I can recall almost his exact words and the inflections of his voice , and I remember , too , that it seemed to me a far cry from the tranquil , pleasant scene before us , on that lovely summer day , to the elemental life of the Flats . The Flats was a forlorn little trading station fifteen miles up the river from Prince Albert , with a scanty population of half-breeds and three white men . When Jerome Carey was sent to take charge of the telegraph office there , he cursed his fate in the picturesque language permissible in the far Northwest . Not that Carey was a profane man , even as men go in the West . He was an English gentleman , and he kept both his life and his vocabulary pretty clean . But -- the Flats ! Outside of the ragged cluster of log shacks , which comprised the settlement , there was always a shifting fringe of teepees where the Indians , who drifted down from the Reservation , camped with their dogs and squaws and papooses . There are standpoints from which Indians are interesting , but they can not be said to offer congenial social attractions . For three weeks after Carey went to the Flats he was lonelier than he had ever imagined it possible to be , even in the Great Lone Land . If it had not been for teaching Paul Dumont the telegraphic code , Carey believed he would have been driven to suicide in self-defense . The telegraphic importance of the Flats consisted in the fact that it was the starting point of three telegraph lines to remote trading posts up North . Not many messages came therefrom , but the few that did come generally amounted to something worth while . Days and even weeks would pass without a single one being clicked to the Flats . Carey was debarred from talking over the wires to the Prince Albert man for the reason that they were on officially bad terms . He blamed the latter for his transfer to the Flats . Carey slept in a loft over the office , and got his meals as Joe Esquint 's , across the `` street . '' Joe Esquint 's wife was a good cook , as cooks go among the breeds , and Carey soon became a great pet of hers . Carey had a habit of becoming a pet with women . He had the `` way '' that has to be born in a man and can never be acquired . Besides , he was as handsome as clean-cut features , deep-set , dark-blue eyes , fair curls and six feet of muscle could make him .
Mrs. Joe Esquint thought that his mustache was the most wonderfully beautiful thing , in its line , XXXXX she had ever seen .
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