Lords of the North

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"It may not have been you, my scowling sachem," said I to myself, "but
snakes have fangs. Henceforth I'll take good care you're not at my
back."

I slept no more that night. Next day I asked the fellow his name and he
poured out such a jumbled mouthful of quick-spoken, Indian syllables, I
was not a whit the wiser. I told him sharply he was to be Tom Jones on
my boat, at which he gave an evil leer.

Without stay we still pushed forward. The arrowy pace was merciless to
red men and white; but that was the kind of service the great North-West
Company always demanded. Some ten miles from the outlet of Lake
Nipissangue (Nipissing) foul weather threatened delay. The _Bourgeois_
were for proceeding at any risk; but as the thunder-clouds grew blacker
and the wind more violent, the head steersman lost his temper and
grounded his canoe on the sands at _Point a la Croix_. Springing ashore
he flung down his pole and refused to go on.

"Sacredie!" he screamed, first pointing to the gathering storm and then
to the crosses that marked the fate of other foolhardy _voyageurs_,
"Allez si vous voulez! Pour moi je n'irai pas; ne voyez pas le danger!"

A hurricane of wind, snapping the great oaks as a chopper breaks
kindling wood, enforced his words. Canoes were at once beached and
tarpaulins drawn over the bales of provisions. The men struggled to
hoist a tent; but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads, and
before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain-drift drenched every
one to the skin. By sundown the storm had gone southeast and we
unrighteously consoled ourselves that it would probably disorganize the
Hudson's Bay brigade as much as it had ours. Plainly, we were there for
the night. _Point a la Croix_ is too dangerous a spot for navigation
after dark. With much patience we kindled the soaked underbrush and
finally got a pile of logs roaring in the woods and gathered round the
fire.

The glare in the sky attracted the lake tribes from their lodges.
Indians, half-breeds and shaggy-haired whites--degenerate traders, who
had lost all taste for civilization and retired with their native wives
after the fashion of the north country--came from the Nipissangue
encampments and joined our motley throng. Presently the natives drew off
to a fire by themselves, where there would be no white-man's restraint.
They had either begged or stolen traders' rum, and after the hard trip
from Ste. Anne, were eager for one of their mad _boissons_--a
drinking-bout interspersed with jigs and fights.

Stretched before our camp, I watched the grotesque figures leaping and
dancing between the firelight and the dusky woods like forest demons.
With the leaves rustling overhead, the water laving the pebbles on the
shore, and the washed pine air stimulating one's blood like an
intoxicant, I began wondering how many years of solitary life it would
take to wear through civilization's veneer and leave one content in the
lodges of forest wilds. Gradually I became aware of my sulky canoeman's
presence on the other side of the camp-fire. The man had not joined the
revels of the other _voyageurs_ but sat on his feet, oriental style,
gazing as intently at the flames as if spellbound by some fire-spirit.

"What's wrong with that fellow, anyhow?" I asked a veteran trader, who
was taking last pulls at a smoked-out pipe.

"Sick--home-sick," was the laconic reply.

"You'd think he was near enough nature here to feel at home! Where's his
tribe?"

"It ain't his tribe he wants," explained the trader.

"What, then?" I inquired.

"His wife, he's mad after her," and the trader took the pipe from his
teeth.

"Faugh!" I laughed. "The idea of an Indian sentimental and love-sick for
some fat lump of a squaw! Come! Come! Am I to believe that?"

"Don't matter whether you do, or not," returned the trader. "It's a
fact. His wife's a Sioux chief's daughter. She went north with a gang of
half-breeds and hunters last month; and he's been fractious crazy ever
since."

"What's his name?" I called, as my informant vanished behind the tent
flaps.

