"Ah fils du roi, tu es mèchant,En roulant ma boule,Toutes les plumes s'en vont au vent,Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant."
"Ah fils du roi, tu es mèchant,En roulant ma boule,Toutes les plumes s'en vont au vent,Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant."
By Windy Island they quickened their pace, chorusing loudly:
"En roulant ma boule roulante,En roulant ma boule;Derrière chez-nous y-a-t-un' ètang;En roulant ma boule."
"En roulant ma boule roulante,En roulant ma boule;Derrière chez-nous y-a-t-un' ètang;En roulant ma boule."
So the brigade went. And Oxford House crouched low in the distance.
Off Caribou Point Wahbiscaw, the bowsman of Dunvegan's canoe, cried out sharply in his native tongue. The craft turned aside from a jagged reef of rock that poked like a pike's nose almost to the surface. Then they sped on with increasing rapidity. The Cree knew every channel, every fang, every shoal, every bar in the shallows of Oxford Lake. And of every other lake and river in his district there was a map in his mind.
It is the unequalled gift of the true red man to remember country over which he has travelled but once. Not only does he recall the trails or the waterways but the things which go to make those trails or waterways. He can place the smooth current, the broken, the rapid, the eddy, the rocks, the bends of shore. Even the Indian youth quickly acquires such power of recollection. The retentive faculty is developed to an enormous degree by those who roam in the wilderness.
Ahead of the brigade loomed Wasita Island, a cliff of crag and spruce sunk to its knees in some volcanic crater which had opened under it aeons ago. Its headlands were scarred and seamed, old in time, marked with the brand of chaos that had once rocked the mighty northland as the tornado rocks the balsams.
Dunvegan, mechanically doing his work as steersman, scanned the shores for a glimpse of a canoe. At last he placed it on the island margin drawn up in a little cove called Spirit Bay. It was directly in the course of the brigade. His heart beats quickened.
"Faster," he commanded the paddlers, and steered closer to the island shore.
"Spirit Bay?" questioned the stolid Cree bowsman.
"So!" answered his leader. He made a motion for the rest of the fleet to continue on its way.
The chief trader's canoe slipped over a white sandbar and nosed in against the rock alongside the other empty craft which required no tying in the absence of any lake swell.
"Behold the canoe ofayume-aookemou, the praying man," spoke Wahbiscaw, puzzled.
But with a command for him to wait in silence Dunvegan was climbing the rocks. Up on the peak of the boulder-like island he found Desirée and Father Brochet.
"See," she laughed, her beauty increased tenfold by the splendor of sun and sky, "we have come this far to bid you farewell. Are you not grateful? It is far to come to say a sentence or two!"
She gave him her hands, smiling saucily into his eyes. No vision he had ever seen or dreamed of was so entrancing, so tempting, and yet so human!
"Grateful? Ah—yes!" he breathed. "But pray God you may come this far to meet me on my return! Would you?" He retained the hands that made him quiver.
"Who knows?" Desirée pouted teasingly. "The snows will be lying deep. You may come in a blizzard! Who knows?"
Like a red ring her lips allured. Father Brochet piously turned his back. If there was a passionate kiss, he did not see it. He heard only the heart strain in Dunvegan's voice; saw only the great yearning in his eyes.
"Your vow?" he asked. "Will you hold it till I come?"
"Yes—and after," she plagued.
"Till I come," Dunvegan pleaded.
"Yes," Desirée answered, softening. "I told you I would never marry a Hudson's Bay man."
"Keep it well, then," he adjured—"till I come!"
It took effort to release her warm palms! Dunvegan turned hastily to the priest.
"Good-bye, Brochet." Their hands welded.
"A Dieu," murmured his friend.
There was a mist in Dunvegan's eyes as he walked. Father Brochet noted that he stumbled a little in reaching the canoe.
"Wik! Wik!" Wahbiscaw called. The craft slanted through the channel and was gone.
Brochet, watching closely, saw a great void grow in Desirée's eyes.
"Ah," he mused, "if this had been return!"
September smiled between the scarlet curtains of the moose maples upon Dunvegan's arrival in the Katchawan Valley. October glared through the bare lattice work of the branches at the upstanding walls of trading room, store and blockhouse. November swept wrathfully down the open forest lanes, blustering a frosty challenge to the hive of men toiling at the roofing over, the gabling in, the palisading.
But the challenge rang too late. Kamattawa's stockades grinned back undaunted. Behind them crouched the broad-bulked buildings, weather-proof, grim, impregnable alike to destructive elements and predatory foes.
There still remained the finer inside work; the flooring, the store shelving, the compartment shaping, the counter making for the trading room, the stairs of the same and the grill in the supply loft above. But all this could be accomplished with comparative luxury in the warmth of the fireplaces whose birch flames crackled defiance to the cold.
The incidents of the Hudson's Bay men's journey to the Valley and the log of events during the post's building stand in bold orthography upon the daybook of the Fort. One hundred spacious pages the story covers. And because Bruce Dunvegan was not given to write of trifles, the sheets claim a sequence of bold facts which prompt the imagination with the allurement of boundless suggestion.
For instance, there is a line telling that they encountered a squall on Trout Lake. But the yellow paper says nothing of how for hours they bucked the monstrous seas which broke over the canoe bows till each bailer's muscles cramped under the strain of clearing shipped water, or how the craft, sliding meteor-like down the passed surge crests, slapped and pounded in the wave troughs till the bottoms broke in rents and the daring crews won the shore race with death by a scant paddle's stroke.
