Lords of the North Part 5

"You know, Rufus," he answered, using the schoolboy name. "We should have told you before. But remember we didn't invite you here. We didn't lead you into it."

"Well?" I demanded.

"Well," he replied in a voice too low for any of the listeners but the squaw to hear, "there's a very bad case of smallpox up in that tent and we're keeping the man apart till he gets better. That, in fact, is why we're all here. You must go. It is not safe."

"Thanks, Laplante," said I. "Good-by." But he did not offer me his hand when I made to take leave.

"Come," he said. "I'll go as far as the gorge with you;" and he stood on the embankment and waved as we pa.s.sed into the lengthening shadows of the valley.

Now, in these days of health officers and vaccination, people can have no idea of the terrors of a smallpox scourge at the beginning of this century. The _habitant_ is as indifferent to smallpox as to measles, and accepts both as dispensations of Providence by exposing his children to the contagion as early as possible; but I was not so minded, and hurried down the gorge as fast as my snow-shoes would carry me. Then I remembered that the Indian population of the north had been reduced to a skeleton of its former numbers by the pestilence in 1780, and recalled that my Uncle Jack had said the native's superst.i.tious dread of this disease knew no bounds. That recollection checked my sudden flight. If the Indians had such fear, why had this band camped within a mile of the pest tent? It would be more like Indian character to reverse Samaritan practises and leave the victim to die. This man might, of course, be a French-Canadian trapper, but I would take no risks of a trick, so I ordered Paul to lead me back to that tepee.

The Mute seemed to understand I had no wish to be seen by the campers.

He skirted round the base of the hill till we were on the side remote from the tribe. Then he motioned me to remain in the gorge while he scrambled up the cliff to reconnoitre. I knew he received a surprise as soon as his head was on a level with the top of the bank; for he curled himself up behind a snow-pile and gave a low whistle for me. I was beside him with one bound. We were not twenty pole-lengths from the wigwam. There was no appearance of life. The tent flaps had been laced up and a solitary watch-dog was tied to a stake before the entrance.

Down the valley the setting sun shone through the naked trees like a wall of fire, and dyed all the glistening snow-drifts primrose and opal.

At one place in the forest the red light burst through and struck against the tent on the hill-top, giving the skins a peculiar appearance of being streaked with blood. The faintest breath of wind, a mere sigh of moving air-currents peculiar to snow-padded areas, came up from the woods with far-away echoes of the trappers' voices. Perhaps this was heard by the watch-dog, or it may have felt the disturbing presence of my half-wild _habitant_ guide; for it sat back on its haunches and throwing up its head, let out the most doleful howlings imaginable.

"Oh! _Monsieur_," shuddered out the superst.i.tious habitant s.h.i.+vering like an aspen leaf, "sick man moan,--moan,--moan hard! He die, _Monsieur_, he die, he die now when dog cry lak dat," and full of fear he scrambled down into the gorge, making silent gestures for me to follow.

For a time--but not long, I must acknowledge--I lay there alone, watching and listening. Paul's ears might hear the moans of a sick man, mine could not: nor would I return to the Chateau without ascertaining for a certainty what was in that wigwam. Slipping off the snow-shoes, I rose and tip-toed over the snow with the full intention of silencing the dog with my pole; but I was suddenly arrested by the distinct sound of pain-racked groaning. Then the brute of a dog detected my approach and with a furious leaping that almost hung him with his own rope set up a vicious barking. Suddenly the black head of an Indian, or trapper, popped through the tent flaps and a voice shouted in perfect English--"Go away! Go away! The pest! The pest!"

"Who has smallpox?" I bawled back.

"A trader, a Nor'-Wester," said he. "If you have anything for him lay it on the snow and I'll come for it."

