A Gentleman of Courage. James Oliver Curwood
and had built their cabin a stone's throw away; Jeremie and Geertruda had a baby, and at the edge of the green bit of meadow which he had pointed out to Josette five years ago were the homes of Jean Croisset and Telesphore Clamart, and Aleck Clamart was courting Anne Croisset. With Pierre he was secretly making plans for a home the following year, after one more season of trapping.
And right at the tip of the evergreen forest, where Pierre had promised, was the little log church in which they gathered each Sunday, and to which Father Albanel, a wandering minister of the forests, came once and sometimes twice a month.
As the population had grown, so had the clearing expanded. There were a good dozen acres or more under careful tillage, and in the open were cattle and several horses, and in every wild meadow for miles about a stack of harvested hay in season. There were chickens and geese and a community flock of turkeys, and at all seasons plenty of eggs and milk and cream and the sweet butter, and the dug-out cellars were filled to the brim with good things to eat when the first cold blasts of winter came. Pierre and Aleck had built a boat, and the six families had combined in the purchase of two nets, so there was no lack of fish either winter or summer at Five Fingers.
For two winters, much against his desire, young Joe had been sent back over the new Canadian Pacific to attend school at Ste. Anne.
Simon McQuarrie made note of all these things with the judgment of a fox and the keenness of a weasel. No one would have judged Simon for what he really was, at least not on short acquaintance. In him was a heart so honest he would have cut off a little finger before taking a mean advantage of any other man or woman. But, as Herman put it, he was always looking around to see what he could pick up. Herman furnished the laughter, the jollity, the never-ending good humor and four-fifths of the stomach of the partnership, and Simon was the ferret who smelled out the dollars; so when Simon said one day, "I never knew a better place than this for a little mill, Herman," the proud grandfather of baby Tobina knew something was in the air.
First of all, with his native shrewdness, Simon took stock of the happiness at Five Fingers. This contentment, the community affection which brought all together like members of one family, was a big asset in the very beginning. The mill itself could be made a sort of family affair, and a boat arranged for twice or three times a year to run up from Duluth or Fort William and carry away the lumber. There was enough fine birch and cedar and spruce right about them to keep going for years, and the mill would bring even greater prosperity than trapping, which was sure to wear out now that the settlements were filling up rapidly along the line of the railroad.
At last he talked over the matter with Pierre, and Pierre called in Dominique, and there was a meeting of all the men-folk of the families at which it was agreed nothing could be finer for Five Fingers than a mill. Simon promised the first thing to be made from its lumber should be a schoolhouse, and they would have to see to it the schoolhouse had a teacher, for if Dominique and Jeremie and Poleon kept up the pace they were going there surely must be teaching at Five Fingers.
This was on Saturday. The next day Father Albanel came, a little, gray-haired, rosy-cheeked man who loved life and all living things, and who had no settled church because he saw in nature a greater God than he had ever been able to find in the Book written by man, a freedom of thought which had been labeled heresy by those who traveled the old and unchangeable paths. But Father Albanel was loved by every man, woman and child who knew him, and while his stricter brethren chanted and prayed in their vaulted cathedrals and little mission houses, his Church was ten thousand square miles of forest land. And on this Sunday Father Albanel prayed that Simon McQuarrie might be able to keep his promises.
So the mill came. There was not much to it, but when on a certain September afternoon a tug and a scow came creeping up the middle inlet every soul in Five Fingers was down to meet them, and every heart was beating with the biggest excitement that had ever come into the lives of Pierre and his people. With the tug came Simon McQuarrie, proud as an admiral in command of a fleet, and with him a Norwegian engineer and his wife, two mill-hands, and a sallow-faced, anemic-looking young man who was to teach Jeremie Poulin's children and Dominique's kindergarten during the winter for fifteen dollars a month and board.
The mill was set up, with only pieces of tarpaulin for roof at first. Axes rang merrily in the woods, and the three horses at Five Fingers dragged in the logs at the ends of chains. Even the women were excited, and the children waited eagerly for the set day when smoke would pour from the tall boiler stack and the saws would begin to hum and grind. This happened on the fifth day, and when at last steam was up, and the long belt began to turn, and the big, shining saw to whirl, there rose a great hurrah, and even Baby Tobina waved her tiny fists and crowed as loudly as she could. Then the sharp teeth of the saw touched the end of the first log, and there came the first of that beautiful, droning song—the song of live steel cutting through sweet wood—which was to last for many years at Five Fingers, and which may be heard at times to this very day.
No one, not even his sweetheart wife, Josette, was permitted to look deeply and completely into the heart of Pierre. As time passed he saw his beloved forest dragged in, a log at a time, to be cut into pieces by that droning, merciless saw. He watched the life's blood of the timber pile up in great golden heaps of sweet-smelling sawdust in which the growing children loved to play, and down on the shore he saw his wilderness garnered in huge piles of boards, waiting for the little black tugs to come in and drag them away. He knew that it was all as it should be, for new prosperity came with the mill, more comforts and happiness for the women and children, and a few more people to Five Fingers. This was progress. Yet an ache was in his heart which he kept to himself, and which would never quite die away. For with a passion next to his love for children he loved his forests, and with him every tree was a word of God.
Yet he would not have changed conditions, for he knew it was himself who was wrong. Everything told him that. Even the wild things seemed to love this more intimate companionship with man, for the birds and squirrels were never more numerous about Five Fingers. They sang and chattered with the music of the mill, ran over the roofs of the houses and built their nests under the eaves, and in winter came to the very doorsteps to eat crumbs and grain thrown out for them. It was Pierre whose word was unwritten law at Five Fingers. One of his laws was that no living thing that was not a pest should ever be harmed near the settlement, and when ice and snow were heavy in the hills and between the ridges deer came out shyly to eat with the cattle.
Pierre went no more on the trap line but attended to the business of the mill, and Josette pleased him by saying this made her happiness complete. In spare hours one could always find children about him, and in the evenings, when the droning of the mill saw had ceased, there were games and races and fun among the sawdust piles, and never a day passed that the home of Pierre and Josette was not filled with childish laughter and the patter of little feet, although the little girl they prayed for never came to bear their name. "But she will," said Pierre, keeping up that undying hope in his heart. "Some day, my Josette, there will come a little girl to be a sister to Joe."
Even Joe, his one child, seemed to be getting farther away from him, for as time passed the boy needed no urging to return to Ste. Anne, but was restless and ill at ease when back home from school, and was excited when the day drew near that would take him from Five Fingers again. He was eighteen when Josette learned his secret, and she laughed softly, and kissed him, and told Pierre so that he would not worry any more. The girl was none other than Marie Antoinette, the beautiful little daughter of Jacques Thiebout, whom they had known years ago on the St. Lawrence. She was a year younger than Joe, and had told him he must wait until she had finished completely with the school of Ste. Anne de la Perade, for that was her ambition, and her father's, too. Then she would come with him to Five Fingers.
Tears of joy filled Pierre's eyes the night Josette whispered the secret to him, for if the little girl they both wanted persisted in not coming they would at least have grandsons and granddaughters to make up for it.
"And it may be this is the answer to my prayers," Pierre said to himself. "For Joe's children will be of our own flesh and blood, and we shall love Marie Antoinette as our own. And as Joe is younger and stronger than Dominique, who is growing fat, I do not see why he should fall behind him in the matter of family."
Few