Likewise a brief obituary states that Gabriel Fonderel was killed in a skirmish with some of Running Wolf's tribe at the Channel Du Loup. Yet there is no word of how the now hostile Crees, strong in numbers and led by the fiery Three Feathers held back Dunvegan's men for four days till finally the chief trader ran the rocky passage in the dark beneath a vicious fire that wounded a half-dozen voyageurs besides snuffing out Fonderel's breath.
Two burnings of the unfinished palisades by stealthy enemies; three night attacks of combined bodies of Nor'westers and Running Wolf's Crees; the finding of a full powder bag standing among the flour sacks drying before the fire—all these were mildly noted!
But between the brief lines of this daybook which reposed upon Dunvegan's desk in the trading room of Fort Kamattawa could be read the whole round of a virile, courageous existence; could be felt the pulse of danger and hidden menace; could be witnessed the keen drama of the inimical wilderness conflict. Crowded into these northmen's short span of months were years of endeavor. They took cognizance of no restraining limits to this and that undertaking. Theirs were the herculean things, the endless creations, the hot ambitions. Out of the vast resources of the northland they established a well-defined era, a cycle of supremacy, an epoch of undying history which would round their full conquest of the land.
The powerful instruments of their healthy bodies were applied by the shrewdness of their concentrated minds, guarded always by the blessing of sane leadership. Through his wise counsels Bruce Dunvegan conserved the powers of his retainers and turned them along the required channels, directing brain and sinew, blood and spirit, to the profit of the Ancient and Honorable Company.
Over every part of the Fort hung his rigid, progressive discipline. At daybreak all the post Indians, the voyageurs, the H. B. C. servants were engaged upon their various tasks, fashioning, constructing, finishing! They labored with care, but with the merriest of dispositions. At seven they breakfasted. In an hour the hum of work rose again. Leisure could wait for the deep winter snows!
Outside the trading room a great flagstaff was reared before the ground froze too solidly. Up the pine stick ran the Company's crimson ensign, marking another step of conquest, flinging defiance to the Nor'westers, shutting out the stronghold of Fort La Roche from the Katchawan Valley.
Tumultuous cheering greeted the first flap of the banner. Shouts more sincere than patriotic cries rang out loudly. The Company's adherents but voiced their allegiance.
"Vive La Compagnie!" exulted the impetuous Baptiste Verenne, a typical voyageur.
"Grace à Dieu!" pealed his comrades, stridently—"Grace à Dieu!" Like some wild orison to an invisible god—the Company god it might be—their musical tongues chanted the phrase.
Could the Nor'westers have seen these outland sons thus greet their flag, chests big with the emotional breath of love, cheeks bright with the inspiring blood that comes of proud prestige, eyes burning with the fire of eternal loyalty, they would have stopped to think. Could Black Ferguson have witnessed the scene, he would have understood that he was combating not iron determination alone; not reckless strength, not unswerving pertinacity, but a stern faith in a power so vast as to be almost beyond comprehension; a belief in a precedence dominant and complete, a love of an ideal which even death could not conquer because it extended beyond through that exalted medium of heroism. And where the ideal is raised to the clear eye of faith rests the cause invincible.
As an auspicious omen on Kamattawa Indian summer came down with its fragrant sigh and its transient flash of yellow radiance. Then the winds fell strangely mute. Some unseen magic permeated the calm. Earth and air lay breathless with the prophecy of change.
A little cold caress on his tanned cheek, a tang on his lips, a familiar tingle in his sinews foretold the prophecy's fulfillment to Baptiste Verenne when he sauntered in one night from his trail-blazing. He inspected the sullen sky a moment and shook his head as he strode through the gates to the blockhouse.
"Wintaire!" he announced briefly to Dunvegan. "She be comin'viteon denordwind, M'sieu'."
The chief trader tilted his browned face skyward and clutched the air tentatively to get the feel of the weather.
"Not far off! Not far off, Baptiste," he calculated. "It may close in any night, and we'll see a white world when we wake of a morning."
Verenne's arm slanted, pointing over the palisades.
"See dat?" he cried.
A circling wind, the first of many days, eddied the leaves lying against the stockade, piled them in a wreath thirty feet high in the air with gentle motion peculiarly distinctive to a close observer, then ruthlessly disintegrated the whole.
"An dat?" Baptiste added.
A whizzing phalanx of wild geese blurred the distant horizon, bored like a rocket from sky to sky, and pierced the invisible distance.
"W'en dey fly dat way," averred Baptiste, "de wintaire right on dere tails! She be cometoute suite, M'sieu'."
And it did! A greasy wrack of clouds masked the sunset. The north wind blew out of the Arctic circle with a humming like vibrating wires. The wraith of desolation went eerily shrieking round and round. Then out of inky space the snow came down, driving fiercely on a forty-mile gale to smother the gauntness of the rugged forest in a swirl of white. For thirty-six hours the frozen flakes pelted the stout stockades. The snow lay in foamy levels in the timber, ten feet deep in the hollows, and wind-packed to tremendous hardness on the ice-bound lakes and rivers.
The days became less strenuous now in Fort Kamattawa. The nights grew long. The Hudson's Bay men attended to their winter needs and equipments, while the post Indians fashioned snowshoes with native quickness and skill.
