The Cryptogram Part 1

The Cryptogram.

by William Murray Graydon.

CHAPTER I.

THE SAVING OF GRAY MOOSE.

I have long had in mind to set down the story of my early life, and now, as I draw pen and paper to me for the commencement of the task, I feel the inspiration of those who wrote straight from the heart. It is unlikely that this narrative will ever appear in print, but if it does the reader may rely on its truthfulness and accuracy from beginning to end, strange and incredulous though parts of it may seem.

Thirty years ago! It is a long time, but the magic power of memory laughs at wider gulfs. Every incident comes back to me with the vividness and clearness of yesterday. I hear the echo of voices that have been silent these many years. Dead faces, some smiling and some looking fierce-haired, take dim shape in the corners of the room.

Beyond the open window, where birds are twittering in the overhanging ivy, an English landscape of meadow and woodland, hills and hamlets, rolls far in the sunshine of a June morning. It is the year 1846, in the reign of her gracious majesty, Queen Victoria. I close my eyes, and I am back in another world. I see the Great Lone Land--its rivers and lakes, its plains and peaks, its boundless leagues of wilderness stretching from sea to sea. I sniff the fragrant odors of snow-clad birch and pine, of marsh pools glimmering in the dying glow of a summer sun. I hear the splash of paddles and the glide of sledge-runners, the patter of flying moose and deer, and the scream of the hungry panther. I feel the weird, fascinating spell of the solitude and silence.

The Great Lone Land! Truly, to those who have known it, a name to conjure with! As it was then so it remains to-day, that vast, mysterious, romantic realm of the Canadas. The territory of the Hudson Bay Company, chartered remotely and by royal warrant when Charles II was king; the home of the Red Indian and the voyageur, the half-breed trapper and hunter, the gentlemen adventurers of England, Scotland and France; a land of death by Indian treachery and grizzlies, starvation and freezing, snowslides and rapids; a mighty wilderness, with canoes and sledges for the vehicles of travel and commerce, and forest trails joining the scattered trading posts.

There I, Denzil Carew, was born. There was my home from the cradle to manhood, and there my story lies. In that wild country I was nurtured and bred, schooled in the lore of the woods, taught to shoot and swim, to bear fatigue and to navigate dangerous waters. Nor did I grow up in ignorance of finer arts, for my father, Bertrand Carew, was an Englishman and a gentleman, and he took pains to give me the benefit of his own education and culture. Who his people were, or what had brought him out to the Canadas, were things he never told me.

My mother was the daughter of a company factor in charge of Fort Beaver.

I do not remember her, for she died when I was a year old. At the factor's death my father succeeded to the post, and ten years later he was killed by a treacherous Indian. Fort Beaver was then abandoned, a new post having been recently built, seventy miles farther north. This was Fort Royal, on the Churchill River, one hundred miles south of Hudson's Bay, and I went there as a.s.sistant factor--I had already worn the company's uniform for three years.

At that time I was twenty years old--very tall, and built in proportion, with light hair and eyes, and a mustache in which I took some pride. I knew as much of the wilderness and the fur trade as any voyageur, and I had been twice to Quebec and other towns of Lower Canada.

I liked the life at Fort Royal, and I liked the factor, Griffith Hawke.

We got on well together, and I performed my duties to his satisfaction.

Thus five years pa.s.sed way, and the closing of that uneventful period brings me to the opening proper of my story--to the mission that sent me five hundred miles down country in the dead of winter to Fort Garry, where the town of Winnipeg now stands, and thence more than a thousand miles eastward to Quebec. Concerning the purpose of the journey I shall speak later, but it was not a thing to my taste or experience.

Distinctly I recall that frosty morning of March in the year 1815. The picture of life and color, breaking on a scene of wintry grandeur and solitude, rises before my eyes. I see the frozen, snow-covered waste of the Lake of the Woods, the surrounding evergreen forests and towering hills, the low leaden sky overhead. Along the edge of the scrubby-timbered sh.o.r.e, five husky dogs come at a trot, harnessed in single file to a sledge. The dogs are short-legged and very hairy, with long snouts, sharp-pointed ears, and the tails of wolves; the sledge is a simple toboggan made of two pieces of birch nine feet in length, their ends turned high in front. Buckskin thongs hold the load in place, and at either side of this vehicle of the woods a brightly-clad figure on snowshoes glides swiftly.

Of the two men, one was myself, and the other was my half-breed servant Baptiste. I wore the winter uniform of the Hudson Bay Company--a furred leather coat lined with flannel, a belt of scarlet worsted, breeches of smoked buckskin, moccasins of moose-hide, and blue cloth leggings. A fur cap was on my head, and a strip of Scotch plaid about my neck. Baptiste was dressed like all the company's voyageurs and hunters, in a blue capote, red flannel shirt, beaded corduroy trousers and fringed leggings, and a cap decked out with feathers. We each carried a musket and a hunting knife, a powder horn, and a bullet pouch.

