"What tribe, Louis?" I asked.
"I'll be hanged, now, if I'm not jealous," he began. "You'll stare the lady out of countenance——" But at this moment the Indian who had come up the bank behind us came round and interrupted Laplante's merriment by tossing a piece of bethumbed paper between my comrade's knees.
"The deuce!" exclaimed Louis, bulging his tongue into one cheek and glancing at me with a queer, quizzical look as he unfolded and read the paper.
If he had not spoken I might not have turned; but having turned I could not but notice two things. Louis jerked back from me, as if I might try to read the soiled note in his hand, and in raising the paper displayed on the back the stamp of the commissariat department from Quebec Citadel.
Neither Laplante's suppressed surprise, nor my observations of his movement, escaped the big squaw. She came quickly round the fire to us both.
"Give me that," she commanded, holding out her hand to the French youth.
"The deuce I will," he returned, twisting the paper up in his clenched fist. Half in jest, half in earnest, just as Louis used to be punished at the seminary, she gave him a prompt box on the ear. He took it in perfect good-nature. And the whole encampment laughed. The squaw went back to the other side of the fire. Laplante leaned forward and threw the paper towards the flames; but without his knowledge, he overshot the mark; and when the trader was looking elsewhere the big squaw stooped, picked up the coveted note and slipped it into her skirt pocket.
"Now, Louis, nonsense aside," I began.
"With all my soul, if I have one," said he, lying back languidly with a perceptible cooling of the cordiality he had first evinced.
I told him my errand, and that I wished to search every wigwam for trace of the lost woman and child. He listened with shut eyes.
"It isn't," I explained in a low voice, eager to arouse his interest, "it isn't in the least, Laplante, that we suspect these people; but you know the kidnappers might have traded the clothing to your people——"
"Oh! Go ahead!" he interjected impatiently. "Don't beat round the bush! What do you want of me?"
"To go through the tents with me and help me. By Jove! Laplante! I thought at least a spark of the man would suggest that without my speaking," I broke out hotly.
He was on his feet with an alacrity that brought old Paul Larocque round to my side and the squaw to his.
"Curse you," he cried out roughly, shoving the squaw back. For a moment I was uncertain whether he were addressing the woman or myself. "You mind your own business and go to your Indian! Here, Gillespie, I'll do the tents with you. Get off with you," he muttered at the squaw, rumbling out a lingo of persuasive expletives; and he led the way to the first wigwam.
But the squaw was not to be dismissed; for when I followed the Frenchman, she closed in behind looking thunder, not at her abuser, but at me; and The Mute, fearing foul play and pole in hand, loyally brought up the rear of our strange procession. I shall not retail that search through robes and skins and blankets and boxes, in foul-smelling, vermin-infested wigwams. It was fruitless. I only recall the lowering face of the bigsquaw looking over my shoulder at every turn, with heavy brows contracted and gashed lips grinning an evil, malicious challenge. I thought she kept her hands uncomfortably near the ivory handle in the agate belt; but Larocque, good fellow, never took his beady eyes off those same hands and kept a grip of the leaping pole.
Thus we examined the tents and made a circuit of the people round the fire, but found nothing to reveal the whereabouts of Miriam and the child. Laplante and I were on one side of the robe, Larocque and the squaw on the other.
"And why is that tent apart from the rest and who is in it?" I asked Laplante, pointing to the lone tepee on the crest of the hill.
The fire cracked so loudly I became aware there was ominous silence among the loungers of the camp. They were listening as well as watching. Up to this time I had not thought they were paying the slightest attention to us. Laplante was not answering, and when I faced him suddenly I found the squaw's eyes fastened on his, holding them whether he would or no, just as she had mine.
"Eh! man?" I cried, seizing him fiercely, a nameless suspicion getting possession of me. "Why don't you answer?"
The spell was broken. He turned to me nonchalantly, as he used to face accusers in the school-days of long ago, and spoke almost gently, with downcast eyes, and a quiet, deprecating smile.
