And to fill the full round of his need, and that they might not see
overmuch of each other, there arrived at Twenty Mile one Sandy
MacPherson, as companionable a man as ever whistled along the trail
or raised a ballad by a camp-fire. A Jesuit priest had run into
his camp, a couple of hundred miles up the Yukon, in the nick of
time to say a last word over the body of Sandy's partner. And on
departing, the priest had said, "My son, you will be lonely now."
And Sandy had bowed his head brokenly. "At Twenty Mile," the
priest added, "there is a lonely man. You have need of each other,
my son."
So it was that Sandy became a welcome third at the post, brother to
the man and woman that resided there. He took Bonner moose-hunting
and wolf-trapping; and, in return, Bonner resurrected a battered
and way-worn volume and made him friends with Shakespeare, till
Sandy declaimed iambic pentameters to his sled-dogs whenever they
waxed mutinous. And of the long evenings they played cribbage and
talked and disagreed about the universe, the while Jees Uck rocked
matronly in an easy-chair and darned their moccasins and socks.
Spring came. The sun shot up out of the south. The land exchanged
its austere robes for the garb of a smiling wanton.
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