Читать книгу The Heart of Unaga - Cullum Ridgwell - Страница 9

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There are some personalities which never fail to permeate their neighbourhood with their presence. Of such was Dr. Ian Ross. His presence never failed to impress itself. The moment he crossed the threshold of his home the household became aware of it. There was his big voice, his deep-throated husky laugh. There was that strong-hearted kindly humanity always shining in his deep-set, blue eyes.

He had returned from his surgery at the agency for his midday meal, and his abundant toned hail reached his wife in a remote bedroom in the almost luxurious home which he had had set up amidst the spruce woods lining the Deadwater trail.

"Ho, Millie!" he cried. "Ho you, Mill!" he called again, without waiting for any response.

"I'll be right along, Mac," came back the cheerful reply.

"Fine. But don't stop to change your gown, there's a good soul. Guess it's feed time, anyway. And not so much 'Mac.' Guess I'm Ross of the Ross of Ardairlie, which is in the Highlands of Scotland, which is part of a small group of islands, which are dumped down in the Atlantic off the west coast of Europe. Maybe—you've heard tell."

The man flung his wide-brimmed hat on a side table in the hall with a comfortable laugh. Then seating himself in a big chair, he ran his fingers through his crisp iron-grey hair.

He was a raw-boned, powerfully built man who seemed by nature the beau ideal for the healing of a race of savages who regard disease as inevitable, a visitation by the powers of evil, and something which must be submitted to in patience lest worse befall. Almost brusque of manner, forceful, he was as strong and kindly of heart as he was skilful. He was a product of the best Scottish school of medicine, and one of those rare souls whose whole desire in life is the relief of human suffering. Fortune had favoured him very practically. He had ample private means which enabled him to accept the paltry salary the Government offered him to take charge of a herd of its coloured children up on the Caribou River. Furthermore he had had the good fortune to marry a Canadian woman whose whole heart was wrapped up in him and his life's purpose.

So these two, with their two young children, had made their way north. The man had set up an ample, even luxurious home on the confines of the reserve, and they had settled down to battle with the exterminating diseases, which, since the civilizing process set in, the Indian seems to have become heir to. So far the battle had raged, for ten years, and it looked likely to last far beyond Ian Ross's lifetime.

Whatever other successes and failures he had had during that time he had achieved an affection from his patients quite as great as the hatred achieved by Hervey Garstaing in less than half that number of years.

The plump round figure of Millie Ross rustled into the hall.

"Where's Dora?"

The man's question came without turning from the sunlit view beyond the doorway. A wonderful stretch of undulating wood-clad country lay spread out before him. It was a waste of virgin territory chequered with woodland bluffs, with here and there the rigid Indian teepee poles supporting their rawhide dwellings, peeping out from all sorts of natural shelters.

"Dora? Why, Dora's over with Nita Allenwood. That child spends most of her time there now."

Millie's cheerful, easy manner was perhaps the greatest blessing of Ian Ross's life. Her happy good temper spoke of a perfectly healthy body, and a mind full of a pleasant humour.

Dr. Ross withdrew a timepiece from his pocket.

"Now?" he cried. "Oh, you mean because of Steve's going off on the long trail. Five days isn't it before he goes?" He chuckled in his pleasant, tolerant fashion. "Sort of sympathetic butting in, isn't it? Guess heart and sense never were a good team. I'd say Dora's chock full of heart."

"And it's just as well for someone around this house to have a bunch of heart that can feel for other folks," Millie retorted promptly. "Say, you, Mac, there's two days past since word went round of Steve's going, and you haven't done a thing. Not a thing but continue to make life miserable for those poor neches who can't help themselves, and have to spend their play time in swallowing the dope you can't make filthy enough to please your notions of humanity."

The man laughed up into the smiling, admonishing eyes of the woman who meant so much to him.

"Hell!" he cried. "What would you have me do? Isn't it my job to see those poor devils right? Why, they'd lap up dope till you couldn't tell 'em from a New York drug store. The fouler it tastes the more surely they come back for more. I'd say I've lengthened the sick list of this reserve till you'd think it was a Free Hospital, and there wasn't a healthy neche, squaw, or pappoose north of 60°."

Millie picked up the hat he had flung on the side table and hung it on a peg of the coat rack.

"What would I have you do?" she said, ignoring the rest of his remarks for the thought in her mind, and coming back to his chair and resting her plump hand on his crisp hair. "Why something else besides think of these scalliwag Indians. I'm all worried to death about Nita Allenwood and Steve."

The man stirred uneasily under the caressing fingers.

"So am I," he cried brusquely. "Well?"