"You know, Rufus," he answered, using theschoolboy 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 passed 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. Thehabitantis 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 superstitious dread of this disease knew no bounds. That recollection checked my sudden flight. If the Indians hadsuch 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-wildhabitantguide; for it sat back on its haunches and throwing up its head, let out the most doleful howlings imaginable.
"Oh!Monsieur," shuddered out the superstitious habitant shivering 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 manfrom 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 myhabitantguide, which instinctively put out feelers with the caution of an insect's antennæ 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.
"You should have knocked that blasted quarantine's head off," ejaculated 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 tosupposeanything. 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 ofmy 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; shadowedvoyageurs, who passed 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 associates. 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, orslain 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 circumstances 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 thathabitantMute, 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 ofFrench 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 passed 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 promptitude 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 pronounced; 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 andvoyageursset out on the annual trip to thePays 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 association with the North-West Company it was probable he would be in Robertson's brigade. Among thevoyageursof 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 areputation for embodying the vices of white man and red—which gave him his unsavory title—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 dexterousvoyageur. 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 passage north with Colin Robertson's brigade, which was to leave Lachine in a few weeks. My uncle had been a famousBourgeoisof 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 thevoyageursand 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 theBourgeoiswore on festive occasions. In very truth I oft had need of its inspiriting motto:Fortitude in Distress.
Feudal lords of the middle ages never wagedmore 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 passed from Lake Superior (thekelche gammeof 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 thePays 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 theircoureurs-des-boispushed 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 thecoureurs-des-bois, or wood-rangers, theMetis, or French half-breeds, theBois-Brulés, 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'-Westershad reaped a harvest of profits by leaving the beaten track of trade and pushing 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 ship their peltries directly to England from the bay, the Nor'-Westers labored under the disadvantage of many delays and trans-shipments 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 quantities for portaging and despatched from Montreal with the Nor'-Westernvoyageursthe 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 ships 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 of1812-1814, 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 Assiniboine 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 pass 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 Beaupré, 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 Chaudière 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 thenative 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 gayvoyageurs. 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 ofLa Bonne Sainte Anne, cross himself, invoke her protection on the voyage anddrop 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? Women know what to do and say in such a case. A man must be dumb, or blunder; so I could but link my arm through his and lead him silently down to my own canoe.
A single wave of the chief steersman's hand, and out swept the paddles in a perfect harmony of motion. Then someone struck up avoyageurs'ballad and the canoemen unconsciously kept time with the beat of the song. The valley seemed filled with the voices of those deep-chested, strong singers, and the chimes of Ste. Anne clashed out a last sweet farewell.
"Cheer up, old man!" said I to Eric, who was sitting with face buried in his hands. "Cheer up! Do you hear the bells? It's a God-speed for you!"
My uncle accompanied our flotilla as far as Lachine and occupied a place in my division of canoes. Many were the admonitions he launched out like thunderbolts whenever his craft and mine chanced to glide abreast.
"If you lay hands on that skunk," he had said, the malodorous epithet being his designation for Louis Laplante, "If you lay hands on that skunk, don't be a simpleton. Skin him, Sir, by the Lord, skin him! Let him play the ostrich act! Keep your own counsel and work him for all you're worth! Let him play his deceitful game! By Jove! Give the villain rope enough to hang himself! Gain your end! Afterwards forget and forgive if you like; but, by the Lord, remember and don't ignore the fact, that repentance can't turn a skunk into an innocent, pussy cat!"
And so Mr. Jack MacKenzie continued to warn me all the way from Quebec to Montreal, mixing his metaphors as topers mix drinks. But I had long since learned not to remonstrate against these outbursts of explosive eloquence—not though all the canons of Laval literati should be outraged. "What, Sir?" he had roared out when I, in full conceitof new knowledge, had audaciously ventured to pull him up, once in my student days. "What, Sir? Don't talk to me of your book-fangled balderdash! Is language for the use of man, or man for the use of language?" and he quoted from Hamlet's soliloquy in a way that set me packing my pedant lore in the unused lumber-room of brain lobes. And so, I say, Mr. Jack MacKenzie continued to pour instructions into my ear for the venturesome life on which I had entered. "The lad's a fool, only a fool," he said, still harping on Louis, "and mind you answer the fool according to his folly!"
