The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lords of the North, by A. C. Laut This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Lords of the North Author: A. C. Laut Release Date: January 22, 2007 [EBook #20418] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORDS OF THE NORTH *** Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (www.canadiana.org)) LORDS OF THE NORTH BY A. C. LAUT TORONTO WILLIAM BRIGGS Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand nine hundred, by William Briggs, at the Department of Agriculture. TO THE Pioneers and their Descendants WHOSE HEROISM WON THE LAND, THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. ACKNOWLEDGMENT. The author desires to express thanks to pioneers and fur traders of the West for information, details and anecdotes bearing on the old life, which are herein embodied; and would also acknowledge the assistance of the history of the North-West Company and manuscripts of the Bourgeois, compiled by Senator L. R. Masson; and the value of such early works as those of Dr. George Bryce, Gunn, Hargraves, Ross and others. THE TRAPPER'S DEFIANCE. "The adventurous spirits, who haunted the forest and plain, grew fond of their wild life and affected a great contempt for civilization." You boxed-up, mewed-up artificials, Pent in your piles of mortar and stone, Hugging your finely spun judicials, Adorning externals, externals alone, Vaunting in prideful ostentation Of the Juggernaut car, called Civilization— What know ye of freedom and life and God? Monkeys, that follow a showman's string, Know more of freedom and less of care, Cage birds, that flutter from perch to ring, Have less of worry and surer fare. Cursing the burdens, yourselves have bound, In a maze of wants, running round and round— Are ye free men, or manniken slaves? Costly patches, adorning your walls, Are all of earth's beauty ye care to know; But ye strut about in soul-stifled halls To play moth-life by a candle-glow— What soul has space for upward fling, What manhood room for shoulder-swing, Coffined and cramped from the vasts of God? The Spirit of Life, O atrophied soul, In trappings of ease is not confined; That touch from Infinite Will 'neath the Whole In Nature's temple, not man's, is shrined! From hovel-shed come out and be strong! Be ye free! Be redeemed from the wrong, Of soul-guilt, I charge you as sons of God! INTRODUCTION. I, Rufus Gillespie, trader and clerk for the North-West Company, which ruled over an empire broader than Europe in the beginning of this century, and with Indian allies and its own riotous Bois-Brulés, carried war into the very heart of the vast territory claimed by its rivals, the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company, have briefly related a few stirring events of those boisterous days. Should the account here set down be questioned, I appeal for confirmation to that missionary among northern tribes, the famous priest, who is the son of the ill-fated girl stolen by the wandering Iroquois. Lord Selkirk's narration of lawless conflict with the Nor'-Westers and the verbal testimony of Red River settlers, who are still living, will also substantiate what I have stated; though allowance must be made for the violent partisan leaning of witnesses, and from that, I—as a Nor'-Wester—do not claim to be free. On the charges and counter-charges of cruelty bandied between white men and red, I have nothing to say. Remembering how white soldiers from eastern cities took the skin of a native chief for a trophy of victory, and recalling the fiendish glee of Mandanes over a victim, I can only conclude that neither race may blamelessly point the finger of reproach at the other. Any variations in detail from actual occurrences as seen by my own eyes are solely for the purpose of screening living descendants of those whose lives are here portrayed from prying curiosity; but, in truth, many experiences during the thrilling days of the fur companies were far too harrowing for recital. I would fain have tempered some of the incidents herein related to suit the sentiments of a milk-and-water age; but that could be done only at the cost of truth. There is no French strain in my blood, so I have not that passionate devotion to the wild daring of l'ancien régime, in which many of my rugged companions under Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest gloried; but he would be very sluggish, indeed, who could not look back with some degree of enthusiasm to the days of gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, in a word, to the workings of the great fur trading companies. Theirs were the trappers and runners, the Coureurs des Bois and Bois-Brulés, who traversed the immense solitudes of the pathless west; theirs, the brigades of gay voyageurs chanting hilarious refrains in unison with the rhythmic sweep of paddle blades and following unknown streams until they had explored from St. Lawrence to MacKenzie River; and theirs, the merry lads of the north, blazing a track through the wilderness and leaving from Atlantic to Pacific lonely stockaded fur posts— footprints for the pioneers' guidance. The whitewashed palisades of many little settlements on the rivers and lakes of the far north are poor relics of the fur companies' ancient grandeur. That broad domain stretching from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean, reclaimed from savagery for civilization, is the best