Читать книгу Forest, Lake and Prairie. Twenty Years of Frontier Life in Western Canada—1842-62 онлайн

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Right across from us was another store, the owner of which had been a "whiskey trader" the greater part of his life.

One morning I was taking the shutters off our windows, when a man galloped up in great haste and told me he was after a doctor, that there was someone either freezing or frozen out on the ice in the bay, a little below the village; and away he flew on his errand.

The old "whiskey trader" happened just then to come to the door of his store, and I told him what I had heard. With a laugh and an oath he said, "John, I'll bet that is old Tom Bigwind, the old rascal." (Poor Tom, an Indian, was the victim of drunkenness, and this man had helped to make him so.) "He owes me, and I suppose he owes you also. Well, I will tell you what we will do; you shall take his old squaw, and I will take his traps."

My boyish blood was all ablaze at this, but as he was a white-headed old man, I turned away in disgust.

I then went in to breakfast, and when I came out I had an errand down the street, and presently met the old trader, all broken up and crying like a child. I said, "What is the matter?" and he burst out, "Oh, it is George! Poor George!" "What George?" I asked; and he said, "My son! my son!" And then it flashed upon me—for I knew his son, like old Tom, the Indian, had become a victim of the same curse.