The Woman from Outside [On Swan River]. Footner Hulbert

it was drunk up by now. Some of the men showed the sullen depressed air that follows on a prolonged spree, but all were sober at present.

      He was in one of the last houses of the village, when, out of the tail of his eye, he saw a man quietly issue from the house next in order, and, covered by the crowd around the door, make his way back to a house already visited. Stonor, without saying anything, went back to that house and found himself face to face with a young white man, a stranger, who greeted him with an insolent grin.

      “Who are you?” demanded the policeman.

      “Hooliam.”

      “You have a white man’s name. What is it?”

      “Smith”—this with inimitable insolence, and a look around that bid for the applause of the natives.

      Stonor’s lip curled at the spectacle of a white man’s thus lowering himself. “Come outside,” he said sternly. “I want to talk to you.”

      He led the way to a place apart on the river bank, and the other, not daring to defy him openly, followed with a swagger. With a stern glance Stonor kept the tatterdemalion crowd at bay. Stonor coolly surveyed his man in the sunlight and saw that he was not white, as he had supposed, but a quarter or eighth breed. He was an uncommonly good-looking young fellow in the hey-day of his youth, say, twenty-six. With his clear olive skin, straight features and curly dark hair he looked not so much like a breed as a man of one of the darker peoples of the Caucasian race, an Italian or a Greek. There was a falcon-like quality in the poise of his head, in his gaze, but the effect was marred by the consciousness of evil, the irreconcilable look in the fine eyes.

      “Bad clear through!” was Stonor’s instinctive verdict.

      “Where did you come from?” he demanded.

      “Up river,” was the casual reply. The man’s English was as good as Stonor’s own.

      “Answer me fully.”

      “From Sah-ko-da-tah prairie, if you know where that is. I came into that country by way of Grande Prairie. I came from Winnipeg.”

      Stonor didn’t believe a word of this, but had no means of confuting the man on the spot. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

      “A week or so. I didn’t keep track.”

      “What is your business here?”

      “I’m looking for a job.”

      “Among the Beavers? Why didn’t you come to the trading-post?”

      “I was coming, but they tell me John Gaviller’s a hard man to work fer. Thought I better keep clear of him.”

      “Gaviller’s the only employer of labour hereabouts. If you don’t like him you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

      “I can take up land, can’t I?”

      “Not here. This is treaty land. Plenty of good surveyed homesteads around the post.”

      “Thanks. I prefer to pick my own location.”

      “I’ll give you your choice. You can either come down to the post where I can keep an eye on your doings, or go back up the river where you came from.”

      “Do you call this a free country?”

      “Never mind that. You’re getting off easy. If you’d rather, I’ll put you under arrest and carry you down to the post for trial.”

      “On what charge?”

      “Furnishing whisky to the Indians.”

      “It’s a lie!” cried the man, hoping to provoke Stonor into revealing the extent of his information.

      But the policeman shrugged, and remained mum.

      The other suddenly changed his front. “All right, I’ll go if I have to,” he said, with a conciliatory air. “To-morrow.”

      “You’ll leave within an hour,” said Stonor, consulting his watch. “I’ll see you off. Better get your things together.”

      The man still lingered, and Stonor saw an unspoken question in his eye, a desire to ingratiate himself. Now Stonor, under his stern port as an officer of the law, was intensely curious about the fellow. With his good looks, his impudent assurance, his command of English, he was a notable figure in that remote district. The policeman permitted himself to unbend a little.

      “What are you travelling in?” he asked.

      “Dug-out.” Encouraged by the policeman’s altered manner, the self-styled Hooliam went on, with an air of taking Stonor into his confidence: “These niggers here are a funny lot, aren’t they? Still believe in magic.”

      “In what way?”

      “Why, they’re always talking about a White Medicine Man who lives beside a river off to the north-west. Ernest Imbrie they call him. Do you know him?”

      “No.”

      “He’s been to the post, hasn’t he?”

      “No.”

      “Well, how did he get into the country?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “These people say he works magic.”

      “Well, if anyone wants to believe that—!”

      “What do they say about him down at the post?”

      “Plenty of foolishness.”

      “But what?”

      “You don’t expect me to repeat foolish gossip, do you?”

      “No, but what do you think about him?”

      “I don’t think.”

      “They say that Gaviller’s lodged a complaint against him, and you’re going out there to arrest him as soon as it’s fit to travel.”

      “That’s a lie. There’s no complaint against the man.”

      “But you are going out there, aren’t you?”

      “I can’t discuss my movements with you.”

      “That means you are going. Is it true he sent in a whole bale of silver foxes to the post?”

      “Say, what’s your interest in this man, anyway?” said Stonor, losing patience.

      “Nothing at all,” said the breed carelessly. “These Indians are always talking about him. It roused my curiosity, that’s all.”

      “Suppose you satisfy my curiosity about yourself,” suggested Stonor meaningly.

      The old light of impudent mockery returned to the comely dark face. “Me? Oh, I’m only a no-account hobo,” he said. “I’ll have to be getting ready now.”

      And so Stonor’s curiosity remained unsatisfied. To have questioned the man further would only have been to lower his dignity. True, he might have arrested him, and forced him to give an account of himself, but the processes of justice are difficult and expensive so far north, and the policemen are instructed not to make arrests except when unavoidable. At the moment it did not occur to Stonor but that the man’s questions about Imbrie were actuated by an idle curiosity.

      When the hour was up, the entire population of Carcajou Point gathered on the shore to witness Hooliam’s departure. Stonor was there, too, of course, standing grimly apart from the rabble. Of what they thought of this summary deportation he could not be sure, but he suspected that if the whisky were all gone, they would not care much one way or the other. Hooliam was throwing his belongings in a dug-out of a different style from that used by the Beavers. It was ornamented with a curved prow and stern, such as Stonor had not before seen.

      “Where