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Burned Bridges

Page 22

"Dat's white man married hon Enjun woman," Breyette responded to

Thompson's inquiry. "Ah don' never see heem maself. Lachlan she's leev

over there."

Left to himself Thompson would probably have gravitated first to a man

of his own blood, even though he had been warned to approach Carr with

diplomacy. But there was no sign of life about the Carr place, and his

men were headed straight for their objective, walking hurriedly to get

away from the hungry swarms of mosquitoes that rose out of the grass.

Thompson followed them. Two weeks in their company, with a steadily

growing consciousness of his dependence upon them, had inclined him to

follow their lead.

They found Lachlan at home, a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house

full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How

could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first

dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his great

perplexity, seemed to turn more upon incongruities than upon his real

mission there. That is, to Thompson they seemed incongruities. The

little things that go to make up a whole were each impinging upon him

with a force he could not understand. He could not, for instance, tell

why he thought only with difficulty, with extreme haziness, of the

great good he desired to accomplish at Lone Moose, and found his

attention focussing sharply upon the people, their manner of speech,

their surroundings, even upon so minor a detail as a smudge of flour

upon the hand that Mrs. Lachlan extended to him. She was a fat,

dusky-skinned woman, apparently regarding Thompson with a feeling akin

to awe. The entire family, which numbered at least nine souls, spoke in

the broad dialect of their paternal ancestors from the heather country

overseas.

Thompson spent an hour there, an hour which was far from conducive to a

cheerful survey of the field wherein his spiritual labors would lie.

Aside from Sam Carr, who appeared to be looked upon as the Nestor of the

village, the Lachlans were the only persons who either spoke or

understood a word of English. And Thompson found himself more or less

tongue-tied with them, unable to find any common ground of intercourse.

They were wholly illiterate. As a natural consequence the world beyond

the Athabasca region was as much of an unknown quantity to them as the

North had been to Thompson before he set foot in it--as much of its

needs and customs were yet, for that matter. The Lachlan virtues of

simplicity and kindliness were overcast by obvious dirt and a general

slackness. In so far as religion went if they were--as Breyette had

stated--fond of preachers, it was manifestly because they looked upon a

preacher as a very superior sort of person, and not because of his

gospel message.

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