PART I
NORTH OF “SIXTY”
NORTH OF “SIXTY”
NORTH OF “SIXTY”
The sub-Arctic summer was at its height. The swelter of heat was of almost tropical intensity. No wisp of cloud marred the perfect purity of the steely blue sky, and no breath of wind relieved the intemperate scorch of the blazing sun.
The two men on the river bank gave no heed to the oppressive heat. For the moment they seemed concerned with nothing but their ease, and the swarming flies, and the voracious attacks of the mosquitoes from which the smoke of their camp fire did its best to protect them. Down below them, a few yards away, their walrus-hide kyak lay moored to the bank of the river, whose sluggish, oily-moving waters flowed gently northward towards the far-off fields of eternal ice. It was noon, and a rough midday meal had been prepared and disposed of. Now they were smoking away a leisurely hour before resuming their journey.
The younger of the two flung away the end of a cigarette with a movement that was almost violent in its impatience. He turned a pair of narrow black eyes upon his companion, and their sparkle of resentment shone fiercely in sharp contrast against the dusky skin of their setting.
“It’s no use blinding ourselves, sir,” he said, speaking rapidly in the tongue of the whiteman, with only the faintest suspicion of native halting. “It’s here. But we’ve missed it. And another’s found it.”
He was a youthful creature something short of the completion of his second decade. But that which he lacked in years he made up for in the alertness of purpose that looked out of his keen eyes. He was dark-skinned, its hue something between yellow and olive. He had prominent, broad cheek bones like those of all the natives of Canada’s extreme north. Yet his face differed from the general low type of the Eskimo. There was refinement in every detail of it. There was something that suggested a race quite foreign, but curiously akin.
“Marty Le Gros? Yes?”
The older man stirred. He had been lounging full length on the ground so that the smoke of the camp fire rolled heavily across him, and kept him safe from the torment of winged insects. Now he sat up like the other, and crossing his legs tucked his booted feet under him.
He was older than his companion by more than twenty years. But the likeness between them was profound. He, too, was dusky. He, too, had the broad, high cheek bones. He was of similar stature, short and broad. Then, too, his hair was black and cut short like the other’s, so short, indeed, that it bristled crisply over the crown of his bare head with the effect of a wire brush. He, too, was clad in the rough buckskin of the trail with no detail that could have distinguished him from the native. The only difference between the two was in age, and the colour of their eyes. The older man’s eyes were a sheer anachronism. They were a curious gleaming yellow, whose tawny depths shone with a subtle reflection of the brilliant sunshine.
“Tell me of it again, Sate,” he went on, knocking out the red clay pipe he had been smoking, and re-filling it from a beaded buckskin pouch.
But the youth was impatient, and the quick flash of his black eyes was full of scorn for the unruffled composure of the other.
“He’s beaten us, father,” he cried. “He has it. I have seen.” He spread out his hands in an expressive gesture. And they were lean, delicate hands that were almost womanish. “This priest-man with his say-so of religion. He search all the time. It is the only thing he think of. Gold! Well, he get it.”
He finished up with a laugh that only expressed fierce chagrin.
“And he get it here on this Loon Creek, that you make us waste three months’ search on, son?”
The father shook his head. And his eyes were cold, and the whole expression of his set features mask-like. The youth flung out his hands.
“I go down for trade to Fort Cupar. This missionary, Marty Le Gros, is there. He show this thing. Two great nuggets, clear yellow gold. Big? They must be one hundred ounces each. No. Much more. And he tell the story to McLeod, who drinks so much, that he find them on Loon Creek. I hear him tell. I listen all the time. They don’t know me. They think I am a fool Eskimo. I let them think. Well? Where is it on Loon Creek? We go up. We come down. There is no sign anywhere. No work. The man lies, for all his religion. Or we are the fools we do not think we are.”
Sate turned his searching eyes on the northern distance, where the broad stream merged itself into the purple of low, far-off hills.
