![The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert](/cover_903698.jpg "The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert")
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 of the big clap-boarded villa. Stonor, tiring of the conversation around the stove, frequently spent the evenings in front of his own fire, and here he sometimes had a visitor, to wit, Tole Grampierre, youngest son of Simon, the French half-breed farmer up the river. Tole came of good, self-respecting native stock, and was in his own person a comely, sensible youngster a few years younger than the trooper. Tole was the nearest thing to a young friend that Stonor possessed in the post. They were both young enough to have some illusions left. They talked of things they would have blushed to expose to the cynicism of the older men.
Stonor sat in his barrel chair that he had made himself, and Tole sat on the floor nursing his knees. Both were smoking Dominion mixture.
Said Tole: “Stonor, what you make of this Swan River mystery?”
“Oh, anything can be a mystery until you learn the answer. I don’t see why a man shouldn’t settle out on Swan River if he has a mind to.”
“Why do all the white men talk against him?”
“Don’t ask me. I doubt if they could tell you themselves. When men talk in a crowd they get started on a certain line and go on from bad to worse without thinking what they mean by it.”
“Our people just the same that way, I guess,” said Tole.
“I’m no better,” said Stonor. “I don’t know how it is, but fellows in a crowd seem to be obliged to talk more foolishly than they think in private.”
“You don’t talk against him, Stonor.”
The policeman laughed. “No, I stick up for him. It gets the others going. As a matter of fact, I’d like to know this Imbrie. For one thing, he’s young like ourselves, Tole. And he must be a decent sort, to cure the Indians, and all that. They’re a filthy lot, what we’ve seen of them.”
“Gaviller says he’s going to send an outfit next spring to rout him out of his hole. Gaviller says he’s a cash trader.”
Stonor chuckled. “Gaviller hates a cash trader worse than a devil with horns. It’s nonsense anyway. What would the Kakisas do with cash? This talk of sending in an expedition will all blow over before spring.”
“Stonor, what for do you think he lives like that by himself?”
“I don’t know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman at the bottom of it. He’s young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he’d be thankful for a friend now.”
“White men got funny ideas about women, I think.”
“I suppose it seems so. But where did you get that idea?”
“Not from the talk at the store. I have read books. Love-stories. Pringle the missionary lend me a book call Family Herald with many love-stories in it. From that I see that white men always go crazy about women.”
Stonor laughed aloud.
“Stonor, were you ever real crazy about a woman?”
The trooper shook his head—almost regretfully, one might have said. “The right one never came my way, Tole.”
“You don’t like the girls around here.”
“Yes, I do. Nice girls. Pretty, too. But well, you see, they’re not the same colour as me.”
“Just the same, they are crazy about you.”
“Nonsense!”
“Yes, they are. Call you ‘Gold-piece.’ Us fellows got no chance if you want them.”
“Tell me about the stories you read, Tole.”
Tole refused to be diverted from his subject. “Stonor, I think you would like to be real crazy about a woman.”
“Maybe,” said the other dreamily. “Perhaps life would seem less empty then.”
“Would you go bury yourself among the Indians for a woman?”
“I hardly think so,” said Stonor, smiling. “Though you never can tell what you might do. But if I got turned down, I suppose I’d want to be as busy as possible to help forget it.”
“Well, I think that Imbrie is crazy for sure.”
“It takes all kinds to make a world. If I can get permission I’m going out to see him next summer.”
CHAPTER II HOOLIAM
When the spring days came around, Stonor, whose
