" And then he asked: "Why
are you going west?"
David found himself face to face with the question, and had to answer.
"Just to toughen up a bit," he replied. "Wandering. Nothing else to do."
And after all, he thought later, wasn't that pretty near the truth? He
tried to convince himself that it was. But his hand touched the picture
of the Girl, in his breast pocket. He seemed to feel her throbbing
against it. A preposterous imagination! But it was pleasing. It warmed
his blood.
For a week David and Baree remained at Horseshoe Bay with the Frenchman.
Then they went on around the end of the lake toward Fort Chippewyan.
Bouvais accompanied them, out of friendship purely, and they travelled
afoot with fifty-pound packs on their shoulders, for in the big, sunlit
reaches the ground was already growing bare of snow. Bouvais turned back
when they were ten miles from Fort Chippewyan, explaining that it was a
nasty matter to have knocked two teeth down a factor's throat, and
particularly down the throat of the head factor of the Chippewyan and
Athabasca district. "And they went down," assured Bouvais. "He tried to
spit them out, but couldn't." A few hours later David met the factor and
observed that Bouvais had spoken the truth; at least there were two
teeth missing, quite conspicuously.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213