There came a brief, cold, sleety rain which settled the drifts and the subsequent hard frosts formed a crust that made excellent tripping on the raquettes. The first tripper over the trail was Basil Dreaulond carrying Company dispatches on his way to Nelson House. He lurched in one night in the midst of a whistling storm with his dog team and a halfbreed assistant. The world outside the Fort was a shrieking maelstrom of snow and cutting blasts. Inside the men sat close together about the roaring fireplace.
So blinding was the tempest that Kamattawa's sentinel in the blockhouse tower could see nothing from his frosted windows and did not mark the courier's approach till Basil and the breed were hammering upon the closed gates with their rifle-butts. Eugene Demorel slid back the shutter in the watchtower and leaned out, his gun trained on the entrance.
"De password," he bellowed. "Who comes dere?"
"Diabletak' de password," roared Basil who was half frozen. "I'm Dreaulond. Open dis gate queeck!"
On the inferno of the elements his words puffed up like faint echoes, but Eugene Demorel knew the courier's tone. The stockade opened for a second, a raging snowgap in the draught. Basil stumbled into the log store.
"Holá, camarade," they greeted joyously. "How do you like the weather?"
"Mauvais," groaned Dreaulond, leaning toward the flames. "Saprie, but she be cold!"
Dunvegan took the papers Macleod had sent to him and read them. They concerned ordinary matters of fort routine and gave him no news of the home post.
"How is everything at Oxford House, Basil?" he inquired with ill-concealed eagerness.
"Everyt'ing be quiet," returned the courier. "De Nor'westaires don' move mooch."
His eyes, however, held a hint of private information, and the chief trader did not miss the glance.
"Come to the trading room when you get warmed, Dreaulond," he requested. "I'd like to see you."
"Oui," assented Basil. "W'en I get dis cold out ma bones."
Dunvegan disappeared. The Hudson's Bay men volleyed their questions at Dreaulond. They were ravenous for word of their kind from whom the busy months had cut them off. Between questions he slowly revolved before the fireplace, warming his chest, scorching his back, sucking the heat into his chilled marrow.
"Any news of the Factor's daughter?" Connear asked him.
"Non!" Basil frowned and added: "She's wit' Black Ferguson, I bet on dat. She got de spirit of herpère. She'd go to La Roche an' mak' heem geeve her sheltaire."
"And Running Wolf gone over to him, too. We found that out. That whelp Three Feathers made it hot enough for us at Du Loup." Connear spat copiously into the snarling birch logs and grinned at the remembrance of the fight. "How's the English clerk?" he asked after a minute. "Drinkin' any?"
"Dey don' geeve heem any chance," replied Dreaulond. "Dat's de ordaire from hees parents. An' we don't want drunk mans on de post at dis taim of de great dangaire."
In Basil's tone they discovered an unwonted gravity, as if he had knowledge of new developments which he was keeping from them.
"What's up?" asked Pete, always interested in secrets. "If there's anything on foot, let us have it, for it's got to be bloomin' dull here. I miss my grog. I'd give a month's pay for a good glass now."
"I don't know anyt'ing new," the courier returned. "Eef you want to grog, go ovaire to de Nor'westaire. Dey drink her pretty free."
"Yes. Black Ferguson swears by it."
"Dis Black Ferguson wan devil," declared Dreaulond, passing into the trading room. "Now he be run after Desirée Lazard, but she not be look at heem!"
From his desk Dunvegan glanced steadily at the courier.
"No letter, Basil?" He bit his lip on the question.
"Non," replied his friend. "I'm sorry, me."
"Something's wrong," blurted the chief trader. "Tell me what it is. Has the Nor'wester had speech with Desirée?" Dunvegan's voice was strained, his fingers clenched white on the wood of his desk.
"Not dat," Basil explained awkwardly. "De dangaire is in anoder quartaire! Desirée an' dis Edwin Glyndon dey togedder mooch—ver' mooch. All de autumn taim dey canoe, dey walk, dey spik alone. Dat be not ma beezness!Vraimentdat none of ma affair.Mais, I t'ink you want know, mebbe, an' I be tell you w'at I see. Dey togedder all de taim!"
Dreaulond stepped to the door. His actions like his sentences were brief and full of significance. The chief trader's voice followed him, an odd, low tone the courier had never heard him use.
"Thank you, Basil," was his only comment. "Thank you, for that information."
Alone, he strode immediately into the darkness of his sleeping apartment where he walked the floor, brooding gloomily. Dawn heard his footsteps still falling.
Three days after Dreaulond's departure for Nelson House Maskwa, the swiftest fort runner in the service, dashed over the bluffs, springing madly on his long, webbed running shoes. He had out-distanced the trio of breeds following with three dog teams, and he pushed dispatches of importance into Dunvegan's hands.
"Half our number leave to-morrow for Oxford House," the chief trader announced to his retainers as he read. "Men from two of the Nor'west posts, Brondel and Dumarge, have sacked our fur trains from the Shamattawa and the Wokattiwagan. The Factor will go to raze Fort Dumarge. We outfit at Oxford House and move against Fort Brondel."
A cheer hit the rafters. Unprecedented activity followed. The breeds blew in with the exhausted giddés. Recuperation came to these Company dogs with the night's rest, and into the bitter dawn they were haled. The cold struck nippingly at bare fingers that loaded arms and travelling necessities on the sledges, lashed the moosehide covers over the provender, and tied the stubborn babiche knots. Likewise the frost squeezed the hands that harnessed the dogs. The giddés themselves whined and stirred uneasily in the cold. They were eager for the rush that would make their blood run warm.
Those of the Fort who were to stay behind helped in the work. Long practice and consummate skill accomplished starting preparations in the shortest possible time. The dog teams sprang through the gateway at the release, and a shout of farewell thundered.
