Chapter 6

The Girl on the _Fontenelle_

The passengers on the _Far West_ rose early. Danvers stood watching the slow sun uplift from the gently undulating prairie. He threw back his head, his lungs expanded as though he could not get enough of the air. He did not know why, but he suddenly felt himself a part of the country--felt that this great, open country was his. The banks of the Missouri were not high and he had an unobstructed view of the vast, grassy sea rolling uncounted miles away to where the sky came down to the edge of the world.

The song of the meadow lark, sweet and incessant as it balanced on a rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects; the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight, rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed, green-grassed land. The blue-green of the ocean had not so fascinated as the mysticism of this broad view. He was glad to be alive, and anxious to be in the riot of life on the plains, where trappers, traders and soldiers moved in the strenuous game of making a new world.

His abounding vitality had recouped itself after the strain of yesterday and he forgot its unpleasantness in the glorious morning; yet at the sight of Burroughs coming from his cabin, the sunlight dulled and involuntarily he felt himself grow tense.

"I didn't mean a damn thing," began Burroughs awkwardly.

"That's all right," broke in Philip, as uncomfortable as the other.

Just then the doctor, with Joe and Charlie, came on the upper deck.

"What 'd I tell you, Charlie?" triumphantly asked the physician, as he saw the trader and trooper shaking hands.

"What 'd you tell us?" repeated the man with the scarred face, in doubt, as Burroughs moved away and Danvers turned toward the prow of the boat staring, with eyes that saw not, into the western unknown.

"Didn't I tell you that Bob would do the right thing?" asked the charitable surgeon impatiently, unconscious that he had voiced no such sentiment.

The three looked at the river and at the long lances of light streaming from the East, then at the English youth, abstracted, aloof.

"Perhaps yeh did," assented Joe, easily. "But I know one thing. It'll stick in Bob's crop that he craw-fished----." A nod indicated his meaning. "Somehow Danvers strikes me as a stuck-up Britisher."

"A man shouldn't be damned for his look or his manner," exploded the doctor, although he recognized the truth of the criticism. "He's young and self-conscious. A year or two in the Whoop Up Country will season him and be the making of him."

"He'll not always stay in the Whoop Up Country," Charlie said, presciently. "I wish I could do something for him," he added. "He'll make his mark--somehow--somewhere."

"Prophesying, eh?" smiled the doctor. "All right; we'll see."

The light-draft, flat-bottomed _Far West_ made slow progress. The dead and broken snags, the "sawyers" of river parlance, fast in the sand-bars, seemed waiting to impale the steamboat. The lead-man called unceasingly from his position. One bluff yielded to another, a flat succeeded to a grove where wild roses burst into riotous bloom, and over all lay the enchantment of the gay, palpitant, young summer.

The journey was monotonous until, with a bend of the river, they sighted another steamer, the _Fontenelle_, stuck fast on Spread Eagle Bar--the worst bar of the Missouri. Among the passengers at the rail Philip Danvers saw--could it be? a woman--a white woman, young and beautiful. What could be her mission in that far country which seemed so vast to the young Englishman that each day's journey put years of civilization behind him?

The girl on the _Fontenelle_ was evidently enjoying the situation, and Danvers discovered at once that she was holding court on her own boat as well as commanding tribute from the _Far West_. The men about him stared eagerly at the slender, imperious figure, while Burroughs procured a glass from the mate and feasted his eyes.

"I'm goin' to see her at closer range," he declared, and soon had persuaded the captain to let him have a rowboat.

Philip and Latimer, by this time good friends, watched the trader go on board and disappear into the cabin.

"The nerve of that man amazes me!" declared Latimer. "What can he be thinking of?"

"Of the girl, and the first chance at Fort Benton!" answered the doctor, who joined the two in time to catch the remark. "If you'd known Bob Burroughs as long as I have at Fort Benton, you wouldn't be surprised at anything. He's determined to win, wherever you put him, and he'll make money easy enough."

"But his eagerness and offensiveness----" began Danvers.

"It isn't so much ignorance," explained the doctor, always ready to give credit wherever due. "He can talk English well enough when he thinks there is any occasion. He's one of the self-made sort, you know. But he doesn't estimate men correctly--puts them all a little too low--and that's where he's going to lose the game."

When Burroughs came back he was met with a fusillade of questions.

"Who is she, Bob?"

"Major Thornhill's daughter, Eva Thornhill."

"Didn't know he had a daughter," quoth Joe. "He never tol' me----"

This created a laugh, as Joe meant it should.

"The major hasn't been so social since he was stationed at Fort Benton, as to tell us his family affairs," reminded Charlie.

