Lords of the North

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"I'll--keep--him--in sight," muttered Hamilton in low, slow words.

"Hush, Eric!" I whispered. "If we harm him, he may mislead us. Let us
watch him and track him!"

"He's asking leave to go trapping in the Sioux country. Can you go as
trader for your people? To the buffalo hunt first, then, south? I'll
watch here, if he stays; you, there, if he goes, and he shall tell us
all he knows or--"

"Hush, man," I urged. "Listen!"

"Where," Governor McDonell was thundering at Laplante, "where are the
parties that stole those despatches?"

The question brought both Hamilton and myself to the table. We went
forward where we could see Laplante's face without being seen by his
questioners.

"If I answer, Your Honor," began the Frenchman, taking the captain's
bluster for what it was worth and holding out doggedly for his own
rights, "I'll be given leave to trap with the Sioux?"

"Certainly, man. Speak out."

"The parties--that stole--those despatches," Laplante was answering
slowly. At this stage he looked at his interlocutor as if to question
the sincerity of the guarantee and he saw me standing screwing the
spear-head on the tell-tale handle. I patted the spear-head, smiled
blandly back, and with my eyes dared him to go on. He paused, bit his
lip and flushed.

"No lies, no roguery, or I'll have you at the whipping-post," roared the
governor. "Speak up. Where are the parties?"

"Near about here," stammered Louis, "and you may ask your new
turn-coat."

I was betrayed! Betrayed and trapped; but he should not go free! I would
have shouted out, but Hamilton's hand silenced me.

"Here!" exclaimed the astounded governor. "Go call that young
Nor'-Wester! If _he_ backs up y'r story, _he_ was Cameron's secretary,
you can go to the buffalo hunt."

That response upset Louis' bearings. He had expected the governor would
refer to me; but the command let him out of an awkward place and he
darted from the room, as Hamilton and I supposed,--simpletons that we
were with that rogue!--to find the young Nor'-Wester. This turn of
affairs gave me my chance. If the young Nor'-Wester and Laplante came
together, my disguise as Highlander and turn-coat would be stripped from
me and I should be trapped indeed.

"Good-by, old boy!" and I gripped Hamilton's hand. "If he stays, he's
your game. When he goes, he's mine. Good luck to us both! You'll come
south when you're better."

Then I bolted through the main hall thinking to elude the canny Scots,
but saw both men in the stairway waiting to intercept me. When I ran
down a flight of side stairs, they dashed to trap me at the gate. At the
doorway a man lounged against me. The lantern light fell on a pointed
beard. It was Laplante, leaning against the wall for support and shaking
with laughter.

"You again, old tombstone! Whither away so fast?" and he made to hold
me. "I'm in a hurry myself! My last night under a roof, ha! ha! Wait
till I make my grand farewell! We both did well, did the grand, ho! ho!
But I must leave a fair demoiselle!"

"Let go," and I threw him off.

"Take that, you ramping donkey, you Anglo-Saxon animal," and he aimed a
kick in my direction. Though I could ill spare the time to do it, I
turned. All the pent-up strength, from the walk with Frances Sutherland
rushed into my clenched fist and Louis Laplante went down with a thud
across the doorway. There was the sish-rip of a knife being thrust
through my boot, but the blade broke and I rushed past the prostrate
form.

Certain of waylaying me, the Scots were dodging about the gate; but by
running in the shadow of the warehouse to the rear of the court, I gave
both the slip. I had no chance to reconnoitre, but dug my hunting-knife
into the stockade, hoisted myself up the wooden wall, got a grip of the
top and threw myself over, escaping with no greater loss than boots
pulled off before climbing the palisade, and the Highland cap which
stuck fast to a picket as I alighted below. At dawn, bootless and
hatless, I came in sight of Fort Gibraltar and Father Holland, who was
scanning the prairie for my return, came running to greet me.

"The tip-top o' the mornin' to the renegade! I thought ye'd been
scalped--and so ye have been--nearly--only they mistook y'r hat for the
wool o' y'r crown. Boots gone too! Out wid your midnight pranks."

A succession of welcoming thuds accompanied the tirade. As breath
returned, I gasped out a brief account of the night.

"And now," he exclaimed triumphantly, "I have news to translate ye to a
sivinth hiven! Och! But it's clane cracked ye'll be when ye hear it.
Now, who's appointed to trade with the buffalo hunters but y'r very
self?"

It was with difficulty I refrained from embracing the bearer of such
good tidings.

"Be easy," he commanded. "Ye'll need these demonstrations, I'm
thinkin'--huntin' one lass and losin' y'r heart to another."

