The Flying Years by Frederick Niven

Author:Frederick Niven [Niven, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XXII

Mr. Hodges Advises

Mr. Hodges, from whom Angus was to take over control of the Running Antelope Reservation, otherwise the High Butte Reservation, a short, rotund man formed after the manner of a bladder of lard, welcomed them with a vulgar and sincere bonhomie. Angus was glad to have had the little man’s name in writing from Ottawa, for—

“I’m sorry Mrs. ‘Odges is not here to greet you, Mrs. Munro,” Hodges said to Fiona—careless but not consistently careless with his aspirates. “She could not stand the isolation, nobody of her own sex and colour to speak to bar the visiting missionary’s wife, and not often did she come with ‘er husband. The poor woman has her nose so tilted in the air, all because the reverend wears a collar wrong way round, that she was no great cheer to my missus when she did come. It’s for the sake of Mrs. ’Odges I applied for a change when the Western Commissioner came here last. ’Eart to ’eart talk I had with him, man to man. I asked for a transfer if possible to one of the reserves close to the new railway, and I got it. My wife hasn’t seen a train since she got off the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba cars at Emerson. No railway there when I came in. Boat down the Red River all the way from Abercrombie, and you got to Abercrombie from St. Cloud on a stage-coach. I suppose you’ve been out that long?”

“Oh, yes,” said Angus.

“And you?” Mr. Hodges turned to Fiona.

“I was born by Red River—”

“Well, well, a Red River Shore lady!”

“Yes. My people came in by Hudson’s Bay and Nelson River.”

“Hey Presto!” exploded Mr. Hodges. They took it to be his substitute for other expletive when a lady was present. “I wish you could ’ave seen Mrs. ’Odges to tell her that. I like this country myself and I wrote her that I did. But sometimes, after she came out and couldn’t get used to it, always pining to be at ’ome, I got so I felt I got her out here under false pretences. And then came a time her dislike affected me by a kind of sympathy, perhaps, and I found myself calling it a hell of a country. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Munro.”

“That’s all right,” said Fiona, laughing, and feeling what can perhaps best be described as a merciful liking for the man.

“Changes, changes!” Mr. Hodges continued. “I ’ear a rumour that as like as not, after the railway is completed through the mountains to the Pacific, they’ll build a sideline from Calgary to Fort Edmonton. When I tried to cheer my missus with that it made her worse. ‘We’ll all be bones, like the buffalo, by then,’ she sez. Oh, yes, this is no plice for a woman what has been accustomed to seeing lots of people and ’aving a full social life. Well, she’s gone off ahead of me, with all our sticks. I’m boarding with Chantelaine, the clerk here.

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