![The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert](/cover_903698.jpg "The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] - Footner Hulbert")
CHAPTER III THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR
At Fort Enterprise a busy time followed. The big steamboat (“big” of course only for lack of anything bigger than a launch to compare with) had to be put in the water and outfitted, and the season’s catch of fur inventoried, baled and put aboard. By Victoria Day all was ready. They took the day off to celebrate with games and oratory (chiefly for the benefit of the helpless natives) followed by a big bonfire and dance at Simon Grampierre’s up the river.
Next morning the steamboat departed up-stream, taking Captain Stinson, Mathews, and most of the native employees of the post in her crew. Doc Giddings and Stonor watched her go, each with a little pain at the breast; she was bound towards the great busy world, world of infinite delight, of white women, lights, music, laughter and delicate feasting; in short, to them the world of romance. They envied the very bales of fur aboard that were bound for the world’s great market-places. On the other hand, John Gaviller watched the steamboat go with high satisfaction. To him she represented Profit. He never knew homesickness, because he was at home. For him the world revolved around Fort Enterprise. As for Gordon Strange, the remaining member of the quartette who watched her go, no one ever really knew what he thought.
The days that followed were the dullest in the whole year. The natives had departed for their summer camps, and there was no one left around the post but the few breed farmers. To Stonor, who was twenty-seven years old, these days were filled with a strange unrest; for the coming of summer with its universal blossoming was answered by a surge in his own youthful blood—and he had no safety-valve. A healthy instinct urged him to a ceaseless activity; he made a garden behind his quarters; he built a canoe (none of your clumsy dug-outs, but a well-turned Peterboro’ model sheathed with bass-wood); he broke the colts of the year. Each day he tired himself out and knew no satisfaction in his work, and each morning he faced the shining world with a kind of groan. Just now he had not even Tole Grampierre to talk to, for Tole, following the universal law, was sitting up with Berta Thomas.
The steamboat’s itinerary took her first to Spirit River Crossing, the point of departure for “outside” where she discharged her fur and took on supplies for the posts further up-stream. Proceeding up to Cardigan and Fort Cheever, she got their fur and brought it back to the Crossing. Then, putting on supplies for Fort Enterprise, she hustled down home with the current. It took her twelve days to mount the stream and six to return. Gaviller was immensely proud of the fact that she was the only thing in the North that ran on a pre-arranged schedule. He even sent out a timetable to the city for the benefit of intending tourists. She was due back at Enterprise on June 15th.
When the morning of that day broke a delightful excitement filled the breasts of those left at the post. As in most Company establishments, on the most prominent point of the river-bank stood a tall flagstaff, with a little brass cannon at its foot. The flag was run up and the cannon loaded, and every five minutes during the day some one would be running out to gaze up the river. Only Gaviller affected to be calm.
“You’re wasting your time,” he would say. “Stinson tied up at Tar Island last night. If he comes right down he’ll be here at three forty-five; and if he has to land at Carcajou for wood it will be near supper-time.”
The coming of the steamboat always held the potentialities of a dramatic surprise, for they had no telegraph to warn them of whom or what she was bringing. This year they expected quite a crowd. In addition to their regular visitors, Duncan Seton, the Company inspector, and Bishop Trudeau on his rounds, the government was sending in a party of surveyors to lay off homesteads across the river, and Mr. Pringle, the Episcopal missionary, was returning to resume his duties. An added spice of anticipation was lent by the fact that the latter was expected to bring his sister to keep house for him. There had been no white woman at Fort Enterprise since the death of Mrs. Gaviller many years before. But, as Miss Pringle was known to be forty years old, the excitement on her account was not undue. Her mark would be Gaviller, the younger men said, affecting not to notice the trader’s annoyance.
Gaviller had put a big boat’s whistle on his darling Spirit River, and the mellow boom of it brought them on a run out of the store before she hove in sight around the islands in front of Grampierre’s. Gaviller had his binoculars. He could no longer keep up his pretence of calmness.
“Three twenty-eight!” he cried, excitedly. “Didn’t I tell you! Who says we can’t keep time up here! She’ll run her plank ashore at three forty-five to the dot!”
“There she is!” they cried, as she poked her nose around the islands.
“Good old tub!”
“By God! she’s a pretty sight—white as a swan!”
“And floats like one!”
“Some class to that craft, sir!”
Meanwhile Gaviller was nervously focussing his binoculars. “By Golly! there’s a big crowd on deck!” he cried. “Must be ten or twelve beside the crew!”
“Can you see the petticoat?” asked Doc Giddings. “Gee! I hope she can cook!”
“Wait a minute! Yes—there she is!—Hello! By God, boys, there’s two of them!”
“Two!”
“Go on, you’re stringing us!”
“The other must be a breed.”
“No, sir, she’s got a white woman’s hat on, a stylish hat. And now I can see her white face!”
“John, for the lova Mike let me look!”
But the trader held him off obdurately. “I believe she’s young. She’s a little woman beside the other. I believe she’s good-looking! All the men are crowding around her.”
Stonor’s heart set up an unaccountable beating. “Ah, it’ll be the wife of one of the surveyors,” he said, with the instinct of guarding against a disappointment.
“No, sir! If her husband was aboard the other men wouldn’t be crowding around like that.”
“No single woman under forty would dare venture up here. She’d be mobbed.”
“Might be a pleasant sort of experience for her.”
Doc Giddings had at last secured possession of the glasses. “She is good-looking!” he cried. “Glory be, she’s a peach! I can see her smile!”
The boat was soon close enough for the binoculars to be dispensed with. To Stonor the whole picture was blurred, save for the one slender, fragile figure clad in the well-considered dress of a lady, perfect in detail. Of her features he was aware at first only of a beaming, wistful smile that plucked at his heartstrings with a strange sharpness. Even at that distance she gave out something that changed him for ever, and he knew it. He gazed, entirely self-forgetful, with rapt eyes and parted lips that would have caused the other men to shout with laughter—had they not been gazing, too. The man who dwells in a world full of charming women never knows what they may mean to a man. Let him be exiled, and he’ll find out. In that moment the smouldering uneasiness which had made Stonor a burden to himself of late burst into flame, and he knew what was the matter. He beheld his desire.
As