We arranged he should go to Fort Douglas for Frances Sutherland and I
was to set out later. They were to ride along the river-path south of
the forks where I could join them. I, myself, picked out and paid for
two extra horses, one a quiet little cayuse with ambling action, the
other, a muscular broncho. I had the satisfaction of seeing Father
Holland mounted on the latter setting out for Fort Douglas, while the
Indian pony wearing an empty side-saddle trotted along in tow.

The information I brought back from Fort Douglas delayed any more
hostile demonstrations against the Hudson's Bay. That very morning,
before I had finished breakfast, Governor McDonell rode over to Fort
Gibraltar, and on condition that Fort Douglas be left unmolested gave
himself up to the Nor'-Westers. At noon, when I was riding off to the
buffalo hunt and the Missouri, I saw the captain, smiling and debonair,
embarking--or rather being embarked--with North-West brigades, to be
sent on a free trip two thousand five hundred miles to Montreal.

"A safe voyage to ye," said Duncan Cameron, commander of Nor'-Westers,
as the ex-governor of Red River settled himself in a canoe. "A safe
voyage to ye, mon!"

"And a prosperous return," was the ironical answer of the dauntless
ruler over the Hudson's Bay.

"Sure now, Rufus," said Father Holland to me a year afterwards, "'twas a
prosperous return he had!"

Fortunately, I had my choice of scouts, and, by dangling the prospects
of a buffalo hunt before La Robe Noire and Little Fellow, tempted them
to come with me.

CHAPTER XII

HOW A YOUTH BECAME A KING

When the prima-donna of some vauntful city trills her bird-song above
the foot-lights, or the cremona moans out the sigh of night-winds
through the forest, artificial townsfolk applaud. Yet a nesting-tree, a
thousand leagues from city discords, gives forth better music with
deeper meaning and higher message--albeit the songster sings only from
love of song. The fretted folk of the great cities cannot understand the
witching fascinations of a wild life in a wild, free, tameless land,
where God's own hand ministers to eye and ear. To fare sumptuously, to
dress with the faultless distinction that marks wealth, to see and above
all to be seen--these are the empty ends for which city men engage in a
mad, feverish pursuit of wealth, trample one another down in a strife
more ruthless than war and gamble away gifts of mind and soul. These are
the things for which they barter all freedom but the name. Where one
succeeds a thousand fail. Those with higher aims count themselves happy,
indeed, to possess a few square feet of canvas, that truly represents
the beauty dear to them, before weeds had undermined and overgrown and
choked the temple of the soul. That any one should exchange gilded
chains for freedom to give manhood shoulder swing, to be and to
do--without infringing on the liberty of others to be and to do--is to
such folk a matter of no small wonderment. For my part, I know I was
counted mad by old associates of Quebec when I chose the wild life of
the north country.

But each to his taste, say I; and all this is only the opinion of an old
trader, who loved the work of nature more than the work of man. Other
voices may speak to other men and teach them what the waterways and
forests, the plains and mountains, were teaching me. If "ologies" and
"ics," the lore of school and market, comfort their souls--be it so. As
for me, it was only when half a continent away from the jangle of
learning and gain that I began to stir like a living thing and to know
that I existed. The awakening began on the westward journey; but the new
life hardly gained full possession before that cloudless summer day on
the prairie, when I followed the winding river trail south of the forks.
The Indian scouts were far to the fore. Rank grass, high as the
saddle-bow, swished past the horse's sides and rippled away in an
unbroken ocean of green to the encircling horizon. Of course allowance
must be made for a man in love. Other men have discovered a worldful of
beauty, when in love; but I do not see what difference two figures on
horseback against the southern sky-line could possibly make to the
shimmer of purple above the plains, or the fragrance of prairie-roses
lining the trail. It seems to me the lonely call of the meadow-lark high
overhead--a mote in a sea of blue--or the drumming and chirruping of
feathered creatures through the green, could not have sounded less
musical, if I had not been a lover. But that, too, is only an opinion;
for one glimpse of the forms before me brought peace into the whole
world.

Father Holland evidently saw me, for he turned and waved. The other
rider gave no sign of recognition. A touch of the spur to my horse and I
was abreast of them, Frances Sutherland curveting her cayuse from the
trail to give me middle place.

"Arrah, me hearty, here ye are at last! Och, but ye're a skulkin'
wight," called the priest as I saluted both. "What d'y' say for y'rself,
ye belated rascal, comin' so tardy when ye're headed for Gretna
Green--Och! 'Twas a _lapsus linguae_! 'Tis Pembina--not Gretna
Green--that I mean."

