The Gun-Brand Part 5

It had been Chloe's idea to lay out her "village," as she called it, upon a rather elaborate scheme, the plans for which had been drawn by an architect whose clients' tastes ran to million-dollar "summer cottages"

at Seash.o.r.e-by-the-Sea.

First, there was to be the school itself, an ornate building of crossed rafters and overhanging eaves. Then the dormitories, two long, parallel buildings with halls, individual rooms, and baths--one for the women and one for men--the two to be connected by a common dining-hall in such a manner as to form three sides of a hollow square. Connected to the dining-hall was to be a commodious kitchen, and back of that a fully equipped carpenter-shop and a laundry.

There were also to be a trading-post, where the Indians could purchase supplies at cost; a six-room cottage for the accommodation of Big Lena, Miss Penny, and Chloe; and numerous three-room cabins for the housing of whole families of Indians, which the girl fondly pictured as flocking in from the wilderness to have the errors of their heathenish religion pointed out to them upon a brand-new blackboard, and the discomforts of their nomadic lives a.s.suaged by an introduction to collapsible bath-tubs and the multiplication table. For hers was to be a mission as well as a school. Truly the souls north of sixty were destined to owe her much.

For they borrow cheerfully, and repay--never.

So much for Chloe Elliston's plan. Lapierre, however, had his own eminently more practical, if less Utopian, ideas concerning the erection of a trading-post; for in the quarter-breed's mind the planting of an independent trading-post upon the very threshold of MacNair's wilderness empire was of far greater importance than the establishment of a school, or mission, or any other inst.i.tution--especially when the post was one which he himself had set about to control. The man's eyes gleamed and the thin lips smiled as his glance rested momentarily upon the figure of the girl--the unwitting, and therefore the more powerful, weapon that chance had placed in his hands in his battle against MacNair.

His idea of a post was simplicity itself: One long, log trading-room with an ell for a storehouse, and a room--two at the most--in the rear for the accommodation of the three women. The whole to be erected in the centre of the clearing, and surrounded by a fifteen-foot log stockade.

Boldly he broached his plan.

"But this is _not_ a trading-post!" objected the girl. "The store is a side issue and is to be conducted merely to permit those who take advantage of my school to obtain the necessities of life at a fair and reasonable price."

"Your words were well chosen, Miss Elliston. For if you begin to undersell the H.B.C., and more especially the independents, every Indian in the North will proceed to 'take advantage' of your school and of you also."

"But they are being robbed!"

Lapierre smiled. "They do not know it; they are used to it. Let me warn you that to tamper with existing trade schedules, except by one experienced in the commerce of the North, is to invite disaster. You will lose money!"

"But you told me that you yourself gave the Indians better bargains than either the Hudson Bay Company or MacNair."

"I know the North! And you may be a.s.sured the concessions are more nominal than real."

"Very well, then," flashed the girl. "My concessions will be more real than nominal, and of that you may be a.s.sured. If my store pays expenses, well and good!" And by the tone of the girl's voice, and the slight, unconscious out-thrust of her chin, Pierre Lapierre knew that the time was unpropitious for a further discussion of trade principles.

Chloe was speaking again: "But to return to the buildings----"

Lapierre interrupted her, speaking earnestly: "My dear Miss Elliston, consider the circ.u.mstances, the limitations." He tapped lightly the roll of blue-prints the girl held in her hand. "Those plans were made by a man who had not the slightest knowledge of conditions as they exist here."

"The buildings are to be very simple."

"Undoubtedly. But simplicity is relative. A building that would be considered simplicity itself in the States, might well be intricate beyond the possibility of construction here in the wilderness. Do you realize that among our men is not one who can read a blue-print, or has ever seen one? Do you realize that to erect buildings in accordance with these plans would require a force of skilled mechanics under the supervision of a master builder? And do you realize that time is a most important factor in our present undertaking? Who can tell at what moment Brute MacNair may swoop down, upon us like Attila of old, and strike a fatal blow to our little outpost of civilization? And if he finds _me_ here--" His voice trailed into silence and his eyes swept gloomily the northern reach of the river.

Chloe appeared unimpressed. "I hardly think he will resort to violence.

There is the law--even here in the wilderness. Slow to act, perhaps, because of the inaccessibility of the wild country; but once its machinery is in motion, as unbending and as indomitable as justice itself. You see, I have read of your Mounted Police."

"The Mounted!" Lapierre laughed. "Yes--I see you have _read_ of them!

Had you derived your information in a more direct manner--had you lived among them--if you _knew_ them--your childlike trust in them would seem as absurd, perhaps, as it does to me!"

"What do you mean?" cried the girl, regarding the quarter-breed with a searching glance. "That the men of the Mounted are--that they may be--influenced?"

Again Lapierre laughed--harshly. "Just that, Miss Elliston! They are--crooked. They may be influenced!"

"I cannot believe that!"

"You will--later."