monument to the unheralded forerunners of empire. RUFUS GILLESPIE. Winnipeg—one time Fort Garry Formerly Red River Settlement, 19th June, 18— Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I. [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] Wherein a Lad sees Makers of History 9 CHAPTER II. A Strong Man is Bowed 23 CHAPTER III. Novice and Expert 38 CHAPTER IV. Launched Into the Unknown 55 CHAPTER V. Civilization's Veneer Rubs Off 70 CHAPTER VI. A Girdle of Agates Recalled 92 CHAPTER VII. The Lords of the North in Council 99 CHAPTER VIII. The Little Statue Animate 118 CHAPTER IX. Decorating a Bit of Statuary 131 CHAPTER X. More Studies in Statuary 144 CHAPTER XI. A Shuffling of Allegiance 163 CHAPTER XII. How a Youth Became a King 181 CHAPTER XIII. The Buffalo Hunt 200 CHAPTER XIV. In Slippery Places 220 CHAPTER XV. The Good White Father 234 CHAPTER XVI. Le Grand Diable Sends Back our Messenger 246 CHAPTER XVII. The Price of Blood 253 CHAPTER XVIII. Laplante and I Renew Acquaintance 266 CHAPTER XIX. Wherein Louis Intrigues 281 CHAPTER XX. Plots and Counter-Plots 297 CHAPTER XXI. Louis Pays Me Back 313 CHAPTER XXII. A Day of Reckoning 327 CHAPTER XXIII. The Iroquois Plays his Last Card 341 CHAPTER XXIV. Fort Douglas Changes Masters 350 CHAPTER XXV. His Lordship to the Rescue 368 CHAPTER XXVI. Father Holland and I in the Toils 378 CHAPTER XXVII. Under One Roof 389 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Last of Louis' Adventures 409 CHAPTER XXIX. The Priest Journeys to a Far Country 433 LORDS OF THE NORTH 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 a club in Quebec City, waiting for my friend, who had promised to join me at dinner that night. I threw aside a news-sheet, which I had exhausted down to minutest advertisements, stretched myself and strolled across to a group of old fur-traders, retired partners of the North-West Company, who were engaged in heated discussion with some officers from the Citadel. "Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I repeated, indifferent to the merits of their dispute. "That's the tenth time you've asked that question," said my Uncle Jack MacKenzie, looking up sharply, "the tenth time, Sir, by actual count," and he puckered his brows at the interruption, just as he used to when I was a little lad on his knee and chanced to break into one of his hunting stories with a question at the wrong place. "Hang it," drawled Colonel Adderly, a squatty man with an over-fed look on his bulging, red cheeks, "hang it, you don't expect Hamilton? The baby must be teething," and he added more chaff at the expense of my friend, who had been the subject of good-natured banter among club members for devotion to his first-born. I saw Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' arguments than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his unconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up to the company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenzies and other retired veterans of the north country. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said I, "what were you saying to Colonel Adderly?" "Talk of your military conquests, Sir," my uncle continued, "Why, Sir, our men have transformed a wilderness into an empire. They have blazed a path from Labrador on the Atlantic to that rock on the Pacific, where my esteemed kinsman, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, left his inscription of discovery. Mark my words, Sir, the day will come when the names of David Thompson and Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie will rank higher in English annals than Braddock's and——" "Egad!" laughed the officer, amused at my uncle, who had been a leading spirit in the North-West Company and whose enthusiasm knew no bounds, "Egad! You gentlemen adventurers wouldn't need to have accomplished much to eclipse Braddock." And he paused with a questioning supercilious smile. "Sir Alexander was a first cousin of yours, was he not?" My uncle flushed hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemen adventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the adventurers, was not to his taste. "Pardon me, Sir," said he stiffly, "you forget that by the terms of their charter, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company have the privilege of being known as gentlemen adventurers. And by the Lord, Sir, 'tis a gentleman adventurer and nothing else, that stock-jobbing scoundrel of a Selkirk has proved himself! And he, sir, was neither Nor'-Wester, nor Canadian, but an Englishman, like the commander of the Citadel." My uncle puffed out these last [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] words in the nature of a defiance to the English officer, whose cheeks took on a deeper purplish shade; but he returned the charge good-humoredly enough. "Nonsense, MacKenzie, my good friend," laughed he patronizingly, "if the Right Honorable, the Earl of Selkirk, were such an adventurer, why the deuce did the Beaver Club down at Montreal receive him with open mouths and 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 for its hospitality. Founded in 1785, originally composed of but nineteen members and afterwards extended only to men who had served in the Pays d'En Haut, it soon acquired a reputation for entertaining in regal style. Why the vertebrae of colonial gentlemen should sometimes lose the independent, upright rigidity of self-respect