Lords of the North

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"Don't you know?" continued the gambler, unfolding a curious lore of
flowers. "Those little potty, white things, split up the middle with a
green head on top--grow under ferns. Come on. Cards are ready! Who's
going to play?"

"Durn it! Them's Dutchman's breeches!" exclaimed the sun-browned
trapper. "O Goll! If that Little Stature finds any Dutchman's breeches,
she that's so scared of us men! O Goll! Won't she blush? Say, babe, why
don't y'r fill y'r hat with 'em and put 'em in her tent?" and the big
trapper set up a hoarse guffaw which led a general chorus. Then the men
gathered round, to play.

"Faith, lads!" interrupted the voice of the Irish priest, who had come
upon the group so quietly the gambler scarcely had time to tuck the
tell-tale cards under his buckskin smock, "I'm thinking ye've all
developed a mighty sudden interest in botany. Are there any bleeding
hearts in the bush?"

"There may be here," suggested the boy.

"It all comes of the Little Statute!" declared the big trapper.

"Oh! You and your Stature and Statute! Why can't you say Statue?" asked
the lad with the pompous scorn of youthful knowledge.

"Because, oh, babe with the chicken-down," answered the man, giving his
corrector a thud with his broad palm and sticking heroically by his slip
of the tongue, "I says the words I means and don't play no prig. She
don't pay more attention to you than if you wuz a stump, that's why
she's a statue, ain't it? And the fellows've got to stretch their necks
to come up to her ideas of what's proper, that's why she's a stature,
ain't it? And not a man of us, if His Reverence'll excuse me for saying
so, dare let out a cuss afore her. That's why she's a statute, ain't
it?"

And when I walked off to the bush with as great a show of indifference
as I could muster, I heard the priest crying "Bravo!" to the man's
defence. How came it that I was in the woods slushing through damp mold
up to my ankles in black ooze? I no longer had any fear of an ambushed
enemy; for Le Grand Diable, the knave, had forfeited his wages and
deserted at Fort William. He was not seen after the night of the meeting
with the Hudson's Bay canoe off the flats. I drew Father Holland's
attention to this, and the priest was no longer so sceptical about that
phantom boat. But it was not of these things I thought, as I tore a
great strip of bark from the trunk of a birch tree and twisted the piece
into a huge cornucopia. Nor had I the slightest expectation of
encountering father and daughter in the woods. That marble face was too
much in earnest for the vainest of men to suppose its indifference
assumed; and no matter how fair the eyes, no man likes to be looked at,
by eyes that do not see him, or see him only as a blur on the landscape.
Still that marble face stood for much that is dear to the roughest of
hearts and about which men do not talk. So I went on packing damp moss
into the bottom of the bark horn, arranging frail lilies and night
shades about the rim and laying a solid pyramid of violets in the
centre. The mold, through which I was floundering, seemed to merge into
a bog; but the lower reaches were hidden by a thicket of alder bushes
and scrub willows. I mounted a fallen tree and tried to get cautiously
down to some tempting lily-pads. Evidently some one else on the other
side of the brush was after those same bulbs; for I heard the sucking
sound of steps plunging through the mire of water and mud.

"Why, Gillespie," called a voice, "what in the world are you doing
here?" and the boy emerged through the willows gaping at me in
astonishment.

"Just what I want to know of you," said I.

He presented a comical figure. His socks and moccasins had been tied and
slung round his neck. With trousers rolled to his knees, a hatful of
water-lilies in one hand and a sheaf of ferns in the other, he was
wading through the swamp.

"You see," he began sheepishly. "I thought she couldn't--couldn't
conveniently get these for herself, and it would be kind of nice--kind
of nice--you know--to get some for her----"

"Don't explain," I blurted out. "I was trying that same racket myself."

"You know, Gillespie," he continued quite confidentially, "when a man's
been away from his mother and sisters for years and years and years----"

"Yes, I know, babe; you're an octogenarian," I interrupted.

"And feels himself going utterly to the bow-wows without any stop-gear
to keep him from bowling clean to the bottom, a person feels like doing
something decent for a girl like the Little Statue," and the youth
plucked half a dozen yellow flowers as well as the coveted white ones.
"Have some for your basket," said he. His face was puckered into
pathetic gravity. "It's so hanged easy to go to the bow-wows out here,"
he added.

"Not so easy as in the towns," I interjected.

"Ah! but I've been there, gone all through 'em in the towns," he
explained. "That's why the pater packed me off to this wilderness."

And that, thought I, is why the west gets all the credit for the wild
oats gathered in old lands and sown in the new world. I pulled him up to
the log on which I was balanced, and seating himself he dangled his feet
down and began to souse the mud off his toes.