"Bonheur, camarades!" was the word. "A Dieu! A Dieu!"
"PourShamattawa!PourWokattiwagan!" rang the responses from the loyal Hudson's Bay men.
"Marche! Marche!" called the breeds to thegiddés, and the cavalcade swung over the long trail.
"Voyez lesKamattawa trains," shrieked Maurice Nicolet, the cache runner, speeding through the storm-thrashed gates of Oxford House.
"Mon Dieu, dat so?" exclaimed Clement Nemaire. "In dis blizzard? W'ere you be see dem, Maurice?"
"'Cross delac! W'en de snow she stop fallin' some, I see dose trains wan meenit come ovaire de trail."
"Run!" Nemaire admonished. "Tell de Factor dat, queeck!"
The cache runner bolted into the trading room. Macleod was not there. Donald Muir, the assistant trader, held charge.
"LesKamattawa trains," he howled. "M'sieu', dey be come ovaire delac."
Bargaining ceased. Trade slipped from the men's minds. Donald Muir jumped up and squinted through the open doorway, distinguishing nothing in the swishing cloud-rifts of snow. He turned back with a shiver and jammed the latch viciously.
"Maurice, ye fule," he ridiculed. "I've na doot ye'll be seein' ghosts next! Ye dinna glint onything but a herd o' caribou driftin' before the storm."
"Bâ, oui," persisted Nicolet, "w'en de storm she be sheeft wan leetl' bit an' de cloud break oop, I see dose trains 'cross delac.Vraiment, dat's so!" Maurice nodded his head energetically and added a string of French superlatives.
"Fetch me the glass," ordered old Donald Muir.
A man brought the glass, a long ship's telescope which Pete Connear had bestowed upon Oxford House. In spite of having seen hard service, it was a good glass, and the same lens that had picked out many a foresail upon the high seas now searched the whirling smother which enveloped the frozen surface of Oxford Lake for signs of the men from Kamattawa. Donald Muir wedged the rattling door with his knees and sighted through the open slit, the hissing snow-eddies spitting in his beard.
"Yon's a glint o' dogs!" he exclaimed. "Noo the snaw's smoorin' in. I doot, I doot—Ah! yes, I maun believe ye're richt, Nicolet! Aye, mon, ye're richt. I can tell the stride o' yon lang-legged fort runner Maskwa an' the bulk o' Dunvegan. Spread yersels, ye fules—they're here!"
Boring through undeterred, breaking the trail for the teams, taking the brunt of the blizzard came the tireless Ojibway fort runner. The body bent double against the wind, the lurch of hips, the spring from the heel, the toe-twist of the lifting shoe, all bespoke the experienced tripper. Maskwa was old and wise on the trails!
A string of gray dots, the dog teams and the Kamattawa men crawled after. Up the bank they plunged and scurried through the stockade, scattering the loose drifts like foam.
"Hu! Hu! Hu!" shrieked the Indian dog drivers, directing the teams to the trading door with a tremendous cracking of their long lashes. There thegiddéshalted, whimpering in the traces. The arms and equipments were thrown inside. The storm-harried travelers stumbled after.
"Maurice, ye fule," fumed Donald Muir, "fire up. Dinna stan' there wi' yer mouth open! Fire up, mon, fire up! Can ye no see it's heat they want?" The fussy, kind hearted assistant trader seized Dunvegan's arm and hustled his superior to his room where he had thoughtfully prepared a set of dry garments.
"Yon's wha' ye need," he declared. "Ye'll feel warmer wi' a change." His attitude was full of solicitude hidden by a sort of proprietorship that Dunvegan had long ago come to recognize.
"You're like a mother to me, Donald," he laughed. "But I'm really wet through with hard work. The change of clothing is well thought of."
"The Factor wants tae confer wi' ye as soon as ye feel fit," announced the Scot. "I masel maun see tae the outfits."
He bustled off, sending halfbreeds with the dog teams to the log building where the Company'sgiddéswere kept, ordering food for men and animals, bestowing general comfort upon the Kamattawa stalwarts crouched around the fireplace.
Sandy Stewart, the lowland Scot, had been left in charge of the newly-built Fort. The rest of Dunvegan's tired followers were here. The flames licked the bronzed, familiar faces of Pete Connear, Terence Burke, Baptiste Verenne, Maskwa, Wahbiscaw, the hardy halfbreeds, the trusted post Indians, the faithfulmètis.
Loyal to the Company, they were here at the Company's call. And they had come as Desirée Lazard had idly prophesied.
"Kip back," Maurice Nicolet ordered the Oxford House loungers round the fire. "Let dese men have more room. You be well fed, warm—full oftabacsmoke. Kip back. Better go ovaire to de store."
The permanent group obeyed. The new arrivals moved closer. Maurice stoked up, jamming huge birch logs into the cavernous stone pit till it roared and throbbed like a giant engine. Every flicker of the warming fire draught sent the shivers over their frames, the reaction that comes of thorough chilling.
"Ba gosh," chattered Baptiste Verenne, "dis ees de wors' blizzard yet.Saprie, leesten dat,mes camarades!"
A tree crashed thunderously in the forest. Gathering momentum over the level sweep of Oxford Lake, the blasts struck the stockade with a sound like the rumbling of a thousand ice jams. The buildings rocked to the storm's wrath. Monstrous drifts threatened to bury them completely. The baffled frost, denied entrance, blew its angry, congealing breath inch-thick upon the blurred window panes.
