The Wilderness Trail Part 34

It was a strange company. Angus Fitzpatrick, in the deserted camp of the Hudson Bay Company, had risen from his bed, the old loyalty and discipline urging him on, and, in the face of death itself, had come down at the command of his hated enemy and superior. To the last, he was the uncompromising disciplinarian, more severe with himself than with the meanest underling. The commissioner thought it best to secure Fitzpatrick's story while he yet retained his reason, and addressed him first.

"When did you first learn of this scandal concerning me, Fitzpatrick?"

he demanded. "No, lie down!" he commanded, as the other attempted to rise.

"In the middle of last summer, sir. Maria, the squaw, came to me with certain proof that made the evidence incontrovertible."

"What proof?"

"A signed statement by a well-known missionary, declaring that he had united you in marriage."

For an instant, there was the absolute silence of amazed horror, in which, presently, broke the snorting and chuckling of Maria, who rocked herself back and forth on her haunches, like some witch muttering over an evil brew.

"Where is that statement?" demanded the commissioner.

"Maria had it the last time I knew of its whereabouts." Fitzpatrick closed his eyes, wearily.

"Maria!" The commissioner's voice was sharp with command and disgust.

The withered squaw suddenly stopped her rocking, and opened her little, fire-shot eyes steadily for a moment.

"Douglas!" she said, p.r.o.nouncing his first name with careless familiarity.

Fitzpatrick, at this breach of ceremony, rose, furious, on his pile of blankets, inarticulate.

But McTavish waved him back.

"Where is that certificate?"

"I have it," replied Maria, sullenly.

"Let me see it." Not many people resisted that tone of McTavish's.

"I refuse," she said.

"You refuse, eh?" The blue eyes darkened to ominous black. "If you repeat that, old woman, you start with me for Winnipeg to-morrow, and you spend the rest of your life in jail. You have done me enough injury already to land you in a dozen courts. I'll give you another chance. Let me see that paper. And no funny business. I mean what I say, and you know it. We're at the point now where you, or I, win forever. Come now, dig up, and be quick!"

Perhaps, the flinty hardness, the indifferent crispness, of that voice raised dim memories in the woman's mind, for her glance wavered, for the first time.

"Come on, Maria," interposed Donald, as the old woman framed a whining reply, "the paper is in that muskrat-skin bag around your neck. I know, because I've seen it."

She turned upon him, bristling like an angry cat.

"Yes, and be quick, or you'll have help you don't want," added the commissioner, coolly.

With a snarl, Maria thrust her hand into her meager bosom, and drew forth a little bag with its draw-strings. Under the fascinated eyes of the group, she opened it, and carefully extracted the worn paper.

"Please identify it, Fitzpatrick," ordered the commissioner, and the factor of Fort Severn took the sheet in his hands.

"It's the same she showed me last summer," he said, after a careful examination. "I would know the handwriting of Burns Riley, the missionary, anywhere."

"Good heavens!" cried the commissioner. "Did Burns Riley write and sign that?" He reached out an agitated hand, and Fitzpatrick pa.s.sed over the paper.

"Who was this Riley, father?" asked Donald.

"One of the first men to reach the Whale River districts," was the agitated answer. "When Fitzpatrick and I were your age, he was one of the most famous characters in the Northland, because he carried Christianity in either fist when it was necessary. But he was the squarest man that ever lived, was old Burns."

"Is he dead now?"

"Yes, these fifteen years. Wait a minute. Let me see this." He ran his eyes slowly along the faded lines, and read:

This is to certify that on April 17, 1873, I united in marriage Douglas McTavish, fur trader at Fort Miskati, son of Duncan McTavish, pure Scotch, to Maria Seguis, Ojibway Indian. "Whom G.o.d hath joined together let no man put asunder."

BURNS RILEY, Missionary.

That was all. McTavish saw his whole life go down in wreckage and ruin under the weight of those five or six lines of writing. There was no question as to the authorship--he himself recognized Riley's handwriting, though it was many years since he had seen any of it.