"Say!" he exclaimed. "How are you going to get 'em to her?"

"Take them to the tent."

"Well, Gillespie, when you take yours up, take mine along, too, will
you? There's a good fellow! Do!" He was drawing on his socks.

"Not much I will. If there's any proxy, you can take mine," I returned.

"Say! Do you think Father Holland would take 'em up?" He had tied his
moccasins and was standing.

"Can't say I think he would."

"He'd let you hear about it to all eternity, too, wouldn't he?"
reflected the lad. "Come on, then; but you go first." And he followed me
up the log, both of us feeling like shame-faced schoolboys. We stole
into the tent, the one tent of all others that had interest for us that
night, and deposited our burden of flowers on the couch of buffalo
robes.

"Hurry," whispered my companion. "Stack these ferns round somewhere!
Hurry! She'll be back." And leaving me to do the arranging he bolted for
the tent flaps. "Oh! Open earth and swallow me!" he almost screamed, and
I heard the sound of two persons coming in violent collision at the
entrance.

"The babe, as I live! The rascally young broth of a babe! Ye rogue, ye!"
burred the deep bass tones of the trader whom I had met over Louis
Laplante. "What are ye doin' here?"

"Oh, is it only you? Thank fortune!" ejaculated the boy, dodging back.
"What are you doing yourself? Great guns! You scared the wits out of
me! Ho! Here's a lark! Gillespie, my pal, look here!" I turned to see
the sheepish, guilty, smirking faces of the trader, the rough-tongued,
sunburned trapper and the ragged gambler grouped at the entrance, and
each man's arms were full of flowers.

"Well, I'm durned!" began the rough man.

"As she's jack-spotted us all," drawled the gentle, liquid tones of the
gambler, "we'd better go ahead and----"

"And decorate a bit of statuary," shouted the lad with a laugh.

It was a long tent, like the booth of a fair, with supports at each end,
and we were festooning it from pole to pole with moss and ferns when
somebody rasped at the door. "Mon alive! What's goin' on here?" We
started from our work with the guilty alacrity of burglars. There stood
Frances Sutherland's father, much aghast at the proceedings, and by his
side was a face with cheeks flaming poppy red and lips twitching in
merriment. There was a sudden snow-storm of flowers being tossed down,
and five men brushed past the two spectators and dashed into the hiding
of gathering dusk. At the foot of the knoll I ran against the priest.

"That," roared Father Holland, shaking with laughter. "That's what I
call good stuff in the rough! Faith, but ye'll give me good stuff in the
rough. I want none o' yer gilded chivalry from the tinsel towns!"

There was a wreath of night-shades in the Little Statue's hat when the
canoes set out next morning. Mayflowers were at her throat, violets in
her girdle and I know not what in a basket at her feet. The face was
unconscious of us as ever, but about the downcast eyelids played a
tender gentleness which was not there before. Once I caught her glancing
back among us as if she would pick out the culprits; and when her eyes
for a moment rested on me, my heart set up a silly thumping. But she
looked just as pointedly at the others, and I know every man's heart of
them responded; for the boy began such a floundering I thought he would
spill his canoe. A quick trip brought us to the mouth of Red River,
where the Hudson's Bay _voyageurs_ under Colin Robertson were resting.
Here I was surprised to learn that Eric Hamilton had not waited but had
hastened up Red River to Fort Douglas. I could not but connect this
southward move of his with the sudden flight of Le Grand Diable from
Fort William.

After brief pause at the foot of Lake Winnipeg, our brigade turned
southward and made speed up the Red through the rush-grown sedgy swamps
which over-flood the river bed. Farther south the banks towered high and
smoke curled up from the huts of Lord Selkirk's settlers. Women with
nets in their hands to scare off myriad blackbirds that clouded the air,
and men from the cornfields ran to the river edge and cheered us as we
passed. Here the Sutherlands landed. Some of the traders thought it a
good omen, that Hudson's Bay settlers cheered Nor'-Wester brigades; but
in one bend of the muddy Red, the bastions of Fort Douglas, where
Governor McDonell of the rival company ruled, loomed up and the guns
pointing across the river wore anything but a welcome look.

We passed Fort Douglas unmolested, followed the Red a mile farther to
its junction with the Assiniboine and here disembarked at Fort
Gibraltar, the headquarters of the Nor'-Westers in Red River.

CHAPTER X

MORE STUDIES IN STATUARY

"So he laughs at our warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll
teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George
III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the
papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with knuckles and
heels.

