Lords of the North Part 8

"Nothing--false alarm!" I called rea.s.suringly. Then there caught my eyes what startled me out of all presence of mind. There, reflecting the glare of the firelight was the Indian's fowling-piece, richly mounted in burnished silver and chased in the rare design of Eric Hamilton's family crest. The morose canoeman was Le Grand Diable.

A few hours later, I was in the thick of a confused re-embarking. Le Grand Diable took a place in another boat; and a fresh hand was a.s.signed to my canoe. Of that I was glad; I could sleep sounder and he, safer.

The _Bourgeois_ complained that too much rum had been given out.

"Keep a stiffer hand on your men, boy, or they'll ride over your head,"

one of the chief traders remarked to me.

CHAPTER VI

A GIRDLE OF AGATES RECALLED

To unravel a ball of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness, transformed into a crafty trader with all the villainous tricks of the bargain-maker at my finger-tips. We had befooled Louis into a betrayal of his a.s.sociates but how much reliance could be placed on that betrayal? Had he incriminated Diable to save himself? Then, why had Diable rescued his betrayer? Where was Louis in hiding? Was the Sioux wife with her white slave really in the north country, or was she near, and did that explain my morose Iroquois' all-night vigils? We had cheated Laplante; but had he in turn cheated us? Would I be justified in taking Diable prisoner, and would my company consent to the demoralization of their crews by such a step? Ah, if life were only made up of simple right and simple wrong, instead of half rights and half wrongs indistinguishably mingled, we could all be righteous! If the path to the goal of our chosen desire were only as straight as it is narrow, instead of being dark, mysterious and tortuous, how easily could we attain high ends! I was launched on the life for which I had longed, but strange, shadowy forms like the storm-fiends of sailors' lore, drunkenness, deceit and crime--on whose presence I had not counted--flitted about my ship's masthead. And there was not one guiding star, not one redeeming influence, except the utter freedom to be a man.

I was learning, what I suppose everyone learns, that there are things which sap success of its sweets.

Such were my thoughts, as our canoes sped across the northern end of Lake Huron, heading for the Sault. The Nor'-Westers had a wonderful way of arousing enthusiastic loyalty among their men. Danger fanned this fealty to white-heat. In the face of powerful opposition, the great company frequently accomplished the impossible. With half as large a staff in the service as its rivals boasted, it invaded the hunting-ground of the Hudson's Bay Company, and outrunning all compet.i.tion, extended fur posts from the heart of the continent to the foot-hills to the Rockies, and from the international boundary to the Arctic Circle. I had thought no crews could make quicker progress than ours from Lachine to _Point a la Croix_; but the short delay during the storm occasioned faster work. More _voyageurs_ were engaged from the Nip.i.s.sangue tribes. As soon as one lot f.a.gged fresh shifts came to the relief. Paddles shot out at the rate of modern piston rods, and the waters whirled back like wave-wash in the wake of a clipper. Except for briefest stoppages, speed was not relaxed across the whole northern end of those inland seas called the Great Lakes. With ample s.p.a.ce on the lakes, the brigades could spread out and the canoes separated, not halting long enough to come together again till we reached the Sault.

Here, orders were issued for the maintenance of rigid discipline. We camped at a distance from the lodges of local tribes. No grog was given out. Camp-fire conviviality was forbidden, and each man kept with his own crew. We remained in camp but one night; and though I searched every tent, I could not find Le Grand Diable. This worried and puzzled me. All night, I lay awake, stretching conscience with doubtful plans to entrap the knave.

