Lords of the North Part 7

"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't _know_, 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 a.s.sented.

"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--

"Rum for Indians, when they come, Rum for the beggars, when they go, That's the trick my grizzled lads To catch the cash and snare the foe."

"What's your plan?" I asked with a vague feeling the trader had some shady purpose in mind.

"Squeamish? Eh? You'll get over that, boy. I'll trap your trapper and spy your spy, and Nor'-Wester your H. B. C.! You come down to the sand between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I'll have news for you," and he brushed past me with his arms full of something I could not see in the half-light.

Then, as a trader, began my first compromise with conscience, and the enmity which I thereby aroused afterwards punished me for that night's work. I knew very well my comrade, with the rough-and-ready methods of traders, had gone out to do what was not right; and I hung back in the tent, balancing the end against the means, our deeds against Louis'

perfidy, and Nor'-Westers' interests against those of the Hudson's Bay.

It is not pleasant to recall what was done between the cedars and the sh.o.r.e. I do not attempt to justify our conduct. Does the physician justify medical experiments on the criminal, or the sacrificial priest the driving of the scape-goat into the wilderness? Suffice it to say, when I went down to the sh.o.r.e, Louis Laplante was sitting in the midst of empty drinking-flasks, and the wily, old Nor'-Wester was tempting the silly boy to take more by drinking his health with fresh bottles. But while Louis Laplante gulped down his rum, becoming drunker and more communicative, the tempter threw gla.s.s after gla.s.s over his shoulder and remained sober. The Nor'-Wester motioned me to keep behind the Frenchman and I heard his drunken lips mumbling my own name.

"Rufush--prig--stuck-up prig--serve him tam right!

Hamilton's--sh--sh--prig too--sho's his wife. Serve 'em all tam right!"

"Ask him where she is," I whispered over his head.

"Where's the gal?" demanded the trader, shoving more liquor over to Louis.

"Shioux squaw--Devil's wife--how you say it in English? Lah Grawnd Deeahble," and he mouthed over our misp.r.o.nunciation of his own tongue "Joke, isn't it?" he went on. "That wax-face prig--slave to Shioux Squaw. Rufush--a fool. Stuffed him to hish--neck. Made him believe shmall-pox was Hamilton's wife. I mean, Hamilton's wife was shmall-pox.

Calf bellowed with fright--ran home--came back--'tamme,' I say, 'there he come again' 'shmall-pox in that grave,' say I. Joke--ain't it?" and he stopped to drain off another pint of rum.

"Biggest joke out of jail," said the Nor'-Wester dryly, with meaning which Louis did not grasp.

"Ask him where she is," I whispered, "quick! He's going to sleep." For Louis wiped his beard on his sleeve and lay back hopelessly drunk.

"Here you, waken up," commanded the Nor'-Wester, kicking him and shaking him roughly. "Where's the gal?"

"Shioux--_Pays d'En Haut_," drawled the youth. "Take off your boots!

Don't wear boots. _Pays d'En Haut_--moccasins--softer," and he rolled over in a sodden sleep, which defied all our efforts to shake him into consciousness.

"Is that true?" asked the Nor'-Wester, standing above the drunk man and speaking across to me. "Is that true about the Indian kidnapping a woman?"

"True--too terribly true," I whispered back.

"I'd like to boot him into the next world," said the trader, looking down at Louis in a manner that might have alarmed that youth for his safety. "I've bagged H. B. dispatches anyway," he added with satisfaction.

"What'll we do with him?" I asked aimlessly. "If he had anything to do with the stealing of Hamilton's wife----"

"He hadn't," interrupted the trader. "'Twas Diable did that, so Laplante says."

"Then what shall we do with him?"

"Do--with--him," slowly repeated the Nor'-Wester in a low, vibrating voice. "Do--with--him?" and again I felt a vague shudder of apprehension at this silent, uncompromising man's purpose.