The Assiniboine enters the Red at something like a right angle and in
this angle was the Nor'-Westers' fort, named after an old-world
stronghold, because we imagined our position gave us the same command of
the two waterways by which the _voyageurs_ entered and left the north
country as Gibraltar has of the Mediterranean. Governor McDonell had
thought to outwit us by building the Hudson's Bay fort a mile further
down the current of the Red. It was a sharp trick, for Fort Douglas
could intercept Nor'-West brigades bound from Montreal to Fort
Gibraltar, or from Fort Gibraltar to the Athabasca. Two days after our
arrival, Cuthbert Grant, with a band of _Bois-Brules_, had gone to Fort
Douglas to arrest Captain Miles McDonell for plundering Nor'-West posts.
The doughty governor took Grant's warrant as a joke and scornfully
turned the whole North-West party out of Fort Douglas. On the stockades
outside were proclamations commanding settlers to take up arms in
defense of the Hudson's Bay traders and forbidding natives to sell furs
to any but our rivals. These things added fuel to the hot anger of the
chafing _Bois-Brules_. A curious race were these mongrel plain-rangers,
with all the savage instincts of the wild beast and few of the brutal
impulses of the beastly man. The descendants of French fathers and
Indian mothers, they inherited all the quick, fiery daring of the
Frenchman, all the endurance, craft and courage of the Indian, and all
the indolence of both white man and red. One might cut his enemy's
throat and wash his hands in the life blood, or spend years in
accomplishing revenge; but it is a question if there is a single
instance on record of a _Bois-Brule_ molesting an enemy's family. When
the Frenchman married a native woman, he cast off civilization like an
ill-fitting coat and virtually became an Indian. When the Scotch settler
married a native woman, he educated her up to his own level and if she
did not become entirely civilized, her children did. One was the wild
man, the Ishmaelite of the desert, the other, the tiller of the soil,
the Israelite of the plain. Such were the tameless men, of whom Cuthbert
Grant was the leader, the leader solely from his fitness to lead.

It was late in the afternoon when the warden returned from Fort Douglas.
I was busy over my desk. Father Holland was still with us awaiting the
departure of traders to the south, and Duncan Cameron was stamping about
the room like a caged lion. There came a quick, angry tramp from the
hall.

"That's Grant back, and there's no one with him," muttered Cameron with
suppressed anger; and in burst the warden himself, his heavy brows dark
with fury and his eyes flashing like the fire at a pistol point.
Involuntarily I stopped work and the priest glanced across at me with a
look which bespoke expectation of an explosion. Grant did not storm.
That was not his way. He took several turns about the room, mastered
himself, and speaking through his teeth said quietly, "There be some
fools that enjoy playing with gunpowder. I'm not one of them! There be
some idiots that like teasing tigers. 'Tis not sport to my fancy! There
be some pot-valiant braggarts that defy the law. Let them enjoy the
breaking of the law!"

"What--what--what?" sputtered the Highland governor, springing first on
one side of Grant and then on the other, all the while rumbling out
maledictions on Lord Selkirk, and Governor McDonell and Fort Douglas.
"What do ye say, mon? Do I understand ye clearly, there's no prisoners
with ye?"

"Laughs at the _Bois-Brules_. The fool laughs at the _Bois-Brules_! I've
seen gophers cock their eye at a wolf, before that same wolf made a
breakfast of gophers! The fool laughs at your warrant, Sir! Scouted it,
Sir! Bundled us out of Fort Douglas like cattle!" The warden went on in
a bitter strain to tell of the effect of the posted proclamations on his
followers.

"So the lordly Captain Miles McDonell of the Queen's Rangers,
generalissimo of all creation, defies us, does he?" demanded Cameron in
great dudgeon, scarcely crediting his ears.

"Aye!" answered Grant, "but he can ill afford to be so high and mighty.
We went through the settlement and half the people are with us----"

"That's good! That's good!" responded Cameron with keen relish.

"They're heartily sick of the country," continued the warden, "and would
leave to-morrow if we'd supply the boats. Last winter they nearly
starved. The company's generous supply was rancid grease and wormy
flour."

"Fine way o' colonizing a country," stormed Cameron, "bring men out as
settlers and arm them to fight! We'll spike his guns by shipping a score
more away."

"We've spiked his guns in a better way," said Grant dryly. "Some of the
friendlies are so afraid he'll take their guns away and leave them
defenceless unless they fight us, they've sent their arms here for
safekeeping. We'll keep them safe, I'll warrant." Grant smiled, showing
his white teeth in a way that was not pleasant to see, and somehow
reminded me of a dog's snarl.

"Good! Good! Excellent, Grant." Such strategy pleased Cameron. "See
here, mon, Cuthbert, we've the law on our side--we've the warrants to
back the law! We'd better give yon dour fool a lesson. He's broken the
peace. We haven't. Come out, an' I'll talk it over with ye!"

