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Catharine Of The "Crow’s Nest"
by
That evening Mr. Wingate himself rode over to the canyon; it was a good mile, and the trail was rough in the extreme. He did not dismount when he reached the lonely log lodge, but rapping on the door with the butt of his quirt, he awaited its opening. There was some slight stirring about inside before this occurred; then the door slowly opened, and she stood before him–a rather tall woman, clad in buckskin garments, with a rug made of coyote skins about her shoulders; she wore the beaded leggings and moccasins of her race, and her hair, jet black, hung in ragged plaits about her dark face, from which mournful eyes looked out at the young Montrealer.
Yes, she would go for the wages he offered, she said in halting English; she would come to-morrow at daybreak; she would cook their breakfast.
“Better come to-night,” he urged. “The men get down the grade to work very early; breakfast must be on time.”
“I be on time,” she replied. “I sleep here this night, every night. I not sleep in camp.”
Then he told her of the shack he had ordered and that was even now being built.
She shook her head. “I sleep here every night,” she reiterated.
Wingate had met many Indians in his time, so dropped the subject, knowing full well that persuasion or argument would be utterly useless.
“All right,” he said; “you must do as you like; only remember, an early breakfast to-morrow.”
“I ‘member,” she replied.
He had ridden some twenty yards, when he turned to call back: “Oh, what’s your name, please?”
“Catharine,” she answered, simply.
“Thank you,” he said, and, touching his hat lightly, rode down towards the canyon. Just as he was dipping over its rim he looked back. She was still standing in the doorway, and above and about her were the purple shadows, the awful solitude, of Crow’s Nest Mountain.
* * * * *
Catharine had been cooking at the camp for weeks. The meals were good, the men respected her, and she went her way to and from her shack at the canyon as regularly as the world went around. The autumn slipped by, and the nipping frosts of early winter and the depths of early snows were already daily occurrences. The big group of solid log shacks that formed the construction camp were all made weather-tight against the long mountain winter. Trails were beginning to be blocked, streams to freeze, and “Old Baldy,” already wore a canopy of snow that reached down to the timber line.
“Catharine,” spoke young Wingate, one morning, when the clouds hung low and a soft snow fell, packing heavily on the selfsame snows of the previous night, “you had better make up your mind to occupy the shack here. You won’t be able to go to your home much longer now at night; it gets dark so early, and the snows are too heavy.”
“I go home at night,” she repeated.
“But you can’t all winter,” he exclaimed. “If there was one single horse we could spare from the grade work, I’d see you got it for your journeys, but there isn’t. We’re terribly short now; every animal in the Pass is overworked as it is. You’d better not try going home any more.”
“I go home at night,” she repeated.
Wingate frowned impatiently; then in afterthought he smiled. “All right, Catharine,” he said, “but I warn you. You’ll have a search-party out after you some dark morning, and you know it won’t be pleasant to be lost in the snows up that canyon.”
“But I go home, night-time,” she persisted, and that ended the controversy.
But the catastrophe he predicted was inevitable. Morning after morning he would open the door of the shack he occupied with the other officials, and, looking up the white wastes through the gray-blue dawn, he would watch the distances with an anxiety that meant more than a consideration for his breakfast. The woman interested him. She was so silent, so capable, so stubborn. What was behind all this strength of character? What had given that depth of mournfulness to her eyes? Often he had surprised her watching him, with an odd longing in her face; it was something of the expression he could remember his mother wore when she looked at him long, long ago. It was a vague, haunting look that always brought back the one great tragedy of his life–a tragedy he was even now working night and day at his chosen profession to obliterate from his memory, lest he should be forever unmanned–forever a prey to melancholy.