Lords of the North Part 18

"Hoo are ye, gillie?" said the burly Scot in my ear.

Turning, I found the canny swain had followed me on an investigating tour. Again I gave him an inarticulate reply and lost myself among other coteries. Was the man spying on me? I reflected that if "the chiefs"--as the Hudson's Bay man had called them--were in the side room, Eric Hamilton would be among these conferring with the governor. As I approached the door, I noticed my Scotch friend had taken some one into his confidence and two men were now on my tracks. Lifting the latch, I gave a gentle, cautious push and the hinges swung so quietly I had slipped into the room before those inside or out could prevent me. I found myself in the middle of a long apartment with low, sloping ceiling, and deep window recesses. It had evidently been part.i.tioned off from the main hall; for the wall, ceiling and floor made an exact triangle. At one end of the place was a table. Round this was a group of men deeply engrossed in some sort of conference. Sitting on the window sills and lounging round the box stove behind the table were others of our rival's service. I saw at once it would be difficult to have access to Hamilton. He was lying on a stretcher within talking range of the table and had one arm in a sling. Now, I hold it is harder for the unpractised man to play the spy with everything in his favor, than for the adept to act that role against the impossible. One is without the art that foils detection. The other can defy detection. So I stood inside with my hand on the door lest the click of the closing latch should rouse attention, but had no thought of prying into Hudson's Bay secrets.

"Your Honor," began Hamilton in a lifeless manner, which told me his search had been bootless, and he turned languidly towards a puffy, crusty, military gentleman, whom, from the respect shown him, I judged to be Governor McDonell. "Duncan Cameron's warrant for the arrest is perfectly legal. If Your Honor should surrender yourself, you will save Fort Douglas for the Hudson's Bay Company. Besides, the whole arrest will prove a farce. The law in Lower Canada provides no machinery for the trial of cases occurring----" Here Hamilton came to a blank and unexpected stop, for his eyes suddenly alighted on me with a look that forbade recognition, and fled furtively back to the group it the table.

I understood and kept silent.

"For the trial of cases occurring?" asked the governor sharply.

"Occurring--here," added Hamilton, shooting out the last word as if his arm had given him a sudden twinge. "And so I say, Your Honor will lose nothing by giving yourself up to the Nor'-Westers, and will save Fort Douglas for the Hudson's Bay."

"The doctor tells me it's a compound fracture. You'll find it painful, Mr. Hamilton," said Governor McDonell sympathetically, and he turned to the papers over which the group were conferring. "I'm no great hand in winning victories by showing the white flag," began the gallant captain, "but if a free trip from here to Montreal satisfies those fools, I'll go."

"Well said! Bravo! Your Honor," exclaimed a s.h.a.ggy member of the council, bringing his fist down on the table with a thud. "I call that diplomacy, outmanoeuvring the enemy! Your Honor sets an example for abiding by the law; you obey the warrant. They must follow the example and leave Fort Douglas alone."

"Besides, I can let His Lords.h.i.+p know from Montreal just what reinforcements are needed here," continued Captain McDonell, with a curious disregard for the law which he professed to be obeying, and a faithful zeal for Lord Selkirk.

Hamilton was looking anxiously at me with an expression of warning which I could not fully read. Then I felt, what every one must have felt at some time, that a third person was watching us both. Following Eric's glance to a dark window recess directly opposite the door where I stood, I was horrified and riveted by the beady, glistening, insolent eyes of Louis Laplante, gazing out of the dusk with an expression of rakish amus.e.m.e.nt, the amus.e.m.e.nt of a spider when a fly walks into its web.

Taken unawares I have ever been more or less of what Mr. Jack MacKenzie was wont to call "a stupid loon!" On discovering Laplante I promptly sustained my reputation by letting the door fly to with a sharp click that startled the whole room-full. Whereat Louis Laplante gave a low, soft laugh.

"What do you want here, man?" demanded Governor McDonell's sharp voice.

Jerking off my cap, I saluted.

"My man, Your Honor," interjected Eric quietly. "Come here, Rufus," he commanded, motioning me to his side with the hauteur of a master towards a servant. And Louis Laplante rose and tip-toed after me with a tigerish malice that recalled the surly squaw.

"Oh, Eric!" I cried out eagerly. "Are you hurt, and at such a time?"

Unconsciously I was playing into Louis' hands, for he stood by the stove, laughing nonchalantly.

Thereupon Eric ground out some imprecation at my stupidity.

"There's been a shuffling of allegiance, I hear," he said with a queer misleading look straight at Laplante. "We've recruits from Fort Gibraltar."

