The Cryptogram Part 14

"All going well?" I asked.

"Within the fort, yes," he replied gravely, as he sat down. "Miss Hatherton is quite recovered, and has an appet.i.te. She seems to be a brave and spirited girl."

"She is," I a.s.sented. "You knew they were sending her, I suppose?"

"Yes, Lord Selkirk forwarded me a little water color sketch of her months ago. I am afraid there is a considerable disparity in our ages, but that can be overcome. I shall make her a good husband, and a steady one--eh, Denzil?"

With a forced smile, I pretended to appreciate the jest.

"How is Moralle?" I asked abruptly.

"He is a very sick man," said the factor; "but it is not a hopeless case. With care, he may recover. But I came to have a serious talk with you, my boy. First of all, tell me everything that happened from the time you met Miss Hatherton in Quebec until I ran across you up the river this morning. I have heard only fragments of the narrative."

I did as he requested, and he hung on my words with close attention and with a deepening look of anxiety in his eyes. When I had finished, he asked me numerous questions, and then pondered silently for a few moments.

Finally he leaned forward and began to fill his pipe. By this time my mind had strayed from the subject, and on a sudden impulse I plunged into the thing that I was so anxious to have done and over with.

I grew confused from the start--a lie was so foreign to my nature--and I fear I made rather a mess of it. What words I used I cannot recall, but I incoherently told the factor that I wished to leave the fort at once and go down country, pleading as an excuse that I was tired of the lonely life of the wilderness and had taken a fancy to carve a future for myself among the towns.

By the expression of his face I was certain that he suspected the truth, and I could have bitten my tongue off with chagrin and shame. He looked at me hard.

"You would leave the service of the company?" he asked. "And with your fine chances!"

"I might be transferred--Fort Garry would suit me nicely," I blundered, quite forgetting what I had said previously.

"This is not the time to make such a demand," Griffith Hawke replied, not unkindly. "I want you here. There will be trouble in the North before many days."

"I am very anxious to go," I persisted doggedly.

"I can't spare you," he said sharply. "Let that end the discussion for the present. In the spring if you are of the same mind--"

"I will wait until then," I broke in.

I saw that all was against me, and that there was nothing to do but make the best of it.

"I can hardly believe," continued the factor, "that Cuthbert Mackenzie would have undertaken so desperate an affair, or that the Indians would have taken service under him, unless both he and they knew that they had the Northwest Company back of them. I am of the opinion that the redskins have been bought over--that hostilities are about to begin.

What do you think?"

"I am inclined to agree with you," I replied.

"My duty is plain," said Griffith Hawke. "I have already despatched a full report of the matter by messenger to Fort York. To-morrow I shall send a dozen men out to scour the country to the east, west and south.

They are not likely to find Mackenzie--he is doubtless safe in one of the Northwest Company's posts by this time--but they may run across some of Gray Moose's braves, and ascertain from them what is brewing."

"I hope they may," said I.

"There is a chance of it," replied the factor. "Will you take charge of the expedition, Denzil?"

I had been waiting craftily for this offer, which meant a prolonged absence from the fort. Nothing could have suited me better--short of transference to another post--and I accepted without hesitation. We talked the matter over together until it was time to turn in for the night.

I was off two hours after sunrise the next day, in command of twelve of our best men. I did not see Flora before I started, nor did I wish to.

And I fervently hoped, as we plunged into the forest and lost sight of the fort that the priest would have arrived and the marriage be over before I returned.

I do not intend to write at length of the expedition, and indeed but little could be said of it. We scoured the wilderness in three directions, but we found no trace of Cuthbert Mackenzie or of his hired band of savages. They had melted away mysteriously, and the empty fastnesses of the Great Lone Land told us nothing of what we sought to learn. The Indians of those parts we met in abundance, but they were peacefully engaged in trapping, and denied that any overtures had been made to them by the Northwest Company.

We were gone a fortnight, and covered some hundreds of miles. Meanwhile the winter had set in, and we returned on snowshoes. The weather was bitterly cold, the streams and lakes were frozen, and the snow lay two feet deep. Away from the fort I had been in better spirits. When I entered the stockade again, and realized that I was near Flora my heart began to ache as before.

