The Woman from Outside Read online

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  [Transcriber's Note: Obvious errors in the text have been corrected.Changes have also been made to make spelling, hyphenation, andpunctuation use consistent. A full list of changes is at the end of thetext.]

  THE WOMAN _from_ "OUTSIDE" [On Swan River]

  By HULBERT FOOTNER Author of "The Fur Bringers" etc.

  THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY _Publishers_ _New York_

  Copyright, 1921 by THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY All Rights Reserved

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN 1 II HOOLIAM 15 III THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR 24 IV MORE ABOUT CLARE 35 V THE FIRST STAGE 46 VI THE KAKISAS 59 VII ON THE RIVER 68 VIII THE LOG SHACK 83 IX THE FOOT 96 X THE START HOME 111 XI THE MYSTERY 129 XII IMBRIE 139 XIII THE RESCUE 154 XIV PURSUIT 172 XV UPS AND DOWNS 192 XVI THE LAST STAGE ON SWAN RIVER 212 XVII THE HEARING 243 XVIII A LETTER FROM MAJOR EGERTON TO HIS FRIEND ARTHUR DONCOURT, ESQ. 256 EPILOGUE 264

  THE WOMAN FROM OUTSIDE

  CHAPTER I

  THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN

  On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the "gang"sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussingthat inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The biglofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock ofexpensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a cityemporium rather than the Company's most north-westerly post, nearly athousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seemingmiracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader wasabove all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point withpride to Gaviller's flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellowclap-boarded house--two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings aroundit! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only onenorth of fifty-five!

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

  "Ben can't start from the Crossing until the mail comes through fromthe Landing," said Gaviller. "It can't start from the Landing until theice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across CaribouLake." Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceedinggood care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiablerelentlessness. They called him the "Czar," and it did not displeasehim.

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

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

  "The trouble is, they wait until the horse-road is made over the icebefore starting the mail in. If the Government had the enterprise of aground-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 fortheir mail. Who knows what may have happened since the freeze-up lastOctober?"

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

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

  "Well, 'tain't a job as I'd envy any man," put in Captain Stinson of thesteamboat _Spirit River_, now hauled out on the shore. "Breaking a roadfor three hundred and fifty mile, and not a stopping-house the whole waytill he gets to the Beaver Indians at Carcajou Point."

  The doctor addressed himself to the policeman, who was mending asnowshoe in the background. "Stonor, you've got the best dogs in thepost; 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 mirthfulsobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tonethat 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?' Andwhen I told him he'd come back with his well-known embellishments oflanguage: 'Has the R.N.W.M.P. nothing better to do than tote DocGiddings' love-letters?'"

  A great laugh greeted this sally: they are so grateful for the smallestof 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 andout 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 trailand 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 withthe mail-bags over his shoulder, and cast them magnificently on thecounter. Even up north, where every man cultivates his own peculiaritiesunhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick manof enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quicksethedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like anEskimo, 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 forcatalogues 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 itthrough an air-hole--I swear I will! So now you're warned! I got somepinbetter to do than tote catalogues. When I die and go to hell, I onlyhope I meet the man who invented mail-order catalogues there, that'sall."

  "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 wholelitter through the ice up there. Mahooly of the French outfit at theSettlement's gone out to get him a set of chiny teeth. Says he's goingto get blue ones to dazzle the Indians. Oh, and I almost forgot; down atOttawa 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 andfeed 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 ofhis eye: Captain Stinson had a wife, and Mathews the engineer, anelderly sweetheart. The
dark-skinned Gordon Strange, Gaviller's clerk,carried on an extensive correspondence, the purport of which was unknownto the others, and Father Goussard was happy in the receipt of manyletters from his confreres. Even young Stonor was excited, who had noone in the world to write to him but a married sister who sent himlong, dutiful chronicles of small beer. But it was from "home."

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

  "Hello, what's this?" he cried, reading the label in surprise. "DoctorErnest 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, FortEnterprise, Spirit River, Athabasca."

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

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

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

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

  "But we hear about everybody who comes north of the Landing," objectedGaviller. "I would have been advised if he had a credit here."

  "Another doctor!" said Doc Giddings bitterly. "If he expects to share mypractice he's welcome!"

  At another time they would have laughed at this, but the mystery teasedthem. They resented the fact that some rank outsider claimed FortEnterprise for his post-office, without first having made himselfknown.

  "If he went back outside, he'd stop all this stuff coming in, you'dthink."

  "Maybe somebody's just putting up a joke on us."

