Burned Bridges

At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that

intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot

Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the

Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and

willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the

thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river

and shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting

point fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread

away northeastward in a widening stretch, its farthest boundary a watery

junction with the horizon.

There were three men in the canoe. One squatted forward, another rested

his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy, stockily

built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt hats

crowning lank, black hair long innocent of a barber's touch.

The third man sat amidships in a little space left among goods that were

piled to the top of the deep-sided craft. He was no more like his

companions than the North that surrounded them with its silent waterways

and hushed forests is like the tropical jungle. He was a fairly big

man, taller, wider-bodied than the other two. His hair was a

reddish-brown, his eyes as blue as the arched dome from which the hot

sun shed its glare.

He had on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of

the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a

part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had

preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the

eyebrows down his face was in the last stages of sunburn, reddened,

minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in

August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other

men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a

conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking.

The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The

only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of

his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay

aside his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze

wavered off the open water. He lifted his hat and let it play about his

moist hair.

"This is Lake Athabasca?" he asked.

"Oui, M'sieu Thompson," Mike Breyette answered from the bow, without

turning his head. "Dees de lak."

"How much longer will it take us to reach Port Pachugan?" Thompson made

further inquiry.

"Bout two-three hour, maybeso," Breyette responded.

He said something further, a few quick sentences in the French patois

of the northern half-breeds, at which both he and his fellow-voyageur in

the stern laughed. Their gayety stirred no response from the midship

passenger. If anything, he frowned. He was a serious-minded young man,

and he did not understand French. He had a faint suspicion that his

convoy did not take him as seriously as he wished. Whether their talk

was badinage or profanity or purely casual, he could not say. In the

first stages of their journey together, on the upper reaches of the

river, Mike Breyette and Donald MacDonald had, after the normal habit of

their kind, greeted the several contingencies and minor mishaps such a

journey involved with plaintive oaths in broken English. Mr. Wesley

Thompson, projected into an unfamiliar environment and among a--to

him--strange manner of men, took up his evangelistic cudgel and

administered shocked reproof. It was, in a way, practice for the tasks

the Methodist Board of Home Missions had appointed him to perform. But

if he failed to convict these two of sin, he convinced them of

discourtesy. Even a rude voyageur has his code of manners. Thereafter

they invariably swore in French.