Billy Topsail & Company Part 13

"I said I wouldn't go t' Birds' Nest Islands," said Billy Topsail, "an' I won't."

"Ah, come on, Billy," Archie pleaded.

"I said I wouldn't," Billy repeated, obstinately, "an' I won't."

"That ain't nothink," Bagg argued.

"Anyhow," said Billy, "I won't, for I got my reasons."[3]

David Grey, a bent old fellow, who was now long "past his labour," as they say in Newfoundland, sat within hearing. Boy and man he had been in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, as hunter, clerk, trader, explorer, factor; and here, on the coast where he had been born, he had settled down to spend the rest of his days. He was not an ignorant man, but, on the contrary, an intelligent one, educated by service, wide evening study of books, and hard experience in the great wildernesses of the Canadian Northwest, begun, long ago, when he was a lad.

"You make me think of Donald McLeod," said he.

The boys drew near.

"It was long ago," David went on. "Long, long ago," the old man repeated. "It was 'way back in the first half of the last century, for I was little more than a boy then. McLeod was factor at Fort Refuge, a remote post, situated three hundred miles or more to the northeast of Lake Superior, but now abandoned. And a successful, fair-dealing trader he was, but so stern and taciturn as to keep both his helpers and his half-civilized customers in awe of him. It was deep in the wilderness--not the wilderness as you boys know it, where a man might wander night and day without fear of wild beast or savage, but a vast, unexplored place, with dangers lurking everywhere.

"'Grey,' he said to me when I reported for duty, fresh from headquarters, 'if you do your duty by me, I'll do mine by you.'

"'I'll try to,' said I.

"'When you know me better,' said McLeod, with quiet emphasis, 'you'll know that I stand by my word.'

"We dealt, of course, with the Indians, who, spring and fall, brought their furs to the fort, and never failed to remain until they had wasted their earnings in the fashion that best pleased their fancy.

"Even then the Indians were degenerate, given over to idleness and debauchery; but they were not so far sunk in these habits as are the dull, lazy fellows who sell you the baskets and beaded moccasins that the squaws make to-day. They were superst.i.tious, malicious, revengeful, and they were almost in a condition of savagery, for the only law they knew was the law our guns enforced. Some authority was vested in the factor, and he was not slow to exert it when a flagrant offense was committed near by.

"'There's no band of Indians in these parts,' I was told, 'that can scare McLeod. He'll see justice done for and against them as between man and man.'

"Fort Refuge was set in a wide clearing. It was built of logs and surrounded by a high, stout stockade. Admittance to the yard was by a great gate, which was closed promptly at sundown, and always strongly barred. We had no garrison regularly stationed there to defend us. In all, it may be, we could muster nine men--McLeod, two clerks, and a number of stout fellows who helped handle the stores. Moreover, were our gate to be closed and our fort surrounded by a hostile force, we should be utterly cut off from communication with those quarters whence relief might come. We had the company's wares to guard, and we knew that once we were overcome, whatever the object of the attack, the wares and our lives would be lost together.

"'But we can stand a long siege,' I used to think; and indeed there was good ground for comfort in that.

"Our stockade was impregnable to an attack by force, no doubt; but as it soon appeared, it was no more than a paper ribbon before the wily strategy of the Indians. One night, when I had shut the gates and dropped the bars, I heard a long-drawn cry--a scream, in which it was not hard to detect the quality of terror and great stress. It came, as I thought, from the edge of the forest. When it was repeated, near at hand, my heart went to my mouth, for I knew that a band of Indians was encamped beyond, and had been carousing for a week past. Then came a knocking at the gate--a desperate pounding and kicking.

"'Let me in! Open! Open!' I heard a man cry.

"I had my hands on the bar to lift it and throw open the gate when McLeod came out of his house.

"'Stop!' he shouted.

"I withdrew from the gate. He approached, waved me back, and put his own hand on the bar.

"'Who's there?' he asked.

"'Let me in, McLeod. It's Landley. Quick! Open the gate, or I'll be killed!'

"McLeod's hesitation vanished. He opened the gate. A man stumbled in.

Then the gate was shut with a bang.

"'What's this about, Landley?' McLeod said, sternly. 'What trouble have you got yourself into now?'

"I knew Landley for a white man who had abandoned himself to a shiftless, vicious life with the Indians. He had sunk lower, even, than they. He was an evil, worthless, ragged fellow, despised within the fort and respected nowhere. But while he stood there, gasping and terror-stricken, I pitied him; and it may be McLeod himself was stirred by the mere kinship of colour.

"'Speak up, man!' he commanded. 'What have you done?'

"'I've done no wrong,' Landley whimpered. 'Buffalo Horn's young son has died, and they put the blame on me. They say I've cast the evil eye on him. They say I killed him with a spell. You know me, McLeod.

You know I haven't got the evil eye. Don't turn me out, man. They're coming to kill me. Don't give me up. You know I'm not blood-guilty.

You know me. You know I haven't got the evil eye.'

"'Tush, man!' said McLeod. 'Is that all the trouble?'

"'That's all!' Landley cried. 'I've done no harm. Don't give me up to them.'

"'I won't,' McLeod said, positively. 'You're safe here until they prove you blood-guilty. I'll not give you up.'"

Old David Grey paused; and Jimmie demanded:

"Did they give un up?"

"Was they _wild_ Indians?" Bagg gasped.

David laughed. "You just wait and see," said he.

[3] Billy Topsail's reasons were no doubt connected with an encounter with a gigantic devil-fish at Birds' Nest Islands, as related in "The Adventures of Billy Topsail."

CHAPTER XIII

_In Which There Are Too Many Knocks At the Gate, a Stratagem Is Successful, Red Feather Draws a Tomahawk, and an Indian Girl Appears On the Scene_

"McLeod turned on his heel and went to the shop," David continued; "and when he had ordered a watch to be kept on the clearing on all sides, we devoted ourselves to the matter in hand--the preparation of the regular quarterly statement for the officials at headquarters. But as we laboured, hatchets, knives and the cruel, evil faces of the savages, by whom, as I chose to think, we were threatened, mixed themselves with the figures, to my bewilderment.

"Soon the dusk came, and while I trimmed and lighted the candles in the shadowy outer room there seemed to be shapes in the corners which I had never seen there in quieter times. McLeod, however, was unperturbed. He had forgotten all about the numerous band which he stood ready to defy.

"'Do you think there is danger?' said I.

"'Danger?' said he. 'From what?'

"'Buffalo Horn's band,' said I.