As honor pledged me to serve Hamilton until he found his wife, I was not particularly anxious to exchange civilities at close range with a man from a smallpox tent; so I quickly retraced my way to the gorge and hurried homeward with The Mute. My old school-fellow's sudden change towards me when he received the letter written on Citadel paper, and the big squaw's suspicion of my every movement, now came back to me with a significance I had not felt when I was at the camp. Either intuitions like those of my _habitant_ guide, which instinctively put out feelers with the caution of an insect's antennae for the presence of vague, unknown evil, lay dormant in my own nature and had been aroused by the incidents at the camp, or else the mind, by the mere fact of holding information in solution, widens its own knowledge. For now, in addition to the letter from the Citadel and the squaw's animosity, came the one missing factor--Adderly. I felt, rather than knew, that Louis Laplante had deceived me. Had he lied? A lie is the clumsy invention of the novice. An expert accomplishes his deceit without anything so grossly and tangibly honest as a lie; and Louis was an expert. Though I had not a vestige of proof, I could have sworn that Adderly and the squaw and Louis were leagued against me for some dark purpose. I was indeed learning the first lessons of the trapper's life: never to open my lips on my own affairs to another man, and never to believe another man when he opened his lips to me.

CHAPTER IV

LAUNCHED INTO THE UNKNOWN

"You should have knocked that blasted quarantine's head off," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Jack MacKenzie, with ferocious emphasis. I had been relating my experience with the campers; and was recounting how the man put his head out of the tent and warned me of smallpox. But my uncle was a gentleman of the old school and had a fine contempt for quarantine.

"Knocked his head off, knocked his head off, Sir," he continued, explosively. "Make it a point to knock the head off anything that stands in your way, Sir----"

"But you don't suppose," I expostulated, about to voice my own suspicions.

"_Suppose!_" he roared out. "I make it a point never to _suppose_ anything. I act on facts, Sir! You wanted to go into that wigwam; didn't you? Well then, why the deuce didn't you go, and knock the head off anything that opposed you?"

Being highly successful in all his own dealings, Mr. Jack MacKenzie could not tolerate failure in other people. A month of vigilant searching had yielded not the slightest inkling of Miriam and the child; and this fact ignited all the gunpowder of my uncle's fiery temperament. We had felt so sure Le Grand Diable's band of vagabonds would hang about till the brigades of the North-West Company's tripmen set out for the north, all our efforts were spent in a vain search for some trace of the rascals in the vicinity of Quebec. His gypsy nondescripts would hardly dare to keep the things taken from Miriam and the child. These would be traded to other tribes; so day and night, Mr.

MacKenzie, Eric and I, with hired spies, dogged the footsteps of trappers, who were awaiting the breaking up of the ice; shadowed _voyageurs_, who pa.s.sed idle days in the dram-shops of Lower Town, and scrutinized every native who crossed our path, ever on the alert for a glimpse of Diable, or his a.s.sociates. Diligently we tracked all Indian trails through Charlesbourg forest and examined every wigwam within a week's march of the city. Le Grand Diable was not likely to be among his ancestral enemies at Lorette, but his half-breed followers might have traded with the Hurons; and the lodges at Lorette were also searched.

Watches were set along the St. Lawrence, so no one could approach an opening before the ice broke up, or launch a canoe after the water had cleared, without our knowledge. But Le Grand Diable and his band had vanished as mysteriously as Miriam. It was as impossible to learn where the Iroquois had gone as to follow the wind. His disappearance was altogether as unaccountable as the lost woman's, and this, of itself, confirmed our suspicions. Had he sold, or slain his captives, he would not have remained in hiding; and the very fruitlessness of the search redoubled our zeal.

The conviction that Louis Laplante had, somehow or other, played me false, stuck in my mind like the depression of a bad dream. Again and again, I related the circ.u.mstances to my uncle; but he "pished," and "tushed," and "pooh-poohed," the very idea of any kidnappers remaining so near the city and giving me free run of their wigwams. My reasonless persistence was beginning to irritate him. Indeed, on one occasion, he informed me that I had as many vagaries in my head as a "bed-ridden hag," and with great fervor he "wished to the Lord there was a law in this land for the ham-stringing of such fool idiots, as that _habitant_ Mute, who led me such a wild-goose chase."

In spite of this and many other jeremiades, I once more donned snow-shoes and with Paul for guide paid a second visit to the campers of the gorge. And a second time, I was welcomed by Louis and taken through the wigwams. The smallpox tent was no longer on the crest of the hill; and when I asked after the patient, Louis without a word pointed solemnly to a snow-mound, where the man lay buried. But I did not see the big squaw, nor the face that had emerged from the tent flaps to wave me off; and when I also inquired after these, Louis' face darkened. He told me bluntly I was asking too many questions and began to swear in a mongrel jargon of French and English that my conduct was an insult he would take from no man. But Louis was ever short of temper. I remembered that of old. Presently his little flare-up died down, and he told me that the woman and her husband had gone north through the woods to join some crews on the Upper Ottawa. From the talk of the others, I gathered that, having disposed of their hunt to the commissariat department at the Citadel, they intended to follow the same trail within a few days. I tried without questioning to learn what crews they were to join; but whether with purpose, or by chance, the conversation drifted from my lead and I had to return to the city without satisfaction on that point.