"That's just what it isn't," Millie had withdrawn her hand. She moved to the doorway and gazed out into the sunlight. "I want to do something and just don't know how to do it. I know you hate folks who 'slop over.' But just think of the position. Steve's going to be away for two years, according to his reckoning. They've sent Corporal Munday to take over his post in his absence. What—what on earth is Nita to do in his absence? She'll get her rations, and her pay, and all that. But—she can't live around the post sort of keeping house for this boy—Munday. She can't live there by herself anyway. Think of her by that shack with her kiddie. Two years, here in a country——Besides—"

"'Besides' nothing," exclaimed the man with that curious irritation of a troubled mind. "Is there need of 'besides' when you think of a good-looker girl who's barely twenty-two, with as dandy a baby as I've ever set eyes on, and who I helped into daylight, sitting around without her husband in a country that's peopled with white men whose morals would disgrace a dog-wolf? Two years! Why, it makes me sweat thinking. If that feller Steve don't see my way of looking at things I'm going to tell him just what his parents ought to've been."

"And what's your way of thinking, Mac?" enquired his wife with the confidence of certain knowledge.

"My way? My way?" the man exploded, his blue eyes widening with incredulity. "Why, the way he's got to look. The way sense lies. That girl and her kiddie have got to come right along here and camp with us till the boy gets back. There's going to be no darn nonsense," he added threateningly, as though Millie were protesting. "She's going to come right here, where you can keep your dandy eye on her till——"

"Eyes—plural, Mac." Millie's smile was a goodly match for the summer day.

The doctor flung his head back in a deep-throated guffaw.

"Have it your own way," he cried. "One or two, they don't miss much. Anyway, I guessed I'd put it to you before I went over to fix things up."

"Sure," laughed Millie comfortably. "You most generally ask my consent before you get busy." Then, in a moment, she became serious. "But you're right, Mac," she said. "Dora and I have been talking that way ever since we heard. And Mabel swears she's going to write the Commissioner of Police all she thinks about it, and that's 'some.' It's cruel sending off a married man on a trip like that without fixing things for his wife. You see and fix things, Mac. Nita's just as welcome as a ray of sunshine right here with us. It's a shame! It's a wicked downright shame! And Steve ought to know better than to stand for it. He ought to——"

"He can't kick." The man shook his head. "He's looking to get a superintendentship. A kick would fix that for good. No, he's got no kick coming. You need to understand the Police force right. It's no use talking that way. It's the work of the force first, last, and all the time. Everything else is nowhere, and the womenfolk, whom they discourage, last of all. And mind you, they're right. You can't run a family, and this hellish country at the same time. If the Police weren't what they were it would need seventy thousand of them instead of seven hundred to make this territory better than a sink of crime for every low down skunk who can't keep out of penitentiary anywhere else. This thing has me so worried I haven't appetite enough to care it's gone my feed time by a quarter hour. Isn't Miss Prue through with the darn potatoes, or—something?"

Millie laughed indulgently.

"I'll get along and see. You see, Miss Prue's a good and God-fearing squaw, when she isn't smoking her pipe or sitting asleep over the cook-stove. Anyway, I'll chase her up," and she bustled off in the direction of the kitchen.

Left to himself Ian Ross forgot entirely that he was awaiting his dinner. His deep-set eyes were turned to the view beyond the door, and his thoughts were still further afield. He was thinking of the pretty, eager face he had watched at the bachelors' dance at Deadwater. He was thinking of the men who had approached Nita with the ceremony which had so delighted her. He was old enough and wise enough to appreciate fully the dangers she would be confronted with in Steve's absence, dangers which it was more than likely Steve could not realize.

He liked Steve. For all their disparity of years a great friendship existed between them. Steve was a man who would succeed in anything he undertook. The doctor was sure of that. But—and this was the matter that troubled him most—Steve had utter and complete faith in his wife, the same as he had in all those who possessed his regard. Steve was a man of single, simple purpose. Strong as a lion in the open battle where the danger was apparent, but in the more subtle dangers of life he was a child.

Well, there were men in their world who constituted just one of those grave subtle dangers to Steve in Steve's absence. Ian Ross shared with everybody else the hatred of Hervey Garstaing. He had seen Garstaing and Nita together at the dance. He had seen them together at other times. Oh—he had never seen anything that was not perhaps perfectly legitimate. But he knew Hervey Garstaing better than most people at Deadwater. He saw far more of him than he desired. And Hervey was a good-looking man. Nita was young and full of a youthful desire for a good time. And then Hervey was also an unscrupulous hound whom it would have given the doctor the greatest pleasure in life to shoot.

Ian Ross laughed out loud as he strode through the woods on his way to the police post. A thought had occurred to him which pleased his simple mind mightily. It was not a very profound thought. And the humour of it was difficult to detect. But it pleased him, and he had to laugh, and when he laughed the echoes rang. It had occurred to him that it took a man of real brain to be a perfect "damn fool."

The inspiration of his thought was undoubtedly Steve Allenwood. Steve Allenwood and his affairs had occupied his thoughts all the morning, and had interfered with a due appreciation of the dinner he had just eaten. He was perturbed, and Millie had set the match to the powder train of his emotions and energies. His admiration for Steve was as unstinted as his sympathy for the call that had been suddenly made on him. But he knew Steve, and realized the difficulties that lay before him in carrying out the programme of kindly purpose Millie and he had worked out over their midday meal. It was this which had brought him to the conclusion which had inspired his laugh.