"Sound lak de spreeng, eh?" grinned Baptiste.
"We'll run into a calm in the morning," Pete Connear prophesied knowingly. "She's been blowin' for fifty hours now. You'll see the wind drop about midnight."
Verenne made a gesture of unbelief. "Mebbe," he grunted, "mebbe."
"I know it," growled Connear. "Let me tell you, Frenchy, that I've weathered more gales than you ever heard of. It'll be calm to-morrow and colder than a Belle Isle ice-berg." He lighted the pipe he had filled and lay back within the heat circle blowing clouds of contentment.
Dunvegan dressed hastily. He was anxious to get out and go through his interview with the Factor in order that he might then have some time to pay a visit to a certain small cabin below the Chapel. He had not seen Edwin Glyndon, the clerk when he came in. Bruce wondered jealously if the young Englishman was at the Lazard home. The words of Basil Dreaulond, given as a friendly hint, had worked in him with the yeast of unrest, stirring up misgivings, forebodings, positive fears.
When Bruce crossed the trading room, he looked for Glyndon again, but the latter was not to be seen.
"Where's the clerk?" he asked, addressing his retainers sprawling close to the ruddy logs in the fireplace.
"Don't know," Connear answered. "I haven't seen him. Guess he's with the other Oxford House men. They're over at the store. Old Donald's gone across to start the packing."
"Better have your things dry and your gear all ready to-night," was the chief trader's parting advice. "Unless there is a change of plans, we start at dawn for Fort Brondel."
While he made his way to the Factor's house, the terrific wind seemed lessening in velocity, and the snow was settling in straighter lines. Yet the swaying forest held its dejected droop. The air had still that voice of wild desolation, symbolic of sorrow, of heart-break, of desecration.
Seated somberly at the table in his council room, Malcolm Macleod did not speak at Dunvegan's entrance. The chief trader, quite accustomed to the Factor's vagaries, waited unconcernedly on Macleod's whim. Buried in his dark ruminations, the Factor sat immovable, his knitted eyebrows meeting, his piercing black eyes focused on the table center. Suddenly he banged the top with his fist.
"The girl Flora," he bellowed. "Any trace, any sight of her?"
"None," Dunvegan answered calmly. "I don't think we'll see her again till we stand inside the stockades of Fort La Roche."
"Which will be soon," grated Macleod, with sinister emphasis. "I'll stand there, mind you, before spring runs out. I swear it by all the saints and devils of heaven and hell!" The oath was heartily backed by his malignant face and the suggestive gnash of strong teeth behind tightened lips.
The chief trader drew some closely written sheets from his pocket.
"Here is my report," he ventured by way of getting Macleod's mind lifted from his hateful brooding. "This is the record of my daybook in duplicate. It will tell you everything. While good fortune blessed us at Kamattawa, things seem to have gone badly with you here."
"Gone badly," echoed the Factor, sneeringly. "I call the loss of two fur trains, ten men, and a clerk hellish."
"Clerk? Was Glyndon with them? Did he fall in the fight?" Eager curiosity was mingled with Dunvegan's great astonishment.
"No," growled Macleod, "he wasn't with the fur trains. How could he be? Just a week ago to-day he married Lazard's niece, and they fled together."
As a man who gets a knife blade in the ribs Dunvegan settled back in his chair. In spite of his tremendous self control, the pallor crept up through his tan. His eyes widened and remained so, staring glazily. The Factor could not help but notice the change. He gazed a moment above the pages he held.
"What's the matter?" he demanded in genuine surprise. Then recollection coming, he added: "Yes, I remember now. Let that be a lesson to you, Dunvegan. Don't trust a woman out of your sight! I speak from hard experience."
The chief trader pulled his pithless limbs together with an effort.
"There is a mistake somewhere," he began in a quiet, hollow voice. "What you say cannot have happened."
"Why?"
"As you know, Desirée's feeling leaned toward the Nor'westers. She registered a vow that she would never marry a Hudson's Bay man."
"Neither did she!"
"Great God," breathed Dunvegan, "don't fool with riddles! Speak it out!"
"She didn't marry a Hudson's Bay man," Macleod asserted grimly. "That damned traitor of a Glyndon turned Nor'wester and fled. Now do you understand?"
Amid a tumultuous rush of mingling feelings, condemnation, anger, jealousy, despair, Dunvegan understood to the bitter full. For several silent minutes he sat there, fighting his conflicting emotions, getting a grip on himself. The Factor read on at the duplicate sheets with stolid absorption.
"Who married them?" was the question that interrupted. Dunvegan had forced his vocal chords into mechanical action.
"Father Brochet," muttered Macleod, not looking up.
"And where are they, do you know?"
"Not I," snarled the Factor, stopping his study of the report. "Most likely they are now in the Nor'west fort at La Roche."
"With Black Ferguson! Oh my God!" Bruce leaped to his feet and paced and re-paced the council room with long, savage strides. The Factor watched him, smiling cynically, as if at the discovery of some new trait in the man. A dozen times the chief trader tramped the floor. Then he whirled in the middle of a stride.
"This thing was planned," he averred. "The clerk was approached from the outside."
"I know that." Macleod's eyes darkened and narrowed a little.
"By whom?"
"It is obvious."
"The Nor'westers—directly?"
"Undoubtedly." The Factor laid down the report upon the council table. Dunvegan resumed his frantic walk, again pausing uncertainly.
"But the means—the means!" he exclaimed petulantly.