on contact with old world nobility, I know not. But instantly, Colonel Adderly's reference to Lord Selkirk and the Beaver Club called up the picture of a banquet in Montreal, when I was a lad of seven, or thereabouts. I had been tricked out in some Highland costume especially pleasing to the Earl— cap, kilts, dirk and all—and was taken by my Uncle Jack MacKenzie to the Beaver Club. Here, in a room, that glittered with lights, was a table steaming with things, which caught and held my boyish eyes; and all about were crowds of guests, gentlemen, who had been invited in the quaint language of the club, "To discuss the merits of bear, beaver and venison." The great Sir Alexander MacKenzie, with his title fresh from the king, and his feat of exploring the river now known by his name and pushing through the mountain fastnesses to the Pacific on all men's lips—was to my Uncle Jack's right. Simon Fraser and David Thompson and other famous explorers, who were heroes to my imagination, were there too. In these men and what they said of their wonderful voyages I was far more interested than in the young, keen-faced man with a tie, that came up in ruffles to his ears, and with an imperial decoration on his breast, which told me he was Lord Selkirk. I remember when the huge salvers and platters were cleared away, I was placed on the table to execute the sword dance. I must have acquitted myself 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 cap and a whirl of lights and faces around my dizzy head. Then my uncle took me between his knees, promising to let me sit up to the end if I were good, and more wine was passed. "That's enough for you, you young cub," says my kinsman, promptly inverting the wine-glass before me. "O Uncle MacKenzie," said I with a wry face, "do you measure your own wine 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 to the butler, "Here, Johnson, toddy for one, glass of hot water, pure, for other." But when Johnson brought back the glasses, I observed Uncle MacKenzie kept 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 the little man!" "His is the best wine of the cellar," vowed His Lordship; and I drank my peppermint 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 tests of strength could take. Ironical toasts to the North-West Passage, whose myth Sir Alexander had dispelled; toasts to the discoverer of the MacKenzie River, which brought storms of applause that shook the house; toasts to "our distinguished guest," whose suave response disarmed all suspicion; toasts to the "Northern winterers," poor devils, who were serving the cause by undergoing a life-long term of Arctic exile; toasts to "the merry lads of the north," who only served in the ranks without attaining to the honor of partnership; toasts enough, in all conscience, to drown the memory of every man present. Thanks to my Uncle Jack MacKenzie, all my toasts were taken in peppermint, and the picture in my mind of that banquet is as clear to-day as it was when I sat at the table. What would I not give to be back at the Beaver Club, living it all over again and hearing Sir Alexander MacKenzie with his flashing hero-eyes and quick, passionate gestures, recounting that wonderful voyage of his with a sulky crew into a region of hostiles; telling of those long interminable winters of Arctic night, when the great explorer sounded the depths of utter despair in service for the company and knew not whether he faced madness or starvation; and thrilling the whole assembly with a description of his first glimpse of the Pacific! Perhaps it was what I heard that night—who can tell—that drew me to the wild life of after years. But I was too young, then, to recognize fully the greatness of those men. Indeed, my country was then and is yet too young; for if their greatness be recognized, it is forgotten and unhonored. I think I must have fallen asleep on my uncle's knee; for I next remember sleepily looking about and noticing that many of the gentlemen had slid down in their chairs and with closed eyes were breathing heavily. Others had slipped to the floor and were sound asleep. This shocked me and I was at once wide awake. My uncle was sitting very erect and his arm around my waist had the tight grasp that usually preceded some sharp rebuke. I looked up and found his face grown suddenly so hard and stern, I was all affright lest my sleeping had offended him. His eyes were fastened on Lord Selkirk with a piercing, angry gaze. His Lordship was not nodding, not a bit of it. How brilliant he seemed to my childish [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] fancy! He was leaning forward, questioning those Nor'-Westers, who had received him with open arms, and open hearts. And the wine had mounted to the head of the good Nor'-Westers and they were now also receiving the strange nobleman with open mouths, pouring out to him a full account of their profits, the extent of the vast, unknown game preserve, and how their methods so far surpassed those of the Hudson's Bay, 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 with questions. "I must say," whispered Uncle Jack to Sir Alexander MacKenzie, "if any Hudson'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 for sleeping. "Nonsense," retorted Sir Alexander, who had cut active connection with the 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 pointed questions?" demanded my uncle, addressing the Earl. The nobleman