Meanwhile, Hamilton rested neither night nor day. In the morning with a few hurried words he would outline the plan for the day. At night he rode back to the Chateau with such eager questioning in his eyes when they met mine, I knew he had nothing better to report to me, than I to him. After a silent meal, he would ride through the dark forest on a fresh mount. How and where he pa.s.sed those sleepless nights, I do not know. Thus had a month slipped away; and we had done everything and accomplished nothing. Baffled, I had gone to confer with Mr. Jack MacKenzie and had, as usual, exasperated him with the reiterated conviction that Adderly and the Citadel writing paper and Louis Laplante had some connection with the malign influence that was balking our efforts.

"Fudge!" exclaims my uncle, stamping about his study and puffing with indignation. "You should have knocked that blasted quarantine's head off!"

"You've said that several times already, Mr. MacKenzie," I put in, having a touch of his own peppery temper from my mother's side. "What about Adderly's rage?"

"Adderly's been in Montreal since the night of the row. For the Lord's sake, boy, do you expect to find the woman by believing in that bloated bugaboo?"

"But the Citadel paper?" I persisted.

"Of course you've never been told, Rufus Gillespie," he began, choking down his impatience with the magnitude of my stupidity, "that the commissariat buys supplies from hunters?"

"That doesn't explain the big squaw's suspicions and Louis' own conduct."

"That Louis!" says my uncle. "Pah! That son of an inflated old seigneur!

A fig for the buck! Not enough brains in his pate to fill a peanut!"

"But there might be enough evil in his heart to wreck a life," and that was the first argument to pierce my uncle's scepticism. The keen eyes glanced out at me as if there might be some hope for my intelligence, and he took several turns about the room.

"Hm! If you're of that mind, you'd better go out and excavate the smallpox," was his sententious conclusion. "And if it's a hoax, you'd better----" and he puckered his brows in thought.

"What?" I asked eagerly.

"Join the traders' crews and track the villains west," he answered with the prompt.i.tude of one who decides quickly and without vacillation. "O Lord! If I were only young! But to think of a man too stout and old to buckle on his own snow-shoes hankering for that life again!" And my uncle heaved a deep sigh.

Now, no one, who has not lived the wild, free life of the northern trader, can understand the strange fascinations which for the moment eclipsed in this courteous and chivalrous old gentleman's mind all thought of the poor woman, with whom my own fate was interwoven. But I, who have lived in the lonely fastnesses of the splendid freedom, know full well what surging recollections of danger and daring, of success and defeat, of action in which one faces and laughs at death, and calm in which one sounds the unutterable depths of very infinity--thronged the old trader's soul. Indeed, when he spoke, it was as if the sentence of my own life had been p.r.o.nounced; and my whole being rose up to salute destiny. I take it, there is in every one some secret and cherished desire for a chosen vocation to which each looks forward with hope up to the meridian of life, and to which many look back with regret after the meridian. Of prophetic instincts and intuitions and impressions and feelings and much more of the same kind going under a different name, I say nothing, I only set down as a fact, to be explained how it may, that all the way out to the gorge, with Paul, The Mute leading for a third time, I could have sworn there would be no corpse in that snow-covered grave. For was it not written in my inner consciousness that destiny had appointed me to the wild, free life of the north? So I was not surprised when Paul Larocque's spade struck sharply on a box.

Indians sleep their last sleep in the skins of the chase. Nor was I in the least amazed when that same spade pried up the lid of cached provisions instead of a coffin. Then I had ocular proof of what I knew before, that Louis in word and conduct--but chiefly in conduct, which is the way of the expert had--lied outrageously to me.

When the ice broke up at the end of April, hunters were off for their summer retreats and _voyageurs_ set out on the annual trip to the _Pays d'En Haut_. This year the Hudson's Bay Company had organized a strong fleet of canoemen under Mr. Colin Robertson, a former Nor'-Wester, to proceed to Red River settlement by way of the Ottawa and the Sault instead of entering the fur preserve by the usual route of Hudson Bay and York Factory. From Le Grand Diable's former a.s.sociation with the North-West Company it was probable he would be in Robertson's brigade.

