Lords of the North

by Agnes C. Laut

  CHAPTER I

  WHEREIN A LAD SEES MAKERS OF HISTORY

  "Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I asked.

  For an hour, or more, I had been lounging about the sitting-room of aclub in Quebec City, waiting for my friend, who had promised to join meat dinner that night. I threw aside a news-sheet, which I had exhausteddown to minutest advertisements, stretched myself and strolled across toa group of old fur-traders, retired partners of the North-West Company,who were engaged in heated discussion with some officers from theCitadel.

  "Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I repeated, indifferent to the meritsof their dispute.

  "That's the tenth time you've asked that question," said my Uncle JackMacKenzie, looking up sharply, "the tenth time, Sir, by actual count,"and he puckered his brows at the interruption, just as he used to when Iwas a little lad on his knee and chanced to break into one of hishunting stories with a question at the wrong place.

  "Hang it," drawled Colonel Adderly, a squatty man with an over-fed lookon his bulging, red cheeks, "hang it, you don't expect Hamilton? Thebaby must be teething," and he added more chaff at the expense of myfriend, who had been the subject of good-natured banter among clubmembers for devotion to his first-born.

  I saw Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' argumentsthan to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of hisunconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up tothe company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenziesand other retired veterans of the north country.

  "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said I, "what were you saying to ColonelAdderly?"

  "Talk of your military conquests, Sir," my uncle continued, "Why, Sir,our men have transformed a wilderness into an empire. They have blazed apath from Labrador on the Atlantic to that rock on the Pacific, where myesteemed kinsman, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, left his inscription ofdiscovery. Mark my words, Sir, the day will come when the names of DavidThompson and Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie will rank higherin English annals than Braddock's and----"

  "Egad!" laughed the officer, amused at my uncle, who had been a leadingspirit in the North-West Company and whose enthusiasm knew no bounds,"Egad! You gentlemen adventurers wouldn't need to have accomplished muchto eclipse Braddock." And he paused with a questioning supercilioussmile. "Sir Alexander was a first cousin of yours, was he not?"

  My uncle flushed hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemenadventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the _adventurers_, wasnot to his taste.

  "Pardon me, Sir," said he stiffly, "you forget that by the terms oftheir charter, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company have theprivilege of being known as gentlemen adventurers. And by the Lord, Sir,'tis a gentleman adventurer and nothing else, that stock-jobbingscoundrel of a Selkirk has proved himself! And he, sir, was neitherNor'-Wester, nor Canadian, but an Englishman, like the commander of theCitadel." My uncle puffed out these last words in the nature of adefiance to the English officer, whose cheeks took on a deeper purplishshade; but he returned the charge good-humoredly enough.

  "Nonsense, MacKenzie, my good friend," laughed he patronizingly, "if theRight Honorable, the Earl of Selkirk, were such an adventurer, why thedeuce did the Beaver Club down at Montreal receive him with open mouthsand open arms and----"

  "And open hearts, Sir, you may say," interrupted my Uncle MacKenzie."And I'd thank you not to 'good-friend' me," he added tartly.

  Now, the Beaver Club was an organization at Nor'-Westers renowned forits hospitality. Founded in 1785, originally composed of but nineteenmembers and afterwards extended only to men who had served in the _Paysd'En Haut_, it soon acquired a reputation for entertaining in regalstyle. Why the vertebrae of colonial gentlemen should sometimes lose theindependent, upright rigidity of self-respect on contact with old worldnobility, I know not. But instantly, Colonel Adderly's reference to LordSelkirk and the Beaver Club called up the picture of a banquet inMontreal, when I was a lad of seven, or thereabouts. I had been trickedout in some Highland costume especially pleasing to the Earl--cap,kilts, dirk and all--and was taken by my Uncle Jack MacKenzie to theBeaver Club. Here, in a room, that glittered with lights, was a tablesteaming with things, which caught and held my boyish eyes; and allabout were crowds of guests, gentlemen, who had been invited in thequaint language of the club, "To discuss the merits of bear, beaver andvenison." The great Sir Alexander MacKenzie, with his title fresh fromthe king, and his feat of exploring the river now known by his name andpushing through the mountain fastnesses to the Pacific on all men'slips--was to my Uncle Jack's right. Simon Fraser and David Thompson andother famous explorers, who were heroes to my imagination, were theretoo. In these men and what they said of their wonderful voyages I wasfar more interested than in the young, keen-faced man with a tie, thatcame up in ruffles to his ears, and with an imperial decoration on hisbreast, which told me he was Lord Selkirk.