turned quickly to him and said something about the Highlanders and Prince Edward's Island, which I did not understand. The rest of that evening fades from my thoughts; for I was carried home in Mr. Jack MacKenzie's arms. And all these things happened some ten or twelve years before that wordy sword-play between this same uncle of mine and the English colonel from the Citadel. "We erred, Sir, through too great hospitality," my uncle was saying to the colonel. "How could we know that Selkirk would purchase controlling interest in Hudson's Bay stock? How could we know he'd secure a land grant in the very heart of our domain?" "I don't object to his land, nor to his colonists, nor to his dower of ponies and muskets and bayonets to every mother's son of them," broke in another of the retired traders, "but I do object to his drilling those same colonists, to his importing a field battery and bringing out that little ram of a McDonell from the Army to egg the settlers on! It's bad enough to pillage our fort; but this proclamation to expel Nor'-Westers from what is claimed as Hudson's Bay Territory——" "Just listen to this," cries my uncle pulling out a copy of the obnoxious proclamation and reading aloud an order for the expulsion of all rivals to the Hudson's Bay Company from the northern territory. "Where can Hamilton be?" said I, losing interest in the traders' quarrel as soon as they went into details. "Home with his wifie," half sneered the officer in a nagging way, that irritated me, though the remark was, doubtless, true. "Home with his wifie," he repeated in a sing-song, paying no attention to the elucidation of a subject he had raised. "Good old man, Hamilton, but since marriage, utterly gone to the bad!" "To the what?" I queried, taking him up short. This officer, with the pudding cheeks and patronizing insolence, had a provoking trick of always keeping just inside the bounds of what one might resent. "To the what, did you say Hamilton had gone?" "To the domestics," says he laughing, then to the others, as if he had listened to every word of the explanations, "and if His Little Excellency, Governor MacDonell, by the grace of Lord Selkirk, ruler over gentlemen adventurers in no- man's-land, expels the good Nor'-Westers from nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intend doing 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 little martinet of the plains. Warrant for his arrest! Fetch him out!" "Warrant 43rd King George III. will do it," added one of the partners who had looked the matter up. "43rd King George III. doesn't give jurisdiction for trial in Lower Canada, if offense be committed elsewhere," interjects a lawyer with show of importance. "A Daniel come to judgment," laughs the colonel, winking as my uncle's wrath rose. "Pah!" says Mr. Jack MacKenzie in disgust, stamping on the floor with both feet. "You lawyers needn't think you'll have your pickings when fur companies quarrel. We'll ship him out, that's all. Neither of the companies 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." [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] Then they all rose to go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out to have a look down the street for Hamilton, I heard Colonel Adderly's last fling—"Pretty rascals, you gentlemen adventurers are, so shy and coy about law courts." It was a dark night, with a few lonely stars in mid-heaven, a sickle moon cutting the horizon cloud-rim and a noisy March wind that boded snow from The Labrador, or sleet from the Gulf. When Eric Hamilton left the Hudson's Bay Company's service at York Factory on Hudson Bay and came to live in Quebec, I was but a student at Laval. 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 my life; and when these two talked of their adventures in the far, lone land of the north, I could no more conceal my awe-struck admiration than a girl could on first discovering her own charms in a looking-glass. I think he must have noticed my boyish reverence, for once he condescended to ask about the velvet cap and green sash and long blue coat which made up the Laval costume, and in a moment I was talking to him as volubly as if 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 resuming conversation with Mr. MacKenzie. "By Jove! Sir, I can hardly realize I went into that country a lad of fifteen, like your nephew, and here I am, out of it, an old man." "Pah, Eric man," says my uncle, "you'll be finding a wife one of these days and renewing your youth." "Uncle," I broke out when the Hudson's Bay man had gone home, "how old is Mr. Hamilton?" "Fifteen years older than you are, boy, and I pray Heaven you may have half as much of the man in you at thirty as he has," returns my uncle mentally measuring me with that stern eye of his. At that information, my heart gave a curious, jubilant thud. Henceforth, I no longer looked upon Mr. Hamilton with the same awe that a choir boy entertains for a bishop. Something of comradeship sprang up between us, and before that year had passed we were as boon companions as man and boy could be. But Hamilton presently spoiled it all by fulfilling my uncle's prediction and finding a wife, a beautiful, fair-haired, frail slip of a girl, near enough the twenties to patronize me and too much of the young lady to find pleasure in an awkward lad. That meant an end to our rides and walks and sails down the St. Lawrence and long evening talks; but