The Woman from Outside [On Swan River]

On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the "gang" sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city emporium rather than the Company's most north-westerly post, nearly a thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with pride to Gaviller's flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow clap-boarded house--two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one north of fifty-five!

"I don't see why Hairy Ben can't come down," said Doc Giddings--Doc was the grouch of the post--"the ice on the river has been fit for travelling for a month now."

"Ben can't start from the Crossing until the mail comes through from the Landing," said Gaviller. "It can't start from the Landing until the ice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across Caribou Lake." Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceeding good care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiable relentlessness. They called him the "Czar," and it did not displease him.

"Everybody knows Caribou Lake freezes over first," grumbled the doctor.

"But the rivers down there are swift, and it's six hundred miles south of here. Give them time."

"The trouble is, they wait until the horse-road is made over the ice before starting the mail in. If the Government had the enterprise of a ground-hog they'd send in dogs ahead."

"Nobody uses dogs down there any more."

"Well, I say 'tain't right to ask human beings to wait three months for their mail. Who knows what may have happened since the freeze-up last October?"

"What's happened has happened," said Father Goussard mildly, "and knowing about it can't change it."

The doctor ignored the proffered consolation. "What we need is a new mail-man," he went on bitterly. "I know Hairy Ben! I'll bet he's had the mail at the Crossing for a week, and puts off starting every day for fear of snow."

"Well, 'tain't a job as I'd envy any man," put in Captain Stinson of the steamboat Spirit River, now hauled out on the shore. "Breaking a road for three hundred and fifty mile, and not a stopping-house the whole way till he gets to the Beaver Indians at Carcajou Point."

The doctor addressed himself to the policeman, who was mending a snowshoe in the background. "Stonor, you've got the best dogs in the post; why don't you go up after him?"

The young sergeant raised his head with a grin. He was a good-looking, long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful sobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tone that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. "No, thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior. When I drove up he'd say: 'What the hell are you doing up here?' And when I told him he'd come back with his well-known embellishments of language: 'Has the R.N.W.M.P. nothing better to do than tote Doc Giddings' love-letters?'"

A great laugh greeted this sally: they are so grateful for the smallest of jokes on winter afternoons up North.

Doc Giddings subsided, but the discussion went on without him.

"Well, he'll have easy going in from Carcajou; the Indians coming in and out have beaten a good trail."

"Oh, when he gets to Carcajou he's here."

"If it don't snow. That bit over the prairie drifts badly."

"The barometer's falling."

And so on. And so on. They made the small change of conversation go far.

In the midst of it they were electrified by a shout from the land trail and the sound of bells.

"Here he is!" they cried, jumping up to a man, and making for the door.

Ben Causton, conscious of his importance, made a dramatic entrance with the mail-bags over his shoulder, and cast them magnificently on the counter. Even up north, where every man cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash about his ample middle.

"Hello, Ben! Gee! but you're slow!"

"Hello, fellows! Keep your hair on! If you want to send out for catalogues in the middle of winter you're lucky if I get here at all. Next month, if the second class bag's as heavy as this, I'll drop it through an air-hole--I swear I will! So now you're warned! I got somepin better to do than tote catalogues. When I die and go to hell, I only hope I meet the man who invented mail-order catalogues there, that's all."

"You're getting feeble, Ben!"

"I got strength enough left to put your head in chancery!"

"What's the news of the world, Ben?"

"Sarge Lambert's got a bone felon. Ally Stiff lost a sow and a whole litter through the ice up there. Mahooly of the French outfit at the Settlement's gone out to get him a set of chiny teeth. Says he's going to get blue ones to dazzle the Indians. Oh, and I almost forgot; down at Ottawa the Grits are out and the Tories in."

"Bully!"

"God help Canada!"

While Gaviller unlocked the bags, Ben went out to tie up his dogs and feed them. The trader handed out letters to the eager, extended hands, that trembled a little. Brightening eyes pounced on the superscriptions. Gaviller himself had a daughter outside being "finished," the apple of his eye: Captain Stinson had a wife, and Mathews the engineer, an elderly sweetheart. The dark-skinned Gordon Strange, Gaviller's clerk, carried on an extensive correspondence, the purport of which was unknown to the others, and Father Goussard was happy in the receipt of many letters from his confreres. Even young Stonor was excited, who had no one in the world to write to him but a married sister who sent him long, dutiful chronicles of small beer. But it was from "home."

The second-class bag with the papers was scarcely less exciting. To oblige Ben they only took one newspaper between them, and passed it around, but in this mail three months' numbers had accumulated. As the contents of the bag cascaded out on the counter, Stonor picked up an unfamiliar-looking magazine.

"Hello, what's this?" he cried, reading the label in surprise. "Doctor Ernest Imbrie. Who the deuce is he?"

"Must have come here by mistake," said Gaviller.

"Not a bit of it! Here's the whole story: Doctor Ernest Imbrie, Fort Enterprise, Spirit River, Athabasca."

It passed around from hand to hand. A new name was something to catch the attention at Fort Enterprise.

"Why, here's another!" cried Gaviller in excitement. "And another! Blest if half the bag isn't for him! And all addressed just so!"

They looked at each other a little blankly. All this evidence had the effect of creating an apparition there in their midst. There was an appreciable silence.

"Must be somebody who started in last year and never got through," said Mathews. He spoke with an air of relief at discovering so reasonable an explanation.