And Riley's name was the symbol of righteousness and squareness throughout his whole vast parish, and beyond. The date was the spring that he and Maria had separated for the last time. But he was sure that Riley never wrote the certificate as far back as that.

"If I only had an ink-and-writing expert here!" he groaned to himself. "But that writing is Riley's all right," he admitted aloud.

Maria began to rock herself again, and to mutter. The commissioner changed his attack.

"Who's this man, Maria?" he suddenly asked, pointing to Charley Seguis.

"Your legitimate son and rightful heir," snapped the squaw, and she went on rocking, while McTavish wrestled with a deadly impulse to strangle her.

"When was he born?"

"In November, 1873, seven months after you sent me away." McTavish did not question this. Acting on Donald's advice, he had observed the half-breed closely, and had detected unmistakable signs of McTavish blood. Furthermore, the man looked his age.

The commissioner turned to Seguis, and questioned him in regard to certain events he would remember, had he been alive at the time Maria claimed.

He answered correctly in all regards, and with a naturalness that showed he had not been coached. The commissioner was satisfied that here was his first-born, and the pang that went through his heart was like a red-hot arrow. But he turned his mind to the necessities of the occasion, not yielding to its griefs.

"Maria," he said despairingly, "you know we were never married.

You know you came to me willingly and gladly, when I offered you the only life I would permit myself to offer an Indian. You came as my companion until such time as we should see fit to separate; in fact, you were the first to put the idea into my mind. That paper shows me you have done something very wrong. I can't now disprove the statements there: that will come later. But what I want to say now is that you are forcing through one of the dirtiest pieces of work that ever took place in the Company."

Fitzpatrick feebly pawed his beard, and his eyes glittered with triumph. This was what he had waited for--to see the commissioner slowly come to his knees before a filthy squaw, and plead for his life!

"You don't hate me," McTavish continued, "for I never wronged you.

When you left me, I gave you enough to make you comfortable. Why did you not tell me of this child?

"Factors have too many ways of getting such things out of the way,"

Maria mumbled.

"Fool! Do you think I am a murderer at heart? You lie when you say that. It was ambition that changed you from a pretty Indian girl to a ruthless fiend; ambition for your child that would take him and you up to the heights, perhaps. But not by the open road! The dirty back alleys were what you used to climb, and now you're nearly there. But you never did it alone, never. You enlisted the help of a man that hates me and mine, as a trapper hates a wolverene.

A man who has lied to me and tried to deceive me for years; a man who, boasting of his devotion to the Company, has let personal animus sway every thought and action for twenty years.

"Yes, I mean, Fitzpatrick. You!" snarled the commissioner, shaking a swift, accusing finger at the factor, who had raised himself on his elbow, his face purple. "You think you have gone on un.o.bserved; and wonder why you were never promoted to York factory, and why honors never came to you as you grew older. Know now that I was watching you and that I knew everything you did--almost the thoughts that pa.s.sed in your mind. You have persecuted my son, you would have succeeded in taking his life, if your own pretender, Seguis there, hadn't defeated you. Under a mask of loyalty, you've been the one accursed rebel in the Company's ranks, and, if I were a commissioner of the old regime, I'd have you taken out and hanged to a tree this afternoon. But I won't do that. Your own life has been its own punishment. For years, you haven't known a happy day or a contented hour; your venom has eaten your own heart away, and what life remains to you will be more miserable still, because, after all, you go down in defeat, dishonored and disgraced. You are hereby removed from any office and any connection with the Company, and are commanded to leave its territories as soon as you can travel."

The commissioner ceased speaking abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury, and his outstretched arm trembling. The factor cowered before the accusing presence, like a boy caught in a theft, and sank back upon his blankets, shame and pain struggling on the scarred battlefield of his face. For him, life had come to a bitter and inglorious end, and, during all that followed, he never spoke again.