I took my revenge by assuming the airs of a man of forty, at which Hamilton quizzed me not a little and his wife, Miriam, laughed. When I surprised them all by jumping suddenly from boyhood to manhood—"like a tadpole into a mosquito," as my Uncle Jack facetiously remarked. Meanwhile, a son and heir came to my friend's home and I had to be thankful for a humble third place. And so it came that I was waiting for Eric's arrival at the Quebec Club that night, peering from the porch for sight of him and calculating how long it would take to ride from the Chateau Bigot above Charlesbourg, where he was staying. Stepping outside, I was surprised to see the form of a horse beneath the lantern of the arched gateway; and my surprise increased on nearer inspection. As I walked up, the creature gave a whinny and I recognized Hamilton's horse, lathered with sweat, unblanketed and shivering. The possibility of an accident hardly suggested itself before I observed the bridle-rein had been slung over the hitching-post and heard steps hurrying to the side door of the club-house. "Is that you, Eric?" I called. There was no answer; so I led the horse to the stable boy and hurried back to see if Hamilton were inside. The sitting room was deserted; but Eric's well-known, tall figure was entering the dining-room. And a curious figure he presented to the questioning looks of the club men. In one hand was his riding whip, in the other, his gloves. He wore the buckskin coat of a trapper and in the belt were two pistols. One sleeve was torn from wrist to elbow and his boots were scratched as if they had been 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 as I came up behind, "have you been in a race or a fight?" and he gave him the look of suspicion one might give an intoxicated man. "Is it a cold night?" asked the colonel punctiliously, gazing hard at the still-strapped hat. Not a word came from Hamilton. "How's the cold in your head?" continued Adderly, pompously trying to stare Hamilton's hat off. "Here I am, old man! What's kept you?" and I rushed forward but quickly checked myself; for Hamilton turned slowly towards me and instead of erect 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 guzzler that he was, he would have seen something unspeakably terrible written on 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 the open lips, giving him an ugly, furious expression, strange to his face. He took a quick stride towards the officer, raised his whip and brought it down with the full strength of his shoulder in one cutting blow across the baggy, purplish cheeks of the insolent speaker. [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] CHAPTER II A STRONG MAN IS BOWED The whole thing was so unexpected that for one moment not a man in the room drew breath. Then the colonel sprang up with the bellow of an enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush, and a dozen club members were pulling him back from Eric. "Eric Hamilton, are you mad?" I cried. "What do you mean?" But Hamilton stood motionless as if he saw none of us. Except that his breath was labored, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air he had on entering the club. "Hold back!" I implored; for Adderly was striking right and left to get free from the men. "Hold back! There's a mistake! Something's wrong!" "Reptile!" roared the colonel. "Cowardly reptile, you shall pay for this!" "There's a mistake," I shouted, above the clamor of exclamations. "Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same," whispered Uncle Jack MacKenzie in my ear, "but get him out of this. Drunk—or a scandal," says my uncle, who always expressed himself in explosives when excited. "Side room— here—lead him in—drunk—by Jove—drunk!" "Never," I returned passionately. I knew both Hamilton and his wife too well to tolerate either insinuation. But we led him like a dazed being into a side office, where Mr. Jack MacKenzie promptly turned the key and took up a posture with his back against the door. "Now, Sir," he broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor a scandal——" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us, moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his hat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece. My uncle and I looked from the silent man to each other. Raising his brows in question, Mr. Jack MacKenzie touched his forehead and whispered across to me—"Mad?" At that, though the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turned slowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made as though he would speak, sank into the armchair before the grate and pressed both hands against his forehead. "Mad," he repeated in a voice low as a moan, framing his words slowly and with great effort. "By Jove, men, you should know me better than to mouth such rot under your breath. To-night, I'd sell my soul, sell my soul to be mad, really mad, to know that all I think has happened, hadn't happened at all—" and his speech was broken by a sharp intake of breath. "Out with it, man, for the Lord's sake," shouted my uncle, now convinced that Eric was not drunk and jumping to conclusions—as he was wont to do when excited—regarding a possible scandal. "Out with it, man! We'll stand by you! Has that blasted red-faced turkey——" "Pray, spare your histrionics, for the present," Eric cut in with the icy self-possession bred by a lifetime's danger, dispelling my uncle's second suspicion with a quiet scorn that revealed nothing. "What the——" began my kinsman, "what did you strike him for?" "Did I strike somebody?" asked Hamilton absently. Again my uncle flashed a questioning look at me, but this time his face showed his conviction so plainly no word was needed. "Did I strike somebody? Wish you'd apologize——" "Apologize!" thundered my uncle. "I'll do nothing of the kind. Served him right. 