In that brief instant the complete silence of the woods about him had been broken up in startling fashion. No shot from a rifle, no mournful cry of timber-wolf could disturb the spell of nature like the jarring note of the human voice.

But it had another effect. It elicited a response no less startling to the man who had laughed.

"Ho you, Mac!"

Ian Ross halted. He had recognized the voice instantly.

"That you, Steve?"

"Sure," came back the reply.

Instantly the Scotsman's lack of self-consciousness became apparent.

"How in hell did you know it was me?"

It was the turn of the invisible police officer to laugh.

"Guess there's only one laugh like yours north of 60°—less a bull moose can act that way." Then he went on. "Sharp to your left. I'm down here on the creek. I was making your place and this way cuts off quite a piece."

Ross turned off at once and his burly figure crashed its way through the barrier of delicate-hued spruce. A moment later he was confronting the officer on the bank of the creek.

Steve's smile was one of cordial welcome.

"I was figgering to get you before you went back to the agency," he said in explanation.

The doctor's eyes twinkled.

"And I was guessing to get you—before I went."

Steve nodded.

"We were chasing each other."

"Which is mostly a fool stunt."

"Mostly."

They stood smiling into each other's eyes for a moment.

"You were needing me—particular?" Steve enquired after a pause.

Ross glanced down at the gurgling water of the shallow stream as it passed over its rough gravel bed.

"I was needing a yarn. Nothing amiss at the post? You wanted me—particular?"

The smile in Steve's eyes deepened.

"No. I was needing a—yarn."

The doctor's twinkling eyes searched the clearing. A fallen tree was sprawling near by, with its upper boughs helping to cascade the waters of the stream. He pointed at it.

"Guess we don't need to wear our legs out."

Steve laughed shortly.

"That's where the neches beat us every time. You need to sit at a pow-wow."

"Sure. Their wise men sit most all the time."

They moved over to the tree trunk, and Ross accepted the extreme base of it and sat with his back against the up-torn roots. Steve sat astride the trunk facing him. Then by a common impulse the men produced their pipes. Steve's was alight first and he held a match for the other.

"You were chasing me up?" he said. "Nothing on the Reserve?"

"No." The doctor's pipe was glowing under the efforts of his powerful lungs. "Most of the neches are sleeping off the dope. It's queer how they're crazy for physic. How's Nita and the kiddie? I haven't seen Nita since the dance."

Steve's smile died out quite suddenly. The doctor's observant eyes lost nothing of the change, although the sunshine on the dancing waters seemed to absorb his whole attention.

"Guess little Coqueline absorbs more bottles to the twenty-four hours than you'd ever guess she was made to fit," Steve replied with a half laugh. "She kind of reminds you of one of those African sand rivers in the rainy season. Nita's the same as usual. She had a good time at the dance."

"Yes." The doctor bestirred himself and withdrew his gaze from the tumbling waters. "You had something to say to me," he demanded abruptly, his blue eyes squarely challenging.

Steve nodded. A half smile lit his steady eyes.

"Sure. And—it isn't easy."

The Scotsman returned the half smile with interest.

"I haven't noticed it hard for folks to talk, unless it is to tell of their own shortcomings. Guess you aren't figgering that way. Maybe I can help you. I'd hate to be setting out on a two years' trip and leaving Millie to scratch around without me."

Steve's eyes lit.

"That's it, Doc," he said with a nod which told the other of the emotions stirring under his calm exterior. "Two years!" He laughed without any amusement. "It may be more, a hell of a sight. Maybe even I won't get back. You see, you never can figger what this north country's got waiting on you. It's up in the Unaga country. And I guess it's new to me. I'd say it's new to anyone. It's mostly a thousand miles I've got to make, right up somewhere on the north-west shores of Hudson's Bay."

"A—thousand miles! It's tough." Dr. Ross shook his head.

"An' it comes at a bad time for me," Steve went on thoughtfully. "Still, I guess it can't be helped. You see, it's murder! Or they reckon it is. A letter got through from Seal Bay. That's on the Hudson coast. The Indian Department don't know where it comes from. It seems to have been handed in by an Indian named Lupite. The folks tried to get out of him where he came from, but I guess he didn't seem to know. Anyway he didn't tell them. He said Unaga, and kind of indicated the north. Just the north. Well, it isn't a heap to go on. Still, that's the way of these things. I've got to locate the things the folks at Seal Bay couldn't locate. It seems there's a biggish trading post way up hidden somewhere on the plateau of Unaga. It was run by two partners, and they had a sort of secret trade. The man at Seal Bay—Lorson Harris—reckons it's a hell of an important trade. The names of these traders were Marcel Brand—a chemist—and Cy Allshore, a pretty tough northern man. These fellers used to come down and trade at Seal Bay. Well, I don't know much more except this letter came into Seal Bay—it's written in a woman's hand and in English—to say her husband, Marcel Brand, and this, Cy Allshore, have been murdered. And she guesses by Indians. She don't seem dead sure. But they've been missing over a year. I'm just handing you this so you'll know the sort of thing I'm up against. And I've got to leave Nita, and my little baby girl, for two years—sure."