Читать книгу Mike Mullins of Boston Crick - Owen Templeton Garrett Williamson - Страница 4

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This is le mot juste, since what follows is purely introductory. Candour forces me to say that I did not meet Mullins at Cobalt in 1907 although, on his own admission, he was at the Kerr Lake Mine that year. My first knowledge of him came from Old John, when he related the pig shipment episode. Old John, otherwise John Doyle, is a T. & N.O. Agent who has been in retirement for the past ten years. A close friend of Mullins, he outranks him on the Seniority List by about two minutes, which, together with his masterful attitude, has permitted him to dominate the situation whenever they are together My first actual contact with Mike came when, still indignant because of the notoriety thrust upon him by the publication of his Big Moment, he told me about the measles epidemic up at MacDougall Chutes. Since these constituted my introduction, they must serve as well to introduce the reader to Mike Mullins.

For those who are not content to paint their own mental pictures, it may be said that Mullins is a plain man of medium height and breadth of shoulder. He would pass unnoticed in a crowd but even a casual glance might be arrested by his eyes. They are eyes which smile even when his lips are set; eyes which, while they may be no asset in a poker game, are peep holes to the inner man. Mike sticks his chest out occasionally when he feels that he has pulled off something good, which distinguishes him from Old John whose chest is always distended. A masterful man is Old John with plenty of self-assurance but with a heart of gold.

O’Rourke? There’s a man. Fifty years ago in Southern Ontario, his blood-brothers might have been seen in half a hundred pleasant, well-kept bars, sliding beer mugs half their length and accepting cigars for many a proffered drink. His moustache is of the proper weight and curl and he would be a museum piece except for the subtle variations forty years of Northern Ontario have imposed. The ruddiness and pleasing plumpness of the authentic type has been replaced by a weather-beaten tan and a certain muscular stringiness but he still radiates hospitality and is a good fellow according to his lights.

Annie is a sweet woman, one of the best. You may picture her with eyes of the deepest blue and a kind and understanding smile. If her face is now lined, the lines are an honourable accumulation of good marks conferred for forty years of backing up her man and smiling through the vicissitudes of pioneering. She lets Mike talk, when a word from her might puncture one of his rosiest dreams. She is a motherly woman and Mike thrives on it.

For the others, if you come to Northern Ontario, you will find them all the way from North Bay to Moosonee. Not at all heroic, still they are part of the warp and woof of the pattern and fabric of Northern life.