'Twas a pretty way, a pretty way, indeed, to speak of any man's wife——" But the word "wife" had not been uttered before Eric threw out his hands in an imploring gesture. "Don't!" he cried out sharply in the suffering tone of a man under the operating knife. "Don't! It all comes back! It is true! It is true! I can't get away from it! It is no nightmare. My God, men, how can I tell you? There's no way of saying it! It is impossible—preposterous—some monstrous joke—it's quite impossible I tell you—it couldn't have happened— such things don't happen—couldn't happen—to her—of all women! But she's gone—she's gone——" "See here, Hamilton," cried my uncle, utterly beside himself with excitement, "are we to understand you are talking of your wife, or—or some other woman?" [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] "See here, Hamilton," I reiterated, quite heedless of the brutality of our questions and with a thousand wild suspicions flashing into my mind. "Is it your wife, Miriam, and your boy?" But he heard neither of us. "They were there—they waved to me from the garden at the edge of the woods as I entered the forest. Only this morning, both waving to me as I rode away—and when I returned from the city at noon, they were gone! I looked to the window as I came back. The curtain moved and I thought my boy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We've searched every nook from cellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I fancied I heard his voice everywhere, but no! No—no—and we've been hunting house and garden for hours——" "And the forest?" questioned Uncle Jack, the trapper instinct of former days suddenly re-awakening. "The forest is waist-deep with snow! Besides we beat through the bush everywhere, and there wasn't a track, nor broken twig, where they could have passed." His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness of that search. "Nonsense," my uncle burst out, beginning to bluster. "They've been driven to town without leaving word!" "No sleigh was at Chateau Bigot this morning," returned Hamilton. "But the road, Eric?" I questioned, recalling how the old manor-house stood well back in the center of a cleared plateau in the forest. "Couldn't they have gone down the road to those Indian encampments?" "The road is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winter wraps are all in the house. For Heaven's sake, men, suggest something! Don't madden me with these useless questions!" But in spite of Eric's entreaty my excitable kinsman subjected the frenzied man to such a fire of questions as might have sublimated pre-natal knowledge. And I stood back listening and pieced the distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency till the whole tragic scene at the Chateau on that spring day of the year 1815, became ineffaceably stamped on my memory. Causeless, with neither warning nor the slightest premonition of danger, the greatest curse which can befall a man came upon my friend Eric Hamilton. However fond a husband may be, there are things worse for his wife than death which he may well dread, and it was one of these tragedies which almost drove poor Hamilton out of his reason and changed the whole course of my own life. In broad daylight, his young wife and infant son disappeared as suddenly and completely as if blotted out of existence. That morning, Eric light-heartedly kissed wife and child good-by and waved them a farewell that was to be the last. He rode down the winding forest path to Quebec and they stood where the Chateau garden merged into the forest of Charlesbourg Mountain. At noon, when he returned, for him there existed neither wife nor child. For any trace of them that could be found, both might have been supernaturally spirited away. The great house, that had re-echoed to the boy's prattle, was deathly still; and neither wife, nor child, answered his call. The nurse was summoned. She was positive Madame was amusing the boy across the hall, and reassuringly bustled off to find mother and son in the next room, and the next, and yet the next; to discover each in succession empty. Alarm spread to the Chateau servants. The simple habitant maids were questioned, but their only response was white- faced, blank amazement. Madame not returned! Madame not back! Mon Dieu! What had happened? And all the superstition of hillside lore added to the fear on each anxious face. Shortly after Monsieur went to the city, Madame had taken her little son out as usual for a morning airing, and had been seen walking up and down the paths tracked through the garden snow. Had Monsieur examined the clearing between the house and the forest? Monsieur could see for himself the snow was too deep and crusty among the trees for Madame to go twenty paces into the woods. Besides, foot-marks could be traced from the garden to the bush. He need not fear wild animals. They were receding into the mountains as spring advanced. Let him take another look about the open; and Hamilton tore out-doors, followed