Lords of the North Part 14

"As she's jack-spotted us all," drawled the gentle, liquid tones of the gambler, "we'd better go ahead and----"

"And decorate a bit of statuary," shouted the lad with a laugh.

It was a long tent, like the booth of a fair, with supports at each end, and we were festooning it from pole to pole with moss and ferns when somebody rasped at the door. "Mon alive! What's goin' on here?" We started from our work with the guilty alacrity of burglars. There stood Frances Sutherland's father, much aghast at the proceedings, and by his side was a face with cheeks flaming poppy red and lips twitching in merriment. There was a sudden snow-storm of flowers being tossed down, and five men brushed past the two spectators and dashed into the hiding of gathering dusk. At the foot of the knoll I ran against the priest.

"That," roared Father Holland, shaking with laughter. "That's what I call good stuff in the rough! Faith, but ye'll give me good stuff in the rough. I want none o' yer gilded chivalry from the tinsel towns!"

There was a wreath of night-shades in the Little Statue's hat when the canoes set out next morning. Mayflowers were at her throat, violets in her girdle and I know not what in a basket at her feet. The face was unconscious of us as ever, but about the downcast eyelids played a tender gentleness which was not there before. Once I caught her glancing back among us as if she would pick out the culprits; and when her eyes for a moment rested on me, my heart set up a silly thumping. But she looked just as pointedly at the others, and I know every man's heart of them responded; for the boy began such a floundering I thought he would spill his canoe. A quick trip brought us to the mouth of Red River, where the Hudson's Bay _voyageurs_ under Colin Robertson were resting.

Here I was surprised to learn that Eric Hamilton had not waited but had hastened up Red River to Fort Douglas. I could not but connect this southward move of his with the sudden flight of Le Grand Diable from Fort William.

After brief pause at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, our brigade turned southward and made speed up the Red through the rush-grown sedgy swamps which over-flood the river bed. Farther south the banks towered high and smoke curled up from the huts of Lord Selkirk's settlers. Women with nets in their hands to scare off myriad blackbirds that clouded the air, and men from the cornfields ran to the river edge and cheered us as we pa.s.sed. Here the Sutherlands landed. Some of the traders thought it a good omen, that Hudson's Bay settlers cheered Nor'-Wester brigades; but in one bend of the muddy Red, the bastions of Fort Douglas, where Governor McDonell of the rival company ruled, loomed up and the guns pointing across the river wore anything but a welcome look.

We pa.s.sed Fort Douglas unmolested, followed the Red a mile farther to its junction with the a.s.siniboine and here disembarked at Fort Gibraltar, the headquarters of the Nor'-Westers in Red River.

CHAPTER X

MORE STUDIES IN STATUARY

"So he laughs at our warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with knuckles and heels.

The a.s.siniboine enters the Red at something like a right angle and in this angle was the Nor'-Westers' fort, named after an old-world stronghold, because we imagined our position gave us the same command of the two waterways by which the _voyageurs_ entered and left the north country as Gibraltar has of the Mediterranean. Governor McDonell had thought to outwit us by building the Hudson's Bay fort a mile further down the current of the Red. It was a sharp trick, for Fort Douglas could intercept Nor'-West brigades bound from Montreal to Fort Gibraltar, or from Fort Gibraltar to the Athabasca. Two days after our arrival, Cuthbert Grant, with a band of _Bois-Brules_, had gone to Fort Douglas to arrest Captain Miles McDonell for plundering Nor'-West posts.

The doughty governor took Grant's warrant as a joke and scornfully turned the whole North-West party out of Fort Douglas. On the stockades outside were proclamations commanding settlers to take up arms in defense of the Hudson's Bay traders and forbidding natives to sell furs to any but our rivals. These things added fuel to the hot anger of the chafing _Bois-Brules_. A curious race were these mongrel plain-rangers, with all the savage instincts of the wild beast and few of the brutal impulses of the beastly man. The descendants of French fathers and Indian mothers, they inherited all the quick, fiery daring of the Frenchman, all the endurance, craft and courage of the Indian, and all the indolence of both white man and red. One might cut his enemy's throat and wash his hands in the life blood, or spend years in accomplishing revenge; but it is a question if there is a single instance on record of a _Bois-Brule_ molesting an enemy's family. When the Frenchman married a native woman, he cast off civilization like an ill-fitting coat and virtually became an Indian. When the Scotch settler married a native woman, he educated her up to his own level and if she did not become entirely civilized, her children did. One was the wild man, the Ishmaelite of the desert, the other, the tiller of the soil, the Israelite of the plain. Such were the tameless men, of whom Cuthbert Grant was the leader, the leader solely from his fitness to lead.

It was late in the afternoon when the warden returned from Fort Douglas.

I was busy over my desk. Father Holland was still with us awaiting the departure of traders to the south, and Duncan Cameron was stamping about the room like a caged lion. There came a quick, angry tramp from the hall.

"That's Grant back, and there's no one with him," muttered Cameron with suppressed anger; and in burst the warden himself, his heavy brows dark with fury and his eyes flashing like the fire at a pistol point.

Involuntarily I stopped work and the priest glanced across at me with a look which bespoke expectation of an explosion. Grant did not storm.