Among the _voyageurs_ of both companies there was not a more expert canoeman than this treacherous, thievish Iroquois. As steersman, he could take a crew safely through knife-edge rocks with the swift certainty of arrow flight. In spite of a reputation for embodying the vices of white man and red--which gave him his unsavory t.i.tle--it seemed unlikely that the Hudson's Bay Company, now in the thick of an aggressive campaign against its great rival, and about to despatch an important flotilla from Montreal to Athabasca by way of the Nor'-Westers' route, would dispense with the services of this dexterous _voyageur_. On the other hand, the Nor'-Westers might bribe the Iroquois to stay with them.

Acting on these alternative possibilities, Hamilton and I determined to track the fugitives north. We could leave hirelings to shadow the movements of Indian bands about Quebec. Eric could re-engage with the Hudson's Bay and get pa.s.sage north with Colin Robertson's brigade, which was to leave Lachine in a few weeks. My uncle had been a famous _Bourgeois_ of the great North-West Company in his younger days, and could secure me an immediate commission in the North-West Company. Thus we could accompany the _voyageurs_ and runners of both companies.

Hamilton's arrangements were easily made; and my uncle not only obtained the commission for me, but, with a hearty clap on my back and a "Bravo, boy! I knew the fur trader's fever would break out in you yet!" pinned to the breast of my inner waistcoat the showy gold medallion which the _Bourgeois_ wore on festive occasions. In very truth I oft had need of its inspiriting motto: _Fort.i.tude in Distress_.

Feudal lords of the middle ages never waged more ruthless war on each other than the two great fur trading companies of the north at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Pierre de Raddison and Grosselier, gentlemen adventurers of New France, first followed the waters of the Outawa (Ottawa) northward, and pa.s.sed from Lake Superior (the _kelche gamme_ of Indian lore) to the great unknown fur preserve between Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean; but the fur monopolists of the French court in Quebec jealously obstructed the explorers' efforts to open up the vast territory. De Raddison was compelled to carry his project to the English court, and the English court, with a liberality not unusual in those days, promptly deeded over the whole domain, the extent, locality and wealth of which there was utter ignorance, to a fur trading organization,--the newly formed "Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay," incorporated in 1670 with Prince Rupert named as first governor. If monopolists of New France, through envy, sacrificed Quebec's first claim to the unknown land, Frontenac made haste to repair the loss. Father Albanel, a Jesuit, and other missionaries led the way westward to the _Pays d'En Haut_. De Raddison twice changed his allegiance, and when Quebec fell into the hands of the British nearly a century later, the French traders were as active in the northern fur preserve as their great rivals, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company; but the Englishmen kept near the bay and the Frenchmen with their _coureurs-des-bois_ pushed westward along the chain of water-ays leading from Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg to the Saskatchewan and Athabasca. Then came the Conquest, with the downfall of French trade in the north country. But there remained the _coureurs-des-bois_, or wood-rangers, the _Metis_, or French half-breeds, the _Bois-Brules_, or plain runners--so called, it is supposed, from the trapper's custom of blazing his path through the forest. And on the ruins of French barter grew up a thriving English trade, organized for the most part by enterprising citizens of Quebec and Montreal, and absorbing within itself all the cast-off servants of the old French companies. Such was the origin of the X. Y. and North-West Companies towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. Of these the most energetic and powerful--and therefore the most to be feared by the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company--was the North-West Company, "_Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest_," as the partners designated themselves.