"You mean that MacNair has----"

The man interrupted with a wave of his hand. "What I have told you of MacNair is the truth. I shall prove this to your own satisfaction, at the proper time. Until then, I ask you to believe me. Admitting, then, that I have spoken the truth, do you suppose for an instant that these facts are not known to the Mounted? If not, then the officers are inefficient fools. If they are known, why don't the Mounted remedy matters? Because MacNair is rich! Because he buys them, body and soul!

Because he owns them, like he owns the Indians! That's why!

"Just stop and consider what is ahead of a dollar-a-day policeman. When his five-year term of enlistment has expired, he has his choice of enlisting for another term, or making his living some other way. At the end of the five years he has learned to hate the service with a hatred that is soul-searing. It is the hardest, strictest, most exacting, and most ill-paid service in the world; and the five years of the man's enlistment have practically rendered him unfit for earning a living.

"He has lived in the wild country. He knows the wild country. And civilization, with its rapid advance, has left him five years behind the times. Our ex-man of the Mounted is fit for only the commonest labour.

And, because there are almost no employers in the North, he cannot turn his knowledge of the wilds to profitable account, unless he turns smuggler, whiskey-runner, or fur-poisoner. The men know this.

Therefore, when an officer whose patrol takes him into the far 'back blocks' is approached by a man like MacNair, with his pockets bulging with gold, what report goes down to Regina, and on to Ottawa?

"Yes, Miss Elliston, in the Northland there is law. But the law is a fundamental law--the primitive law of savage might. The strong devour the weak. Only the fit survive--survive to be ruled, to be trampled, to be _owned_ by the strongest. And the law is the measure of might!

Primal instincts--pristine pa.s.sions--primordial brutishness permeate the whole North--rule it.

"The wolf and savage _carcajo_ drag down the hunger-weakened caribou and the deer, and rip the warm, red flesh from their bones before their eyes have glazed. And, in turn, the wolf and the _carcajo_, the unoffending beaver and musquash, the mink, the fisher, the fox, and the otter are trapped by savage man and the pelts ripped from their twitching bodies while life and sensibility remain. They are harder to skin when cold.

And with the thermometer at forty or sixty below zero, the little bodies chill almost instantly if mercifully killed--therefore, they are not killed, but flayed alive and their bleeding bodies tossed upon the snow.

They die quickly--then. But--they have lived through the skinning! And that is the North!"

Chloe Elliston shuddered and drew away in horror. "Is--is this possible?" she faltered. "Do they----"

"They do. The fur business is not a pretty business, Miss Elliston. But neither is the North pretty--nor are its inhabitants. But the traffic in fur is inherently the business of the North--and its history is written in blood--the blood and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of animals. But the profits are great. Fashion has decreed that My Lady shall be swathed in fur--therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens, and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow! No, the North is not gentle, Miss Elliston----"

"Don't! Don't!" faltered the girl. "It is all too--too horrible--too sickeningly brutal--too--too unbelievable!" She covered her eyes with her hand.

Lapierre answered, dryly. "Yes. The North is that way. It has always been so--and it always will----"

Chloe's hand dropped from her eyes and, she faced him in a sudden burst of pa.s.sion. Her sensitive lips quivered and her eyes narrowed to the rapier-blade eyes that were the eyes of Tiger Elliston. She tore the roll of blue-prints to bits and ground them into the mould with the heel of her boot.

"_It will not!_" Her voice cut sharply, and hard. "What do you know of what the North _will_ be? You know it only as it has been--as it is, perhaps. But, of its future you know nothing. I tell you the North will change! It is a hard land--cruel--elemental--raw! But it is _big_!

And, when it awakens, its very bigness, the virile force and strength of it, will turn against its savagery, its cruelty, its brutishness; and above all other lands it will stand for the protection of the weak and for the right of things to live!"

The quarter-breed gazed into her face with a look of undisguised admiration. "Ah, Miss Elliston, you are beautiful, now--beautiful always--but, at this moment--radiant--divine--" Chloe seemed not to hear him.

"And that is to be _my_ work--to awaken the North! To bring to its people the comforts--the advantages of civilization!"

"The North is too big for you, Miss Elliston. It is too big for _men_.

Pardon, but it is not a woman's land."

The girl's eyes flashed. "Suppose we leave s.e.x out of it, Mr. Lapierre.

They said of my grandfather that 'the harder they fought him, the better he liked 'em,' and that 'he never knew when he was licked.' Maybe that is the reason he never was licked, but lived to carry civilization into a land that was a thousand years deeper in savagery than this land is. And today civilization--education--Christianity exist where seventy-five years ago the chance visitor was tortured first and eaten afterward."

Lapierre shrugged. "It is useless to argue. I am in sympathy with your undertaking. I admire your courage, and the high ideals of your mission.

But, permit me to remind you that your grandfather, whoever he was, was _not_ a woman. Also, that here, in the North, Christianity and education have failed to civilize--the educated ones and the converts are worse than the others."

The girl's eyes darkened and the man noticed the peculiar out-thrust of the chin. He hastened to change the subject.

"I am glad you have abandoned those plans. They were useless. May I now proceed with the building?"

Chloe smiled. "Yes," she answered, "by all means. But, as this is to be _my_ undertaking, I think I shall have it _my_ way. Build the store first, if you please----"