  I remember when the huge salvers and platters were cleared away, I wasplaced on the table to execute the sword dance. I must have acquittedmyself with some credit; for the gentlemen set up a prodigious clapping,though I recall nothing but a snapping of my fingers, a wave of my capand a whirl of lights and faces around my dizzy head. Then my uncle tookme between his knees, promising to let me sit up to the end if I weregood, and more wine was passed.

  "That's enough for you, you young cub," says my kinsman, promptlyinverting the wine-glass before me.

  "O Uncle MacKenzie," said I with a wry face, "do you measure your ownwine so?"

  Whereat, the noble Earl shouted, "Bravo! here's for you, Mr. MacKenzie."

  And all the gentlemen set up a laugh and my uncle smiled and called tothe butler, "Here, Johnson, toddy for one, glass of hot water, pure, forother."

  But when Johnson brought back the glasses, I observed Uncle MacKenziekept the toddy. "There, my boy, there's Adam's ale for you," said he,and into the glass of hot water he popped a peppermint lozenge.

  "Fie!" laughed Sir Alexander to my uncle's right, "Fie to cheat thelittle man!"

  "His is the best wine of the cellar," vowed His Lordship; and I drank mypeppermint with as much gusto and self-importance as any man of them.

  Then followed toasts, such a list of toasts as only men inured to testsof strength could take. Ironical toasts to the North-West Passage, whosemyth Sir Alexander had dispelled; toasts to the discoverer of theMacKenzie River, which brought storms of applause that shook the house;toasts to "our distinguished guest," whose suave response disarmed allsuspicion; toasts to the "Northern winterers," poor devils, who wereserving the cause by undergoing a life-long term of Arctic exile; toaststo "the merry lads of the north," who only served in the ranks withoutattaining to the honor of partnership; toasts enough, in all conscience,to drown the memory of every man present. Thanks to my Uncle JackMacKenzie, all my toasts were taken in peppermint, and the picture in mymind of that banquet is as clear to-day as it was when I sat at thetable. What would I not give to be back at the Beaver Club, living itall over again and hearing Sir Alexander MacKenzie with his flashinghero-eyes and quick, passionate gestures, recounting that wonderfulvoyage of his with a sulky crew into a region of hostiles; telling ofthose long interminable winters of Arctic night, when the great explorersounded the depths of utter despair in service for the company and knewnot whether he faced madness or starvation; and thrilling the wholeassembly with a description of his first glimpse of the Pacific! Perhapsit was what I heard that night--who can tell--that drew me to the wildlife of after years. But I was too young, then, to recognize fully thegreatness of those men. Indeed, my country was then and is yet tooyoung; for if their greatness be recognized, it is forgotten andunhonored.

  I think I must have fallen asleep on my uncle's knee; for I nextremember sleepily looking about and noticing that many of the gentlemenhad slid down in their chairs and with closed eyes were breathingheavily. Others had slipped to the floor and were sound asleep. Thisshocked me and I was at once wide awake. My uncle was sitting ver
y erectand his arm around my waist had the tight grasp that usually precededsome sharp rebuke. I looked up and found his face grown suddenly so hardand stern, I was all affright lest my sleeping had offended him. Hiseyes were fastened on Lord Selkirk with a piercing, angry gaze. HisLordship was not nodding, not a bit of it. How brilliant he seemed to mychildish fancy! He was leaning forward, questioning those Nor'-Westers,who had received him with open arms, and open hearts. And the wine hadmounted to the head of the good Nor'-Westers and they were now alsoreceiving the strange nobleman with open mouths, pouring out to him afull account of their profits, the extent of the vast, unknown gamepreserve, and how their methods so far surpassed those of the Hudson'sBay, their rival's stock had fallen in value from 250 to 50 per cent.

  The more information they gave, the more His Lordship plied them withquestions.

  "I must say," whispered Uncle Jack to Sir Alexander MacKenzie, "if anyHudson's Bay man asked such pointed questions on North-West business,I'd give myself the pleasure of ejecting him from this room."