"Most men are fools first, and then knaves, knaves because they have been fools," I returned to my uncle, "and I fancy Laplante has graduated from the fool stage by this time, and is a full diploma knave!"
"That's all true," he retorted, "but don't you forget there's always fool enough left in the knave to give you your opportunity, if you're not a fool. Joint in the armor, lad! Use your cutlass there."
Apart from the peppery discourses of my kinsman, I remember very little of the trip up the St. Lawrence from Ste. Anne to Lachine with Eric sitting dazed and silent opposite me. We, of course, followed the river channel between the Island of Orleans and the north shore; and whenever our boats drew near the mainland, came whiffs of crisp, frosty air from the dank ravines, where snow patches yet lay in the shadow. Then the fleet would sidle towards the island and therewould be the fresh, spring odor of damp, uncovered mold, with a vague suggestiveness of violets and May-flowers and ferns bursting with a rush through the black clods. The purple folds of the mountains, with their wavy outlines fading in the haze of distance, lay on the north as they lie to-day; and everywhere on the hills were the white cots ofhabitanthamlets with chapel spires pointing above tree-tops. At the western end of the island, where boats sheer out into mid-current, came the dull, heavy roar of the cataract and above the north shore rose great, billowy clouds of foam. With a sweep of our paddles, we were opposite a cleft in the vertical rock and saw the shimmering, fleecy waters of Montmorency leap over the dizzy precipice churning up from their own whirling depths and bound out to the river like a panther after prey.
Now the Isle of Orleans was vanishing on our rear and the bold heights of Point Levis had loomed up to the fore; and now we had poked our prows to the right and the sluggish, muddy tide of the St. Charles lapped our canoes, while a forest of masts and yard-arms and flapping sails arose from the harbor of Quebec City. The great walls of modern Quebec did not then exist; but the rude fortifications, that sloped down from the lofty Citadel on Cape Diamond and engirt the whole city on the hillside, seemed imposing enough to us in those days.
It was late in the afternoon when we passed. The sunlight struck across the St. Charles,brightening the dull, gray stone of walls and cathedrals and convents, turning every window on the west to fire and transforming a multitude of towers and turrets and minarets to glittering gold. Small wonder, indeed, that all our rough tripmen stopped paddling and with eyes on the spire of Notre Dame des Victoires muttered prayers for a prosperous voyage. For some reason or other, I found my own hat off. So was Mr. Jack MacKenzie's, so was Eric Hamilton's. Then thevoyageursfell to work again. The canoes spread out. We rounded Cape Diamond and the lengthening shadow of the high peak darkened the river before us. Always the broad St. Lawrence seemed to be winding from headland to headland among the purple hills, in sunlight a mirror between shadowy, forest banks, at night, molten silver in the moon-track. Afternoon slipped into night and night to morning, and each hour of daylight presented some new panorama of forests and hills and torrents. Here the river widened into a lake. There the lake narrowed to rapids; and so we came to Lachine—La Chine, named in ridicule of the gallant explorer, La Salle, who thought these vast waterways would surely lead him to China.
At Lachine, Mr. Jack MacKenzie, with much brusque bluster to conceal his longings for the life he was too old to follow and many cynical injunctions about "skinning the skunk" and "knocking the head off anything that stood in my way" and "always profiting from the folliesof other men"—"mind, have none yourself,"—parted from us. Here, too, Eric gripped my hand a tense, wordless farewell and left our party for the Hudson's Bay brigade under Colin Robertson.
