoon and the greater part of that night the three friends continued in close conversation—Harry sitting in front of the stove, with his hands in his pockets, on a chair tilted as usual on its hind legs, and pouring out volleys of questions, which were pithily answered by the good-humoured, loquacious hunter, who sat behind the stove, resting his elbows on his knees, and smoking his much-loved pipe; while Hamilton reclined on Harry’s bed, and listened with eager avidity to anecdotes and stories, which seemed, like the narrator’s pipe, to be inexhaustible.

“Good-night, Jacques, good-night,” said Harry, as the latter rose at last to depart; “I’m delighted to have had a talk with you. You must come back to-morrow. I want to hear more about your friend Redfeather. Where did you say you left him?”

“In the Saskatchewan, master. He said that he would wait there, as he’d heerd the missionary was comin’ up to pay the Injins a visit.”

“By-the-bye, you’re going over to the missionary’s place to-morrow, are you not?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Ah, then, that’ll do. I’ll go over with you. How far off is it?”

“Three miles or thereabouts.”

“Very good. Call in here as you pass, and my friend Hamilton and I will accompany you. Good-night.”

Jacques thrust his pipe into his bosom, held out his horny hand, and giving his young friends a hearty shake, turned and strode from the room.

On the following day Jacques called according to promise, and the three friends set off together to visit the Indian village. This missionary station was under the management of a Wesleyan clergyman, Pastor Conway by name, an excellent man, of about forty-five years of age, with an energetic mind and body, a bald head, a mild, expressive countenance, and a robust constitution. He was admirably qualified for his position, having a natural aptitude for every sort of work that man is usually called on to perform. His chief care was for the instruction of the Indians, whom he had induced to settle around him, in the great and all-important truths of Christianity. He invented an alphabet, and taught them to write and read their own language. He commenced the laborious task of translating the Scriptures into the Cree language; and being an excellent musician, he instructed his converts to sing in parts the psalms and Wesleyan hymns, many of which are exceedingly beautiful. A school was also established and a church built under his superintendence, so that the natives assembled in an orderly way in a commodious sanctuary every Sabbath day to worship God; while the children were instructed, not only in the Scriptures, and made familiar with the narrative of the humiliation and exaltation of our blessed Saviour, but were also taught the elementary branches of a secular education. But good Pastor Conway’s energy did not stop here. Nature had gifted him with that peculiar genius which is powerfully expressed in the term “a jack-of-all-trades.” He could turn his hand to anything; and being, as we have said, an energetic man, he did turn his hand to almost everything. If anything happened to get broken, the pastor could either mend it himself or direct how it was to be done. If a house was to be built for a new family of red men, who had never handled a saw or hammer in their lives, and had lived up to that time in tents, the pastor lent a hand to begin it, drew out the plan (not a very complicated thing, certainly), set them fairly at work, and kept his eye on it until it was finished. In short, the worthy pastor was everything to everybody, “that by all means he might gain some.”

Under such management the village flourished as a matter of course, although it did not increase very rapidly owing to the almost unconquerable aversion of North American Indians to take up a settled habitation.

It was to this little hamlet, then, that our three friends directed their steps. On arriving, they found Pastor Conway in a sort of workshop, giving directions to an Indian who stood with a soldering-iron in one hand and a sheet of tin in the other, which he was about to apply to a curious-looking, half-finished machine that bore some resemblance to a canoe.

“Ah, my friend Jacques!” he exclaimed as the hunter approached him; “the very man I wished to see. But I beg pardon, gentlemen—strangers, I perceive. You are heartily welcome. It is seldom that I have the pleasure of seeing new friends in my wild dwelling. Pray come with me to my house.”

Pastor Conway shook hands with Harry and Hamilton with a degree of warmth that evinced the sincerity of his words. The young men thanked him and accepted the invitation.

As they turned to quit the workshop, the pastor observed Jacques’s eye fixed, with a puzzled expression of countenance, on his canoe.

“You have never seen anything like that before, I dare say?” said he, with a smile.

“No, sir; I never did see such a queer machine afore.”

“It is a tin canoe, with which I hope to pass through many miles of country this spring, on my way to visit a tribe of Northern Indians; and it was about this very thing that I wanted to see you, my friend.”

Jacques made no reply, but cast a look savouring very slightly of contempt on the unfinished canoe as they turned and went away.

The pastor’s dwelling stood at one end of the village, a view of which it commanded from the back windows, while those in front overlooked the lake. It was pleasantly situated and pleasantly tenanted, for the pastor’s wife was a cheerful, active little lady, like-minded with himself, and delighted to receive and entertain strangers. To her care Mr Conway consigned the young men, after spending a short time in conversation with them; and then, requesting his wife to show them through the village, he took Jacques by the arm and sauntered out.

“Come with me, Jacques,” he began; “I have somewhat to say to you. I had not time to broach the subject when I met you at the Company’s fort, and have been anxious to see you ever since. You tell me that you have met with my friend Redfeather?”

“Yes, sir; I spent a week or two with him last fall. I found him stayin’ with his tribe, and we started to come down here together.”

“Ah, that is the very point,” exclaimed the pastor, “that I wished to inquire about. I firmly believe that God has opened that Indian’s eyes to see the truth; and I fully expected, from what he said when we last met, that he would have made up his mind to come and stay here.”

“As to what the Almighty has done to him,” said Jacques, in a reverential tone of voice, “I don’t pretend