From the time that the North-Westers gratuitously poured their secrets into the ears of Lord Selkirk, and Lord Selkirk shrewdly got control of the Hudson's Bay Company and began to infuse Nor'-Westers' zeal into the stagnant workings of the older company, there arose such a feud among these lords of the north as may be likened only to the pillaging of robber barons in the middle ages. And this feud was at its height when I cast in my lot with the North-West Fur Company, Nor'-Westers had reaped a harvest of profits by leaving the beaten track of trade and pus.h.i.+ng boldly northward into the remote MacKenzie River region. This year the Hudson's Bay had determined to enter the same area and employed a former Nor'-Wester, Mr. Colin Robertson, to conduct a flotilla of canoes from Lachine, Montreal, by way of the Nor'-Westers' route up the Ottawa to the Saskatchewan and Athabasca. But while the Hudson's Bay Company could s.h.i.+p their peltries directly to England from the bay, the Nor'-Westers labored under the disadvantage of many delays and trans-s.h.i.+pments before their goods reached seaboard at Montreal. Indeed, I have heard my uncle tell of orders which he sent from the north to England in October. The things ordered in October would be sent from London in March to reach Montreal in mid-summer. There they would be re-packed in small quant.i.ties for portaging and despatched from Montreal with the Nor'-Western _voyageurs_ the following May, and if destined for the far north would not reach the end of their long trip until October--two years from the time of the order. Yet, under such conditions had the Nor'-Westers increased in prosperity, while the Hudson's Bay, with its annual s.h.i.+ps at York Factory and Churchill, declined.

When Lord Selkirk took hold of the Hudson's Bay there was a change. Once a feud has begun, I know very well it is impossible to apportion the blame each side deserves. Whether Selkirk timed his acts of aggression during the American war of 1812-1814, when the route of the Nor'-Westers was rendered unsafe--who can say? Whether he brought colonists into the very heart of the disputed territory for the sake of the colonists, or to be drilled into an army of defense for The Hudson's Bay Company--who can say? Whether he induced his company to grant him a vast area of land at the junction of the Red and a.s.siniboine rivers--against which a minority of stockholders protested--for the sake of these same colonists, or to hold a strategical point past which North-Westers' cargoes must go--who can say? On these subjects, which have been so hotly discussed both inside and outside law courts, without any definite decision that I have ever heard, I refuse to pa.s.s judgment.

I can but relate events as I saw them and leave to each the right of a personal decision.

In 1815, Nor'-Westers' canoes were to leave Ste. Anne de Beaupre, twenty miles east of Quebec, instead of Ste. Anne on the Ottawa, the usual point of departure. We had not our full complement of men. Some of the Indians and half-breeds had gone northwest overland through the bush to a point on the Ottawa River north of Chaudiere Falls, where they were awaiting us, and Hamilton, through the courtesy of my uncle, was able to come with us in our boats as far as Lachine.

I was never a grasping trader, but I provided myself before setting out with every worthless gew-gaw and flashy trifle that could tempt the native to betray Indian secrets. Lest these should fail, I added to my stock a dozen as fine new flint-locks as could corrupt the soul of an Indian, and without consideration for the enemy's scalp also equipped myself with a box of wicked-looking hunting-knives. These things I placed in square cases and sat upon them when we were in barges, or pillowed my head upon them at night, never losing sight of them except on long portages where Indians conveyed our cargo on their backs.

A man on a less venturesome quest than mine could hardly have set out with the brigades of canoemen for the north country and not have been thrilled like a lad on first escape from school's leading strings. There we were, twenty craft strong, with clerks, traders, one steersman and eight willowy, copper-skin paddlers in each long birch canoe. No oriental prince could be more gorgeously appareled than these gay _voyageurs_. Flaunting red handkerchiefs banded their foreheads and held back the lank, black hair. Buckskin smocks, fringed with leather down the sleeves and beaded lavishly in bright colors, were drawn tight at the waist by sashes of flaming crimson, green and blue. In addition to the fringe of leather down the trouser seams, some in our company had little bells fastened from knee to ankle. It was a strange sight to see each of these reckless denizens of forest and plain pause reverently before the chapel of _La Bonne Sainte Anne_, cross himself, invoke her protection on the voyage and drop some offering in the treasury box before hurrying to his place in the canoe. One Indian left the miniature of a carved boat in the hands of the priest at the porch. It was his votive gift to the saint and may be seen there to this day.

As we were embarking I noticed Eric had not come down and the canoes were already gliding about the wharf awaiting the head steersman's signal. I had last seen him on the church steps and ran back from the river to learn the cause of his delay. Now Hamilton is not a Catholic; neither is he a Protestant; but I would not have good people ascribe his misfortunes to this lack of creed, for a trader in the far north loses denominational distinctions and a better man I have never known. What, then, was my surprise to meet him face to face coming out of the chapel with tears coursing down his cheeks and floor-dust thick upon his knees?