  Then, I knew his anger was against Lord Selkirk and not against me forsleeping.

  "Nonsense," retorted Sir Alexander, who had cut active connection withthe Nor'-Westers some years before, "there's no ground for suspicion."But he seemed uneasy at the turn things had taken.

  "Has your Lordship some colonization scheme that you ask such pointedquestions?" demanded my uncle, addressing the Earl. The nobleman turnedquickly to him and said something about the Highlanders and PrinceEdward's Island, which I did not understand. The rest of that eveningfades from my thoughts; for I was carried home in Mr. Jack MacKenzie'sarms.

  And all these things happened some ten or twelve years before that wordysword-play between this same uncle of mine and the English colonel fromthe Citadel.

  "We erred, Sir, through too great hospitality," my uncle was saying tothe colonel. "How could we know that Selkirk would purchase controllinginterest in Hudson's Bay stock? How could we know he'd secure a landgrant in the very heart of our domain?"

  "I don't object to his land, nor to his colonists, nor to his dower ofponies and muskets and bayonets to every mother's son of them," broke inanother of the retired traders, "but I do object to his drilling thosesame colonists, to his importing a field battery and bringing out thatlittle ram of a McDonell from the Army to egg the settlers on! It's badenough to pillage our fort; but this proclamation to expel Nor'-Westersfrom what is claimed as Hudson's Bay Territory----"

  "Just listen to this," cries my uncle pulling out a copy of theobnoxious proclamation and reading aloud an order for the expulsion ofall rivals to the Hudson's Bay Company from the northern territory.

  "Where can Hamilton be?" said I, losing interest in the traders' quarrelas soon as they went into details.

  "Home with his wifie," half sneered the officer in a nagging way, thatirritated me, though the remark was, doubtless, true. "Home with hiswifie," he repeated in a sing-song, paying no attention to theelucidation of a subject he had raised. "Good old man, Hamilton, butsince marriage, utterly gone to the bad!"

  "To the what?" I queried, taking him up short. This officer, with thepudding cheeks and patronizing insolence, had a provoking trick ofalways keeping just inside the bounds of what one might resent. "To thewhat, did you say Hamilton had gone?"

  "To the domestics," says he laughing, then to the others, as if he hadlistened to every word of the explanations, "and if His LittleExcellency, Governor MacDonell, by the grace of Lord Selkirk, ruler overgentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, expels the good Nor'-Westersfrom nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intenddoing to the Little Tyrant?"

  "Charles the First him," responds a wag of the club.

  "Where's your Cromwell?" laughs the colonel.

  "Our Cromwell's a Cameron, temper of a Lucifer, oaths before action,"answers the wag.

  "Tuts!" exclaims Uncle Jack testily. "We'll settle His Lordship's littlemartinet of the plains. Warrant for his arrest! Fetch him out!"

  "Warrant 43rd King George III. will do it," added one of the partnerswho had looked the matter up.

  "43rd King George III. doesn't give jurisdiction for trial in LowerCanada, if offense be committed elsewhere," interjects a lawyer withshow of importance.

  "A Daniel come to judgment," laughs the colonel, winking as my uncle'swrath rose.

  "Pah!" says Mr. Jack MacKenzie in disgust, stamping on the floor withboth feet. "You lawyers needn't think you'll have your pickings when furcompanies quarrel. We'll ship him out, that's all. Neither of thecompanies wants to advertise its profits--"

  "Or its methods--ahem!" interjects the colonel.

  "And its private business," adds my uncle, looking daggers at Adderly,"by going to court."

  Then they all rose to go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out tohave a look down the street for Hamilton, I heard Colonel Adderly's lastfling--"Pretty rascals, you gentlemen adventurers are, so shy and coyabout law courts."

  It was a dark night, with a few lonely stars in mid-heaven, a sicklemoon cutting the horizon cloud-rim and a noisy March wind that bodedsnow from The Labrador, or sleet from the Gulf.

  When Eric Hamilton left the Hudson's Bay Company's service at YorkFactory on Hudson Bay and came to live in Quebec, I was but a student atLaval. It was at my Uncle MacKenzie's that I met the tall, dark, sinewy,taciturn man, whose influence was to play such a strange part in mylife; and when these two talked of their adventures in the far, loneland of the north, I could no more conceal my awe-struck admiration thana girl could on first discovering her own charms in a looking-glass. Ithink he must have noticed my boyish reverence, for once he condescendedto ask about the velvet cap and green sash and long blue coat which madeup the Laval costume, and in a moment I was talking to him as volubly asif he were the boy and I, the great Hudson's Bay trader.