Fort Garry, where we had stopped for a few days after a fortnight's steady travel from the Churchill River, was a week's journey behind us, and we were likely to be another month in the wilderness before we should reach Quebec. But we liked the wild life better than the turmoil of towns, Baptiste and I, and we were in no haste to have done with it.

The strange thing that was taking me to Quebec would not be ripe for accomplishment until the coming of the tardy June spring of the Canadas, which was as yet eight or nine weeks off.

The weather was bitterly cold that March day, and we kept the dogs at such a pace that by noon we had covered a matter of twenty miles. Then, as we were speeding along the frozen river that leads from the Lake of the Woods to Lake Superior, we heard the report of a musket, followed by the cry of a human voice and the growl of a beast. Baptiste and I stopped and at a word the dogs stood still and barked with uplifted snouts. The sound had come from close by on our left, but now we heard only a faint and receding patter on the snow crust.

"_Nom de Dieu_, there are two running!" cried Baptiste. "It is a chase."

"And the dogs smell a bear," I replied. "I am off to the rescue, Baptiste. Do you wait here with the sledge, and if I shout for help, come quickly."

With that I turned and made into the forest, unslinging my musket as I ran. Fifty yards through scrub and timber brought me to a spot that bore the imprint of big claws and moccasined feet. Here were a few drops of blood on the snow, and the parts of a broken gun lying near. I had no need to follow the trail, for as I pushed on with great strides the noise of a struggle guided me straight.

It was but a short distance further. Breaking from the trees into a rugged hollow, I came upon a thrilling scene. An Indian had sought refuge in a shallow crevice between two tall bowlders, and he was in sore peril of his life from a monstrous grizzly that was striving to tear him out. The bear--I had never seen a larger one--was dealing blow after blow with his heavy paws, and the redskin was making the best use of his knife that his cramped position would allow. The clamor of beast and man made a blood-curdling din.

I mastered the situation at a glance and vowed to save the Indian. I was as likely to hit him as the bear from where I stood, so I circled quickly around to one side. But the grizzly both heard and smelled me, and I had scarcely lifted my musket when he turned with a snarl of rage, and came at me. I aimed and fired. Bang!

It is difficult to kill a grizzly with a single shot, and as the smoke drifted aside I saw the brute advancing on hind legs. His eyes were like b.a.l.l.s of fire, his open jaws dripped foam, and he roared horribly with pain and anger. Blood was trickling from a wound close to the heart, made by my bullet, and there was another bleeding hole in his neck.

I had no chance to reload, and there was barely time to flee. But my temper was up, and it drove me to a reckless determination. I stood my ground for an instant, while the grizzly shambled on, pawing viciously at the air. Then I drew my long-bladed knife, darted out of the way, and as swiftly turned and struck under the sheltered fore feet. It was a foolish trick, and my agility barely saved me from a crushing blow. As it was, I had to leave the knife sticking deep in the wound. But the thrust had gone straight to the heart, and I gave a yell of delight as the great beast came down with a crash. He lay quite still after a brief struggle that churned the snow crust to powder.

The bear was dead, and my first step was to withdraw the knife and wipe it clean. Then, having shouted to Baptiste, I approached the crevice just as the Indian crawled out. Too weak to rise, he propped himself against a rock. He was bleeding profusely from a dozen wounds. His shirt of buffalo skin, his breech-clout, his fringed leggings of antelope, all had been ripped to tatters by the grizzly's claws; his feathered scalp-lock was half torn from his head, and one shoulder was mangled.

I was full of pity at first, but my heart hardened when I recognized the savage. He was Gray Moose, a Sioux of much influence, and he and his people were said to be carrying on underhand dealings with the Northwest Company, which was the great and dangerous rival of the Hudson Bay Company. We were known to each other, having met before on several occasions. Whether the above rumor was true or not, I was aware to a certainty that he held the Hudson Bay men in no favor; and I half regretted that I had saved his life.

"How came you in such straits?" I asked coldly.

He explained in a few words, and in fairly good English. The grizzly had come upon him unawares, and in his haste to fire he had inflicted only a slight wound. Then he fled, and took shelter in the rock cranny as a last resort.

"The red man is grateful to Pantherfoot," he concluded, addressing me by a name which my skill at tracking game had won for me among the Indians.

"Gray Moose will not forget. Now let white man go his way."

But it was not in my nature to leave the poor wretch wounded and helpless, and I told him so. On questioning him, I learned that a village of his people was within a few miles, and I decided to take him there. By this time Baptiste had arrived with the team, and after dressing the Sioux's injuries as well as I could, I fixed him comfortably on the sledge, the half-breed and I shouldering the displaced part of the load.

On the way my servant had picked up the broken musket, and when Gray Moose saw that the weapon was beyond mending--the grizzly had shattered it by a terrific blow--such a look of misery came into his eyes as softened my heart at once. I knew the value an Indian set on his shooting-piece, and I gave him an extra gun which I chanced to have on the sledge.