  "Funny kind of joke! Subscriptions to these magazines cost money."

  Stonor read off the titles of the magazines: "_The Medical Record_; _TheAmerican Medical Journal_; _The Physician's and Surgeon's Bulletin_."

  "Quite a scientific guy," said Doctor Giddings, with curling lip.

  "Strange, he gets so many papers and not a single letter!" remarkedFather Goussard. "A friendless man!"

  Gaviller picked up a round tin, one of several packed and addressedalike. He read the business card of a well-known tobacconist. "Smokingtobacco!" he said indignantly. "If the Company's Dominion Mixture isn'tgood enough for any man I'd like to know it! He has a cheek, if you askme, bringing in tobacco under my very nose!"

  "Tobacco!" cried Stonor. "It's all very well about papers, but no manwould waste good tobacco! It must be somebody who started in beforeBen!"

  Their own mail matter, that they had looked forward to so impatiently,was forgotten now.

  When Ben Causton came back they bombarded him with questions. But thisbag had come through locked all the way from Miwasa Landing, and Ben,even Ben, the great purveyor of gossip in the North, had heard nothingof any Doctor Imbrie on his way in. Ben was more excited and moreindignant than any of them. Somebody had got ahead of him in spreading asensation!

  "It's a hoe-axe," said Ben. "It's them fellows down at the Landingtrying to get a rise out of me. Or if it ain't that, it's some guycomin' in next spring, and sendin' in his outfit piecemeal ahead of him.And me powerless to protect myself! Ain't that an outrage! But when Imeet him on the trail I'll put it to him!"

  "There are newspapers here, too," Stonor pointed out. "No man coming innext spring would send himself last year's papers."

  "Where is he, then?" they asked.

  The question was unanswerable.

  "Well, I'd like to see any lily-handed doctor guy from the outside facethe river trail in the winter," said Ben bitterly. "If he'll do that,I'll carry his outfit for him. But he'll need more than his diploma tofit him for it."

  At any rate they had a brand-new subject for conversation at the post.

  * * * * *

  About a week later, when Hairy Ben had started back up the river, theroutine at the post was broken by the arrival of a small party of KakisaIndians from the Kakisa or Swan River, a large unexplored stream off tothe north-west. The Kakisas, an uncivilized and shy race, rarelyappeared at Enterprise, and in order to get their trade Gaviller hadformerly sent out a half-breed clerk to the Swan River every winter. Butthis man had lately died, and now the trade threatened to lapse for thelack of an interpreter. None of the Kakisas could speak English, andthere was no company employee who could speak their uncouth tongueexcept Gordon Strange the bookkeeper, who could not be spared from thepost.

  Wherefore Gaviller welcomed these six, in the hope that they might proveto be the vanguard of the main body. They were a wild and ragged lot,under the leadership of a withered elder called Mahtsonza. They werediscovered by accident camping under cover of a poplar bluff across theriver. No one knew how long they had been there, and Gordon Strange hada time persuading them to come the rest of the way. It was dusk whenthey entered the store, and Gaviller, by pre-arrangement with Mathews,clapped his hands and the electric lights went on. The effect surpassedhis expectations. The Kakisas, with a gasp of terror, fled, and couldnot be tempted to return until daylight.

  They brought a good little bundle of fur, including two silver foxskins, the finest seen at Enterprise that season. They laid their fur onthe counter, and sidled about the store silent and abashed, likechildren in a strange house. With perfectly wooden faces they took inall the wonders out of the corners of their eyes; the scales, the stove,the pictures on the canned goods, the show-cases of jewellery and candy.Candy they recognized, and, again like children, they discussed therespective merits of the different varieties in their own tongue.Gaviller, warned by his first mistake, affected to take no notice ofthem.

  The Kakisas had been in the store above an hour when Mahtsonza, withoutwarning, produced a note from the inner folds of his dingy capote, and,handling it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, silently offered itto Gaviller. The trader's eyes almost started out of his head.

  "A letter!" he cried stupidly. "Where the hell did you get that?--Boys!Look here! A note from Swan River! Who in thunder at Swan River canwrite a white man's hand?"

  Stonor, Doc Giddings, Strange, and Mathews, who were in the store,hastened to him.

  "Who's it addressed to?" asked the policeman.

  "Just to the Company. Whoever wrote it didn't have the politeness to putmy name down."

  "Maybe he doesn't know you."

  "How could that be?" asked Gaviller, with raised eyebrows.

  "Open it! Open it!" said Doc Giddings irritably.

