Burned Bridges

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.