Lords of the North

by Laut, Agnes C

  Now the Isle of Orleans was vanishing on our rear and the bold heights of Point Levis had loomed up to the fore; and now we had poked our prows to the right and the sluggish, muddy tide of the St. Charles lapped our canoes, while a forest of masts and yard-arms and flapping sails arose from the harbor of Quebec City. The great walls of modern Quebec did not then exist; but the rude fortifications, that sloped down from the lofty Citadel on Cape Diamond and engirt the whole city on the hillside, seemed imposing enough to us in those days.

  It was late in the afternoon when we passed. The sunlight struck across the St. Charles, brightening the dull, gray stone of walls and cathedrals and convents, turning every window on the west to fire and transforming a multitude of towers and turrets and minarets to glittering gold. Small wonder, indeed, that all our rough tripmen stopped paddling and with eyes on the spire of Notre Dame des Victoires muttered prayers for a prosperous voyage. For some reason or other, I found my own hat off. So was Mr. Jack MacKenzie's, so was Eric Hamilton's. Then the voyageurs fell to work again. The canoes spread out. We rounded Cape Diamond and the lengthening shadow of the high peak darkened the river before us. Always the broad St. Lawrence seemed to be winding from headland to headland among the purple hills, in sunlight a mirror between shadowy, forest banks, at night, molten silver in the moon-track. Afternoon slipped into night and night to morning, and each hour of daylight presented some new panorama of forests and hills and torrents. Here the river widened into a lake. There the lake narrowed to rapids; and so we came to Lachine—La Chine, named in ridicule of the gallant explorer, La Salle, who thought these vast waterways would surely lead him to China.

  At Lachine, Mr. Jack MacKenzie, with much brusque bluster to conceal his longings for the life he was too old to follow and many cynical injunctions about "skinning the skunk" and "knocking the head off anything that stood in my way" and "always profiting from the follies of other men"—"mind, have none yourself,"—parted from us. Here, too, Eric gripped my hand a tense, wordless farewell and left our party for the Hudson's Bay brigade under Colin Robertson.

  It has always been a mystery to me why our rivals sent that brigade to Athabasca by way of Lachine instead of Hudson Bay, which would have been two thousand miles nearer. We Nor'-Westers went all the way to and from Montreal, solely because that was our only point of access to the sea; but the Hudson's Bay people had their own Hudson Bay for a starting place. Why, in their slavish imitation of the methods, which brought us success, they also adopted our disadvantages, I could never understand. Birch canoes and good tripmen could, of course, as the Hudson's Bay men say, be most easily obtained in Quebec; but with a good organizer, the same could have been gathered up two thousand miles nearer York Factory, on Hudson Bay. Indeed, I have often thought the sole purpose of that expedition was to get Nor'-Westers' methods by employing discarded Nor'-Westers as trappers and voyageurs. Colin Robertson, the leader, had himself been a Nor'-Wester; and all the men with him except Eric Hamilton were renegades, "turn-coat traders," as we called them. But I must not be unjust; for neither company could possibly exceed the other in its zeal to entice away old trappers, who would reveal opponents' secrets. Acting on my uncle's advice, I made shift to pick up a few crumbs of valuable information. Had the Hudson's Bay known, I suppose they would have called me a spy. That was the name I gave any of them who might try such tricks with me. The General Assembly of the North-West partners was to meet at Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior. I learned that Robertson's brigade were anxious to slip past our headquarters at Fort William before the meeting and would set out that very day. I also heard they had sent forward a messenger to notify the Hudson's Bay governor at Fort Douglas of their brigade's coming.

  Almost before I realized it, we were speeding up the Ottawa, past a second and third and fourth Ste. Anne's; for she is the voyageurs' patron saint and her name dots Canada's map like ink-blots on a boy's copybook. Wherever a Ste. Anne's is now found, there has the voyageur of long ago passed and repassed. In places the surface of the river, gliding to meet us, became oily, almost glassy, as if the wave-current ran too fast to ripple out to the banks. Then little eddies began whirling in the corrugated water and our paddlers with labored breath bent hard to their task. By such signs I learned to know when we were stemming the tide of some raging waterfall, or swift rapid. There would follow quick disembarking, hurried portages over land through a tangle of forest, or up slippery, damp rocks, a noisy launching far above the torrent and swifter progress when the birch canoes touched water again. Such was the tireless pace, which made North-West voyageurs famous. Such was the work the great Bourgeois exacted of their men. A liberal supply of rum, when stoppages were made, and of bread and meat for each meal—better fare than was usually given by the trading companies—did much to encourage the tripmen. Each man was doing his utmost to out-distance the bold rivals following by our route. The Bourgeois were to meet at Fort William early in June. At all hazards we were determined to notify our company of the enemy's invading flotilla; and without margin for accidents we had but a month to cross half a continent.

  At nightfall the fourth day from the shrine, after a tiresome nine-mile traverse past the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa, glittering camp-fires on the river bank ahead showed where a fresh relay of canoemen awaited us. They were immediately taken into the different crews and night-shifts of paddlers put to work. It was quite dark, when the new hands joined us; but in the moonlight, as the chief steersman told off the men by name, I watched each tawny figure step quickly to his place in the canoes, with that gliding Indian motion, which scarcely rocked the light craft. There came to my crew Little Fellow, a short, thick-set man, with a grinning, good-natured face, who—despite his size—would solemnly assure people he was equal in force to the sun. With him was La Robe Noire, of grave aspect and few words, mighty in stature and shoulder power. There were five or six others, whose names in the clangor of voices I did not hear. Of these, one was a tall, lithe, swift-moving man, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a serpent. This canoeman silently twisted into sleeping posture directly behind me.

  The signal was given, and we were in mid-stream again. Wrapping my blanket about me, half propped by a bale of stuff and breathing deep of the clear air with frequent resinous whiffs from the forest I drowsed off. The swish of waters rushing past and the roar of torrents, which I had seen and heard during the day, still sounded in my ears. The sigh of the night-wind through the forest came like the lonely moan of a far-distant sea, and I was sleepily half conscious that cedars, pines and cliffs were engaged in a mad race past the sides of the canoe. A bed in which one may not stretch at random is not comfortable. Certainly my cramped limbs must have caused bad dreams. A dozen times I could have sworn the Indian behind me had turned into a snake and was winding round my chest in tight, smothering coils. Starting up, I would shake the weight off. Once I suddenly opened my eyes to find blanket thrown aside and pistol belt unstrapped. Lying back eased, I was dozing again when I distinctly felt a hand crawl stealthily round the pack on which I was pillowed and steal towards the dagger handle in the loosened belt. I struck at it viciously only to bruise my fist on my dagger. Now wide awake, I turned angrily towards the Indian. Not a muscle of the still figure had changed from the attitude taken when he came into the canoe. The man was not asleep, but reclined in stolid oblivion of my existence. His head was thrown back and the steely, unflinching eyes were fixed on the stars.

  "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 à 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 à 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 th
e 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!"