Burned Bridges

Nevertheless, he was conscious that he felt very much as he might have

felt if, for instance, his guides had stopped anywhere in those somber

woods and without rhyme or reason set him and his goods ashore and

abandoned him forthwith. And when he crawled over the bow of the canoe

and ascended the short, steep bank to a place beside Mike Breyette, this

peculiar sense of being forsaken grew, if anything, more acute, more

appalling.

They stood on the edge of the bank, taking a reconnaissance, so to

speak. The forest flowed about them like a sea. On Thompson's left hand

it seemed to thin a trifle, giving a faint suggestion of open areas

beyond. Beginning where they stood, some time in past years a square

place had been slashed out of the timber, trees felled and partly

burned, the stumps still standing and the charred trunks lying all askew

as they fell. The unlovely confusion of the uncompleted task was

somewhat concealed by a rank growth of weeds and grass. This

half-hearted attack upon the forest had let the sunlight in. It blazed

full upon a cabin in the center of the clearing, a square, squat

structure of logs with a roof of poles and dirt. A door and a window

faced the creek, a window of tiny panes, a door that stood partly open,

sagging forlornly upon its hinges.

"Is that the house?" Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely

credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of

some rude jest at his expense.

"Dat's heem," Breyette answered. "Let's tak' leetle more close look on

heem."

Thompson did not miss the faint note of commiseration in the

half-breed's voice. It stung him a little, nearly made him disregard the

spirit of abnegation he had been taught was a Christian's duty in his

Master's service. He closed his lips on an impulsive protest against

that barren unlovely spot, and stiffened his shoulders.

"I understand it has not been occupied for some time," he said as they

moved toward the cabin.

But even forewarned as he was his heart sank a few degrees nearer to his

square-toed shoes when he stepped over the threshold and looked about.

Little, forgotten things recurred to him, matters touched upon lightly,

airily, by the deacons and elders of the Board of Missions when his

appointment was made. He recalled hearing of a letter in which his

predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry

together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement

that the North was no place for either God or man.

The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The

swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the

door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the

corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The

floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a

rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on

a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of

peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered

on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds

and rodents.