It has always been a mystery to me why our rivals sent that brigade to Athabasca by way of Lachine instead of Hudson Bay, which would have been two thousand miles nearer. We Nor'-Westers went all the way to and from Montreal, solely because that was our only point of access to the sea; but the Hudson's Bay people had their own Hudson Bay for a starting place. Why, in their slavish imitation of the methods, which brought us success, they also adopted our disadvantages, I could never understand. Birch canoes and good tripmen could, of course, as the Hudson's Bay men say, be most easily obtained in Quebec; but with a good organizer, the same could have been gathered up two thousand miles nearer York Factory, on Hudson Bay. Indeed, I have often thought the sole purpose of that expedition was to get Nor'-Westers' methods by employing discarded Nor'-Westers as trappers andvoyageurs. Colin Robertson, the leader, had himself been a Nor'-Wester; and all the men with him except Eric Hamilton were renegades, "turn-coat traders," as we called them. But I must not be unjust; for neither company could possibly exceed the other in its zeal to entice away old trappers, who would reveal opponents' secrets. Acting on my uncle's advice, I made shift to pickup a few crumbs of valuable information. Had the Hudson's Bay known, I suppose they would have called me a spy. That was the name I gave any of them who might try such tricks with me. The General Assembly of the North-West partners was to meet at Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior. I learned that Robertson's brigade were anxious to slip past our headquarters at Fort William before the meeting and would set out that very day. I also heard they had sent forward a messenger to notify the Hudson's Bay governor at Fort Douglas of their brigade's coming.
Almost before I realized it, we were speeding up the Ottawa, past a second and third and fourth Ste. Anne's; for she is thevoyageurs'patron saint and her name dots Canada's map like ink-blots on a boy's copybook. Wherever a Ste. Anne's is now found, there has thevoyageurof long ago passed and repassed. In places the surface of the river, gliding to meet us, became oily, almost glassy, as if the wave-current ran too fast to ripple out to the banks. Then little eddies began whirling in the corrugated water and our paddlers with labored breath bent hard to their task. By such signs I learned to know when we were stemming the tide of some raging waterfall, or swift rapid. There would follow quick disembarking, hurried portages over land through a tangle of forest, or up slippery, damp rocks, a noisy launching far above the torrent and swifter progress when the birch canoes touched water again. Such was the tireless pace, which made North-Westvoyageursfamous. Such was the work the greatBourgeoisexacted of their men. A liberal supply of rum, when stoppages were made, and of bread and meat for each meal—better fare than was usually given by the trading companies—did much to encourage the tripmen. Each man was doing his utmost to out-distance the bold rivals following by our route. TheBourgeoiswere to meet at Fort William early in June. At all hazards we were determined to notify our company of the enemy's invading flotilla; and without margin for accidents we had but a month to cross half a continent.
At nightfall the fourth day from the shrine, after a tiresome nine-mile traverse past the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa, glittering camp-fires on the river bank ahead showed where a fresh relay of canoemen awaited us. They were immediately taken into the different crews and night-shifts of paddlers put to work. It was quite dark, when the new hands joined us; but in the moonlight, as the chief steersman told off the men by name, I watched each tawny figure step quickly to his place in the canoes, with that gliding Indian motion, which scarcely rocked the light craft. There came to my crew Little Fellow, a short, thick-set man, with a grinning, good-natured face, who—despite his size—would solemnly assure people he was equal in force to the sun. With him was La Robe Noire, of grave aspect and few words, mighty in stature and shoulder power. There were five or six others, whose names in theclangor of voices I did not hear. Of these, one was a tall, lithe, swift-moving man, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a serpent. This canoeman silently twisted into sleeping posture directly behind me.
The signal was given, and we were in mid-stream again. Wrapping my blanket about me, half propped by a bale of stuff and breathing deep of the clear air with frequent resinous whiffs from the forest I drowsed off. The swish of waters rushing past and the roar of torrents, which I had seen and heard during the day, still sounded in my ears. The sigh of the night-wind through the forest came like the lonely moan of a far-distant sea, and I was sleepily half conscious that cedars, pines and cliffs were engaged in a mad race past the sides of the canoe. A bed in which one may not stretch at random is not comfortable. Certainly my cramped limbs must have caused bad dreams. A dozen times I could have sworn the Indian behind me had turned into a snake and was winding round my chest in tight, smothering coils. Starting up, I would shake the weight off. Once I suddenly opened my eyes to find blanket thrown aside and pistol belt unstrapped. Lying back eased, I was dozing again when I distinctly felt a hand crawl stealthily round the pack on which I was pillowed and steal towards the dagger handle in the loosened belt. I struck at it viciously only to bruise my fist on my dagger. Now wide awake, I turned angrily towards the Indian. Not a muscle of the stillfigure had changed from the attitude taken when he came into the canoe. The man was not asleep, but reclined in stolid oblivion of my existence. His head was thrown back and the steely, unflinching eyes were fixed on the stars.
