CHAPTER VII
THE LORDS OF THE NORTH IN COUNCIL
Beyond the Sault, the fascinations of the west beckoned like a siren.Vast waterways, where a dozen European kingdoms could be dropped intoone lake without raising a sand-bar, seemed to sweep on forever and callwith the voice of enchantress to the very ends of the earth. With thepurple recesses of the shore on one side and the ocean-expanse of LakeSuperior on the other, all the charms of clean, fresh freedom wereunveiling themselves to me and my blood began to quicken with thatfevered delight, which old lands are pleased to call western enthusiasm.Lake Huron, with its greenish-blue, shallow, placid waters and calm,sloping shores, seemed typical of the even, easy life I had left in theeast. How those choppy, blustering, little waves resembled thejealousies and bickerings and bargainings of the east; but when one cameto Lake Superior, with its great ocean billows and slumbering, giantrocks and cold, dark, fathomless depths, there was a new life in a hard,rugged, roomy, new world. We hugged close to the north coast; and thenumerous rocky islands to our left stood guard like a wall of adamantbetween us and the heavy surf that flung against the barrier. We wererapidly approaching the headquarters of our company. When south-boundbrigades, with prisoners in hand-cuffs, began to meet us, I judged wewere near the habitation of man.
"Bad men?" I asked Little Fellow, pointing to the prisoners, as ourcrews exchanged rousing cheers with the Nor'-Westers now bound forMontreal.
"_Non, Monsieur!_ Not all bad men," and the Indian gave his shoulders anexpressive shrug, "_Les traitres anglais_."
To the French _voyageur_, English meant the Hudson's Bay people. Theanswer set me wondering to what pass things had come between the twogreat companies that they were shipping each other's tradersgratuitously out of the country. I recalled the talk at the Quebec Clubabout Governor McDonell of the Hudson's Bay trying to expel Nor'-Westersand concluded our people could play their own game against the commanderof Red River.
We arrived in Fort William at sundown, and a flag was flying above thecourtyard.
"Is that in our honor?" I asked a clerk of the party.
"Not much it is," he laughed. "We under-strappers aren't oppressed withhonors! It warns the Indians there's no trade one day out of seven."
"Is this Sunday?"
I suddenly recollected as far as we were concerned the past month hadbeen entirely composed of week-days.
"Out of your reckoning already?" asked the clerk with surprise. "Wonderhow you'll feel when you've had ten years of it."
Situated on the river bank, near the site of an old French post, FortWilliam was a typical traders' stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feethigh ran round the whole fort and the inner court enclosed at least twohundred square yards. Heavily built block-houses with guns pokingthrough window slits gave a military air to the trading post. Theblock-houses were apparently to repel attack from the rear and the faceof the fort commanded the river. Stores, halls, warehouses and livingapartments for an army of clerks, were banked against the walls, and themain building with its spacious assembly-room stood conspicuous in thecentre of the enclosure. As we entered the courtyard, one of the chieftraders was perched on a mortar in the gate. The little magnatecondescended never a smile of welcome till the _Bourgeois_ came up. Thenhe fawned loudly over the chiefs and conducted them with noisyostentation to the main hall. Indians and half-breed _voyageurs_ quicklydispersed among the wigwams outside the pickets, while clerks andtraders hurried to the broad-raftered dining-hall. Fatigued from thetrip, I took little notice of the vociferous interchange of news inpassage-way and over door-steps. I remember, after supper I wasstrolling about the courtyard, surveying the buildings, when at thedoor of a sort of barracks where residents of the fort lived, I caughtsight of the most grateful object my eye had lighted upon since leavingQuebec. It was a tin basin with a large bar of soap--actual soap. Theremust still have been some vestige of civilization in my nature, forafter a delightful half-hour's intimate acquaintance with that soap, Icame round to the groups of men rehabilitated in self-respect.
"Athabasca, Rocky Mountain and Saskatchewan brigades here to-morrow,"remarked a boyish looking Nor'-Wester, with a mannish beard on his face.Involuntarily I put my hand to my chin and found a bristling growththere. That was a land where young men could become suddenly very old;and many a trader has discovered other signs of age than a beard on hisface when he first looked at a mirror after life in the _Pays d'EnHaut_.
"I say," blurted out another young clerk. "There's a man here from RedRiver, one of the Selkirk settlers. He's come with word if we'll supplythe boats, lots of the colonists are ready to dig out. GeneralAssembly's going to consider that to-morrow."
"Oh! Hang the old Assembly if it ships that man out! He's got a prettydaughter, perfect beauty, and she's here with him!" exclaimed the ladwith the mannish beard.