Eric's words, curiously enough, banished triumph from Laplante's face and the Frenchman's expression was one of puzzled suspicion. From Eric's impa.s.sive features, he could read nothing. What Hamilton was driving at, I should presently learn; but to find out I would no more take my eyes from Laplante's than from a tiger about to spring. At once, to get my attention, Hamilton brought a stick down on my toes with a sharpness that made me leap. By all the codes of nudges and kicks and such signaling, it is a principle that a blow at one end of human anatomy drives through the density of the other extremity. It dawned on me that Eric was trying to persuade Laplante I had deserted Nor'-Westers for the Hudson's Bay. The ethics of his attempt I do not defend. It was after the facile fas.h.i.+on of an intriguing era. A sharper weapon was presently given us against Louis Laplante; for when I grasped Eric's stick to stay the raps against my feet, I felt the handle rough with carving.

"What are these carvings, may I inquire, Sir?" I asked, a.s.suming the strangeness, which Eric's signals had directed, but never moving my eyes from Laplante. The villain who had befooled me in the gorge and eluded me in the forest, and now tormented Frances Sutherland, winced under my watchfulness.

"The carvings!" answered Eric, annoyed that I did not return his plain signals and determined to get my eye. "Pray look for yourself! Where are your eyes?"

"I can't see in this poor light, Sir; but I also have a strangely carved thing--a spear-head. Now if this head has no handle and this handle has no head--they might fit," I went on watching Laplante, whose saucy a.s.surance was deserting him.

"Spear-head!" exclaimed Hamilton, beginning to understand I too had my design. "Where did you find it?"

"Trying to bury itself in my head." I returned. At this, Laplante, the knave, smiled graciously in my very face.

"But it didn't succeed?" asked Hamilton.

"No--it mistook me for a tree, missed the mark and went into the tree; just as another friend of mine mistook me for a tree, hit the mark and ran into me," and I smiled back at Laplante. His face clouded. That reference to the scene on the beach, where his Hudson's Bay despatches were stolen, was too much for his hot blood. "Here it is," I continued, pulling the spear-head out of my plaid. I had brought it to Hamilton, hoping to identify our enemy, and we did. "Please see if they fit, Sir?

We might identify our--friends!" and I searched the furtive, guilty eyes of the Frenchman.

"Dat frien'," muttered Louis with a threatening look at me, "dat frien'

of Mister Hamilton he spike good English for Scot' youth."

Now Louis, as I remembered from Laval days, never mixed his English and French, except when he was in pa.s.sion furious beyond all control.

"Fit!" cried Hamilton. "They're a perfect fit, and both carved the same, too."

"With what?"

"Eagles," answered Eric, puzzled at my drift, and Louis Laplante wore the last look of the tiger before it springs.

"And eagles," said I, defying the spring, "signify that both the spear-head and the spear-handle belong to the Sioux chief whose daughter"--and I lowered my voice to a whisper which only Laplante and Hamilton could hear--"is married--to Le--Grand--Diable!"

"What!" came Hamilton's low cry of agony. Forgetting the fractured arm, he sprang erect.

And Louis Laplante staggered back in the dark as if we had struck him.

"Laplante! Laplante! Where's that Frenchman? Bring him up here!" called Governor McDonell's fussy, angry tones.

Coming when it did, this demand was to Louis a bolt of judgment; and he joined the conference with a face as gray as ashes.

"Now about those stolen despatches! We want to know the truth! Were you drunk, or were you not? Who has them?" Captain McDonell arraigned the Frenchman with a fire of questions that would have confused any other culprit but Louis.

"Eric," I whispered, taking advantage of the respite offered by Louis'

examination. "We found Laplante at _Pointe a la Croix_. He was drunk. He confessed Miriam is held by Diable's squaw. Then we discovered someone was listening to the confession and pursued the eavesdropper into the bush. When we came back, Laplante had been carried off. I found one of my canoemen had your lost fowling-piece, and it was he who had listened and carried off the drunk sot and tried to send that spear-head into me at the Sault. 'Twas Diable, Eric! Father Holland, a priest in our company, told me of the white woman on Lake Winnipeg. Did you find this--" indicating the spear handle--"there?"

Eric, cold, white and trembling, only whispered an affirmative.

"Was that all?"

"All," he answered, a strange, fierce look coming over his face, as the full import of my news forced home on him. "Was--was--Laplante--in that?" he asked, gripping my arm in his unwounded hand with foreboding force.

"Not that we know of. Only Diable. But Louis is friendly with the Sioux, and if we only keep him in sight we may track them."

"I'll--keep--him--in sight," muttered Hamilton in low, slow words.

"Hush, Eric!" I whispered. "If we harm him, he may mislead us. Let us watch him and track him!"

"He's asking leave to go trapping in the Sioux country. Can you go as trader for your people? To the buffalo hunt first, then, south? I'll watch here, if he stays; you, there, if he goes, and he shall tell us all he knows or--"

"Hush, man," I urged. "Listen!"

"Where," Governor McDonell was thundering at Laplante, "where are the parties that stole those despatches?"

The question brought both Hamilton and myself to the table. We went forward where we could see Laplante's face without being seen by his questioners.

"If I answer, Your Honor," began the Frenchman, taking the captain's bl.u.s.ter for what it was worth and holding out doggedly for his own rights, "I'll be given leave to trap with the Sioux?"

"Certainly, man. Speak out."