The two went out, Grant saying as they passed the window--"Let him
tamper with the fur trade among the Indians and I'll not answer for it!
That last order not to sell----" The rest of the remark I lost.

"'Twould serve him well right if they did," returned Cameron, and both
men walked beyond hearing.

Father Holland and I were left alone. The fort became ominously still.
There was a distant clatter of receding hoofs; but we were on the south
side of the warehouse and could not see which way the horses were
galloping.

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid both sides will be rash," observed the priest.

The sun-dial indicated six o'clock. I closed and locked the office
desks. We had supper in the deserted dining-hall. Afterwards we strolled
to the northeast gate, and looking in the direction of Fort Douglas,
wondered what scheme could be afoot. Here my testimony need not be taken
for, or against, either side. All I saw was Duncan Cameron with the
other white men of the fort standing on a knoll some distance from Fort
Gibraltar, evidently gazing towards Fort Douglas. Against the sky, above
the settlement, there were clouds of rising smoke.

"Burning hay-ricks?" I questioned.

"Aye, and houses! 'Tis shameless work leaving the people exposed to the
blasts of next winter! Shameless, shameless work! Y'r company'll gain
nothing by it, Rufus!"

Across the night came faint, short snappings like a fusillade of shots.

"Looting the neutrals," said the priest. "God grant there be no blood on
the plains this night! These fool traders don't realize what it means to
rouse blood in an Indian! They'll get a lesson yet! Give the red devils
a taste of blood and there won't be a white unscalped to the Rockies!
I've seen y'r fine, clever rascals play the Indian against rivals, and
the game always ends the same way. The Indian is a weapon that's quick
to cut the hand of the user."

Little did I realize my part in the terrible fulfilment of that
prophecy.

"Look alive, lad! Where are y'r wits? What's that?" he cried, suddenly
pointing to the river bank.

Up from the cliff sprang a form as if by magic. It came leaping straight
to the fort gate.

"Some frightened half-breed wench," surmised the priest.

I saw it was a woman with a shawl over her head like a native.

"_Bon soir!_" said I after the manner of traders with Indian women; but
she rushed blindly on to the gate.

The fort was deserted. Suspicion of treachery flashed on me. How many
more half-breeds were beneath that cliff?

"Stop, huzzie!" I ordered, springing forward and catching her so tightly
by the wrist that she swung half-way round before she could check
herself. She wrenched vigorously to get free. "Stop! Be still, you
huzzie!"

"Be still--you what?" asked a low, amazed voice that broke in ripples
and froze my blood. A shawl fluttered to the ground, and there stood
before us the apparition of a marble face.

"The Little Statue!" I gasped in sheer horror at what I had done.

"The little--what?" asked the rippling voice, that sounded like cold
water flowing under ice, and a pair of eyes looked angrily down at the
hand with which I was still unconsciously gripping her arm.

"I'd thank you, Sir," she began, with a mock courtesy to the priest,
"I'd thank you, Sir, to call off your mastiff."

"Let her go, boy!" roared the priest with a hammering blow across my
forearm that brought me to my senses and convinced me she was no wraith.

Mastiff! That epithet stung to the quick. I flung her wrist from me as
if it had been hot coals. Now, a woman may tread upon a man--also stamp
upon him if she has a mind to--but she must trip it daintily. Otherwise
even a worm may turn against its tormentor. To have idolized that marble
creature by day and night, to have laid our votive offerings on its
shrine, to have hungered for the sound of a woman's lips for weeks, and
to hear those lips cuttingly call me a dog--were more than I could
stand.

"Ten thousand pardons, Mistress Sutherland!" I said with a pompous
stiffness which I intended should be mighty crushing. "But when ladies
deck themselves out as squaws and climb in and out of windows,"--that
was brutal of me; she had done it for Miriam and me--"and announce
themselves in unexpected ways, they need not hope to be recognized."

And did she flare back at me? Not at all.

"You waste time with your long speeches," she said, turning from me to
Father Holland.

Thereupon I strode off angrily to the river bank.

"Oh, Father Holland," I heard her say as I walked away, "I must go to
Pembina! I'm in such trouble! There's a Frenchman----"

Trouble, thought I; she is in trouble and I have been thinking only of
my own dignity. And I stood above the river, torn between desire to rush
back and wounded pride, that bade me stick it out. Over the plains came
the shout of returning plunderers. I could hear the throb, throb of
galloping hoofs beating nearer and nearer over the turf, and reflected
that I might make the danger from returning _Bois-Brules_ the occasion
of a reconciliation.