Again that mouthful of Indian syllables, unintelligible and unspeakable
for me was tumbled forth. Then I turned to the fantastic figures
carousing around the other camp fire. One form, in particular, I seemed
to distinguish from the others. He was gathering the Indians in line for
some native dance and had an easy, rakish sort of grace, quite different
from the serpentine motions of the redskins. By a sudden turn, his
profile was thrown against the fire and I saw that he wore a pointed
beard. He was no Indian; and like a flash came one of those strange,
reasonless intuitions, which precede, or proceed from, the slow motions
of the mind. Was this the _avant-courier_ of the Hudson's Bay, delayed,
like ourselves, by the storm? I had hardly spelled out my own suspicion,
when to the measured beatings of the tom-tom, gradually becoming faster,
and with a low, weird, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest,
the Indians began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which my slow eyes
could not follow, but which in a strange way brought up memories of
snaky convolutions about the naked body of some Egyptian
serpent-charmer. The drums beat faster. The suppressed voices were
breaking in shrill, wild, exultant strains, and the measured tread had
quickened from a walk to a run and from a swaying run to a swift,
labyrinthine pace, which has no name in English, and which I can only
liken to the wiggling of a green thing under leafy covert. The coiling
and circling and winding of the dancers became bewildering, and in the
centre, laughing, shouting, tossing up his arms and gesticulating like a
maniac, was the white man with the pointed beard. Then the performers
broke from their places and gave themselves with utter abandon to the
wild impulses of wild natures in a wild world; and there was such a
scene of uncurbed, animal hilarity as I never dreamed possible. Savage,
furious, almost ferocious like the frisking of a pack of wolves, that at
any time may fall upon and destroy a weaker one, the boisterous antics
of these children of the forest fascinated me. Filled with the curiosity
that lures many a trader to his undoing, I rose and went across to the
thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. A man darted out of the woods full
tilt against me. 'Twas he of the pointed beard, my _suspect_ of the
Hudson's Bay Company. Quick as thought I thrust out my foot and tripped
him full length on the ground. The light fell on his upturned face. It
was Louis Laplante, that past-master in the art of diplomatic deception.
He snarled out something angrily and came to himself in sitting posture.
Then he recognized me.

"_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered beneath his breath, momentarily surprised into
a betrayal of astonishment. "You, Gillespie?" he called out, at once
regaining himself and assuming his usual nonchalance. "Pardon, my
solemncholy! I took you for a tree."

"Granted, your impudence," said I, ignoring the slight but paying him
back in kind. I was determined to follow my uncle's advice and play the
rascal at his own game. "Help you up?" said I, as pleasantly as I could,
extending my hand to give him a lift; and I felt his palm hot and his
arm tremble. Then, I knew that Louis was drunk and this was the fool's
joint in the knave's armor, on which Mr. Jack MacKenzie bade me use my
weapons.

"Tra-la!" he answered with mincing insult. "Tra-la, old tombstone!
Good-by, my mausoleum! Au revoir, old death's-head! Adieu, grave skull!"
With an absurdly elaborate bow, he reeled back among the dancers.

"Get up, comrade," I urged, rushing into the tent, where the old trader
I had questioned about my canoeman was now snoring. "Get up, man," and I
shook him. "There's a Hudson's Bay spy!"

"Spy," he shouted, throwing aside the moose-skin coverlet. "Spy! Who?"

"It's Louis Laplante, of Quebec."

"Louis Laplante!" reiterated the trader. "A Frenchman employed by the
Hudson's Bay! Laplante, a trapper, with them! The scoundrel!" And he
ground out oaths that boded ill for Louis.

"Hold on!" I exclaimed, jerking him back. He was for dashing on Laplante
with a cudgel. "He's playing the trapper game with the lake tribes."

"I'll trapper him," vowed the trader. "How do you know he's a spy?"

"I don't _know_, really know," I began, clumsily conscious that I had no
proof for my suspicions, "but it strikes me we'd better not examine this
sort of suspect at too long range. If we're wrong, we can let him go."

"Bag him, eh?" queried the trader.

"That's it," I assented.

"He's a hard one to bag."

"But he's drunk."

"Drunk, Oh! Drunk is he?" laughed the man. "He'll be drunker," and the
trader began rummaging through bales of stuff with a noise of bottles
knocking together. He was humming in a low tone, like a grimalkin
purring after a full meal of mice--

"Rum for Indians, when they come,
Rum for the beggars, when they go,
That's the trick my grizzled lads
To catch the cash and snare the foe."

"What's your plan?" I asked with a vague feeling the trader had some
shady purpose in mind.

"Squeamish? Eh? You'll get over that, boy. I'll trap your trapper and
spy your spy, and Nor'-Wester your H. B. C.! You come down to the sand
between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I'll have news for
you," and he brushed past me with his arms full of something I could not
see in the half-light.

Then, as a trader, began my first compromise with conscience, and the
enmity which I thereby aroused afterwards punished me for that night's
work. I knew very well my comrade, with the rough-and-ready methods of
traders, had gone out to do what was not right; and I hung back in the
tent, balancing the end against the means, our deeds against Louis'
perfidy, and Nor'-Westers' interests against those of the Hudson's Bay.
It is not pleasant to recall what was done between the cedars and the
shore. I do not attempt to justify our conduct. Does the physician
justify medical experiments on the criminal, or the sacrificial priest
the driving of the scape-goat into the wilderness? Suffice it to say,
when I went down to the shore, Louis Laplante was sitting in the midst
of empty drinking-flasks, and the wily, old Nor'-Wester was tempting the
silly boy to take more by drinking his health with fresh bottles. But
while Louis Laplante gulped down his rum, becoming drunker and more
communicative, the tempter threw glass after glass over his shoulder and
remained sober. The Nor'-Wester motioned me to keep behind the Frenchman
and I heard his drunken lips mumbling my own name.

"Rufush--prig--stuck-up prig--serve him tam right!
Hamilton's--sh--sh--prig too--sho's his wife. Serve 'em all tam right!"

"Ask him where she is," I whispered over his head.

"Where's the gal?" demanded the trader, shoving more liquor over to
Louis.

"Shioux squaw--Devil's wife--how you say it in English? Lah Grawnd
Deeahble," and he mouthed over our mispronunciation of his own tongue
"Joke, isn't it?" he went on. "That wax-face prig--slave to Shioux
Squaw. Rufush--a fool. Stuffed him to hish--neck. Made him believe
shmall-pox was Hamilton's wife. I mean, Hamilton's wife was shmall-pox.
Calf bellowed with fright--ran home--came back--'tamme,' I say, 'there
he come again' 'shmall-pox in that grave,' say I. Joke--ain't it?" and
he stopped to drain off another pint of rum.

"Biggest joke out of jail," said the Nor'-Wester dryly, with meaning
which Louis did not grasp.

"Ask him where she is," I whispered, "quick! He's going to sleep." For
Louis wiped his beard on his sleeve and lay back hopelessly drunk.

"Here you, waken up," commanded the Nor'-Wester, kicking him and shaking
him roughly. "Where's the gal?"

"Shioux--_Pays d'En Haut_," drawled the youth. "Take off your boots!
Don't wear boots. _Pays d'En Haut_--moccasins--softer," and he rolled
over in a sodden sleep, which defied all our efforts to shake him into
consciousness.

"Is that true?" asked the Nor'-Wester, standing above the drunk man and
speaking across to me. "Is that true about the Indian kidnapping a
woman?"

"True--too terribly true," I whispered back.

"I'd like to boot him into the next world," said the trader, looking
down at Louis in a manner that might have alarmed that youth for his
safety. "I've bagged H. B. dispatches anyway," he added with
satisfaction.

"What'll we do with him?" I asked aimlessly. "If he had anything to do
with the stealing of Hamilton's wife----"

"He hadn't," interrupted the trader. "'Twas Diable did that, so Laplante
says."

"Then what shall we do with him?"

"Do--with--him," slowly repeated the Nor'-Wester in a low, vibrating
voice. "Do--with--him?" and again I felt a vague shudder of apprehension
at this silent, uncompromising man's purpose.

The camp fires were dead. Not a sound came from the men in the woods and
there was a gray light on the water with a vague stirring of birds
through the foliage overhead. Now I would not have any man judge us by
the canons of civilization. Under the ancient rule of the fur companies
over the wilds of the north, 'twas bullets and blades put the fear of
the Lord in evil hearts. As we stooped to gather up the tell-tale
flasks, the drunken knave, who had lightly allowed an innocent white
woman to go into Indian captivity, lay with bared chest not a hand's
length from a knife he had thrown down. Did the Nor'-Wester and I
hesitate, and look from the man to the dagger, and from the dagger to
the man; or is this an evil dream from a black past? Miriam, the
guiltless, was suffering at his hands; should not he, the guilty, suffer
at ours? Surely Sisera was not more unmistakably delivered into the
power of his enemies by the Lord than this man; and Sisera was
discomfited by Barak and Jael. Heber's wife--says the Book--drove a tent
nail--through the temples--of the sleeping man--and slew him! Day was
when I thought the Old Volume recorded too many deeds of bloodshed in
the wilderness for the instruction of our refined generation; but I,
too, have since lived in the wilderness and learned that soft speech is
not the weapon of strong men overmastering savagery.

I know the trader and I were thinking the same thoughts and reading each
other's thoughts; for we stood silent above the drunk man, neither
moving, neither uttering a word.

"Well?" I finally questioned in a whisper.

"Well," said he, and he knelt down and picked up the knife. "'Twould
serve him right." He was speaking in the low, gentle, purring voice he
had used in the tent. "'Twould serve him jolly right," and he knelt over
Louis hesitating.

My eyes followed his slow, deliberate motions with horror. Terror seemed
to rob me of the power of speech. I felt my blood freeze with the fear
of some impending crime. There was the faintest perceptible fluttering
of leaves; and we both started up as if we had been assassins, glancing
fearfully into the gloom of the forest. All the woods seemed alive with
horrified eyes and whisperings.

"Stop!" I gasped, "This is madness, the madness of the murderer. What
would you do?" And I was trying to knock the knife out of his hand,
when among the shadowy green of the foliage, an open space suddenly
resolved itself into a human face and there looked out upon us gleaming
eyes like those of a crouching panther.

"Squeamish fool!" muttered the Nor'-Wester, raising his arm.

"Stop!" I implored. "We are watched. See!" and I pointed to the face,
that as suddenly vanished into blackness.

We both leaped into the thicket, pistol in hand, to wreak punishment on
the interloper. There was only an indistinct sound as of something
receding into the darkness.

"Don't fire," said I, "'twill alarm the camp."

At imminent risk to our own lives, we poked sticks through the thicket
and felt for our unseen enemy, but found nothing.

"Let's go back and peg him out on the sand, where the Hudson's Bay will
see him when they come this way," suggested the Nor'-Wester, referring
to Laplante.

"Yes, or hand-cuff him and take him along prisoner," I added, thinking
Louis might have more information.

But when we stepped back to the beach, there was no Louis Laplante.

"He was too drunk to go himself," said I, aghast at the certainty, which
now came home to me, that we had been watched.

"I wash my hands of the whole affair," declared the trader, in a state
of high indignation, and he strode off to his tent, I, following, with
uncomfortable reflections trooping into my mind. Compunctions rankled in
self-respect. How near we had been to a brutal murder, to crime which
makes men shun the perpetrators. Civilization's veneer was rubbing off
at an alarming rate. This thought stuck, but for obvious reasons was not
pursued. Also I had learned that the worst and best of outlaws
easily justify their acts at the time they commit them; but
afterwards--afterwards is a different matter, for the thing is past
undoing.

I heard the trader snorting out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into
his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again
I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather
than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me.
Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire,
leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows.
Thinking himself unseen by me, he wore such an insolent, amused,
malicious expression, I knew in an instant, who the interloper had been,
and who had carried Louis off. Before I realized that such an act
entails life-long enmity with an Indian, I had bounded over the fire and
struck him with all my strength full in the face. At that, instead of
knifing me as an Indian ordinarily would, he broke into hyena shrieks of
laughter. He, who has heard that sound, need hear it only once to have
the echo ring forever in his ears; and I have heard it oft and know it
well.

"Spy! Sneak!" I muttered, rushing upon him. But he sprang back into the
forest and vanished. In dodging me, he let fall his fowling-piece, which
went off with a bang into the fire.

"Hulloo! What's wrong out there?" bawled the trader's voice from the
tent.

"Nothing--false alarm!" I called reassuringly. Then there caught my eyes
what startled me out of all presence of mind. There, reflecting the
glare of the firelight was the Indian's fowling-piece, richly mounted in
burnished silver and chased in the rare design of Eric Hamilton's family
crest. The morose canoeman was Le Grand Diable.

* * * * *

A few hours later, I was in the thick of a confused re-embarking. Le
Grand Diable took a place in another boat; and a fresh hand was assigned
to my canoe. Of that I was glad; I could sleep sounder and he, safer.
The _Bourgeois_ complained that too much rum had been given out.

"Keep a stiffer hand on your men, boy, or they'll ride over your head,"
one of the chief traders remarked to me.

CHAPTER VI

A GIRDLE OF AGATES RECALLED

To unravel a ball of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs,
has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled
skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in
life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for
guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness,
transformed into a crafty trader with all the villainous tricks of the
bargain-maker at my finger-tips. We had befooled Louis into a betrayal
of his associates but how much reliance could be placed on that
betrayal? Had he incriminated Diable to save himself? Then, why had
Diable rescued his betrayer? Where was Louis in hiding? Was the Sioux
wife with her white slave really in the north country, or was she near,
and did that explain my morose Iroquois' all-night vigils? We had
cheated Laplante; but had he in turn cheated us? Would I be justified in
taking Diable prisoner, and would my company consent to the
demoralization of their crews by such a step? Ah, if life were only made
up of simple right and simple wrong, instead of half rights and half
wrongs indistinguishably mingled, we could all be righteous! If the
path to the goal of our chosen desire were only as straight as it is
narrow, instead of being dark, mysterious and tortuous, how easily could
we attain high ends! I was launched on the life for which I had longed,
but strange, shadowy forms like the storm-fiends of sailors' lore,
drunkenness, deceit and crime--on whose presence I had not
counted--flitted about my ship's masthead. And there was not one guiding
star, not one redeeming influence, except the utter freedom to be a man.
I was learning, what I suppose everyone learns, that there are things
which sap success of its sweets.

Such were my thoughts, as our canoes sped across the northern end of
Lake Huron, heading for the Sault. The Nor'-Westers had a wonderful way
of arousing enthusiastic loyalty among their men. Danger fanned this
fealty to white-heat. In the face of powerful opposition, the great
company frequently accomplished the impossible. With half as large a
staff in the service as its rivals boasted, it invaded the
hunting-ground of the Hudson's Bay Company, and outrunning all
competition, extended fur posts from the heart of the continent to the
foot-hills to the Rockies, and from the international boundary to the
Arctic Circle. I had thought no crews could make quicker progress than
ours from Lachine to _Point a la Croix_; but the short delay during the
storm occasioned faster work. More _voyageurs_ were engaged from the
Nipissangue tribes. As soon as one lot fagged fresh shifts came to the
relief. Paddles shot out at the rate of modern piston rods, and the
waters whirled back like wave-wash in the wake of a clipper. Except for
briefest stoppages, speed was not relaxed across the whole northern end
of those inland seas called the Great Lakes. With ample space on the
lakes, the brigades could spread out and the canoes separated, not
halting long enough to come together again till we reached the Sault.
Here, orders were issued for the maintenance of rigid discipline. We
camped at a distance from the lodges of local tribes. No grog was given
out. Camp-fire conviviality was forbidden, and each man kept with his
own crew. We remained in camp but one night; and though I searched every
tent, I could not find Le Grand Diable. This worried and puzzled me. All
night, I lay awake, stretching conscience with doubtful plans to entrap
the knave.

Rising with first dawn-streak, I was surprised to find Little Fellow and
La Robe Noire, two of my canoemen, setting off for the woods. They had
laid a snare--so they explained--and were going to examine it. Of late I
had grown distrustful of all natives. I suspected these two might be
planning desertion; so I went with them. The way led through a dense
thicket of ferns half the height of a man. Only dim light penetrated the
maze of foliage; and I might easily have lost myself, or been
decoyed--though these possibilities did not occur to me till we were at
least a mile from the beach. Little Fellow was trotting ahead, La Robe
Noire jogging behind, and both glided through the brake without
disturbing a fern branch, while I--after the manner of my race--crunched
flags underfoot and stamped down stalks enough to be tracked by
keen-eyed Indians for a week afterwards. Twice I saw Little Fellow pull
up abruptly and look warily through the cedars on one side. Once he
stooped down and peered among the fern stems. Then he silently signaled
back to La Robe Noire, pointed through the undergrowth and ran ahead
again without explanation. At first I could see nothing, and regretted
being led so far into the woods. I was about to order both Indians back
to the tent, when Little Fellow, with face pricked forward and foot
raised, as if he feared to set it down--for the fourth time came to a
dead stand. Now, I, too, heard a rustle, and saw a vague sinuous
movement distinctly running abreast of us among the ferns. For a moment,
when we stopped, it ceased, then wiggled forward like beast, or serpent
in the underbrush. Little Fellow placed his forefinger on his lips, and
we stood noiseless till by the ripple of the green it seemed to scurry
away.

"What is it, Little Fellow, a cat?" I asked; but the Indian shook his
head dubiously and turned to the open where the trap had been set.

Bending over the snare he uttered an Indian word, that I did not
understand, but have since heard traders use, so conclude it was one of
those exclamations, alien races learn quickest from one another, but
which, nevertheless, are not found in dictionaries. The trap had been
rifled of game and completely smashed.

"Wolverine!" muttered the Indian, making a sweep of his dagger blade at
an imaginary foe. "No wolverine! Bad Indians!"

Scarcely had he spoken when La Robe Noire leaped into the air like a
wounded rabbit. An arrow whizzed past my face and glanced within a
hair's-breadth of the Indian's head. Both men were dumb with amazement.
Such treachery would have been surprising among the barbarous tribes of
the Athabasca. The Sault was the dividing line between Canada and the
Wilderness, between the east and the west, and there were no hostiles
within a thousand miles of us. Little Fellow would have dragged me
pell-mell back to the beach, but I needed no persuasion. La Robe Noire
tore ahead with the springs of a hunted lynx. Little Fellow loyally kept
between me and a possible pursuer, and we set off at a hard run. That
creature, I fancied, was again coursing along beneath the undergrowth;
for the foliage bent and rose as we ran. Whether it were man or beast,
we were three against one, and could drive it out of hiding.

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