Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 nize Waseyawin and Missowa, bowsman and steersman, and the four middlemen as well, and there was Carlisle himself amid- ships with Eugene Drummond by his side. Yet why were they here? It was not in ac- cordance with the outlined plans or the issued orders. Something had happened. Something had gone wrong. Lewis tugged at his gray beard and muttered a wonder- ing monologue till the Factor was close enough to hail him. “Well, Lewis, how is it with everything here at the Pas?” “Nae mon wull bother me, ye ken, Fac- tor,’ replied Lewis. “I ha’ done well wi’ the trade, an’ I maun no be complainin’. An’ yersel’? Wha’ aboot the York boats. Had they ony trouble gettin’ up?” “No, but lots of trouble when they. got there. Richelieu has them now, cargoes and all, and I’m bound down for the others.” ‘The de’il! An’ ye are sayin’ so, Factor? But wull ye no be stoppin’ a bit?” ‘“‘No—no time,” refused Carlisle, sheer- ing off again. “I just wanted to let you know. Keep a tight hand, Lewis. I'll see you again on the way back!’ On down the river the huge canoe leaped, flinging its miles behind, winding ‘round its interminable curves to Chimawa- win lying where the Saskatchewan broad- ened into Cedar Lake, but Hampton had no boats there. “Us hasn’t larned aught about them from Jarvis, Factor,’’ was his report to Carlisle. ‘“‘Not likely they comed across the lake yet or it’s a very mistaker. judgment I has.” So they were off again down Cedar Lake through the Narrows, past the Demie Charge Rapids, past the Roche Rouge Rapids to the Grand Rapids post. Here the Saskatchewan, watering a vast empire in its long journey from the Rockies, poured at last into Lake Winnipeg, and here Jarvis had the same report as Hampton. Only three York boats had crossed the lake, the three that had gone on to the Pas. Jarvis couldn’t tell the cause of the de- lay. They might be still on the river, or they might be moored at Norway House waiting for favorable weather to cross. Jarvis did not know. He would not know till they arrived. “But strike me blind in the blinkers if they ayn’t put Heskimos or some other God-fors’yken copper-skins on for crews!” Adventure he prophesied. ‘‘’Cos w’y should it tyke them this long to reach ’ere? Cawn’t come fine and dry! Have to wait for the dirty rain and blows. We ’aven’t but three sea- sons ’ere anyw’y, Factor—July, Haugust and Winter!”’ ; Carlisle would have continued on across the lake to Norway House, but the Octo- ber rains and gales were on and the Winni- peg was too dangerous at the moment for canoe travel. Perforce he fretted away the days at Grand Rapids, ever watching for the lift of the York boats through the squalls. The breath of Winter blew fros- tily down the vast inland sea. All the forest was a dying blaze of color, cardinal-leaved moose maples, yellow birches, canary willows, umber cotton- woods, silvered poplars, burning brightly against the sere grasses of the gulches and the purple-black spruce of the hills. Then a weird storm with thunder, lightning, hail, sleet quenched the flame in a night, and the next morning the forests were stripped to their swaying trunks and moaning branches. Stark as a skeleton lay the land, with the sifting snow padding its bare ribs and ragged vertebre like leprous flesh. The flowers were swept from the hills. No longer Carlisle saw in the dance of blue- bells Joan’s laughing eyes, no longer he caught in the breeze-blown daisies the golden shimmer of her hair. He cursed the laggard York boats and wore out his eyes trying to pierce Winnipeg’s wrack of storm. The lake raged incessantly, a Winter- harrowed maelstrom, its headlands hidden by the breaking waves, its islands frost- armored over, its beach littered with shore ice broken off and cast high like chips, its three hundred miles of rollers ramping to the clouds, roaring at the migrant rout scudding through the snow. “Ae, Factor, it is not Wenipak now,” described Waseyawin who with Missowa always watched at his shoulder. “It is Keche (the ocean) Wenipak.”’ “So,” nodded Missowa, “‘but in three days the wind will lose its breath. The air will be sweet and warm.” “Indian Summer, eh, Missowa?” asked Carlisle. “Thus the white men call it, but it is not of this earth. It comes from afar, from an- other world. It is the time when the spirits CoOnnicloookxs (C@