That was not his way. He took several turns about the room, mastered himself, and speaking through his teeth said quietly, "There be some fools that enjoy playing with gunpowder. I'm not one of them! There be some idiots that like teasing tigers. 'Tis not sport to my fancy! There be some pot-valiant braggarts that defy the law. Let them enjoy the breaking of the law!"

"What--what--what?" sputtered the Highland governor, springing first on one side of Grant and then on the other, all the while rumbling out maledictions on Lord Selkirk, and Governor McDonell and Fort Douglas.

"What do ye say, mon? Do I understand ye clearly, there's no prisoners with ye?"

"Laughs at the _Bois-Brules_. The fool laughs at the _Bois-Brules_! I've seen gophers c.o.c.k their eye at a wolf, before that same wolf made a breakfast of gophers! The fool laughs at your warrant, Sir! Scouted it, Sir! Bundled us out of Fort Douglas like cattle!" The warden went on in a bitter strain to tell of the effect of the posted proclamations on his followers.

"So the lordly Captain Miles McDonell of the Queen's Rangers, generalissimo of all creation, defies us, does he?" demanded Cameron in great dudgeon, scarcely crediting his ears.

"Aye!" answered Grant, "but he can ill afford to be so high and mighty.

We went through the settlement and half the people are with us----"

"That's good! That's good!" responded Cameron with keen relish.

"They're heartily sick of the country," continued the warden, "and would leave to-morrow if we'd supply the boats. Last winter they nearly starved. The company's generous supply was rancid grease and wormy flour."

"Fine way o' colonizing a country," stormed Cameron, "bring men out as settlers and arm them to fight! We'll spike his guns by shipping a score more away."

"We've spiked his guns in a better way," said Grant dryly. "Some of the friendlies are so afraid he'll take their guns away and leave them defenceless unless they fight us, they've sent their arms here for safekeeping. We'll keep them safe, I'll warrant." Grant smiled, showing his white teeth in a way that was not pleasant to see, and somehow reminded me of a dog's snarl.

"Good! Good! Excellent, Grant." Such strategy pleased Cameron. "See here, mon, Cuthbert, we've the law on our side--we've the warrants to back the law! We'd better give yon dour fool a lesson. He's broken the peace. We haven't. Come out, an' I'll talk it over with ye!"

The two went out, Grant saying as they pa.s.sed the window--"Let him tamper with the fur trade among the Indians and I'll not answer for it!

That last order not to sell----" The rest of the remark I lost.

"'Twould serve him well right if they did," returned Cameron, and both men walked beyond hearing.

Father Holland and I were left alone. The fort became ominously still.

There was a distant clatter of receding hoofs; but we were on the south side of the warehouse and could not see which way the horses were galloping.

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid both sides will be rash," observed the priest.

The sun-dial indicated six o'clock. I closed and locked the office desks. We had supper in the deserted dining-hall. Afterwards we strolled to the northeast gate, and looking in the direction of Fort Douglas, wondered what scheme could be afoot. Here my testimony need not be taken for, or against, either side. All I saw was Duncan Cameron with the other white men of the fort standing on a knoll some distance from Fort Gibraltar, evidently gazing towards Fort Douglas. Against the sky, above the settlement, there were clouds of rising smoke.

"Burning hay-ricks?" I questioned.

"Aye, and houses! 'Tis shameless work leaving the people exposed to the blasts of next winter! Shameless, shameless work! Y'r company'll gain nothing by it, Rufus!"

Across the night came faint, short snappings like a fusillade of shots.

"Looting the neutrals," said the priest. "G.o.d grant there be no blood on the plains this night! These fool traders don't realize what it means to rouse blood in an Indian! They'll get a lesson yet! Give the red devils a taste of blood and there won't be a white unscalped to the Rockies!

I've seen y'r fine, clever rascals play the Indian against rivals, and the game always ends the same way. The Indian is a weapon that's quick to cut the hand of the user."

Little did I realize my part in the terrible fulfilment of that prophecy.

"Look alive, lad! Where are y'r wits? What's that?" he cried, suddenly pointing to the river bank.

Up from the cliff sprang a form as if by magic. It came leaping straight to the fort gate.

"Some frightened half-breed wench," surmised the priest.

I saw it was a woman with a shawl over her head like a native.

"_Bon soir!_" said I after the manner of traders with Indian women; but she rushed blindly on to the gate.

The fort was deserted. Suspicion of treachery flashed on me. How many more half-breeds were beneath that cliff?

"Stop, huzzie!" I ordered, springing forward and catching her so tightly by the wrist that she swung half-way round before she could check herself. She wrenched vigorously to get free. "Stop! Be still, you huzzie!"

"Be still--you what?" asked a low, amazed voice that broke in ripples and froze my blood. A shawl fluttered to the ground, and there stood before us the apparition of a marble face.

"The Little Statue!" I gasped in sheer horror at what I had done.

"The little--what?" asked the rippling voice, that sounded like cold water flowing under ice, and a pair of eyes looked angrily down at the hand with which I was still unconsciously gripping her arm.

"I'd thank you, Sir," she began, with a mock courtesy to the priest, "I'd thank you, Sir, to call off your mastiff."