The Ice Raft.

The beginning of Winter found Cameron and LeClare comfortably settled in the refitted home of Laughing Donald; and under the gentle yet queenly direction of his wife the members of the new household lived amidst surroundings of comfort and domestic happiness.

In one end of the house a small room with windows looking out upon the great river had been furnished as an office for business. In this room many conferences with strangers to The Front had been held of late, and here LeClare and the architect from the city carefully examined the plans from which would be builded the House of Cariboo. To his friend Cameron had given in charge that part of his project which required the experience of one who was familiar with the accompaniments of homes builded for beauty of architecture, displaying a refinement of taste; but for himself, as he explained, he wished to reserve the privilege of dispensing among his neighbors the expenditures for materials which could be supplied from their farms while building the mansion as proposed.

In this same little room during the Winter days Cameron and LeClare often visited together. They talked of their plans for the future, of the task before them in the Springtime, but never of the camp in the Cariboo, nor their returning, which so sadly had been ended. At one of these conferences, on a stormy day of early Winter, as LeClare, seated before the fire in the grate, was reading from a selection of new books he had bought while upon one of his recent trips to the city, he was suddenly interrupted by his friend, who till then had been idly standing, one hand upon the window pane, the other fumbling the watch chain at his vest.

“I have just thought, Edmond,” he began, “as I have looked out upon this icebound expanse, this great river which for months of the year is the busy highway of so much traffic, that now it is bound, like ourselves, to await the pleasure of the season, inactive, only waiting. Perhaps you may think my deductions commonplace, Edmond; but hear me through. Since the beginning of Glengarry’s history there have been, to my knowledge at least, no innovations to disturb the serenity of the established customs of our people, and these customs are few to relate. In the Summer we labor a little and house our crops, that in the Winter we may comfortably live to consume them. The following year, and the years to come, the same highly exciting programme is certain to be followed. For the coming Summer we have provided the diversion of the building of our mansion, but for the lonesome days of our snowbound season we have not provided. Why not advertise our Summer engagement at The Nole, and interest our friends in advance?”

Soon after the conversation held in the library at Laughing Donald’s a team hitched to a farmer’s sled was slowly passing in the roadway. The driver, carefully selecting an opening between the deep snowdrifts piled high on the river embankment, turned his horses abruptly to the left and drove them down the incline and out upon the frozen river. Quickly he dumped the load of cobblestones in a heap upon the snow and ice. Thus returning at intervals of an hour each day, Bill Blakely was engaged throughout the week, till irregular lines of stone heaps covering a considerable area of the river fronting Cameron’s house stood as monuments to his labors.

Since Cameron and LeClare had taken up their residence with Laughing Donald speculation over their reported doings was at fever heat in the neighborhood. Fraser, the carpenter, was frequently called on by his friends from The Gore, but his own lack of information concerning Cameron’s future plans aroused to a greater curiosity the contingent from the adjoining town, of which Nick Perkins was the acknowledged leader. Still smarting from the humiliating blow over his failure to secure the Cameron homestead, Perkins nursed his wrath in silence. A resolve had already formed in his evil mind to pursue even to the finish the destinies of the Camerons at The Front, and already his machinations could be seen at work in the questions he directed at those he met as he drove along the snow-heaped roads.

It was on a Saturday, and Perkins was on his way to the county town, when he met Bill Blakely coming up into the roadway, after having deposited a load of stones upon the ice. Filled with wonderment at what he saw, he inquired of Bill in his blandest tones what he was drawing the stones for.

“Well, Perkins,” replied Bill, “to be truthful with you, it’s for a dollar a load I am doing it principally, but another good reason is that Cameron has asked me to do it. If you think you’d like the job, go ask Cameron. They say his credit is good. Even you ought to know that, Mr. Perkins,” and Bill passed on without saying good-day to him. Perkins bit his lip and made no reply, but drove on to the village.

Other farmers from the neighborhood soon began hauling to the dumping grounds on the river facing the farm at The Nole. Angus Ferguson had hauled to Cameron’s ice raft, as he called it, the old stone wall which had for so long disfigured the view in front of his house. Stopping each evening at the little office at Laughing Donald’s, he received, like the rest, a dollar a load for the number of trips he had made during the day.