Macleod's teeth snapped shut and opened grudgingly for his speech.
"Ha!" he gritted. "God pity the means—if I discover it! We have had spies sneaking about Oxford House. Sometimes I think they must have been inside the stockades, although that is a wild thought. Be this fact as it may, the truth remains that Glyndon was approached directly by an agent of the Nor'westers. Under the powerful combination of the enemy's inducements and the girl's persuasions his desertion must have been a comparatively easy matter."
"Curse his soft eyes!" cried the chief trader. "We might have known better than trust him. Good Lord, and they sent him away from London temptations in order that the Company might give him a certificate of manhood! How, in heaven's name, could a man be made from a bit of slime, a rotten shell, and a colored rag? Betrayal must have been born in him! Did you order no pursuit?"
The Factor shook his shaggy hair as he gathered up the papers.
"They had twenty hours start and good dogs," he explained. "Besides, they fled while it was snowing and left no trail."
"Where's Brochet?" demanded Dunvegan suddenly and irrelevantly.
"Somewhere down Blazing Pine River on a mission to sick Indians," Malcolm Macleod replied. "He left shortly after it happened."
At the end of this questioning, with the little dream-things he had fashioned scattered to the far compass points as the blizzard outside had scattered the snow flakes, Dunvegan felt the sickening of supreme despair. No visible resource stretched before him. He relapsed into sullen inertia.
"Is this all?" the Factor asked, placing his duplicate sheets in numbered sequence.
"All but one other thing."
"And that?"
Dunvegan hesitated. "When I brought Flora Macleod and Running Wolf here," he commenced awkwardly, "I met a strange canoe on Lake Lemeau. In that canoe with two Indian paddlers were two United States marshals named Granger and Garfield. Their passes were good. Their papers I requested of them."
The chief trader paused to note the effect of his words on Macleod. But there was no effect except that the Factor had squared his bulk in his council chair as if to face an emergency.
"Go on," he urged grimly.
"It seemed they were searching for a man whom they suspected of living in this wilderness under an assumed name. They had his photograph!"
Malcolm Macleod shifted forward in a startled fashion.
"You saw that photograph?"
"I did."
"You knew it?"
"No."
The movement of the Factor's body was swiftly reversed. He breathed deeply with something of relief, a relief that fled at the chief trader's next statement.
"I did not know the original of the picture," Dunvegan asserted, "but I was told who it was."
"By whom?" The question shot like a bullet.
"By Flora Macleod. Privately, you understand! Her information was given me after these two marshals had gone."
"Whose picture was it?" Macleod asked doggedly, with the manner of putting an issue to the test.
"Your own," the chief trader answered, "at the age of thirty."
Expecting a dynamic outburst, Dunvegan was completely surprised at the Factor's stoic composure. The massive limbs never offered to spring from the chair; the face preserved its rigid, inscrutable lines.
"You were satisfied with that information, were you?" Macleod interrogated.
"Yes."
"It satisfies you still?"
"It does."
"You did not mention the circumstance at the time," the Factor went on. "Why refer to it now?"
Dunvegan leaned his arms on the table directly opposite Macleod, meeting unafraid the piercing glances of those electric eyes, the eyes which he could now recognize as belonging to the original of the photograph.
"Because it is now necessary," he answered. "If it were not, I would not have opened the subject. In the space of another day, or two, those deputies will make Oxford House. At this moment they are laid up beyond Kabeke Bluffs, not caring to face the blizzard. We passed them there."
Macleod was half out of his chair, an unspoken question blazing from those magnetic eyes. Dunvegan answered it with hauteur and a little scorn.
"I'm no informer," he declared. "Somehow they've got trace of you at the other forts. These men had official entry to both Hudson's Bay and Nor'west posts, and they must have covered the territory pretty well."
"Why do you tell me this?" demanded Macleod, with sudden asperity.
"Out of a sense of duty."
"You think me a hunted criminal?" The Factor's tone held resentment and bitterness which was probably impersonal.
"I forbear to think," answered Dunvegan. "Your affairs are none of my business."
"Yet you serve me! Why serve a man with a supposed stain upon him? Why not follow, rather, our friend Glyndon's move?"
"I serve the Company," was the chief trader's response. "The moral status of the Company's officers cannot effect that fundamental duty—service."
The Factor looked long at Dunvegan, marveling at his integrity, his lack of low curiosity, his allegiance.
"Bruce," he said—and it was not often he used the Christian name—"you're one of the true, northern breed, the shut-mouthed men! Let me tell you a little phase of American life. Twenty years ago there lived over there in one of the big cities a family by the name of Macfarlane. The family consisted of the husband and wife, a daughter, and a son. There was also an intruding element, and this intruder was named James Funster. You see, Funster had loved Macfarlane's wife before she married, and even after the marriage he could not like an honorable man get over his passion. Do you follow me?"
Dunvegan nodded. He had guessed this much from former hints Macleod had given him.
"Well," continued the Factor, "project your thoughts ahead. Imagine the mad things that come into the brain of the infatuated. Imagine also Macfarlane's horror at what happened. One day he was away with his daughter. On his return he found his wife murdered and the son stolen. Without a doubt it was Funster's work. But notice how Fate acted! Suspicion fell upon the husband, suggesting the motive of jealousy. He fled, and the blot still rests on his name."
"How old were the children?" asked Dunvegan, excitedly.
"They were very young," Macleod answered evasively; "just a year between them. I think I have said enough to show you that I am no criminal. That was twenty years ago, but the false accusation follows me."