Had it been half a century later, when a little place called Gretna
sprang up on this very trail, Frances Sutherland and I need not have
flinched at this reference to an old-world Mecca for run-away lovers.
But there was no Gretna on the Pembina trail in those days and the
Little Statue's cheeks were suddenly tinged deep red, while I completely
lost my tongue.

"Not a word for y'rself?" continued the priest, giving me full benefit
of the mischievous spirit working in him. "He, who bearded the foe in
his den, now meeker than a lambkin, mild as a turtle-dove, timid as a
pigeon, pensive as a whimpering-robin that's lost his mate----"

"There ought to be a law against the jokes of the clergy, Sir," I
interrupted tartly. "The jokes aren't funny and one daren't hit back."

"There ought to be a law against lovers, me hearty," laughed he.
"They're always funny, and they can't stand a crack."

"Against all men," ventured Frances Sutherland with that instinctive,
womanly tact, which whips recalcitrant talkers into line like a deft
driver reining up kicking colts. "All men should be warranted safe, not
to go off."

"Unless there's a fair target," and the priest looked us over
significantly and laughed. If he felt a gentle pull on the rein, he
yielded not a jot. Unluckily there are no curb-bits for hard-mouthed
talkers.

"Rufus, I don't see that ye wear a ticket warranting ye'll not go off,"
he added merrily. Red became redder on two faces, and hot, hotter with
at least one temper.

"And womankind?" I managed to blurt out, trying to second her efforts
against our tormentor. "What guarantee against dangers from them? The
pulpit silenced--though that's a big contract--mankind labeled, what for
women?"

"Libeled," she retorted. "Men say we don't hit straight enough to be
dangerous."

"The very reason ye are dangerous," the priest broke in. "Ye aim at a
head and hit a heart! Then away ye go to Gretna Green--och! It's
Pembina, I mean! Marry, my children----" and he paused.

"Marry!--What?" I shouted. Thereupon Frances Sutherland broke into peals
of laughter, in which I could see no reason, and Father Holland winked.

"What's wrong with ye?" asked the priest solemnly. "Faith, 'tis no
advice I'm giving; but as I was remarking, marry, my children, I'd
sooner stand before a man not warranted safe than a woman, who might
take to shying pretty charms at my head! Faith, me lambs, ye'll learn
that I speak true."

As Mr. Jack MacKenzie used to put it in his peppery reproof, I always
did have a knack of tumbling head first the instant an opportunity
offered. This time I had gone in heels and all, and now came up in as
fine a confusion as any bashful bumpkin ever displayed before his lady.
Frances Sutherland had regained her composure and came to my rescue with
another attempt to take the lead from the loquacious churchman.

"I'm so grateful to you for arranging this trip," and she turned
directly to me.

"Hm-m," blurted Father Holland with unutterable merriment, before I
could get a word in, "he's grateful to himself for that same thing.
Faith! He's been thankin' the stars, especially Venus, ever since he got
marching orders!"

"How did you reach Fort Gibraltar?" she persisted.

"Sans boots and cap," I promptly replied, determined to be ahead of the
interloper.

"Sans heart, too," and the priest flicked my broncho with his whip and
knocked the ready-made speech, with which I had hoped to silence him,
clean out of my head. Frances Sutherland took to examining remote
objects on the horizon. Hers was a nature not to be beaten.

"Let us ride faster," she suddenly proposed with a glance that boded
roguery for the priest's portly form. She was off like a shaft from a
bow-string, causing a stampede of our horses. That was effective. A hard
gallop against a stiff prairie wind will stop a stout man's eloquence.

"Ho youngsters!" exclaimed the priest, coming abreast of us as we reined
up behind the scouts. "If ye set me that gait--whew--I'll not be left
for Gretna Green--Faith--it's Pembina, I mean," and he puffed like a
cargo boat doing itself proud among the great liners.

He was breathless, therefore safe. Frances Sutherland was not disposed
to break the accumulating silence, and I, for the life of me, could not
think of a single remark appropriate for a party of three. The ordinary
commonplaces, that stop-gap conversation, refused to come forth. I
rehearsed a multitude of impossible speeches; but they stuck behind
sealed lips.

"Silence is getting heavy, Rufus," he observed, enjoying our
embarrassment.

Thus we jogged forward for a mile or more.

"Troth, me pet lambs," he remarked, as breath returned, "ye'll both
bleat better without me!"

Forthwith, away he rode fifty yards ahead, keeping that distance beyond
us for the rest of the day and only calling over his shoulder
occasionally.