Baptiste upbraided me for my folly, and, indeed, I repented the act the next moment; but the savage's grat.i.tude was so sincere that I could not bring myself to take back the gift.

An hour's tramp--the direction was quite out of our way--brought us to the Sioux village. We left Gray Moose with his friends, and pushed on, refusing an invitation to spend the night. I attached no significance to the affair at the time, nor did I give it much thought afterward, but the future was destined to prove that my trivial dead of kindness was not wasted, and that even a bad Indian will remember a benefactor.

I need make no further mention of our journey through the wilderness to Quebec, where we arrived safely in a little less than four weeks. But at this point, for the better understanding of my narrative, I must set down a brief statement of the ugly and threatening situation in the Canadas at the period of which I write. Long before--during many years, in fact--the Hudson Bay Company had vainly tried to obtain from the English Parliament a confirmation of the charter granted them by Charles II. But Parliament refused to decide the matter in one way or the other, and on the strength of this a number of French and Scotch merchants of Upper Canada formed themselves into the Northwest Trading Company in 1783. They established posts here and there, and in 1804 they erected one on the very sh.o.r.e of Hudson's Bay.

Within the next few years their forts grew to outnumber those of the older company, being scattered about in Prince Rupert's Land, and even across the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. Then, in 1812, the Hudson Bay Company made a bold move. Lord Selkirk, a prominent official of the company in London, sent out a large colony of Scotchmen who had been evicted from their homes in Sutherlandshire. He hoped thus to build up a stronghold and seat of government that would brook no rivalry. The colonists came and settled at Fort Garry, at the forks of the Red River; but matters grew worse instead of better. Each company claimed to be in the right, and was resolved to drive the other out of existence. During the next few years the men of the Northwest Company and of the Hudson Bay Company came to blows more than once, and finally, in October of 1814, the Northwest Company were ordered to remove from the territory within six months--a mandate which they treated with contempt and derision.

It was early in the following year, the reader will recall, that Baptiste and I left Fort Churchill for Lower Canada, and from what we had seen at and about Fort Garry when we stopped there, we were satisfied that serious trouble was brewing, and that it would break out when navigation opened in the spring. We knew that the Northwest Company were plotting to secure the aid of the Indians, and we were also aware that the feeling throughout Lower Canada--even among the government officials--was strongly in favor of the Hudson Bay Company's enemies.

Such being the situation, I was naturally anxious to get back to my post as soon as possible; for though I was not so hot-headed as to wish for war, I was ready to fight for the supremacy of the company I served, and which my father had served before me. But I foresaw with distaste that I should probably be detained in Quebec until the summer months--since I was to await the arrival of a certain ship from England--and I entered that town with but a poor zest for my task.

CHAPTER II.

THE HOTEL IN BONAVENTURE STREET.

It was nine o'clock on a Monday evening in the fourth week of June, and I was sitting, as was my nightly custom, in the cozy coffee room of the modest hostelry where I had taken lodgings when I first came to Quebec.

This was the Hotel Silver Lily, kept by Monsieur Jules Ragoul and madame, his wife. It was a quiet little place in Bonaventure Street, which was one of the oldest and narrowest thoroughfares of the lower town.

I was alone in the room, save for an elderly man who was sound asleep in a big chair on the far side of the table, remote from the candlelight.

He had been there when I entered, and I could not recall having seen him before about the hotel; but of this I was not certain, since his face was in shadow and half-covered by his hat. In the adjoining bar, to judge from the clinking of gla.s.ses and bottles and the hum of conversation, Madame Ragoul was busy with a few customers. The evening was warm, and as I sat by the open window sucking at my long pipe, I could hear on the one side the occasional challenge of the sentries high up on the ramparts of the citadel. From the other direction came the boisterous voices of boatmen and sailors down by the quays of the St.

Lawrence.

Two long months had pa.s.sed since my arrival in Quebec. I was heartily tired of its noisy, brawling life, hungry for the solitude of my native wilderness. At first I had found much to see and enjoy, but the novelty soon wore off. I had but few acquaintances in the town, and none of them were to my fancy. I preferred the seclusion of the hotel, and the company of the honest little Frenchman and his wife. Not so with Baptiste. He had fallen in with a loose set of his own kind, and frequented the low taverns by the riverside. That very evening I had brought him home helplessly drunk, and seen him safely abed.

But before I go on, if you please, a word or two concerning the business that brought me to Quebec. I have spoken of Griffith Hawke, the factor of Fort Royal. He was a man of fifty-odd years, simple-hearted, absorbed in his duties, and with not a spark of romance or sentiment in his being. Would you believe that such a one could think of marriage? Yet it was even so! A wife he suddenly resolved to have, and he sent for one to the head office in London, as was a common custom in those days. Many a woman was sent out by the company to cheer the lonely lot of their employees.

To be brief, a correspondence was carried on for two years between Fort Royal and London--that meant but a couple of letters on either side--and the result of it was that I was now in Quebec to meet the bride of Griffith Hawke and escort her to her distant home.