Rising with first dawn-streak, I was surprised to find Little Fellow and La Robe Noire, two of my canoemen, setting off for the woods. They had laid a snare--so they explained--and were going to examine it. Of late I had grown distrustful of all natives. I suspected these two might be planning desertion; so I went with them. The way led through a dense thicket of ferns half the height of a man. Only dim light penetrated the maze of foliage; and I might easily have lost myself, or been decoyed--though these possibilities did not occur to me till we were at least a mile from the beach. Little Fellow was trotting ahead, La Robe Noire jogging behind, and both glided through the brake without disturbing a fern branch, while I--after the manner of my race--crunched flags underfoot and stamped down stalks enough to be tracked by keen-eyed Indians for a week afterwards. Twice I saw Little Fellow pull up abruptly and look warily through the cedars on one side. Once he stooped down and peered among the fern stems. Then he silently signaled back to La Robe Noire, pointed through the undergrowth and ran ahead again without explanation. At first I could see nothing, and regretted being led so far into the woods. I was about to order both Indians back to the tent, when Little Fellow, with face p.r.i.c.ked forward and foot raised, as if he feared to set it down--for the fourth time came to a dead stand. Now, I, too, heard a rustle, and saw a vague sinuous movement distinctly running abreast of us among the ferns. For a moment, when we stopped, it ceased, then wiggled forward like beast, or serpent in the underbrush. Little Fellow placed his forefinger on his lips, and we stood noiseless till by the ripple of the green it seemed to scurry away.

"What is it, Little Fellow, a cat?" I asked; but the Indian shook his head dubiously and turned to the open where the trap had been set.

Bending over the snare he uttered an Indian word, that I did not understand, but have since heard traders use, so conclude it was one of those exclamations, alien races learn quickest from one another, but which, nevertheless, are not found in dictionaries. The trap had been rifled of game and completely smashed.

"Wolverine!" muttered the Indian, making a sweep of his dagger blade at an imaginary foe. "No wolverine! Bad Indians!"

Scarcely had he spoken when La Robe Noire leaped into the air like a wounded rabbit. An arrow whizzed past my face and glanced within a hair's-breadth of the Indian's head. Both men were dumb with amazement.

Such treachery would have been surprising among the barbarous tribes of the Athabasca. The Sault was the dividing line between Canada and the Wilderness, between the east and the west, and there were no hostiles within a thousand miles of us. Little Fellow would have dragged me pell-mell back to the beach, but I needed no persuasion. La Robe Noire tore ahead with the springs of a hunted lynx. Little Fellow loyally kept between me and a possible pursuer, and we set off at a hard run. That creature, I fancied, was again coursing along beneath the undergrowth; for the foliage bent and rose as we ran. Whether it were man or beast, we were three against one, and could drive it out of hiding.

"See here, Little Fellow!" I cried, "Let's hunt that thing out!" and I wheeled about so sharply the chunky little man crashed forward, knocking me off my feet and sending me a man's length farther on.

That fall saved my life. A flat spear point hissed through the air above my head and stuck fast in the bark of an elm tree. Scrambling up, I promptly let go two or three shots into the fern brake. We scrutinized the underbrush, but there was no sign of human being, except the fern stems broken by my shots. I wrenched the stone spear-head from the tree.

It was curiously ornamented with such a mult.i.tude of intricate carvings I could not decipher any design. Then I discovered that the medley of colors was produced by inlaying the flint with small bits of a bright stone; and the bright stones had been carved into a rude likeness of some birds.

"What are these birds, Little Fellow?" I asked.

He fingered them closely, and with bulging eyes muttered back, "L'Aigle!

L'Aigle!"

"Eagles, are they?" I returned, stupidly missing the possible meaning of his suppressed excitement. "And the stone?"

"Agate, _Monsieur_."

Agate! Agate! What picture did agate call back to my mind? A big squaw, with malicious eyes and gaping upper lip and girdle of agates, watching Louis Laplante and myself at the encampment in the gorge.

"Little Fellow!" I shouted, not suppressing my excitement. "Who is Le Grand Diable's wife?"

And the Indian answered in a low voice, with a face that showed me he had already penetrated my discovery, "The daughter of L'Aigle, chief of the Sioux."

Then I knew for whom those missiles had been intended and from whom they had come. It was a clever piece of rascality. Had the a.s.sa.s.sin succeeded, punishment would have fallen on my Indians.

CHAPTER VII

THE LORDS OF THE NORTH IN COUNCIL

Beyond the Sault, the fascinations of the west beckoned like a siren.

Vast waterways, where a dozen European kingdoms could be dropped into one lake without raising a sand-bar, seemed to sweep on forever and call with the voice of enchantress to the very ends of the earth. With the purple recesses of the sh.o.r.e on one side and the ocean-expanse of Lake Superior on the other, all the charms of clean, fresh freedom were unveiling themselves to me and my blood began to quicken with that fevered delight, which old lands are pleased to call western enthusiasm.