"Go to, thou light-head!" declared the other youth, with the air of anelder in Israel. "Go to! You paraded beneath her window for an hourto-day and she never once laid eyes on you."
All the men laughed.
"Hang it!" said the first speaker. "We don't display our littleamours----"
"No," broke in the other, "we just display our little contours and getsnubbed, eh?"
The bearded youth flushed at the sally of laughter.
"Hang it!" he answered, pulling fiercely at his moustache. "She is a bitof statuary, so she is, as cold as marble. But there is no law againstlooking at a pretty bit of statuary, when it frames itself in a windowin this wilderness."
To which, every man of the crowd said a hearty amen; and I walked off tostretch myself full length on a bench, resolving to have out a mirrorfrom my packing case and get rid of those bristles that offended mychin. The men began to disperse to their quarters. The tardy twilight ofthe long summer evenings, peculiar to the far north, was gathering inthe courtyard. As the night-wind sighed past, I felt the velvet caressof warm June air on my face and memory reverted to the innocent boyhooddays of Laval. How far away those days seemed! Yet it was not so longago. Surely it is knowledge, not time, that ages one, knowledge, thattakes away the trusting innocence resulting from ignorance and gives inits place the distrustful innocence resulting from wisdom. I thought ofthe temptations that had come to me in the few short weeks I had beenadrift, and how feebly I had resisted them. I asked myself if there werenot in the moral compass of men, who wander by land, some guiding star,as there is for those who wander over sea. I gazed high above thesloping roofs for some sign of moon, or star. The sky was darkling andovercast; but in lowering my eyes from heaven to earth, I saw what I hadmissed before--a fair, white face framed in a window above the stoopdirectly opposite my bench. The face seemed to have a background ofgold; for a wonderful mass of wavy hair clustered down from theblue-veined brow to the bit of white throat visible, where a gauzy pieceof neck wear had been loosened. Evidently, this was the statuarydescribed by the whiskered youth. But the statuary breathed. A bloom ofliving apple-blossoms was on the cheeks. The brows were black andarched. The very pose of the head was arch, and in the lips was asuggestion of archery, too,--Cupid's archery, though the upper lip wasdrawn almost too tight for the bow beneath to discharge the little god'sshaft. Why did I do it? I do not know. Ask the young Nor'-Wester, whohad worn a path beneath the selfsame window that very day, or the hostsof young men, who are still wearing paths beneath windows to this veryday. I coughed and sat bolt upright on the bench with unnecessarily loudintimations of my presence. The fringe of black lashes did not evenlift. I rose and with great show of indifference paraded solemnly fivetimes past that window; but, in spite of my pompous indifference, by asort of side-signalling, I learned that the owner of the heavy lasheswas unaware of my existence. Thereupon, I sat down again. It _was_ a bitof statuary and a very pretty bit of statuary. As the youth said, therewas no law against looking at a bit of statuary in this wilderness, andas the statuary did not know I was looking at it, I sat back to take myfill of that vision framed in the open window. The statuary, unknown toits
elf, had full meed of revenge; for it presently brought such a floodof longing to my heart, longings, not for this face, but for what thisface represented--the innocence and love and purity of home, that Ibowed dejectedly forward with moist eyes gazing at the ground.
"Hullo!" whispered a deep voice in my ear. "Are you mooning after theLittle Statue already?"
When I looked up, the man had passed, but the head in the window wasleaning out and a pair of swimming, lustrous, gray eyes were gazingforward in a way that made me dizzy. "Ah," they said in a language thatneeded no speaking, "there are two of us, very, very home-sick."
"The guiding star for my moral compass," said I, under my breath.
Then the statue in a live fashion suddenly drew back into the dark room.The window-shutter flung to, with a bang, and my vision was gone. I leftthe bench, made a shake-down on one of the store counters, and knewnothing more till the noise of brigades from the far north aroused thefort at an early hour Monday morning. The arrival of the Athabascatraders was the signal for tremendous activity. An army returning fromvictory could not have been received with greater acclaim. _Bourgeois_and clerks tumbled promiscuously from every nook in the fort and rushinghalf-dressed towards the gates shouted welcome to the men, who had comefrom the outposts of the known world. They were a shaggy, ragged-lookingrabble, those traders from mountain fastnesses and the Arctic circle.With long white hair, hatless some of them, with beards like orientalpatriarchs, and dressed entirely in skins of the chase, from fringedcoats to gorgeous moccasins, the unkempt monarchs of northern realms hadthe imperious bearing of princes.