by the whole household; but from the Chateau in the center of the glade to the encircling border of snow-laden evergreens there was no trace of wife or child. Then Eric laughed at his own growing fears. Miriam must be in the house. So the search of the old hall, that had once resounded to the drunken tread of gay French grandees, began again. From hidden chamber in the vaulted cellar to attic rooms above, not a corner of the Chateau was left unexplored. Had any one come and driven her to the city? But that was impossible. The roads were drifted the height of a horse and there were no marks of sleigh runners on either side of the riding path. Could she possibly have ventured a few yards down the main road to an encampment of Indians, whose squaws after Indian custom made much of the white baby? Neither did that suggestion bring relief; for the Indians had broken camp early in the morning and there was only a dirty patch of littered snow, where the wigwams had been. The alarm now became a panic. Hamilton, half-crazed and unable to believe his own senses, began wondering whether he had nightmare. He thought he might waken up presently and find the dead weight smothering his chest had been the boy snuggling close. He was vaguely conscious it was strange of him to continue sleeping with that noise of shouting [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] men and whining hounds and snapping branches going on in the forest. The child's lightest cry generally broke the spell of a nightmare; but the din of terrified searchers rushing through the woods and of echoes rolling eerily back from the white hills convinced him this was no dream-land. Then, the distinct crackle of trampled brushwood and the scratch of spines across his face called him back to an unendurable reality. "The thing is utterly impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in short jerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered my uncle's questioning. "Impossible! Utterly impossible!" "I would to God it were!" he moaned. "It was daylight, Eric?" asked Mr. Jack MacKenzie. He nodded moodily. "And she couldn't be lost in Charlesbourg forest?" I added, taking up the interrogations where my uncle left off. "No trace—not a footprint!" "And you're quite sure she isn't in the house?" replied my relative. "Quite!" he answered passionately. "And there was an Indian encampment a few yards down the road?" continued Mr. MacKenzie, undeterred. "Oh! What has that to do with it?" he asked petulantly, springing to his feet. "They'd moved off long before I went back. Besides, Indians don't run off with white women. Haven't I spent my life among them? I should know their ways!" "But my dear fellow!" responded the elder trader, "so do I know their ways. If she isn't in the Chateau and isn't in the woods and isn't in the garden, can't you see, the Indian encampment is the only possible explanation?" The lines on his face deepened. Fire flashed from his gleaming eyes, and if ever I have seen murder written on the countenance of man, it was on Hamilton's. "What tribe were they, anyway?" I asked, trying to speak indifferently, for every question was knife-play on a wound. "Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other, Iroquois canoemen, French half-breeds intermarried with Sioux squaws! They're all connected with the North-West Company's crews. The Nor'-Westers leave here for Fort William when the ice breaks up. This riff-raff will follow in their own dug-outs!" "Know any of them?" persisted my uncle. "No, I don't think I—Let me see! By Jove! Yes, Gillespie!" he shouted, "Le Grand Diable was among them!" "What about Diable?" I asked, pinning him down to the subject, for his mind was lost in angry memories. "What about him? He's my one enemy among the Indians," he answered in tones thick and ominously low. "I thrashed him within an inch of his life at Isle à la Crosse. Being a Nor'-Wester, he thought it fine game to pillage the kit of a Hudson's Bay; so he stole a silver-mounted fowling-piece which my grandfather had at Culloden. By Jove, Gillespie! The Nor'-Westers have a deal of blood to answer for, stirring up those Indians against traders; and if they've brought this on me——" "Did you get it back?" I interrupted, referring to the fowling-piece, neither my uncle, nor I, offering any defense for the Nor'-Westers. I knew there were two sides to this complaint from a Hudson's Bay man. "No! That's why I nearly finished him; but the more I clubbed, the more he jabbered impertinence, 'Cooloo! cooloo! qu' importe! It doesn't matter!' By Jove! I made it matter!" "Is that all about Diable, Eric?" continued my uncle. He ran his fingers distractedly back through his long, black hair, rose, and, coming over to me, laid a trembling hand on each shoulder. "Gillespie!" he muttered through hard-set teeth. "It isn't all. I didn't think at the time, but the morning after the row with that red devil I found a dagger stuck on the outside of my hut-door. The point was through a fresh sprouted leaflet. A withered twig hung over the blade." "Man! Are you mad?" cried Jack MacKenzie. "He must be the very devil himself. You weren't married then—He couldn't mean——" "I thought it was an Indian threat," interjected Hamilton, "that if I had downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant to have his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know I left the country that fall." "You