The camp fires were dead. Not a sound came from the men in the woods and there was a gray light on the water with a vague stirring of birds through the foliage overhead. Now I would not have any man judge us by the canons of civilization. Under the ancient rule of the fur companies over the wilds of the north, 'twas bullets and blades put the fear of the Lord in evil hearts. As we stooped to gather up the tell-tale flasks, the drunken knave, who had lightly allowed an innocent white woman to go into Indian captivity, lay with bared chest not a hand's length from a knife he had thrown down. Did the Nor'-Wester and I hesitate, and look from the man to the dagger, and from the dagger to the man; or is this an evil dream from a black past? Miriam, the guiltless, was suffering at his hands; should not he, the guilty, suffer at ours? Surely Sisera was not more unmistakably delivered into the power of his enemies by the Lord than this man; and Sisera was discomfited by Barak and Jael. Heber's wife--says the Book--drove a tent nail--through the temples--of the sleeping man--and slew him! Day was when I thought the Old Volume recorded too many deeds of bloodshed in the wilderness for the instruction of our refined generation; but I, too, have since lived in the wilderness and learned that soft speech is not the weapon of strong men overmastering savagery.

I know the trader and I were thinking the same thoughts and reading each other's thoughts; for we stood silent above the drunk man, neither moving, neither uttering a word.

"Well?" I finally questioned in a whisper.

"Well," said he, and he knelt down and picked up the knife. "'Twould serve him right." He was speaking in the low, gentle, purring voice he had used in the tent. "'Twould serve him jolly right," and he knelt over Louis hesitating.

My eyes followed his slow, deliberate motions with horror. Terror seemed to rob me of the power of speech. I felt my blood freeze with the fear of some impending crime. There was the faintest perceptible fluttering of leaves; and we both started up as if we had been a.s.sa.s.sins, glancing fearfully into the gloom of the forest. All the woods seemed alive with horrified eyes and whisperings.

"Stop!" I gasped, "This is madness, the madness of the murderer. What would you do?" And I was trying to knock the knife out of his hand, when among the shadowy green of the foliage, an open s.p.a.ce suddenly resolved itself into a human face and there looked out upon us gleaming eyes like those of a crouching panther.

"Squeamish fool!" muttered the Nor'-Wester, raising his arm.

"Stop!" I implored. "We are watched. See!" and I pointed to the face, that as suddenly vanished into blackness.

We both leaped into the thicket, pistol in hand, to wreak punishment on the interloper. There was only an indistinct sound as of something receding into the darkness.

"Don't fire," said I, "'twill alarm the camp."

At imminent risk to our own lives, we poked sticks through the thicket and felt for our unseen enemy, but found nothing.

"Let's go back and peg him out on the sand, where the Hudson's Bay will see him when they come this way," suggested the Nor'-Wester, referring to Laplante.

"Yes, or hand-cuff him and take him along prisoner," I added, thinking Louis might have more information.

But when we stepped back to the beach, there was no Louis Laplante.

"He was too drunk to go himself," said I, aghast at the certainty, which now came home to me, that we had been watched.

"I wash my hands of the whole affair," declared the trader, in a state of high indignation, and he strode off to his tent, I, following, with uncomfortable reflections trooping into my mind. Compunctions rankled in self-respect. How near we had been to a brutal murder, to crime which makes men shun the perpetrators. Civilization's veneer was rubbing off at an alarming rate. This thought stuck, but for obvious reasons was not pursued. Also I had learned that the worst and best of outlaws easily justify their acts at the time they commit them; but afterwards--afterwards is a different matter, for the thing is past undoing.

I heard the trader snorting out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me.

Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows.

Thinking himself unseen by me, he wore such an insolent, amused, malicious expression, I knew in an instant, who the interloper had been, and who had carried Louis off. Before I realized that such an act entails life-long enmity with an Indian, I had bounded over the fire and struck him with all my strength full in the face. At that, instead of knifing me as an Indian ordinarily would, he broke into hyena shrieks of laughter. He, who has heard that sound, need hear it only once to have the echo ring forever in his ears; and I have heard it oft and know it well.

"Spy! Sneak!" I muttered, rushing upon him. But he sprang back into the forest and vanished. In dodging me, he let fall his fowling-piece, which went off with a bang into the fire.

"Hulloo! What's wrong out there?" bawled the trader's voice from the tent.