"And you," ventured Bruce—"you are Macfarlane!"
"I am Alexander Macfarlane."
"And where is Funster?"
"Ah!" grated Macleod. "Tellmethat."
Dunvegan rose up, his own sorrow overshadowed by the portentous resurrection of an old tragedy.
"You are innocent," he cried, "and those men will be here to-morrow or the next day."
"And to-morrow, or the next day I shall be at Fort Dumarge!"
"But they can follow."
"Let them! Or let them await me here! What good will it do? They came in on a long trail, but by Heaven they may go out on a longer one."
Dunvegan stared at the dark, glowering visage and shivered involuntarily.
"What one?" he asked under his breath, although he knew.
"La longue traverse," the Factor decreed.
Pluff! Pluff! The crunching of Maskwa's snowshoes sounded back through the bitter starlight of the dawn. Taking advantage with his skilful heel-spring of the resilience of the taut shoe webbing and the elasticity of the curved frames, Maskwa ran easily in a long, lurching stride. The shifting of his whole weight from one foot to the other sank his raquettes in the snow with uniform pressure. The ankle's side-swing came with unfailing precision. The Ojibway traveled like a machine, perfectly poised and full of potential strength. Thus he could run if need be from sun to sun.
Behind him in the broken trail galloped the first of the six dog teams that carried the outfits. Five halfbreed track beaters packed the snow in front of the other sledges. Six Indians drove. At intervals the positions were shifted, each team taking its turn at the lead where lay the heaviest toil.
"Mush! Mush!" cried the Indian dog drivers. Crack! Crack! snapped the whips in weird staccato. These sounds with the noises of travel were the only ones to echo through the white stillness. For the rest the Hudson's Bay men went in silence because the cold was that awful cold that strangles the northern world before sunrise. Its frigid hands seemed to catch their chests and clamp their lungs tight. A gauntlet removed to allow the fastening of a moccasin lace, the adjustment of the parka hood, or the clearing of iced eyelashes left the bare fingers numbed by the cruel frost which bit through the flesh and lacerated the tense nerves beneath. Through many a dawn-hour had these northmen fought this freezing horror. On countless trails had they come face to face with this death masked ice spirit. Well they knew their capabilities. Closely they guarded their energies. With all his relentless power and subtlety the frost fiend might not take them unawares!
Steadily moved the long line of men across the wind-packed surface of Oxford Lake, their bodies leaning forward at identical angles, their limbs swinging with machine-like regularity. Shoulders heaving at their collars, the dog teams ran in their own peculiar fashion, heads down, tongues lolling between steaming jaws. So exactly alike the outfits seemed that the hindmost ones might have been the oft-repeated shadow of the foremost brushing back across the snows, indistinct, vague beneath the waning starlight.
Quitting Oxford Lake at Kowasin Inlet, the trains ascended Kabeke Ridge that they might make the descent on the other side to the smooth ice of Blazing Pine River which would afford them easy progress for many miles. Among the trees of the crest the cavalcade lost definition. The men were merely shadows on the snow, flicking ghost-like between the silhouetted tree trunks. The dogs were wolfish things sneaking low to the ground. The utter silence of the morning was ethereal in its intangibility. Sharp detonations of frost-split trees brought contrasts that ripped the screen of silence with weird, unearthly noises. A phosphorescent glimmer smeared the crust. Little shadowy shapes began to dance before the men's snow-stung eyes. A suggestion of mirages drifted here and there, mocking, oppressive, supernatural, phantasmagoric.
Where the course of march led from the elevated ridge to the low river surface the incline fell so sharply that extreme care was necessary to make the descent in safety. The Indian dog drivers whipped up their teams to force them in a direct line, while some clung to the sledges that they might not break away wildly and over-run the rushinggiddés. The plunge beat up a cloud of foaming snow particles. Sled after sled shot down. The men half coasted, half ran with amazing speed on the feathery slope. An immense groove in the white covering of the mountain side showed after them. They turned down Blazing Pine, on the banks of which was the Indian encampment that Father Brochet had gone to visit in his mission of administering to the sick.
Maskwa, the tireless, still broke the trail. Dunvegan sent forward Black Fox, a sinewy Salteaux Indian, to relieve him for a space, but the Ojibway smiled a little and refused.
"Strong Father," protested Black Fox, dropping back, "this Maskwa the swift one will not listen. Nor will he give me the task. His legs are of iron, and his lungs are spirit's lungs—they breathe forever! Strong Father, there is none like him from Wenipak to the Big Waters."
"That's true, Black Fox," commented the leader of the expedition, "but he should take some rest."
Dunvegan sped forward till he was running side by side with the Ojibway.
"Maskwa, my brother," he urged, "take the easy place for an hour. It is not well to punish yourself!"
The fort runner smiled again. He had ideal features for an Indian, and the stamp of noble lineage was set upon the bold curve of brow, nose, and chin.
"Strong Father," he replied, "it is not hard for me. I will keep on, for I would have my own eyes search the trail ahead. There are spies about. Let Strong Father mark how the fur trains were sought out and set upon! Mark how the French Hearts took council to surprise Oxford House! We have need to keep the clear eye. We must go swiftly but craftily. Therefore, Strong Father, let Maskwa have the lead. His sight will not fail you."
The Ojibway's dark face glowed earnestly in the golden haze of light which heralded the near appearance of the sun. He was running as easily and breathing as quietly as he had done in the first mile they traversed.
"As you will," conceded Dunvegan. "You have my trust!"