The work of the farmers whom Cameron had seen fit to employ, and who seemed to vie one with another in quickly disposing of the useless materials collected about their farm-yards and disfiguring their homes, progressed so rapidly that ere long whole acres of the frozen river front resembled a congested lumber yard. The fabulous prices paid to them by Cameron for the worthless accumulations of their farm-yards, which he had placed upon the ice to be carried away with the floods in the Spring, caused a storm of comment, the echo of which came over from The Gore in volumes of inquiries.

“Where did Cameron get his money?” they queried. “And why can’t we get a share of it while it lasts?” For Nick Perkins was heard to remark that “a fool from his money was soon parted.”

While the commotion among those engaged in hauling at The Front was still in progress, Bill Blakely and Cameron were paying their respects to certain residents of The Gore. To many of these gentlemen favored by a call Bill was attached by tender recollections of former fistic encounters at the four corners. His welcome, of course, was not always the most cordial, but when Cameron announced very quietly that Mr. Blakely wished to buy a few thousand of their best cedar fence posts at a price which could not be disputed, they soon became more communicative. “Deliver the posts at Mr. Blakely’s, beginning to-morrow,” said Cameron, continuing without any further parleying: “You will be paid by the hundred. We will drive, Bill,” and Cameron was through with the bargaining.

During the next week or two, from his old-time enemies at The Gore, Blakely had purchased for himself, for Angus Ferguson and for Davy Simpson a supply of the best fence posts the county could boast. “Enough,” as Bill said, “to keep Nick Perkins busy for three months a-countin’ them, the next time he found a mortgage due on a Cameron’s farm over by the way of The Front.”

In all the transactions of Cameron thus far since his return Nick Perkins was able to discover a piercing dart, truly thrown at the hypocrisy of his own career. The subjects he had chosen from among the people upon whom to lavish such expenditures of money were always certain to be those who had either been oppressed by him in the past or else considered themselves his natural enemies. Perkins knew of the housebuilding to commence in the Spring at The Nole, for already Blakely was completing the contract he held to supply the stone for the masonry of the foundation walls. Another fact which galled Perkins to madness was that the farmers who had been kept constantly employed were, in every case, those against whom he himself held a mortgage, and he saw very plainly his prospects for eventually gaining their property daily slipping more surely from his grasp.

The Spring season had now arrived, and up at The Nole a small army of workmen were engaged in removing the buildings which had once been occupied by Cameron as his home. The return of April’s hot sun and warm winds had loosened the grip which for months held the icebound river captive between the islands and shore, and suddenly one day, as the workmen had quit for midday lunch, the long-delayed alarm was sounded that the river was breaking up. Down the main boat channel, as far as the eye could see, a forward movement was on. Great squares and chunks of ice lunged and dipped, then plunged forward again like the wheeling and turning of an army of soldiers. Over on the shores of Castle Island mammoth cakes the size of the roofs of the buildings climbed upward till they broke and toppled over by their own weight, crunching and thumping and groaning, till a dull, rumbling noise like the approach of an earthquake could plainly be heard.

Opposite to The Nole, extending in a zig-zag course through the piles of debris, ran gaping cracks in the ice. All the Winter the irregular heaps of ugliness which composed the freight on what was now called “Cameron’s Charity Raft” had reminded those who passed that way of the original methods employed by one man to relieve the condition of his brother workers. The useless stone heaps served no purpose upon the farms from whence they were taken, and the discarded wagon parts and dilapidated farm implements which Cameron had purchased from his neighbors had served them only as an encumbrance and nuisance. Now they soon would be beyond annoying the sight, and their last opportunity for usefulness had brought joy and peacefulness into many a home along The Front. As the immense ice floe passed almost intact down the channel, beating its way amidst the warring, jamming ice cakes, a ringing cheer, led by old Bill Blakely and joined by the company of workmen, went up for the man who had brought fortune and good cheer into their midst.