"Is it you, really you, looking as old as your great grandfather? ByGad! So it is," came from one quondam friend.
"Powers above!" ejaculated another onlooker, "See that old FatherAbraham! It's Tait! As you live, it's Tait! And he only went to theAthabasca ten years ago. He was thirty then, and now he's a hundred!"
"That's Wilson," says another. "Looks thin, doesn't he? Slim fare! He'sthe only man from Great Slave Lake that escaped being a meal for theCrees,--year of the famine; and they hadn't time to pick his bones!"
A running fire of such comments went along the spectators lining eachside of the path. There was a sad side to the clamorous welcomes andhandshakes and surprised recognitions. Had not these men gone northyoung and full of hope, as I was going? Now, news of the feud with theHudson's Bay brought them out old before their time and more like thenatives with whom they had traded than the white race they had left.Here and there, strong men would fall in each other's arms and embracelike school-girls, covering their emotion with rounded oaths instead ofterms of endearment.
All day the confusion of unloading boats continued. The dull tread ofmoccasined feet as Indians carried pack after pack from river bank tothe fort, was ceaseless. Faster than the clerks could sort the fursgreat bundles were heaped on the floor. By noon, warehouses were crammedfrom basement to attic. Ermine taken in mid-winter, when the fur wasspotlessly white, but for the jet tail-tip, otter cut so deftly scarcelya tuft of fur had been wasted along the opened seam, silver fox, whichhad made the fortune of some lucky hunter--these and other rare furs,that were to minister to the luxury of kings, passed from tawny carriersto sorters. Elsewhere, coarse furs, obtained at greater risk, but owingto the abundance of big game, less valuable for the hunter, were sortedand valued. With a reckless underestimate of the beaver-skin, their unitof currency, Indians hung over counters bartering away the season'shunt. I frankly acknowledge the Company's clerks on such occasions coulddo a rushing business selling tawdry stuff at fabulous prices.
Meanwhile, in the main hall, the _Bourgeois_, or partners, of the greatNorth-West Company were holding their annual General Assembly behindclosed doors. Clerks lowered their voices when they passed that room,and well they might; for the rulers inside held despotic sway over adomain as large as Europe. And what were they decreeing? Who can tell?The archives of the great fur companies are as jealously guarded asdiplomatic documents, and more remarkable for what they omit than whatthey state. Was the policy, that ended so tragically a year afterwards,adopted at this meeting? Great corporations have a fashion of keepingtheir mouths and their council doors tight shut and of leaving thepublic to infer that catastrophes come causeless. However that may be, Iknow that Duncan Cameron, a fiery Highlander and one of the keenest menin the North-West service, suddenly flung out of the Assembly room witha pleased, determined look on his ruddy face.
"Are ye Rufus Gillespie?" he asked.
"That's my name, Sir."
"Then buckle on y'r armor, lad; for ye'll see the thick of the fight.You're appointed to my department at Red River." And he left us.
"Lucky dog! I envy you! There'll be rare sport between Cameron andMcDonell, when the two forts up in Red River begin to talk back to eachother," exclaimed a Fort William man to me.
"Are you Gillespie?" asked a low, mellow, musical voice by my side. Iturned to face a tall, dark, wiry man, with the swarthy complexion andintensely black eyes of one having strains of native blood. Among the_voyageurs_, I had become accustomed to the soft-spoken, melodiousspeech that betrays Indian parentage; and I believe if I were toencounter a descendant of the red race in China, or among the Latinpeoples of Southern Europe, I could recognize Indian blood by thatrhythmic trick of the native tongue.
"I'm Gillespie," I answered my keen-eyed questioner. "Who are you?"
"Cuthbert Grant, warden of the plains and leader of the _Bois-Brules_,"was his terse response. "You're coming to our department at FortGibraltar, and I want you to give Father Holland a place in your canoesto come north with us. He's on his way to the Missouri."
At that instant Duncan Cameron came up to Grant and muttered something.Both men at once went back to the council hall of the General Assembly.I heard the courtyard gossips vowing that the Hudson's Bay would ceaseits aggressions, now that Cameron and Cuthbert Grant were to lead theNor'-Westers; but I made no inquiry. Next to keeping his own counsel andgiving credence to no man, the fur trader learns to gain informationonly with ears and eyes, and to ask no questions. The scurrying turmoilin the fort lasted all day. At dusk, natives were expelled from thestockades and work stopped.
Grand was the foregathering around the supper table of the great dininghall that night. _Bourgeois_, clerks and traders from afar, explorers,from the four corners of the earth--assembled four hundred strong,buoyant and unrestrained, enthusiastically loyal to the company, andtingling with hilarious fellowship over this, the first reunion fortwenty years. Though their manner and clothing be uncouth, men who havepassed a lifetime exploring northern wilds have that to say, which isworth hearing. So the feast was prolonged till candles sputtered low andpitch-pine fagots flared out. Indeed, before the gathering broke up,flagons as well as candles had to be renewed. Lanterns swung from theblack rafters of the ceiling. Tallow candles stood in solemn rows downthe centre of each table, showing that men, not women, had prepared thebanquet. Stuck in iron brackets against the walls were pine torches,that had been dipped in some resinous mixture and now flamed brightlywith a smell not unlike incense. Tables lined the four walls of the halland ran in the form of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backlessbenches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs wereplaced, the seats of honor for famous _Bourgeois_. British flags hadbeen draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter torafter.
"Ah, mon! Is no this fine? This is worth living for! This is the companyto serve!" Duncan Cameron exclaimed as he sank into one of the chairs atthe head of the centre table. The Scotchman's heart softened beforethose platters of venison and wild fowl, and he almost broke intogeniality. "Here, Gillespie, to my right," he called, motioning me tothe edge of the bench at his elbow. "Here, Grant, opposite Gillespie!Aye! an' is that you, Father Holland?" he cried to the stout, jovialpriest, with shining brow and cheeks wrinkling in laughter, who followedGrant. "There's a place o' honor for men like you, Sir. Here!" and hegave the priest a chair beside himself.
The _Bourgeois_
seated, there was a scramble for the benches. Then thewhole company with great zest and much noisy talk fell upon the viandswith a will.
"Why, Cameron," began a northern winterer a few places below me, "it'staken me three months fast travelling to come from McKenzie River toFort William. By Jove! Sir, 'twas cold enough to freeze your words solidas you spoke them, when we left Great Slave Lake. I'll bet if you menwere up there now, you'd hear my voice thawing out and yelling get-eppto my huskies, and my huskies yelping back! Used a dog train, whole ofMarch. Tied myself up in bag of buffalo robes at night and made thehuskies lie across it to keep me from freezing. Got so hot, every porein my body was a spouting fountain, and in the morning that moisturewould freeze my buckskin stiff. Couldn't stand that; so I tried sleepingwith my head out of the bag and froze my nose six nights out of seven."
The unfortunate nose corroborated his evidence.
"Ice was sloppy on the Saskatchewan, and I had to use pack-horses andtake the trail. I was trusting to get provisions at Souris. You canimagine, then, how we felt towards the Hudson's Bays when we foundthey'd plundered our fort. We were without a bite for two days. Why, wetook half a dozen Hudson's Bays in our quarters up north last winter,and saved them from starvation; and here we were, starving, that theymight plunder and rob. I'm with you, Sir! I'm with you to the hiltagainst the thieves! There's a time for peace and there's a time forwar, and I say this is a very good time for war!"
"Here's confusion to the old H. B. C's! Confusion, short life, noprosperity, and death to the Hudson's Bay!" yelled the young whiskeredNor'-Wester, springing to his feet on the bench and waving adrinking-cup round his head. Some of the youthful clerks were disposedto take their cue from this fire-eater and began strumming the table andapplauding; but the _Bourgeois_ frowned on forward conduct.
"Check him, Grant!" growled Cameron in disapproval.
"Sit down, bumptious babe!" said the priest, tugging the lad's coat.
"Here, you young show-off," whispered Grant, leaning across the priest,and he knocked the boy's feet from under him bringing him down to thebench with a thud.
"He needs more outdoor life, that young one! It goes to his head mightyfast," remarked Cameron. "What were you saying about your hard luck?"and he turned to the northern winterer again.
"Call that hard luck?" broke in a mountaineer, laughing as if heconsidered hardships a joke. "We lived a month last winter on two mealsa day; soup, out of snow-shoe thongs, first course; fried skins, secondgo; teaspoonful shredded fish, by way of an entree!"
The man wore a beaded buckskin suit, and his mellow intonation of wordsin the manner of the Indian tongue showed that he had almost lostEnglish speech along with English customs. His recital caused nosurprise.
"Been on short, rations myself," returned the northerner. "Don't likeit! Isn't safe! Rips a man's nerves to the raw when Indians glare at himwith hungry eyes eighteen hours out of the twenty-four."
"What was the matter?" drawled the mountaineer. "Hudson's Bay beentampering with your Indians? Now if you had a good Indian wife as Ihave, you could defy the beggars to turn trade away----"
"Aye, that's so," agreed the winterer, "I heard of a fellow on theAthabasca who had to marry a squaw before he could get a pair ofracquets made; but that wasn't my trouble. Game was scarce."
"Game scarce on MacKenzie River?" A chorus of voices vented theirsurprise. To the outside world game is always scarce, reported scarce onMacKenzie River and everywhere else by the jealous fur traders; butthese deceptions are not kept up among hunters fraternizing at the samebanquet board.
"Mighty scarce. Some of the tribe died out from starvation. The Hudson'sBay in our district were in bad plight. We took six of them in--Hadn'theard of the Souris plunder, you may be sure."
"More fools they to go into the Athabasca," declared the mountaineer.
"Bigger fools to send another brigade there this year when they needn'texpect help from us," interjected a third trader.
"You don't say they're sending another lot of men to the Athabasca!"exclaimed the winterer.
"Yes I do--under Colin Robertson," affirmed the third man.
"Colin Robertson--the Nor'-Wester?"
"Robertson who used to be a Nor'-Wester! It's Selkirk's work since hegot control of the H. B."
"Robertson should know better," said the northerner. "He had experiencewith us before he resigned. I'll wager he doesn't undertake that sort ofventure! Surely it's a yarn!"
"You lose your bet," cried the irrepressible Fort William lad. "A runnercame in at six o'clock and reported that the Hudson's Bay brigade fromLachine would pass here before midnight. They're sooners, they are, arethe H. B. C's.," and the clerk enjoyed the sensation of rolling a bigoath from his boyish lips.
"Eric Hamilton passing within a stone's throw of the fort!" Inastonishment I leaned forward to catch every word the Fort William ladmight say.
"To Athabasca by our route--past this fort!" Such temerity amazed thewinterer beyond coherent expression.
"Good thing for them they're passing in the night," continued the clerk."The half-breeds are hot about that Souris affair. There'll be acollision yet!" The young fellow's importance increased in proportion tothe surprise of the elder men.
"There'll be a collision anyway when Cameron and Grant reach RedRiver--eh, Cuthbert?" and the mountaineer turned to the dark,sharp-featured warden of the plains. Cuthbert Grant laughed pleasantly.
"Oh, I hope not--for their sakes!" he said, and went on with the storyof a buffalo hunt.
The story I missed, for I was deep in my own thoughts. I must see Ericand let him know what I had learned; but how communicate with theHudson's Bay brigade without bringing suspicion of double dealing onmyself? I was turning things over in my mind in a stupid sort of waylike one new at intrigue, when I heard a talker, vowing by all that washoly that he had seen the rarest of hunter's rarities--a pure whitebuffalo. The wonder had appeared in Qu'Appelle Valley.
"I can cap that story, man," cried the portly Irish priest who was to gonorth in my boat. "I saw a white squaw less than two weeks ago!" Hepaused for his words to take effect, and I started from my chair as if Ihad been struck.
"What's wrong, young man?" asked the winterer. "We lonely fellows upnorth see visions. We leap out of our moccasins at the sound of our ownvoices; but you young chaps, with all the world around you"--he wavedtowards the crowded hall as though it were the metropolis of theuniverse--"shouldn't see ghosts and go jumping mad."
I sat down abashed.
"Yes, a white squaw," repeated the jovial priest. "Sure now, whiteladies aren't so many in these regions that I'd be likely to make amistake."
"There's a difference between squaws and white ladies," persisted thejolly father, all unconscious that he was emphasizing a difference whichmany of the traders were spelling out in hard years of experience.
"I've seen papooses that were white for a day or two after they wereborn----"
"Effect of the christening," interrupted the youth, whose head, betweenflattered vanity and the emptied contents of his drinking cup, was verylight indeed.
"Take that idiot out and put him to bed, somebody," commanded Cameron.
"For a day or two after they were born," reiterated the priest; "but Inever saw such a white-skinned squaw!"
"Where did you see her?" I inquired in a voice which was not my own.
"On Lake Winnipeg. Coming down two weeks ago we camped near a band ofSioux, and I declare, as I passed a tepee, I saw a woman's face thatlooked as white as snow. She was sleeping, and the curtain had blown up.Her child was in her arms, and I tell you her bare arms were as white assnow."
"Must have been the effect of the moonlight," explained some one.
"Moonlight didn't give the other Indians that complexion," insisted thepriest.
It was my turn to feel my head suddenly turn giddy, though liquor hadnot passed my lips. This information could have only one meaning. I wasclose on the track of Miriam, and Eric was near; yet the slightestblunde
r on my part might ruin all chance of meeting him and rescuingher.
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