The chief trader dropped back in turn with the main body. Maskwa spurted far ahead, performing the duty of scout as well as that of track beater. Before the Nor'westers could compass another surprise they would have to reckon with the cunning Ojibway.
Steadily on went the file of dog trains. The men were feeling the cold less. By this time extreme exertion had infused a warm glow in each man's frame. Every part of the human anatomy responded to the strong blood coursing in the veins. An excess of virile strength permeated the muscles. An effervescence of buoyancy toned up the nerves.
Eyes gleaming brighter for the fringe of filmed ice above, lips blowing cloud-breaths, clothes frost rimmed from over-activity, these Hudson's Bay giants held on their way. Soon they came to the branching of the Blazing Pine River and continued down the tributary which curved by the Indian village lying three hours' journey below the junction point.
At last the belated sun rose over the spruce trees, glaring with a sort of amazed, fiery wrath upon these travelers who had taken advantage of his slumber to win so many miles of their hard march. But the wrath subsided, lost in the rosy day dreams that wrapped earth and sky in a brilliant winter mist. Radiating beams created the impression of cheerful heat. The whole range of imaginable colors, multiplied by tinting and blending, wove and shifted in a vast web of living fire across the opal clouds. A stupendous panorama lay the wilderness world, exhaling color, displaying jewels, wrapping itself in beauteous necromancy!
In the late forenoon Maskwa sighted the Indian village in the middle distance. Dunvegan decided to make mid-day camp there. He gave the order to his men, an order that was received with great alacrity.
"Chac! Chac! Chac!" yelled the drivers to thegiddés, enforcing the order with splitting reports from the long lashes of their dog whips.
Gleefully and dutifully the sledge animals turned toward the Cree tepees pitched permanently in the warm shelter of a pine forest to the left of the river. At the thought of rest, a good meal, and a smoke the Hudson's Bay men dashed forward jauntily, eager to make the bivouac. But an Indian, running out of the winter wigwams, stopped Maskwa from entering the village by a peculiar motion of his crossed hands. The others saw the fort runner halt in his tracks and draw away, while a momentary conference in the native dialect took place.
The Ojibway beckoned to Dunvegan who ran up hastily.
"Strong Father," spoke Maskwa quickly, "an Indian has come to this village and he has fever. We cannot enter. Else will the fever spirit destroy our own men."
"Where's Father Brochet?" Bruce demanded, speaking in Cree. "Where's the priest—the praying man. Bid him come forth!"
On the summons Father Brochet appeared. His greetings were none the less cheerful for the distance that intervened between the friends.
"It wouldn't be wise to come in," the priest called, "and risk exposure to infection. This case isn't so bad, but you know the dangers. The Indian came from the tribe on Loon Lake, and some of his fellows up there are sick with the same thing. When I get him in shape so that the Indian women can bring him through, I am going up to see after the others."
"Loon Lake!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "That's up beyond Fort Brondel. You'd better be careful when you are in the Nor'west haunts."
"The Nor'westers don't trouble the men of God," returned Brochet simply. "I have no fear of them! We are indispensable to both Hudson's Bay servants and Nor'westers!" He smiled grimly at the significance of his plain words.
"But lately men on our side have died unshriven," the chief trader observed bitterly. "There is a chance that the same may happen to the enemy."
"You are heading for Brondel?"
"With all haste! The sack of the Wokattiwagan train will be speedily and thoroughly avenged."
"And the Factor has set out to raze Dumarge as he planned?"
"Yes. We both have hoped to surprise the Nor'west forts for, failing that, we must sit down to a long siege."
Brochet shivered a little even in the sheltered place where he stood.
"It is ill weather for a siege," he commented, "and the Nor'westers are as cunning as wolves. You know, I suppose, about—about Glyndon?"
Dunvegan's face was hard as a mask. By this time he had curbed his emotion tightly.
"I know—that is, I heard," he answered slowly. "Tell me all about that marriage, Brochet!"
The priest raised his hand in a deprecating fashion and shook his head out of sad pity for his friend's disappointment.
"There is nothing to tell," was his low response. "It was a swift, eager wooing—a sort of autumn dream! The golden woods and the white moons were theirs for an uninterrupted, rapturous space. The fascination was intense. Its durability I cannot judge. The climax compelled their marriage. My hope is that Glyndon may prove worthy!"
"Amen," Dunvegan breathed. He seemed desirous of hearing no more, and signaled for the trains to move on.
"If on your return from Loon Lake the Company's banner flaps over Fort Brondel, give me a call," was his parting word to Father Brochet.
"Indeed, yes," the kindly priest promised. "And watch carefully, my son! Guard your person against the enemy, and guard your passions as well. Remember that he who conquers himself is greater than the lord of all the Hudson's Bay districts."
Three miles farther the cavalcade wound with the frozen river. Dunvegan, brooding within himself as had been his custom of late, took little note of its progress. The leadership had devolved for the moment upon Maskwa. Presently the tall Ojibway answered the call of his stomach. He stopped beneath a jutting headland and looked once at the sun. Then with his native stoicism and abruptness he twisted his heels from the loops of his snowshoes.
"Camp here!" he decided.
A fork of fire leaped up under the quick hands of the Indians. The dead spruce boughs crackled merrily. Baptiste Verenne lay back on a pile of green branches before the flames and hummed to the kettles that they might the more quickly melt their contents of snow into steam and boil the tea. His high tenor voice chanted the air ofL'Exilé, a song of far-off France. Very softly and dreamily he sang: