The Woman from Outside [On Swan River]. Footner Hulbert
![The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert](limg_read903698.jpg "The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert")
of the different varieties in their own tongue. Gaviller, warned by his first mistake, affected to take no notice of them.
The Kakisas had been in the store above an hour when Mahtsonza, without warning, produced a note from the inner folds of his dingy capote, and, handling it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, silently offered it to 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 can write 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 put my 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 of astonishment. “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 the Swan River lay through Enterprise. How could a man have got there without their knowing it? Stupefaction was succeeded by resentment.
“Will I be good enough to hand over his mail?” sneered Gaviller. “What kind of elegant language is this from Swan River?”
“Sounds like a regular Percy,” said Strange, who always echoed his chief.
“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 of offence.
“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 back affrighted.
“Wait a minute,” said Strange. “Let me talk to him.”
He conferred for awhile with Mahtsonza in the strange, clicking tongue of the Kakisas. Gaviller soon became impatient.
“Tell us as he goes along,” he said. “Never mind waiting for the end of the 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’s telling me now that Etzooah, a man with much hair, who hunts down the Swan River near the beginning of the swift water, came up to the village at 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 handed it to Mahtsonza, who had dogs, to bring it the rest of the way, and gave Mahtsonza a mink-skin for his trouble.”
“Never mind all that,” said Gaviller impatiently. “What about the white man?”
Strange conferred again with Mahtsonza, while Gaviller bit his nails.
“Mahtsonza says,” he reported, “that Imbrie is a great White Medicine Man who has done honour to the Kakisa people by coming among them to heal the sick and do good. Mahtsonza says he has not seen Imbrie himself, because when he came among the Indians last fall Mahtsonza was off hunting on the upper Swan, but all the people talk about him and what 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 built himself a shack beside the Great Falls of the Swan River. Mahtsonza says that the people know his medicine is strong because he is not afraid to live 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 very good-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 he could make himself look like anything he wanted. He says that the White Medicine Man talks much with dried words in covers—I suppose he means books.”
“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 the bush berries were ripe (that’s August) all the Indians down the river got sick. Water came out of their eyes and nose; their skin got as red as 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 down and gave up hope. Etzooah was the only Kakisa who had seen the White Medicine Man up to that time, and he went to him and asked him to make medicine to cure the sick. So the White Medicine Man came back with Etzooah to the village down the river. He had good words and a soft hand to the sick. He made medicine, and, behold! the sick arose and were well!”
“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 from under the falls where the white bones lie. Some say it is the voice of the falls that comes among men in the shape of a man.”
“Rubbish! A ghost doesn’t subscribe to medical journals!” said Doc Giddings.
“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. It is known that the Swan River empties into Great Buffalo Lake. The Lake can’t be more than a hundred miles below the falls. No white man has ever 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 the police 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 Gordon Strange, “who managed to sneak into the country without attracting notice.”
“He’s picked out a bad place to hide,” said Stonor grimly. “He’ll be well advertised up here.”
Stonor had a room in the “quarters,” a long, low barrack of logs on the side of the quadrangle facing the river. It had been the trader’s residence before the days