  Gaviller did so, and his face expressed a still greater degree ofastonishment. "Ha! Here's our man!" he cried.

  "Imbrie!" they exclaimed in unison.

  "Listen!" He read from the note.

  "GENTLEMEN--I am sending you two silver fox skins, for which please give me credit. I enclose an order for supplies, to be sent by bearer. Also be good enough to hand the bearer any mail matter which may be waiting for me.

  "Yours truly, "ERNEST IMBRIE."

  The silence of stupefaction descended on them. The only gateway to theSwan River lay through Enterprise. How could a man have got therewithout their knowing it? Stupefaction was succeeded by resentment.

  "Will I be good enough to hand over his mail?" sneered Gaviller. "Whatkind of elegant language is this from Swan River?"

  "Sounds like a regular Percy," said Strange, who always echoed hischief.

  "Funny place for a Percy to set up," said Stonor drily.

  "He orders flour, sugar, beans, rice, coffee, tea, baking-powder, salt,and dried fruit," said Gaviller, as if that were a fresh cause ofoffen
ce.

  "He has an appetite, then," said Stonor, "he's no ghost."

  Suddenly they fell upon Mahtsonza with a bombardment of questions,forgetting that the Indian could speak no English. He shrank backaffrighted.

  "Wait a minute," said Strange. "Let me talk to him."

  He conferred for awhile with Mahtsonza in the strange, clicking tongueof the Kakisas. Gaviller soon became impatient.

  "Tell us as he goes along," he said. "Never mind waiting for the end ofthe story."

  "They can't tell you anything directly," said Strange deprecatingly;"there's nothing to do but let them tell a story in their own way. He'stelling me now that Etzooah, a man with much hair, who hunts down theSwan River near the beginning of the swift water, came up to the villageat the end of the horse-track on snowshoes and dragging a little sled.Etzooah had the letter for Gaviller, but he was tired out, so he handedit to Mahtsonza, who had dogs, to bring it the rest of the way, and gaveMahtsonza a mink-skin for his trouble."

  "Never mind all that," said Gaviller impatiently. "What about the whiteman?"

  Strange conferred again with Mahtsonza, while Gaviller bit his nails.

  "Mahtsonza says," he reported, "that Imbrie is a great White MedicineMan who has done honour to the Kakisa people by coming among them toheal the sick and do good. Mahtsonza says he has not seen Imbriehimself, because when he came among the Indians last fall Mahtsonza wasoff hunting on the upper Swan, but all the people talk about him andwhat strong medicine he makes."

  "Conjure tricks!" muttered Doc Giddings.

  "Where does he live?" demanded Gaviller.

  Strange asked the question and reported the answer. "He has builthimself a shack beside the Great Falls of the Swan River. Mahtsonza saysthat the people know his medicine is strong because he is not afraid tolive with the voice of the Great Falls."

  Stonor asked the next question. "What sort of man is he?"

  Strange, after putting the question, said: "Mahtsonza says he's verygood-looking, or, as he puts it, a pretty man. He says he looks young,but he may be as old as the world, because with such strong medicine hecould make himself look like anything he wanted. He says that the WhiteMedicine Man talks much with dried words in covers--I suppose he meansbooks."

  "Ask him what proof he has given them that his medicine is strong,"suggested Stonor.

  Strange translated Mahtsonza's answer as follows: "Last year when thebush berries were ripe (that's August) all the Indians down the rivergot sick. Water came out of their eyes and nose; their skin got as redas sumach and burned like fire."

  "Measles," said Gaviller. "The Beavers had it, too. They take it hard."

  Strange continued: "Mahtsonza says many of them died. They just lay downand gave up hope. Etzooah was the only Kakisa who had seen the WhiteMedicine Man up to that time, and he went to him and asked him to makemedicine to cure the sick. So the White Medicine Man came back withEtzooah to the village down the river. He had good words and a soft handto the sick. He made medicine, and, behold! the sick arose and werewell!"

  "Faith cure!" muttered Doc Giddings.

  "How long has Imbrie been down there by the Falls?" asked Gaviller.

  "Mahtsonza says he came last summer when the ground berries were ripe.That would be about July."

  "Did he come down the river from the mountains?"

  "Mahtsonza says no. Nobody on the river saw him go down."

  "Where did he come from, then?"

  "Mahtsonza says he doesn't know. Nobody knows. Some say he came fromunder the falls where the white bones lie. Some say it is the voice ofthe falls that comes among men in the shape of a man."

  "Rubbish! A ghost doesn't subscribe to medical journals!" said DocGiddings.

