James Beardley Hendryx - Beyond the Outposts

“So you know him? Know, even where he is?”

The man shook his head: “Don’t know nothin’ about him, an’ nothin’ about wher’ he’s at. What I mean is, it’s a long ways from here to Baker Lake, an’ if you don’t know the country, you’ll never find it. Its lucky you run on to me. These here Siwashes don’t know the country. All they’d do is eat grub. I know every foot of it, an’ if yer pa’s anywhere’s between here an’ the Bay, I kin find him. I’m tellin’ you you’re lucky to git me. I’m the best guide they is. If Radford an’ Street had of hired me, like I wanted ’em to, they’d of be’n alive today. Instead of which they hires some Huskies an’ gits murdered. It’ll cost you ten dollars a day, an’ my grub, but you’re rich, an’ besides you’ll be savin’ money in the end.”

The girl hesitated, apparently counting the cost. To engage this man for a guide was unthinkable. Nevertheless, despite his denial he had betrayed knowledge of her father, even to the fact that he was “rich.” If possible, she would try to worm more information out of him before sending him about his business. “How long would it take to find him?” she asked.

“Well, ’course, that’s accordin’ to wher’ he’s at. Mebbe we might run onto him in a month—mebbe two months. Tell you what, you pay me twenty days’ wages down, an’ the rest when we find him.”

Irma Boyne laughed: “You don’t really think I’m fool enough to carry money with me in large sums, do you?”

The man looked disappointed. “If you ain’t got no money how’d you figger to keep in grub, an’ pay them Siwashes off?”

“Orders on the Hudson’s Bay Company,” she smiled, “and beside that I have letters to the Mounted, and to the Canadian Arctic Expedition which will take care of the questions of supplies.”

Nixon scowled his disappointment: “If that’s the case, I s’pose I’ve got to take a Comp’ny order, too.” He rose abruptly to his feet. “First thing is to git red of them Siwashes. Here you!” he growled, pointing at Teddy Bye and Bye, “figger up how much you an’ them others has got comin’, an’ then you turn around an’ head back where you come from!”

“Just a minute,” interrupted the girl coldly, “what do you mean by trying to discharge my Indians?”

“We don’t need ’em no more. They’ll only be the two of us, an’ one canoe. We’ll cache the other one an’ what grub we can’t handle. This Husky boy of mine—he’s fired, too.”

The girl felt her anger rising: “What becomes of the Eskimo is no concern of mine, but these Indians are my concern. What possible right have you to try to discharge them?”

“You hired me to guide you to where yer pa is, an’ if I’m goin’ to guide, I’m goin’ to run the outfit.”

A laugh greeted the man’s words. “Really, Mr. er—Nixon, if it were not all so perfectly absurd, I should be very angry. As it is it’s merely amusing. I certainly have not hired you for a guide, despite your evident anxiety to force your services upon me. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have you for a guide upon any terms whatever. I wouldn’t trust you out of my sight. You’ve been trying to lie to me for the last half-hour, but you haven’t succeeded. You not only know my father, but you know where he is at this minute, and you’re trying to make some easy money by guiding me to him. But your little scheme for extortion won’t work. I have my maps, and I have my Indians, and I’ll find him without any help from you.”

For a moment the same angry gleam flickered in the man’s eyes that had appeared at the mention of the name of Gus Janier. Then the glance shifted, and when he spoke his voice held a note of injured innocence. “It was fer yer own good, mom, I offered fer to go. I don’t want to make no trip into that God-fersaken country—not me. But if you don’t want to hire me, that’s yer own business. Just like it was Radford an’ Street’s business when they wouldn’t hire me.” The shifty glance was upon the faces of the three Indians who, during the whole course of the conversation, had sat huddled beyond the fire, now and then casting fearful glances toward the Eskimo who had seated himself behind Nixon.

Teddy Bye and Bye sat apart, listening, but making no comment. The man continued: “But they hadn’t got fer till the Huskies murdered ’em—yes, mom, speared ’em in the back when they wasn’t lookin’, that’s what they done. They’re all right if you know ’em—Huskies is. But if you don’t know ’em, they’re mean. Look at them two priests they murdered right down here to Bloddy Falls—shot ’em in the back, an’ et one’s liver, to boot. That’s the way they do. They’s a lot of Huskies fishin’ in the country between here an’ the Heywood Range. You an’ the Siwashes’ll prob’ly git murdered ’fore you git half ways, an’ then you’ll wisht you’d of hired me.”

The girl laughed aloud. Inadvertently, the man had dropped a piece of information that she was not slow to grasp. He had mentioned the Heywood Range, the ridge of high hills that reach eastward from Lac du Sauvage to Back’s Fish River. It was somewhere in these hills that she had expected to find her father, and now the expectation amounted almost to a certainty. “No,” she answered, “I won’t wish I had hired you. I had much rather take my chances with the Eskimoes.” The girl glanced at her wrist watch. “Nearly ten o’clock,” she exclaimed. “I haven’t quite got accustomed to this perpetual daylight, yet. But I’m tired, and we have some hard work ahead of us. So if you will kindly take yourself off, we will get some sleep.”

The man moved surlily toward the umiak, pausing at a distance of a dozen yards for a parting shot: “I know wher’ yer pa is, all right—but you won’t never find him!”

Her answer was a mocking laugh. And that night as she lay between her blankets in the little tent, she smiled complacently. Her troubles were about over. Of course there remained many days of hard work in the ascent of the Coppermine, and the traverse of the numerous lakes of its upper reaches. But the river would lead her straight to the Heywood Mountains and there she would find her father. She had the necessary supplies for the journey, and plenty of help to move these supplies. On the whole the undertaking was wonderfully simple—too simple to be particularly interesting. The men who write of the North are prone to overrate its hardships. The smile broadened at thought of her father’s surprise at seeing her walk into his camp, and she closed her eyes and slept.

Irma Boyne had yet to learn the North. She was even now committing the gravest error that it is within the providence of the traveller beyond the outposts to commit. She was overestimating her own strength and ability, and underestimating the vicissitudes of the lean, lone land. And woefully had she underestimated the cunning of Amos Nixon, whose apparently inadvertent mention of the Heywood Range had been a master stroke.

Irma Boyne opened her eyes sleepily the following morning and glanced at her watch. It was six o’clock, and she lay listening for the sounds of the camp—the crackle of the fire, the stealthy moving about of the Indians in the cooking of breakfast, and the preparation of the outfit for the trail. Surely, she thought, they could not still be sleeping. Again she listened. No, the sounds of sleeping would be more evident than the sounds of preparation, for the mission Indian, Chrysostom, was an inveterate and insistent snorer. Each moment from the closing of his eyes to the opening of them was fraught with loud and disagreeable sound. A fact which, at first, had annoyed and irritated the girl almost to the point of dismissing him from her employ. But as the weeks passed she became accustomed to it, and of late, when she had awakened in the night she found herself taking certain comfort from the sound—an added sense of security. But there was no sound of snoring—no sound of any kind. An unnatural stillness seemed to have settled upon the land—a stillness accentuated rather than shattered by the muffled roar of the limestone rapids of the Kendall.