"Bob's thinkin' o' that girl," surmised the mate, openly, as Burroughs looked longingly toward the _Fontenelle_.

The boats, obstructed by the bar, were delayed the better part of two days, and came to feel quite neighborly. The enamoured Burroughs made another call, but he came back with a grievance.

"She wanted to know who the fellow was with the complexion like a girl's. I told her that if she meant Danvers," here he turned toward the object of his comment, "that he was nothin' but a private in the Canadian North West Mounted Police. She wasn't interested then," maliciously.

"Army girls don't look at anything under a lieutenant, you bet!" seconded Toe String Joe. "She probably won't even take any notice of me!"

"She'd heard, through the captain, about the 'hero' who saved Charlie's sister, and she wanted to know all about it," sneered Burroughs.

"Did you tell her how the railin' happened to break?" insinuated Charlie.

Philip Danvers remembered the fling. However, what did it matter what Miss Thornhill thought of him or his position? He would probably never meet her. Yet as the _Far West_ followed the _Fontenelle_ up the river, he watched the girl's face turned, seemingly, toward him; and as the first steamer disappeared around a bend, the alluring eyes seemed like will-o'-the-wisps drawing him on. As he turned, other eyes, soft and affectionate, were upraised to his, and a child's hand crept into his with mute sympathy.

And thus by following the endless turn and twist of the erratic Missouri; warping over rapids and sticking on sand-bars; running by banks undermined by the flood; shaving here a shore and hugging there a bar; after the tie-ups to clean the boilers, or to get wood, or to wait for the high winds to abate; after perils by water and danger from roving Indians, the _Far West_ swung around the last curve of the river and behold--Fort Benton. The passengers cheered; the crowds on the levees answered, while fluttering flags blossomed from boat and adobe fort and trading posts as wild roses blossom in spring.

"Whew!" whistled the doctor, wiping his forehead as he joined Philip and Latimer on the prow of the steamer. "It's warm. Here we are, at last. I wish," turning to Danvers, "that you were going to stay here. Latimer and I will miss you."

"Indeed we shall!" echoed the young lawyer. "Here we've just gotten to be friends and you must leave us. But you must write, old boy, and if I don't make a success of the law business at Fort Benton, I'll run up to Fort Macleod and make you a visit, while I look over the situation."

The Americanism of the phrase "law business" struck oddly on British ears, as lacking in dignity. Philip thought of "doctor business," "artist business," and wondered if Americans spoke thus of all professions. Latimer changed the subject.

"Is this all there is to Fort Benton?" with a wave of his hand.

"Sure," answered the doctor, offended, "what did you expect--a St. Louis?"

"N-o," hesitated the lawyer, divided between a desire to gird at the doctor, or to soothe his civic pride. "But I'll confess I expected a town somewhat larger, for the port of entry of the territory of Montana."

"Thirty years from now Fort Benton will be a second St. Louis," affirmed the doctor, oracularly. "The river traffic will be enormous by that time."

The physician's faith in the ultimate settlement of the Northwest and Fort Benton's consequent growth was shared, Danvers knew, by many another enthusiast; but as he looked back, mentally, over the lonely, wind-swept miles through which the Missouri flowed, uninhabited save by a few adventurers, trappers and Indians, the prediction seemed preposterous.

"So the town looks small to you, eh?" asked the doctor, returning to Latimer's comment. "But let me tell you, Fort Benton does the business! Our boats bring in the year's supply for the mining camps, for the Indian agencies, for the military posts and for the Canadian Mounted Police. No other town in the West has its future."

The three were silent for a time. The little town was very attractive, nestling in the bend of the Missouri and protected by the bluffs in their springtime tints.

Several stern-wheelers, many mackinaws, and smaller boats lay along the water front.

The _Fontenelle_, first to arrive, was discharging her cargo. Danvers, boy-like, took a certain pride in knowing that even the Canadians, through the establishment of the North West Mounted Police and their immediate needs, were adding to the prosperity of this Northwestern center. Much sectional talk among the passengers had strengthened his opinion that Americans were unfair and unjust to their brothers of a common language, though when it came to business, he noticed that the loudest talkers were the most anxious to secure Canadian trade.

The longer Philip looked at Fort Benton the more he was attracted. Decisions about places are as intuitive as convictions about people. One place is liked, another disliked, and no logical reason can be given for either. Fort Benton, that blue and golden day, touched his heart so deeply that the sentiment never left him. Others might see only a raw, rough frontier trading post; but for the trooper, the glamour of the West was mingled with the faint, curling smoke dissolving into the clear atmosphere. He had been right in his strong impulse to cross the seas! Never had he been more sure.