"It may not have been you, my scowling sachem," said I to myself, "but snakes have fangs. Henceforth I'll take good care you're not at my back."
I slept no more that night. Next day I asked the fellow his name and he poured out such a jumbled mouthful of quick-spoken, Indian syllables, I was not a whit the wiser. I told him sharply he was to be Tom Jones on my boat, at which he gave an evil leer.
Without stay we still pushed forward. The arrowy pace was merciless to red men and white; but that was the kind of service the great North-West Company always demanded. Some ten miles from the outlet of Lake Nipissangue (Nipissing) foul weather threatened delay. TheBourgeoiswere for proceeding at any risk; but as the thunder-clouds grew blacker and the wind more violent, the head steersman lost his temper and grounded his canoe on the sands atPoint à la Croix. Springing ashore he flung down his pole and refused to go on.
"Sacredie!" he screamed, first pointing to the gathering storm and then to the crosses that marked the fate of other foolhardyvoyageurs, "Allez si vous voulez! Pour moi je n'irai pas; ne voyez pas le danger!"
A hurricane of wind, snapping the great oaks as a chopper breaks kindling wood, enforced his words. Canoes were at once beached and tarpaulins drawn over the bales of provisions. The men struggled to hoist a tent; but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads, and before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain-drift drenched every one to the skin. By sundown the storm had gone southeast and we unrighteously consoled ourselves that it would probably disorganize the Hudson's Bay brigade as much as it had ours. Plainly, we were there for the night.Point à la Croixis too dangerous a spot for navigation after dark. With much patience we kindled the soaked underbrush and finally got a pile of logs roaring in the woods and gathered round the fire.
The glare in the sky attracted the lake tribes from their lodges. Indians, half-breeds and shaggy-haired whites—degenerate traders, who had lost all taste for civilization and retired with their native wives after the fashion of the north country—came from the Nipissangue encampments and joined our motley throng. Presently the natives drew off to a fire by themselves, where there would be no white-man's restraint. They had either begged or stolen traders' rum, and after the hard trip from Ste. Anne, were eager for one of their madboissons—a drinking-bout interspersed with jigs and fights.
Stretched before our camp, I watched the grotesque figures leaping and dancing between thefirelight and the dusky woods like forest demons. With the leaves rustling overhead, the water laving the pebbles on the shore, and the washed pine air stimulating one's blood like an intoxicant, I began wondering how many years of solitary life it would take to wear through civilization's veneer and leave one content in the lodges of forest wilds. Gradually I became aware of my sulky canoeman's presence on the other side of the camp-fire. The man had not joined the revels of the othervoyageursbut sat on his feet, oriental style, gazing as intently at the flames as if spellbound by some fire-spirit.
"What's wrong with that fellow, anyhow?" I asked a veteran trader, who was taking last pulls at a smoked-out pipe.
"Sick—home-sick," was the laconic reply.
"You'd think he was near enough nature here to feel at home! Where's his tribe?"
"It ain't his tribe he wants," explained the trader.
"What, then?" I inquired.
"His wife, he's mad after her," and the trader took the pipe from his teeth.
"Faugh!" I laughed. "The idea of an Indian sentimental and love-sick for some fat lump of a squaw! Come! Come! Am I to believe that?"
"Don't matter whether you do, or not," returned the trader. "It's a fact. His wife's a Sioux chief's daughter. She went north with a gang of half-breeds and hunters last month; and he's been fractious crazy ever since."
"What's his name?" I called, as my informant vanished behind the tent flaps.