  "It makes me feel quite like a boy again," he had said on resumingconversation with Mr. MacKenzie. "By Jove! Sir, I can hardly realize Iwent into that country a lad of fifteen, like your nephew, and here Iam, out of it, an old man."

  "Pah, Eric man," says my uncle, "you'll be finding a wife one of thesedays and renewing your youth."

  "Uncle," I broke out when the Hudson's Bay man had gone home, "how oldis Mr. Hamilton?"

  "Fifteen years older than you are, boy, and I pray Heaven you may havehalf as much of the man in you at thirty as he has," returns my unclementally measuring me with that stern eye of his. At that information,my heart gave a curious, jubilant thud. Henceforth, I no longer lookedupon Mr. Hamilton with the same awe that a choir boy entertains for abishop. Something of comradeship sprang up between us, and before thatyear had passed we were as boon companions as man and boy could be. ButHamilton presently spoiled it all by fulfilling my uncle's predictionand finding a wife, a beautiful, fair-haired, frail slip of a girl, nearenough the twenties to patronize me and too much of the young lady tofind pleasure in an awkward lad. That meant an end to our rides andwalks and sails down the St. Lawrence and long evening talks; but I tookmy revenge by assuming the airs of a man of forty, at which Hamiltonquizzed me not a little and his wife, Miriam, laughed. When I surprisedthem all by jumping suddenly from boyhood to manhood--"like a tadpoleinto a mosquito," as my Uncle Jack facetiously remarked. Meanwhile, ason and heir came to my friend's home and I had to be thankful for ahumble third place.

  And so it came that I was waiting for Eric's arrival at the Quebec Clubthat night, peering from the porch for sight of him and calculating howlong it would take to ride from the Chateau Bigot above Charlesbourg,where he was staying. Stepping outside, I was surprised to see the formof a horse beneath the lantern of the arched gateway; and my surpriseincreased on nearer inspection. As I walked up, the creature gave awhinny and I recognized Hamilton's horse, lathered with sweat,unblanketed and shivering. The possibility of an accident hardlysuggested itself before I observed the bridle-rein had been slung overthe hitching-post and heard steps hurrying to the side door of theclub-house.

  "Is
that you, Eric?" I called.

  There was no answer; so I led the horse to the stable boy and hurriedback to see if Hamilton were inside. The sitting room was deserted; butEric's well-known, tall figure was entering the dining-room. And acurious figure he presented to the questioning looks of the club men. Inone hand was his riding whip, in the other, his gloves. He wore thebuckskin coat of a trapper and in the belt were two pistols. One sleevewas torn from wrist to elbow and his boots were scratched as if they hadbeen combed by an iron rake. His broad-brimmed hat was still on,slouched down over his eyes like that of a scout.

  "Gad! Hamilton," exclaimed Uncle Jack MacKenzie, who was facing Eric asI came up behind, "have you been in a race or a fight?" and he gave himthe look of suspicion one might give an intoxicated man.

  "Is it a cold night?" asked the colonel punctiliously, gazing hard atthe still-strapped hat.

  Not a word came from Hamilton.

  "How's the cold in your head?" continued Adderly, pompously trying tostare Hamilton's hat off.

  "Here I am, old man! What's kept you?" and I rushed forward but quicklychecked myself; for Hamilton turned slowly towards me and instead oferect bearing, clear glance, firm mouth, I saw a head that was bowed,eyes that burned like fire, and parched, parted, wordless lips.

  If the colonel had not been stuffing himself like the turkey guzzlerthat he was, he would have seen something unspeakably terrible writtenon Hamilton's silent face.

  "Did the little wifie let him off for a night's play?" sneered Adderly.

  Barely were the words out, when Hamilton's teeth clenched behind theopen lips, giving him an ugly, furious expression, strange to his face.He took a quick stride towards the officer, raised his whip and broughtit down with the full strength of his shoulder in one cutting blowacross the baggy, purplish cheeks of the insolent speaker.