By this time the steamer had cautiously nosed its way to its moorings and tied up to a snubbing post. An officer from Fort Macleod came on board to look after his recruits, and in the bustle of landing Philip saw Scar Faced Charlie and little Winifred but a moment. Soon the doctor and Latimer disappeared around the end of a long warehouse on their way to the hotel, after a promise to look him up on the morrow.

The captain was ordering his men, and presently Burroughs sauntered near.

"Well, here we are! I wonder 'f I'll see Miss Thornhill again?" As Danvers made no reply. Burroughs smiled heavily. "I'll see yeh agin. Likely I'll pull m' freight soon after you do and we'll meet at Macleod."

* * * * *

"G'bow thar! ye cussed, Texas horned toad! Haw, thar! ye bull-headed son of a gun, pull ahead! Whoa! Haw! Ye long-horned, mackerel-back cross between a shanghai rooster an' a mud-hen, I'll skin ye alive in about a minute!" The pop of a bull-whip followed like a pistol shot.

These vibrating adjurations, rending the balmy Sunday air, would have amazed and shocked the citizens of a more cultured community, but served in Fort Benton merely to start Scar Faced Charlie's bull-team, loaded almost beyond hauling.

Charlie's shouts, delivered in the vernacular which he avoided when his small kin was near, waked Philip Danvers, and soon he was outside the walls of the 'dobe fort which Major Thornhill had courteously placed at the service of the Canadian officer and his recruits. He called to the driver and fell into step beside the bull-team heading for the western bluffs, while the bull-whacker told him that little Winifred was being cared for by "a real nice old lady."

As he returned to town, after a pleasant good-by, he turned more than once to note the slow, swinging plod of the bulls. Finally he walked more briskly, and, finding the doctor and Latimer, they sought the levees, where the bustle and hustle of the frontier town were most apparent. Early as it was, the river-front was thronged with river-men, American and English soldiers; traders, busy, preoccupied and alert; clerks, examining and checking off goods; bull-whackers and mule-skinners; wolfers and trappers, half-breeds and Indians, gamblers and squaws--all constantly shifting and reforming into kaleidoscopic groups and jovial comradeship.

Everywhere he encountered the covert hostility toward the English, but it was not until late in the afternoon that it became openly manifest.

"Hi there!" a staggering man hiccoughed as he turned to follow Philip and his American friends.

"Go slow, so's folks c'n take yeh in. I'm goin' to kick yeh off'n the face of the earth," he continued, prodding uncertainly at Danvers. "Stop, I tell yeh! Why do I want yeh to walk slow? 'Cos (hic) I want to wipe the road up with yer English hide. Yeh think yeh're all ri', but yeh ain't. Yeh look's if yeh owned the town, an' yeh're walk's convincin', yeh----"

"That's Wild Cat Bill," said the kindly man of drugs, seeking to remove the sting whose effect Danvers only partially succeeded in concealing, as they outdistanced the drunken man. "He's ostensibly a wolfer, a man who kills wolves by scattering poisoned buffalo meat on the prairies in winter, you know," he interjected, "and then makes his rounds later to gather up the dead wolves which have feasted not wisely, but too well. He's a great friend of Sweet Oil Bob's."

Before Danvers had time to speak they passed Burroughs in close conversation with Toe String Joe.

"Those three! Bob and Joe and Bill!" snorted the doctor contemptuously. "You'll likely see considerable of Bob's friends if he goes to Macleod. He might be 'most anything he liked--he's clever enough, but unscrupulous. He's crafty enough to get the most of his work done by his confreres. He can speak English as well as I can, but he thinks bad grammar will give him a stand-in with the frontiersmen. And it's easy for a man to live on a lower level. He'll be sorry some day to find himself out of practice, when the right girl comes along."

"Here he comes--he's behind us," warned Latimer.

As Burroughs passed them he threw a glance of triumph that was unexplainable until a corner turned brought to view Major Thornhill, also walking abroad, accompanied by his daughter. Burroughs, smooth, ingratiating, joined them as if by appointment.

After Philip retired that night the monotone of the soldiers' talk merged into confused and indistinct recollections of his first Sunday at Fort Benton. Eva Thornhill's scornful yet inviting face seemed drawing him through deep waters, to be replaced by the face of the child Winifred, terror-stricken as when she was in the river. Then came the memory of the even-song at home, threading its sweetly haunting way through the wild shouts of a frontier town that continued joyously its night of revelry, until, at last, he fell asleep.