"Come here, lad!" called Father Holland. I needed no urging. "Ye must
rig up in tam-o'-shanter and tartan, like a Highland settler, and take
Mistress Sutherland back to Fort Douglas. She's going to Pembina to meet
her father, lad, when I go south to the Missouri. And, lad," the priest
hesitated, glancing doubtfully from Miss Sutherland to me, "I'm thinking
there's a service ye might do her."

The Little Statue was looking straight at me now, and there were
tear-marks about the heavy lashes. Now, I do not pretend to explain the
power, or witchery, a gentle slip of a girl can wield with a pair of
gray eyes; but when I met the furtive glance and saw the white, veined
forehead, the arched brows, the tremulous lips, the rounded chin, and
the whole face glorified by that wonderful mass of hair, I only know,
without weapon or design, she dealt me a wound which I bear to this day.
What a ruffian I had been! I was ashamed, and my eyes fell before hers.
If a libation of blushes could appease an offended goddess, I was livid
evidence of repentance. I felt myself flooded in a sudden heat of shame.
She must have read my confusion, for she turned away her head to hide
mantling forgiveness.

"There's a crafty Frenchman in the fort has been troubling the lassie.
I'm thinking, if ye worked off some o' your anger on him, it moight be
for the young man's edification. Be quick! I hear the breeds returning!"

"But I have a message," she said in choking tones.

"From whom?" I asked aimlessly enough.

"Eric Hamilton!" she answered.

"Eric Hamilton!" both the priest and I shouted.

"Yes--why? What--what--is it? He's wounded, and he wants a Rufus
Gillespie, who's with the Nor'-Westers. The _Bois-Brules_ fired on the
fort. Where _is_ Rufus Gillespie?"

"Bless you, lassie! Here--here--here he is!" The holy father thumped my
back at every word. "Here he is, crazy as a March hare for news of
Hamilton!"

"You--Rufus--Gillespie!" So she did not even know my name. Evidently, if
she troubled my thoughts, I did not trouble hers.

"He's told me so much about you," she went on, with a little pant of
astonishment. "How brave and good----"

"Pshaw!" I interrupted roughly. "What's the message?"

"Mr. Hamilton wishes to see you at once," she answered coldly.

"Then kill two birds with one stone! Take her home and see Hamilton--and
hurry!" urged the priest.

The half-breeds were now very near.

"Put it over your head!" and Father Holland clapped the shawl about
Frances Sutherland after the fashion of the half-breed women.

She stood demurely behind him while I ran up-stairs in the warehouse to
disguise myself in tartan plaid. When I came out, Duncan Cameron was in
the gateway welcoming Cuthbert Grant and the _Bois-Brules_, as if
pillaging defenceless settlers were heroic. Victors from war may be
inspiring, but a half-breed rabble, red-handed from deeds of violence,
is not a sight to edify any man.

"What's this ye have, Father?" bawled one impudent fellow, and he
pointed sneeringly at the figure in the folds of the shawl.

"Let the wench be!" was the priest's reply, and the half-breed lounged
past with a laugh.

I was about to offer Frances Sutherland my arm to escort her from the
mob, when I felt Father Holland's hard knuckles dig viciously into my
ribs.

"Ye fool ye! Ye blundering idiot!" he whispered, "she's a half-breed.
Och! But's time y'r eastern greenness was tannin' a good western russet!
Let her follow with bowed head, or you'll have the whole pack on y'r
heels!"

With that admonition I strode boldly out, she behind, humble, with
downcast eyes like a half-breed girl.

We ran down the river path through the willows and jumping into a canoe
swiftly rounded the forks of the Assiniboine and Red. There we left the
canoe and fled along a trail beneath the cliff till the shouting of the
half-breeds could be no longer heard. At once I turned to offer her my
arm. She must have bruised her feet through the thin moccasins, for the
way was very rough. I saw that she was trembling from fatigue.

"Permit me," I said, offering my arm as formally as if she had been
some grand lady in an eastern drawing-room.

"Thank you--I'm afraid I must," and she reluctantly placed a light hand
on my sleeve.

I did not like that condescending compulsion, and now out of danger, I
became strangely embarrassed and angry in her presence. The "mastiff"
epithet stuck like a barb in my boyish chivalry. Was it the wind, or a
low sigh, or a silent weeping, that I heard? I longed to know, but would
not turn my head, and my companion was lagging just a step behind. I
slackened speed, so did she. Then a voice so low and soft and golden it
might have melted a heart of stone--but what is a heart of stone
compared to the wounded pride of a young man?--said, "Do you know, I
think I rather like mastiffs?"

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