"Och! But y'r bronchos are slow! Don't be telling me y'r bronchos are
not slow! Arrah, me hearties, be making good use o' the honeymoon,--I
mean afternoon, not honeymoon. Marry, me children, but y'r bronchos are
bog-spavined and spring-halted. Jiggle-joggle faster, with ye, ye
rascals! Faith, I see ye out o' the tail o' my eye. Those bronchos are
nosing a bit too close, I'm thinkin'! I'm going to turn! I warn ye
fair--ready! One--shy-off there! Two--have a care! Three--I'm coming!
Four--prepare!"

And he would glance back with shouts of droll laughter. "Get epp! We
mustn't disturb them! Get epp!" This to his own horse and off he would
go, humming some ditty to the lazy hobble of his nag.

"Old angel!" said I, under my breath, and I fell to wondering what
earthly reason any man had for becoming a priest.

He was right. Talk no longer lagged, whatever our bronchos did; but,
indeed, all we said was better heard by two than three. Why that was, I
cannot tell, for like beads of a rosary our words were strung together
on things commonplace enough; and fond hearts, as well as mystics, have
a key to unlock a world of meaning from meaningless words. Tufts of
poplars, wood islands on the prairie, skulking coyotes, that prowled to
the top of some earth mound and uttered their weird cries, mud-colored
badgers, hulking clumsily away to their treacherous holes, gophers, sly
fellows, propped on midget tails pointing fore-paws at us--these and
other common things stole the hours away. The sun, dipping close to the
sky-line, shone distorted through the warm haze like a huge blood
shield. Far ahead our scouts were pitching tents on ground well back
from the river to avoid the mosquitoes swarming above the water. It was
time to encamp for the night.

Those long June nights in the far north with fire glowing in the track
of a vanished sun and stillness brooding over infinite space--have a
glory, that is peculiarly their own. Only a sort of half-darkness lies
between the lingering sunset and the early sun-dawn. At nine o'clock the
sun-rim is still above the western prairie. At ten, one may read by
daylight, and, if the sky is clear, forget for another hour that night
has begun. After supper, Father Holland sat at a distance from the tents
with his back carefully turned towards us, a precaution on his part for
which I was not ungrateful. Frances Sutherland was throned on the boxes
of our quondam table, and I was reclining against saddle-blankets at her
feet.

"Oh! To be so forever," she exclaimed, gazing at the globe of solid gold
against the opal-green sky. "To have the light always clear, just
ahead, nothing between us and the light, peace all about, no care, no
weariness, just quiet and beauty like this forever."

"Like this forever! I ask nothing better," said I with great heartiness;
but neither her eyes nor her thoughts were for me. Would the eyes
looking so intently at the sinking sun, I wondered, condescend to look
at a spot against the sun. In desperation I meditated standing up. 'Tis
all very well to talk of storming the citadel of a closed heart, but
unless telepathic implements of war are perfected to the same extent as
modern armaments, permitting attack at long range, one must first get
within shooting distance. Apparently I was so far outside the defences,
even my design was unknown.

"I think," she began in low, hesitating words, so clear and thrilling,
they set my heart beating wildly with a vague expectation, "I think
heaven must be very, very near on nights like this, don't--you--Rufus?"

I wasn't thinking of heaven at all, at least, not the heaven she had in
mind; but if there is one thing to make a man swear white is black and
black white and to bring him to instantaneous agreement with any
statement whatsoever, it is to hear his Christian name so spoken for the
first time. I sat up in an electrified way that brought the fringe of
lashes down to hide those gray eyes.

"Very near? Well rather! I've been in heaven all day," I vowed. "I've
been getting glimpses of paradise all the way from Fort William----"

"Don't," she interrupted with a flash of the imperious nature, which I
knew. "Please don't, Mr. Gillespie."

"Please don't Mister Gillespie me," said I, piqued by a return to the
formal. "If you picked up Rufus by mistake from the priest, he sets a
good example. Don't drop a good habit!"

That was my first step inside the outworks.

"Rufus," she answered so gently I felt she might disarm and slay me if
she would, "Rufus Gillespie"--that was a return of the old spirit, a
compromise between her will and mine--"please don't begin saying that
sort of thing--there's a whole day before us----"

"And you think I can't keep it up?"

"You haven't given any sign of failing. You know, Rufus," she added
consolingly, "you really must not say those things, or something will be
hurt! You'll make me hurt it."

"Something is hurt and needs mending, Miss Sutherland----"

"Don't Miss Sutherland me," she broke in with a laugh, "call me Frances;
and if something is hurt and needs mending, I'm not a tinker, though my
father and the priest--yes and you, too--sometimes think so. But sisters
do mending, don't they?" and she laughed my earnestness off as one would
puff out a candle.