Lake Huron, with its greenish-blue, shallow, placid waters and calm, sloping sh.o.r.es, seemed typical of the even, easy life I had left in the east. How those choppy, bl.u.s.tering, little waves resembled the jealousies and bickerings and bargainings of the east; but when one came to Lake Superior, with its great ocean billows and slumbering, giant rocks and cold, dark, fathomless depths, there was a new life in a hard, rugged, roomy, new world. We hugged close to the north coast; and the numerous rocky islands to our left stood guard like a wall of adamant between us and the heavy surf that flung against the barrier. We were rapidly approaching the headquarters of our company. When south-bound brigades, with prisoners in hand-cuffs, began to meet us, I judged we were near the habitation of man.

"Bad men?" I asked Little Fellow, pointing to the prisoners, as our crews exchanged rousing cheers with the Nor'-Westers now bound for Montreal.

"_Non, Monsieur!_ Not all bad men," and the Indian gave his shoulders an expressive shrug, "_Les traitres anglais_."

To the French _voyageur_, English meant the Hudson's Bay people. The answer set me wondering to what pa.s.s things had come between the two great companies that they were shipping each other's traders gratuitously out of the country. I recalled the talk at the Quebec Club about Governor McDonell of the Hudson's Bay trying to expel Nor'-Westers and concluded our people could play their own game against the commander of Red River.

We arrived in Fort William at sundown, and a flag was flying above the courtyard.

"Is that in our honor?" I asked a clerk of the party.

"Not much it is," he laughed. "We under-strappers aren't oppressed with honors! It warns the Indians there's no trade one day out of seven."

"Is this Sunday?"

I suddenly recollected as far as we were concerned the past month had been entirely composed of week-days.

"Out of your reckoning already?" asked the clerk with surprise. "Wonder how you'll feel when you've had ten years of it."

Situated on the river bank, near the site of an old French post, Fort William was a typical traders' stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feet high ran round the whole fort and the inner court enclosed at least two hundred square yards. Heavily built block-houses with guns poking through window slits gave a military air to the trading post. The block-houses were apparently to repel attack from the rear and the face of the fort commanded the river. Stores, halls, warehouses and living apartments for an army of clerks, were banked against the walls, and the main building with its s.p.a.cious a.s.sembly-room stood conspicuous in the centre of the enclosure. As we entered the courtyard, one of the chief traders was perched on a mortar in the gate. The little magnate condescended never a smile of welcome till the _Bourgeois_ came up. Then he fawned loudly over the chiefs and conducted them with noisy ostentation to the main hall. Indians and half-breed _voyageurs_ quickly dispersed among the wigwams outside the pickets, while clerks and traders hurried to the broad-raftered dining-hall. Fatigued from the trip, I took little notice of the vociferous interchange of news in pa.s.sage-way and over door-steps. I remember, after supper I was strolling about the courtyard, surveying the buildings, when at the door of a sort of barracks where residents of the fort lived, I caught sight of the most grateful object my eye had lighted upon since leaving Quebec. It was a tin basin with a large bar of soap--actual soap. There must still have been some vestige of civilization in my nature, for after a delightful half-hour's intimate acquaintance with that soap, I came round to the groups of men rehabilitated in self-respect.

"Athabasca, Rocky Mountain and Saskatchewan brigades here to-morrow,"

remarked a boyish looking Nor'-Wester, with a mannish beard on his face.

Involuntarily I put my hand to my chin and found a bristling growth there. That was a land where young men could become suddenly very old; and many a trader has discovered other signs of age than a beard on his face when he first looked at a mirror after life in the _Pays d'En Haut_.

"I say," blurted out another young clerk. "There's a man here from Red River, one of the Selkirk settlers. He's come with word if we'll supply the boats, lots of the colonists are ready to dig out. General a.s.sembly's going to consider that to-morrow."

"Oh! Hang the old a.s.sembly if it ships that man out! He's got a pretty daughter, perfect beauty, and she's here with him!" exclaimed the lad with the mannish beard.

"Go to, thou light-head!" declared the other youth, with the air of an elder in Israel. "Go to! You paraded beneath her window for an hour to-day and she never once laid eyes on you."

All the men laughed.