Part 20 (2/2)
”Yes,” replied Mrs. Anderson, ”Trig has done very well. He gets six dollars a week now, and Dudley, you know, gets ten.” Then with pardonable asperity she added:
”Archie is doing a little better, however; he's getting seventy-five dollars a week to start on. He has already paid his father back every copper spent on his tuition.”
”_Archie! Seventy-five dollars a week_! Why, he is hardly seventeen! How ever did he do it?” exclaimed the visitor.
”Hock, dear loyal old Hock, says it's because Archie is the very best boy in the world,” replied Mrs. Anderson, laughingly, ”but I say it was the result of a broken string.”
Maurice of His Majesty's Mails
Old Maurice Delorme boasted the blood of many nations; his ”bulldog”
grit came to him from an English sea-captain, a bluff, genial old tar whom he could recall as being his ”grand-daddy” sixty years ago; his gay, rollicking love of laughter and song came to him through his half French father; his love of wood and water lore, his endurance, his gift of strategy, were his birthright directly from his Red Indian mother; consequently there was but one place in the world where such a trinity of nationalities could be fostered in one man, but one place where that man could breathe and be happy, and that place was amid the struggling heights and the yawning canyons of the Rocky Mountains.
Years before Canada had constructed her world-famous transcontinental railroad, which now stretches its belt of steel from Atlantic to Pacific, Maurice Delorme set out for the golden West, working his way across the vast Canadian half of the American continent. He had done everything for a living--that is, everything that was honorable, for his British-French-Indian blood was the blood of honest forefathers, and he prided himself that he could directly and bravely look into the eyes of any man living; for, after all, does not dishonesty make the eyes s.h.i.+ft and the heart cowardly?
He had trapped for fur-bearing animals on the North Sh.o.r.es; he had twice fought the rebels at the Red River; he had freighted many and many a ”prairie schooner” from the a.s.siniboine to the Saskatchewan; and then, one glorious morning in July, when the hot yellow sun poured its wealth of heat and light into the velvety plains of Alberta, Maurice descried at the very edge of the western horizon a far-off speck of s.h.i.+ning white, apparently not larger than a single lump of sugar. As day followed day, and he traversed mile upon mile, more sugar lumps were visible; and, below their whiteness, the grayish distances grew into mountain shapes. Then he realized that at last he beheld the inimitable glory of the Rockies that swept in snow-tipped grandeur from south to north.
Then followed the years when he, his wife and a little Maurice lived in the fastnesses of those mighty ranges; when he learned to know and follow the trail of the mountain goat; when the rugged pa.s.ses grew familiar to him as the little village where he had been born in Quebec; when the countless forests of Douglas fir held no mysteries and no fears for him; and, because he had learned these things, because he was brave and courageous, because his life had been clean and honest, he was selected to carry His Majesty's mails from a primitive ”landing” on one of the Kootenay Lakes to the great gold mines, forty miles into the interior, and over one of the wildest, loneliest mountain trails in all British Columbia.
Then it was that, once a month, when the mail came in by the tiny steamer, Maurice Delorme would harness up his six tough little mountain-climbing horses, put on his cartridge belt, tuck a formidable revolver into his hip pocket and a good gun beneath the seat of the wagon, toss in the bags of mail and the express packages, say a laughing good-bye to Mrs. Delorme and little Maurice, and ”hit the trail” for the gold mines. How he hated to leave those two helpless ones alone in the vast, uninhabited surroundings! But Mrs. Delorme had the fearless courage and self-reliance of the women of the North, and little Maurice was yearly growing, growing, growing. Now he was ten, now twelve, now fourteen--a st.u.r.dy young mountaineer, with the sinews of an athlete, and a store of learning, not from books, for he had never known a school, but from the simple teaching of his parents and the unlimited knowledge of woodcraft, of the habits of wild things, of mountain peaks, of plants, of animals, insects and birds, and of the incessant hunt for food that must always be when one lives beyond the pale of civilized markets.
And then one day, when little Maurice was about fifteen years old, his father staggered into their pretty log home, bleeding, crushed and dazed. The fate of the mountaineer had met him, for, during one of those sudden tempests that sweep through the canyons, a wind-riven tree had hurled its length down across the trail, its rotting heart and decaying branches falling--providentially with broken force--sparing the galloping horses and only injuring the driver--for how he escaped death was beyond human explanation.