"No--no--no--not sisters--not that," I protested. "I have no sisters,
Little Statue. I wouldn't know how to act with a sister, unless she
were somebody else's sister, you know. I can't stand the sisterly
business, Frances----"

"Have you suffered much from the sisterly?" she asked with a merry
twinkle.

"No," I hastened to explain, "I don't know how to play the sisterly
touch-and-go at all, but the men tell me it doesn't work--dead failure,
always ends the same. Sister proposes, or is proposed to----"

"Oh!" cried the Little Statue with the faintest note of alarm, and she
moved back from me on the boxes. "I think we'd better play at being very
matter-of-fact friends for the rest of the trip."

"No, thank you, Miss Sutherland--Frances, I mean," said I. "I'm not the
fool to pretend that----"

"Then pretend anything you like," and there was a sudden coldness in her
voice, which showed me she regarded my refusal and the slip in her name
as a rebuff. "Pretend anything you like, only don't say things."

That was a throwing down of armor which I had not expected.

"Then pretend that a pilgrim was lost in the dark, lost where men's
souls slip down steep places to hell, and that one as radiant as an
angel from heaven shone through the blackness and guided him back to
safe ground," I cried, taking quick advantage of my fair antagonist's
sudden abandon and casting aside all banter.

"Children! children!" cried the priest. "Children! Sun's down! Time to
go to your trundles, my babes!"

"Yes, yes," I shouted. "Wait till I hear the rest of this story."

At my words she had started up with a little gasp of fright. A look of
awe came into her gray eyes, which I have seen on the faces of those who
find themselves for the first time beside the abyss of a precipice. And
I have climbed many lofty peaks, but never one without passing these
places with the fearful possibilities of destruction. Always the novice
has looked with the same unspeakable fear into the yawning depths, with
the same unspeakable yearning towards the jewel-crowned heights beyond.
This, or something of this, was in the startled attitude of the
trembling figure, whose eyes met mine without flinching or favor.

"Or pretend that a traveler had lost his compass, and though he was
without merit, God gave him a star."

"Is it a pretty story, Rufus?" called the priest.

"Very," I cried out impatiently. "Don't interrupt."

"Or pretend that a poor fool with no merit but his love of purity and
truth and honor lost his way to paradise, and God gave him an angel for
a guide."

"Is it a long story, Rufus?" called the priest.

"It's to be continued," I shouted, leaping to my feet and approaching
her.

"And pretend that the pilgrim and the traveler and the fool, asked no
other privilege but to give each his heart's love, his life's devotion
to her who had come between him and the darkness----"

"Rufus!" roared the priest. "I declare I'll take a stick to you. Come
away! D' y' hear? She's tired."

"Good-night," she answered, in a broken whisper, so cold it stabbed me
like steel; and she put out her hand in the mechanical way of the
well-bred woman in every land.

"Is that all?" I asked, holding the hand as if it had been a galvanic
battery, though the priest was coming straight towards us.

"All?" she returned, the lashes falling over the misty, gray eyes. "Ah,
Rufus! Are we playing jest is earnest, or earnest is jest?" and she
turned quickly and went to her tent.

How long I stood in reverie, I do not know. The priest's broad hand
presently came down on my shoulder with a savage thud.

"Ye blunder-busticus, ye, what have ye been doing?" he asked. "The
Little Statue was crying when she went to her tent."

"Crying?"

"Yes, ye idiot. I'll stay by her to-morrow."

And he did. Nor could he have contrived severer punishment for the
unfortunate effect of my words. Fool, that I was! I should keep myself
in hand henceforth. How many men have made that vow regarding the woman
they love? Those that have kept it, I trow, could be counted easily
enough. But I had no opportunity to break my vow; for the priest rode
with Frances Sutherland the whole of the second day, and not once did he
let loose his scorpion wit. She had breakfast alone in her tent next
morning, the priest carrying tea and toast to her; and when she came
out, she leaped to her saddle so quickly I lost the expected favor of
placing that imperious foot in the stirrup. We set out three abreast,
and I had no courage to read my fate from the cold, marble face. The
ground became rougher. We were forced to follow long detours round
sloughs, and I gladly fell to the rear where I was unobserved. Clumps of
willows alone broke the endless dip of the plain. Glassy creeks
glittered silver through the green, and ever the trail, like a narrow
ribbon of many loops, fled before us to the dim sky-line.

When we halted for our nooning, Frances Sutherland had slipped from her
saddle and gone off picking prairie roses before either the priest or I
noticed her absence.

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