It was a scene common enough to the lower lands of Canada’s extreme north. There was nothing of barren desolation. There were no great hills, no great primordial forests along the broad valley of Loon Creek. But it was a widespread park land of woodland bluffs of hardy conifers dotting a brilliant-hued carpet of myriads of Arctic flowers, and long sun-forced grasses, and lichens of every shade of green. It was Nature’s own secret flower garden, far out of the common human track, where, throughout the ages, she had spent her efforts in enriching the soil, till, under an almost tropical summer heat, it yielded a display of vivid colour such as could never have been matched in any wilderness under southern skies.
The older man observed him keenly.
“Sate, my son,” he said at last, “you are discontented. Why? This man has a secret. He has gold. Gold is the thing we look for. Not all the time, but between our trade which makes us rich, and our people rich. We are masters of the north country. It is ours by right of the thing we do. It must be ours. And all its secrets. This man’s secret. We must have it, too.”
The man spoke quietly. He spoke without a smile, without emotion. His tawny eyes were expressionless, for all the blaze of light the sun reflected in them.
“You are right to be discontented,” he went on, after the briefest pause. “But I look no longer on Loon Creek or any other creek. We get this secret from Marty Le Gros. I promise that.”
“How?”
The youth’s quick eyes were searching his father’s face. He had listened to the thing he had hoped to hear. And now he was stirred to a keen expectancy that was without impatience.
The other shrugged his powerful shoulders.
“He will tell it to us—himself.”
The black eyes of the youth abruptly shifted their gaze. Something in the curious eyes of his parent communicated the purpose lying behind his words. But it was insufficient to satisfy his headlong impulse.
“He? He tell his secret to—us?”
There was derision in the challenge.
“Yes. He will tell—when I ask him.”
“But it is far south and west. It is beyond—our territory. It is within the reach of the northern police. There is big risk for you to ask him the—question.”
Again the man with the yellow eyes shook his head.
“Your mother looked for you to be a girl. Maybe her wish had certain effect. Risk? There is no risk. I see none. It is simple. I bend this man to my will. If he will not bend I break him. Yes. He is white. That is as it should be. Someday—sometime the whites of this country will bend, or break before us. They know that. They fear that. The thing they do not yet know is that they bend now. This man, Le Gros, we will see to him without delay.”
He rose from his cross-legged position almost without an effort. He stood up erect, a short, broad-shouldered, virile specimen of manhood in his hard trail clothing. Then he moved swiftly down towards the light canoe at the water’s edge.
The youth, Sate, was slow to follow him. He watched the sturdy figure with unsmiling eyes. He resented the imputation upon his courage. He resented the taunt his father had flung. But his feelings carried nothing deeper than the natural resentment of a war-like, high-strung spirit.
He understood his father. He knew him for a creature of iron nerve, and a will that drove him without mercy. More than that he admitted the man’s right to say the thing he chose to his son. His attitude was one of curious filial submission whatever the hurt he suffered. He may have been inspired by affection, or it may simply have been an expression of the filial obedience and subservience native to the race from which he sprang. But the taunt hurt him sorely. And he jumped to a decision as violent as it was impulsive.
He leapt to his feet, slight, active as a panther, and hastily descended to the water’s edge and joined his parent.
“You think me like a woman, father? You think that?” he demanded hotly.
The other turned eyes that gained nothing of gentleness from their smile.
“No,” he said, and bent again to his work of hauling the little craft clear of the drift-wood that had accumulated about it.
The youth breathed a deep sigh. It was an expression of relief.
“We put that question to this Le Gros soon? Yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Sate nodded, and a great light shone in his black eyes. They were fierce with exultation.
“Then we must waste no time. The way is long. There are many miles to Fox Bluff.” He laughed. “Le Gros,” he went on. “It is a French name, and it means—Tcha!” he exclaimed with all the impetuous feeling which drove him like a whirlwind. “We show him what it means.”
The man with the tawny eyes looked up from his work. For one moment he gazed searchingly into the dark face of his son. Then he returned again to his work without a word.