Part 3 (2/2)

”Mebbe so, _oui_,” replied the old man. ”We load h'all the boats bimeby now. Yes, pretty soon bimeby we start, mebbe so, _oui_.”

”Well,” said Uncle d.i.c.k, smiling, as he turned to the boys, ”that's about as definite as you can get anything. We'll start when we start!

Just get your stuff ready to be embarked and tell the manager where it is. It will be on board all right.”

”But what makes them start so late in the day?” demanded John, who was of an investigative turn of mind. ”I should think the morning was the right time to start.”

”Not so the great fur brigade,” was his answer. ”Nor was it the custom in the great fur brigades which went out with pack-trains from the Missouri in our own old days when there were buffalo and beaver. A short start was made on the first day, usually toward evening. Then when camp was made everything was overhauled, and if anything had been left behind it was not too far to send back to get it. Nearly always it was found that something had been overlooked.

”Now that's the way we'll do here, so they tell me. We'll run down the river a few miles, each boat as it is loaded, and then we'll make a landing. That will give each boat captain time to look over his stuff and his men--and, what is more, it will give each man time to run in across country and get a few last drinks. Some of them will come back to be confessed by their priest. Some will want to send supplies to their families who are left behind. On one excuse or another every man of the brigade will be back here in town to-night if we should start!

Of course by to-morrow morning they'll be on hand again bright and early and ready for the voyage. You see, there are customs up here with which we have not been acquainted before.”

It came out precisely as Uncle d.i.c.k had said. Very late in the afternoon--late by the clock, though not so late by the sun, which at this lat.i.tude sank very late in the west--there came a great shouting and outcry, followed by firing of guns, much as though a battle were in progress. Men, hurrying and crying excitedly as they ran, went aboard the boats. One after another the mooring-ropes were cast off.

The poles and oars did their work, and slowly, piecemeal, but in a vast aggregate, the great Mackenzie brigade was on its way!

The first boat of the fleet, as had been predicted, ran no more than three or four miles before it pulled ash.o.r.e at a landing-place which seemed well known to all. Here the scows came in slowly and clumsily, but without disorder and without damage, until the entire bank for a half-mile was turned into a sort of s.h.i.+pyard of its own.

Here and there men were working the little wooden pumps, because for the first day or two the scows were sure to leak.

The boys made their own camp that night aboard the boat. At each end was a short deck, and that in the rear offered s.p.a.ce for their blanket beds. Rob undertook to sleep on top of the cargo under the edge of the great tarpaulin which covered all. They had their little Yukon stove, which accompanied them, and on the front deck, where a box of earth had been provided, they set this up and did their own cooking, as they preferred.

In the morning Father Le Fevre paddled over to them in a canoe from his own scow.

”_Bon jour_, gentlemen!” said he. ”I called to ask you if you would not like to have breakfast with us. Sister Eloise is known for her skill in cookery.”

The leader of our little party accepted with great cheerfulness, so that they all climbed into the canoe, and presently were alongside the mission scow. All over the great fleet of scows everything now was silent. Each boat had its watchman, but he alone, of all the crew, had remained aboard.

”My poor children!” said Father Le Fevre, smiling as he looked about him. ”They indeed are like children. Presently they will come. Then we shall see.”

Our young travelers now became acquainted with yet others of the north-bound party. Sister Eloise, stout and good-natured, proved herself all that had been promised as a cook.

”Yes, yes, she has gone north before,” said the good Father. ”But always she has fear of the water. When we go on the rapids Sister Eloise knits or tells her beads or reads--very hard indeed she reads or knits or prays! She is afraid, but does not like me to know it,”

and his eye twinkled as he spoke.

”Sister Vincent de Paul goes north for the first time,” he said, smiling now at the other of the gray-habited nuns who found themselves in these strange surroundings. ”She is called to Fort Resolution, and may stay there for some years. We do not know.

”And here,” he added, pulling up by the ear a swarthy little boy who seemed more Indian than white, ”this we will call Charl'. We are taking him back to his father, who is the factor at Resolution. His mother is native woman, as you see, and this boy has been at Montreal for two years at school. _Eh bien_, Charl', you will be good boy now?

If not I shall tell your papa!

”You see,” he explained to the others who now for the first time were getting some acquaintance of this mission-work, ”we try to do the best we know, and to make life easier for these people in the Far North. It is a hard fortune that they have. Always they starve--never have they enough. And every year the great brigade goes north so that they may last yet another year.”

Presently there came down overland to the fleet yet other men who made part of the strange, wild company. Cap. Shott, friendly and paternal in his way, brought on for introduction to the party the Dominion judge, who every year goes north to settle the legal disputes which may have arisen at the several posts for a considerable distance to the north. The judge had with him his clerk and secretary, and there was also a commissioner, as well as another official, a member of the Indian Department, who was bound north to pay the tribesmen their treaty money.

There came also the wife of a member of the Anglican Church, which, as well as the Catholic Church, has missions all along the great waterway almost to the Arctic Sea. So that, as may be seen, the personnel of the brigade that year was of varied and interesting composition.

All came out as Uncle d.i.c.k and Father Le Fevre had said--by the time breakfast was over the half-breed boatmen began to come down at a trot overland from the town. Few of them had slept. All of them had been drinking most of the night. They came with their heads tied up, their eyes red, each man looking uncomfortable, but they all went aboard and made ready for their work. Father Le Fevre shook his head as he looked at them.

”Too bad, too bad, my children!” said he, ”but you will not learn, you will not learn at all. However, two days on the river and your heads will be more clear. Providence has arranged, I presume, that there shall be two or three days' travel between the landing and the Grand Rapids. Else fewer of our boats would get through!”

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