Little Maurice was then the man of the house. He helped his brave mother dress the sufferer's wounds, he cared for the horses, he provided wood and water, going about whistling softly to himself and trying to shut his eyes to the fact that the food was growing less and less daily, and that the mail day was drawing nearer and nearer. Of course the steamer would bring flour and bacon and tea but it would also bring the mail and express to be transported to the gold mines. His father would never be well enough to drive the mails up that jagged mountain trail; and, worse than that, his father must have fresh meat broth at once. Little Maurice went into the sick-room, and standing beside the bed looked carefully into the face of old Maurice. The eyes were feverish, the forehead puckered with pain, the hands hot and growing thin. Then he turned away, followed his mother outside, and, after a brief talk with her, he reached up for his father's gun, took the stock of ammunition and dry biscuits, whistled for his dog, and, a moment later, was swallowed up in the forest.
The long day slipped by; hour after hour Mrs. Delorme would go to the door, shade her eyes with her hand, and look keenly up the mountain slopes, with their wilderness of pines. Once she saw a faint, blue puff of smoke, and her quick ear caught the sharp crack of a far-off rifle.
Then all was silent for hours. The warm September sun had dropped behind the western peaks, and the canyons were purpling with oncoming twilight, when two quick successive shots broke the evening stillness, and echoed like a salute of twenty-one guns far down the valley. Mrs. Delorme ran once again to the door. The shots could not have been five hundred yards distant, for down through the firs came Royal, the magnificent hound, whining and grinning and licking his mouth with delight, and, behind him, Maurice, shouting that he had killed a deer, and was hungry enough to eat half of it himself.
”And, mother,” he cried, ”I could have got the game at noon to-day, but Royal and I have been hours and hours closing in on him, getting him into the runway, so that, when I did drop him, it would be near home, for I could never pack his carca.s.s all that way. He must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. Oh, but he's a fat one. And here are some mountain grouse Roy and I got. Daddy will have all the broth he can drink, and you and old Roy here and I will have some venison steaks for supper!”
So, breathless and proud and excited, Maurice chattered on, preparing a huge knife to quarter the deer, the more easily to pack it home.
There was great rejoicing in the log shack that night. Old Maurice swallowed his bowl of hot grouse soup with relish, and clasped his son's hand with the firm grip one man gives to another. The anxious lines left Mrs. Delorme's face, as she laughed and praised young Maurice's prowess as a bread-winner. Royal stretched his long, lithe legs, yawning audibly with weariness and content as he lay beside the stove sniffing the appetizing smells of broiling steaks, knowing well his share would be generous after his long and faithful hunt and obedience to his young master. And so the little mountain home was well supplied with fresh meat, hot soups, smoked venison hams and dried flitches, until the day of fresh supplies, when the primitive steamer tooted its shrill whistle far down the lake, and Mrs. Delorme, young Maurice and Royal all went down to greet the first fellow-beings they had seen for a month, and to receive and care for seven bags of His Majesty's mails, bound for the distant gold mines.
”Why seven bags?” asked Mrs. Delorme of the captain. ”We never get more than six.”
”The extra is a large consignment of registered mail, madam,” he replied. ”Big money for the mines, they tell me. You want to keep an eye on that extra bag. Old Maurice doesn't want to lose that.”
Then he was told the story of the old driver's accident, and forthwith climbed the steep trail from the landing to the shack to see how things really were. He saw at a glance that Delorme would not be about for some weeks to come; so, after an encouraging word and a kindly good-bye, the captain turned, as he left the door, and, slapping young Maurice on the shoulder in his bluff, hearty way, said:
”Well, kid, I guess you'll have to carry the mails this time. Start good and early to-morrow. I'm a day late bringing them, as it is. The managers of the mines are not the waiting sort, and there's money--money that they need--in that extra bag. Better take a gun with you, boy, and keep a sharp lookout for that registered stuff--mind!”
”Yes, captain,” answered young Maurice, very quietly. ”I'll land the mail at the mines all right.”
And, a few minutes later, the departing whistle of the little steamer was heard far down the lake, as night fell softly and silently on the solitary little mountain home of the Delormes.
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