![The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert](/cover_903698.jpg "The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert")
will sweep a class; this was much the same thing. There was no actual outbreak; it was chiefly evinced in defiant looks and an impudent swagger. It was difficult to trace back, for the red people hang together solidly; a man with even a trace of red blood will rarely admit a white man into the secrets of the race. Under questioning they maintain a bland front that it is almost impossible to break down. Stonor had long ago learned the folly of trying to get at what he wanted by direct questioning.
He finally, as he thought, succeeded in locating the source of the infection at Carcajou Point. Parties from the post rode up there with suspicious frequency, and came back with a noticeably lowered moral tone, licking their lips, so to speak. All the signs pointed to whisky.
At dawn of a morning in May, Stonor, without having advertised his intention, set off for Carcajou on horseback. The land trail cut across a wide sweep of the river, and on horseback one could make it in a day, whereas it was a three days’ paddle up-stream. Unfortunately he couldn’t take them by surprise, for Carcajou was on the other side of the river from Enterprise, and Stonor must wait on the shore until they came over after him.
As soon as he left the buildings of the post behind him Stonor’s heart was greatly lifted up. It was his first long ride of the season. The trail led him through the poplar bush back to the bench, thence in a bee-line across the prairie. The sun rose as he climbed the bench. The prairie was not the “bald-headed” so dear to those who know it, but was diversified with poplar bluffs, clumps of willow, and wild-rose-scrub in the hollows. The crocuses were in bloom, the poplar trees hanging out millions of emerald pendants, and the sky showed that exquisite, tender luminousness that only the northern sky knows when the sun travels towards the north. Only singing-birds were lacking to complete the idyl of spring. Stonor, all alone in a beautiful world, lifted up his voice to supply the missing praise.
Towards sunset he approached the shore of the river opposite Carcajou Point, but as he didn’t wish to arrive at night, he camped within shelter of the woods. In the morning he signalled for a boat. They came after him in a dug-out, and he swam his horse across.
A preliminary survey of the place revealed nothing out of the way. The people who called themselves Beaver Indians were in reality the scourings of half the tribes in the country, and it is doubtful if there was an individual of pure red race among them. Physically they were a sad lot, for Nature revenges herself swiftly on the offspring of hybrids. Quaint ethnological differences were exhibited in the same family; one brother would have a French physiognomy, another a Scottish cast of feature, and a third the thick lips and flattened nose of a negro. Their village was no less nondescript than its inhabitants, merely a straggling row of shacks, thrown together anyhow, and roofed with sods, now putting forth a brave growth of weeds. These houses were intended for a winter residence only. In summer they “pitched around.” At present they were putting their dug-outs and canoes in order for a migration.
Stonor was received on the beach by Shose (Joseph) Cardinal, a fine, up-standing ancient of better physique than his sons and grandsons. In a community of hairless men he was further distinguished by a straggling grey beard. His wits were beginning to fail, but not yet his cunning. He was extremely anxious to learn the reason for the policeman’s coming. For Stonor to tell him would have been to defeat his object; to lie would have been to lower himself in their eyes; so Stonor took refuge in an inscrutability as polite as the old man’s own.
Stonor made a house-to-house canvass of the village, inquiring as to the health and well-being of each household, as is the custom of his service, and keeping his eyes open on his own account. He satisfied himself that if there had been whisky there, 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