I was soon informed of what had taken place during my absence. Gummidge and his wife had departed for Fort Garry a week previously. Moralle was out of danger, and was mending slowly. The messenger was back from Fort York, bringing news that Captain Rudstone had not yet returned there--as was his intention before coming south--and that matters were quiet.

Moreover the priest had not yet arrived at Fort Royal, and there had been no marriage. Flora was still single, and likely to remain so for a time.

A week slipped by rapidly. The winter raged in all its severity, and there was a steady influx of Indians laden with furs and pelts. I had much to do, and was kept busy. I did not return to the factor's house, as I might have done, but stuck to my new quarters. I saw Flora occasionally, but at a distance. By mutual consent we seemed to avoid each other.

Then a memorable day dawned--a day fraught with a series of events that stamped themselves indelibly on my memory.

CHAPTER XVII.

A STRANGE WARNING.

I had been up late the night before, going over some tedious accounts with the clerks, and it was by no means an early hour when I opened my eyes and tumbled out of bed. It was a clear morning, but bitterly cold.

I hurriedly drew on my thick clothing, and was about to leave the room, when I caught sight of an object sticking under the bottom crevice of the door which opened on the fort yard.

I picked it up, and looked at it with interest and curiosity, not unmixed with a vague alarm. What I held in my hand was a flat strip of birch bark about six inches square, containing some rudely-painted scrawls, which I at first took to be hieroglyphics, but which quickly resolved themselves into the uncouth figures of two men. The one was clearly a white man, wearing on his head what was evidently intended to represent the odd-shaped cap of the Northwest Company. The other was an Indian in leggings, blanket and feathers.

Here was a puzzle, indeed, and I could make nothing out of it. I was satisfied, however, that it was meant to warn me--to indicate some danger that threatened myself or the fort.

"It is a mysterious affair altogether," I reflected. "I can't fathom it.

Gray Moose may be the sender, but how did he get the bark under my door?

Ah, perhaps he conveyed it by some of the Indians who came to trade; they must have been admitted to the inclosure an hour ago."

But this explanation was not plausible enough. After some further thought, I concluded that the warning came from some of the Indian employees within the fort, who had learned from their own people of some threatening danger, and had chosen this means of communicating it. Then, looking more closely at the bark, I discovered in the background a few rude lines that had escaped my notice before. They were unmistakably intended for the barred window of the trading room, and of a sudden the solution to the problem flashed upon me.

"I was right in the first place," I muttered. "This is the handiwork of Gray Moose, after all. And now, to make sure, I'll set about it quietly, and won't say anything to the factor until my suspicions are confirmed."

I hastened from my quarters, forgetting that I had not yet breakfasted.

I was so intent on my task that I did not even glance toward the upper windows of the factor's house, where I usually caught a glimpse of Flora's pretty face at this hour. The birch bark I had tucked out of sight in my pocket.

The gates of the stockade were wide open, and within the inclosure a number of Indians--a dozen or more--were standing in groups around sledges packed with furs waiting their turn to be served. They had left their muskets outside, as was the rule when they came to trade. I glanced keenly at them from a distance, and pa.s.sed on to the trading house, entering by the private door in the rear.

Here, looking from the storeroom into the common room beyond, the scene was a noisy and brilliant one. Half a score of gayly-attired savages were talking in guttural tones, gesticulating, and pointing, demanding this and that.

Griffith Hawke greeted me with a nod. He and two a.s.sistants were busily engaged at the barred window of the part.i.tion, receiving and counting bales of skins, pa.s.sing out little wooden castors, and taking them in again in exchange for powder and shot, tobacco and beads, and various other commodities.

For a few moments I watched the scene sharply, though with an a.s.sumed air of indifference. I was satisfied that no Sioux were present. They were all wood Indians--as distinguished from the fiercer tribe of the plains--but they were in stronger numbers than was customary at this time of the year.

What I was seeking I did not find here. I scanned each face in turn, but all present in the outer room were unmistakably redskins.