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The going was now incomparably the best we had had since we left the mission, the snow was light and we had the mail-carrier's trail; but, although the temperature had risen to 21° below, a keen wind put our parkee hoods up and our scarfs around our faces and made our 60° below clothing none too warm.
There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came up late to take his unobtrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even before he added his voice to the din those who argued that the old mail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with that of Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others of his line, were in a hopeless minority.
But the promised help came at last, in the shape of the mail-carrier's plunger, her trim little mast catching his eyes, shining white and bare out of the dusk. Directly he heard the voices of the mail-carrier and another. "Where be ye? Who be ye?" "Right here, under yer bow. Joe Chillis, you bet your life!" "Waal, come aboard here, mighty quick. Make fast. Mind your boat; don't let her strike us.
The officer of the day closed the door of the colonel's head-quarters behind him, and in a few minutes the orderly opened it again to admit a sturdy young soldier, about eighteen years old, who wore upon his arms the yellow chevrons of a corporal of cavalry. This was Bob Owens the boy who stole the mail-carrier's hard-earned money and ran away from home to enjoy it.
His first attempt at stemming the tide of the mail-carrier's gossip met with wonderful success, however. People discovered that for some inexplicable reason, Coonie seemed to have no interest whatever in Splinterin' Andra's behaviour over the proposal of an organ, and with the chief stoker idle, the fire of gossip soon died for want of fuel.
Coonie shot out a look of surprise from his small bright eyes; that Duncan Polite should open any such subject was an amazing thing. "Yep," he answered sharply. "Why?" "I will be having no right to interfere, Coonie." Duncan Polite never by the slightest gesture hinted that he had any claim on the mail-carrier's gratitude.
It would be hard to say whether he noticed that Pedro Casavel, when he showed himself now in the mountains, appeared rather ostentatiously without his gun harder still to guess whether the Mule knew that as he passed across the summit Casavel would sometimes lie amid the rocks, and cover him with that same gun for a hundred yards or so, slowly following his movements with the steady barrel so that the mail-carrier's life hung, as it were, on the touch of a trigger for minutes together.
"It will take him all his time to fetch Grant's; I wish Mr. West would come before it gets dark," Grierson said with a shiver, and fell to work again. Several minutes passed. George was thinking more about the mail-carrier's movements than about Edgar's. The English letters should have arrived, and he was anxiously wondering if there were any for him.
A second application made in the morning, I started out, show-shoeing up the long hill and then down into the flat, and so to the mail-carrier's little hut that is reached under good conditions of trail the first day from Moses' Village, and then back again to the tent.
The mail-carrier's helpless condition called for assistance which was always freely rendered. The person to whom the task generally fell was Mr. Sylvanus Todd, who, by reason of his leisurely habits, found plenty of time, when not assisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge around the post-office and look up the street to see what the Hamilton girls were doing.
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