  "He orders flour, sugar, beans," said Gaviller.

  When this was explained to Mahtsonza the Indian shrugged. Strange said:"Mahtsonza says if he takes a man's shape he's got to feed it."

  "Pshaw!" said Gaviller impatiently. "He must have come up the river. Itis known that the Swan River empties into Great Buffalo Lake. The Lakecan't be more than a hundred miles below the falls. No white man hasever been through that way, but somebody's got to be the first."

  "But we know every white man who ever went down to Great Buffalo Lake,"said Doc Giddings. "Certainly there never was a doctor there except thepolice doctor who makes the round with the treaty outfit every summer."

  "Well, it's got me beat!" said Gaviller, scratching his head.

  "Maybe it's someone wanted by the police outside," suggested GordonStrange, "who managed to sneak into the country without attractingnotice."

  "He's picked out a bad place to hide," said Stonor grimly. "He'll bewell advertised up here."

  * * * * *

  Stonor had a room in the "quarters," a long, low barrack of logs on theside of the quadrangle facing the river. It had been the trader'sresidence before the days of the big clap-boarded villa. Stonor, tiringof the conversation around the stove, frequently spent the evenings infront of his own fire, and here he sometimes had a visitor, to wit, ToleGrampierre, youngest son of Simon, the French half-breed farmer up theriver. Tole came of good, self-respecting native stock, and was in hisown person a comely, sensible youngster a few years younger than thetrooper. Tole was the nearest thing to a young friend that Stonorpossessed in the post. They were both young enough to have someillusions left. They talked of things they would have blushed to exposeto the cynicism of the older men.

  Stonor sat in his barrel chair that he had made himself, and Tole sat onthe floor nursing his knees. Both were smoking Dominion mixture.

  Said Tole: "Stonor, what you make of this Swan River mystery?"

  "Oh, anything can be a mystery until you learn the answer. I don't seewhy a man shouldn't settle out on Swan River if he has a mind to."

  "Why do all the white men talk against him?"

  "Don't ask me. I doubt if they could tell you themselves. When men talkin a crowd they get started on a certain line and go on from bad toworse without thinking what they mean by it."

  "Our people just the same that way, I guess," said Tole.

  "I'm no better," said Stonor. "I don't know how it is, but fellows in acrowd seem to be obliged to talk more foolishly than they think inprivate."

  "You don't talk against him, Stonor."

  The policeman laughed. "No, I stick up for him. It gets the othersgoing. As a matter of fact, I'd like to know this Imbrie. For one thing,he's young like ourselves, Tole. And he must be a decent sort, to curethe Indians, and all that. They're a filthy lot, what we've seen ofthem."

  "Gaviller says he's going to send an outfit next spring to rout him outof his hole. Gaviller says he's a cash trader."

  Stonor chuckled. "Gaviller hates a cash trader worse than a devil withhorns. It's nonsense anyway. What would the Kakisas do with cash? Thistalk of sending in an expedition will all blow over before spring."

  "Stonor, what for do you think he lives like that by himself?"

  "I don't know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman atthe bottom of it. He's young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he'dbe thankful for a friend now."

  "White men got funny ideas about women, I think."

  "I suppose it seems so. But where did you get that idea?"

  "Not from the talk at the store. I have read books. Love-stories.Pringle the missionary lend me a book call _Family Herald_ with manylove-stories in it. From that I see that white men always go crazy aboutwomen."

  Stonor laughed aloud.

  "Stonor, were you ever real crazy about a woman?"

  The trooper shook his head--almost regretfully, one might have said."The right one never came my way, Tole."

  "You don't like the girls around here."

  "Yes, I do. Nice girls. Pretty, too. But well, you see, they're not thesame colour as me."

  "Just the same, they are crazy about you."

  "Nonsense!"

  "Yes, they are. Call you 'Gold-piece.' Us fellows g
ot no chance if youwant them."

  "Tell me about the stories you read, Tole."

  Tole refused to be diverted from his subject. "Stonor, I think you wouldlike to be real crazy about a woman."

  "Maybe," said the other dreamily. "Perhaps life would seem less emptythen."

  "Would you go bury yourself among the Indians for a woman?"

  "I hardly think so," said Stonor, smiling. "Though you never can tellwhat you might do. But if I got turned down, I suppose I'd want to be asbusy as possible to help forget it."

  "Well, I think that Imbrie is crazy for sure."

  "It takes all kinds to make a world. If I can get permission I'm goingout to see him next summer."