Burned Bridges

"I don't deliberately seek religious controversy with any one," Thompson

replied rather stiffly. "I have been sent by the Church to do what good

I am able. That should not offend Mr. Carr, or any man."

"Nor will it," MacLeod returned. Then he added dryly, "It a' depends, as

ye may discover, on the interpretation others put on your method o'

doin' good. However, I wish ye luck. Stop in whenever ye happen along

this way."

"I thank you, sir," Thompson smiled, "both for your hospitality, and

your advice."

They shook hands. Thompson strode to the beach. Mike Breyette and Donald

MacDonald stood bare-footed in the shallow water. When Thompson had

stepped awkwardly aboard and seated himself amidships, they lifted on

the canoe and slid it gently off the shingle, leaped to their places

fore and aft and gave way. A hundred yards off shore they lifted the

dripping paddles in mute adieu to old Donald McPhee, smoking his pipe at

the gable end of his cabin. MacLeod watched the gray canoe slip past the

first point. When it vanished beyond that he turned back into his

quarters with a shrug of his burly shoulders, and a few unintelligible

phrases muttered under his breath.

Lone Moose Creek emptied into Lake Athabasca some forty miles east of

Fort Pachugan. The village of Lone Moose lay another twenty-five miles

or so up the stream. Thompson's canoemen carried with them a rag of a

sail. This they hoisted to a fair wind that held through the morning

hours. Between that and steady paddling they made the creek mouth by

sundown. There they lay overnight on a jutting sandbar where the

mosquitoes plagued them less than on the brushy shore.

At dawn they pushed into the sinuous channel of Lone Moose, breasting

its slow current with steady strokes, startling flocks of waterfowl at

every bend, gliding hour after hour along this shadowy waterway that

split the hushed reaches of the woods. It was very still and very somber

and a little uncanny. The creek was but a thread in that illimitable

forest which pressed so close on either hand. The sun at high noon could

not dissipate the shadows that lurked among the close-ranked trees; it

touched the earth and the creek with patches and streaks of yellow at

rare intervals and left untouched the obscurity where the rabbits and

the fur-bearing animals and all the wild life of the forest went

furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her

calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose

like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a

flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed

before the invisible altars of silence.

About four in the afternoon Mike Breyette turned the nose of the canoe

sharply into the bank.