Again that mouthful of Indian syllables, unintelligible and unspeakable for me was tumbled forth. Then I turned to the fantastic figures carousing around the other camp fire. One form, in particular, I seemed to distinguish from the others. He was gathering the Indians in line for some native dance and had an easy, rakish sort of grace, quite different from the serpentine motions of the redskins. By a sudden turn, his profile was thrown against the fire and I saw that he wore a pointed beard. He was no Indian; and like a flash came one of those strange, reasonless intuitions, which precede, or proceed from, the slow motions of the mind. Was this theavant-courierof the Hudson's Bay, delayed, like ourselves, by the storm? I had hardly spelled out my own suspicion, when to the measured beatings of the tom-tom, gradually becoming faster, and with a low, weird, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest, the Indians began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which my slow eyes could not follow, but which in a strange way brought up memories of snaky convolutions about the naked body of some Egyptian serpent-charmer. The drums beat faster. The suppressed voices were breaking in shrill, wild, exultant strains, and the measured tread had quickened from a walk to a run and from a swaying run to a swift, labyrinthine pace, which has no name in English, and which I can only liken to the wiggling of a green thingunder leafy covert. The coiling and circling and winding of the dancers became bewildering, and in the centre, laughing, shouting, tossing up his arms and gesticulating like a maniac, was the white man with the pointed beard. Then the performers broke from their places and gave themselves with utter abandon to the wild impulses of wild natures in a wild world; and there was such a scene of uncurbed, animal hilarity as I never dreamed possible. Savage, furious, almost ferocious like the frisking of a pack of wolves, that at any time may fall upon and destroy a weaker one, the boisterous antics of these children of the forest fascinated me. Filled with the curiosity that lures many a trader to his undoing, I rose and went across to the thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. A man darted out of the woods full tilt against me. 'Twas he of the pointed beard, mysuspectof the Hudson's Bay Company. Quick as thought I thrust out my foot and tripped him full length on the ground. The light fell on his upturned face. It was Louis Laplante, that past-master in the art of diplomatic deception. He snarled out something angrily and came to himself in sitting posture. Then he recognized me.
"Mon Dieu!" he muttered beneath his breath, momentarily surprised into a betrayal of astonishment. "You, Gillespie?" he called out, at once regaining himself and assuming his usual nonchalance. "Pardon, my solemncholy! I took you for a tree."
"Granted, your impudence," said I, ignoring the slight but paying him back in kind. I was determined to follow my uncle's advice and play the rascal at his own game. "Help you up?" said I, as pleasantly as I could, extending my hand to give him a lift; and I felt his palm hot and his arm tremble. Then, I knew that Louis was drunk and this was the fool's joint in the knave's armor, on which Mr. Jack MacKenzie bade me use my weapons.
"Tra-la!" he answered with mincing insult. "Tra-la, old tombstone! Good-by, my mausoleum! Au revoir, old death's-head! Adieu, grave skull!" With an absurdly elaborate bow, he reeled back among the dancers.
"Get up, comrade," I urged, rushing into the tent, where the old trader I had questioned about my canoeman was now snoring. "Get up, man," and I shook him. "There's a Hudson's Bay spy!"
"Spy," he shouted, throwing aside the moose-skin coverlet. "Spy! Who?"
"It's Louis Laplante, of Quebec."
"Louis Laplante!" reiterated the trader. "A Frenchman employed by the Hudson's Bay! Laplante, a trapper, with them! The scoundrel!" And he ground out oaths that boded ill for Louis.
"Hold on!" I exclaimed, jerking him back. He was for dashing on Laplante with a cudgel. "He's playing the trapper game with the lake tribes."
"I'll trapper him," vowed the trader. "How do you know he's a spy?"
"I don'tknow, really know," I began, clumsily conscious that I had no proof for my suspicions, "but it strikes me we'd better not examine this sort of suspect at too long range. If we're wrong, we can let him go."
"Bag him, eh?" queried the trader.
"That's it," I assented.
"He's a hard one to bag."
"But he's drunk."
"Drunk, Oh! Drunk is he?" laughed the man. "He'll be drunker," and the trader began rummaging through bales of stuff with a noise of bottles knocking together. He was humming in a low tone, like a grimalkin purring after a full meal of mice—