were wrong, Eric!" I blurted out impetuously, the terrible significance of that threat dawning upon me. "That wasn't the meaning at all." Then I stopped; for Hamilton was like a palsied man, and no one asked what those tokens of a leaflet pierced by a [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] dagger and an old branch hanging to the knife might mean. Mr. Jack MacKenzie was the first to pull himself together. "Come," he shouted. "Gather up your wits! To the camping ground!" and he threw open the door. Thereupon, we three flung through the club-room to the astonishment of the gossips, who had been waiting outside for developments in the quarrel with Colonel Adderly. At the outer porch, Hamilton laid a hand on Mr. MacKenzie's shoulder. "Don't come," he begged hurriedly. "There's a storm blowing. It's rough weather, and a rough road, full of drifts! Make my peace with the man I struck." Then Eric and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy night. A moment later, our horses were dashing over iced cobble-stones with the clatter of pistol-shots. "It will snow," said I, feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness against my face; but to this remark Hamilton was heedless. "It will snow, Eric," I repeated. "The wind's veered north. We must get out to the camp before all traces are covered. How far by the Beauport road?" "Five miles," said he, and I knew by the sudden scream and plunge of his horse that spurs were dug into raw sides. We turned down that steep, break-neck, tortuous street leading from Upper Town to the valley of the St. Charles. The wet thaw of mid-day had frozen and the road was slippery as a toboggan slide. We reined our horses in tightly, to prevent a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from side to side managed to reach the foot of the hill without a single fall. Here, we again gave them the bit; and we were presently thundering across the bridge in a way that brought the keeper out cursing and yelling for his toll. I tossed a coin over my shoulder and we galloped up the elm-lined avenue leading to that Charlesbourg retreat, where French Bacchanalians caroused before the British conquest, passed the thatch-roofed cots of habitants and, turning suddenly to the right, followed a seldom frequented road, where snow was drifted heavily. Here we had to slacken pace, our beasts sinking to their haunches and snorting through the white billows like a modern snow-plow. Hamilton had spoken not a word. Clouds were massing on the north. Overhead a few stars glittered against the black, and the angry wind had the most mournful wail I have ever heard. How the weird undertones came like the cries of a tortured child, and the loud gusts with the shriek of demons! "Gillespie," called Eric's voice tremulous with anguish, "listen—Rufus—listen! Do you hear anything? Do you hear any one calling for help? Is that a child crying?" "No, Eric, old man," said I, shivering in my saddle. "I hear—I hear nothing at all but the wind." But my hesitancy belied the truth of that answer; for we both heard sounds, which no one can interpret but he whose well beloved is lost in the storm. And the wind burst upon us again, catching my empty denial and tossing the words to upper air with eldritch laughter. Then there was a lull, and I felt rather than heard the choking back of stifled moans and knew that the man by my side, who had held iron grip of himself before other eyes, was now giving vent to grief in the blackness of night. At last a red light gleamed from the window of a low cot. That was the signal for us to turn abruptly to the left, entering the forest by a narrow bridle-path that twisted among the cedars. As if to look down in pity, the moon shone for a moment above the ragged edge of a storm cloud, and all the snow-laden evergreens stood out stately, shadowy and spectral, like mourners for the dead. Again the road took to right-about at a sharp angle and the broad Chateau, with its noble portico and numerous windows all alight, suddenly loomed up in the center of a forest-clearing on the mountain side. Where the path to the garden crossed a frozen stream was a small open space. Here the Indians had been encamped. We hallooed for servants and by lantern light examined every square inch of the smoked snow and rubbish heaps. Bits of tin in profusion, stones for the fire, tent canvas, ends of ropes and tattered rags lay everywhere over the black patch. Snow was beginning to fall heavily in great flakes that obscured earth and air. Not a thing had we found to indicate any trace of the lost woman and child, until I caught sight of a tiny, blue string beneath a piece of rusty metal. Kicking the tin aside, I caught the ribbon up. When I saw on the lower end a child's finely beaded moccasin, I confess I had rather felt the point of Le Grand Diable's dagger at my own heart than have shown that simple thing to Hamilton. Then the snow-storm broke upon us in white billows blotting out everything. We spread a sheet on the ground to preserve any marks of the campers, but the drifting wind drove us indoors and we were compelled to cease searching. All night long Eric and I sat before the roaring grate fire of the hunting-room, he leaning forward with chin in his palms and saying few words, I offering futile suggestions and uttering mad threats, but both utterly at a loss what to do. We knew enough of Indian character to know what not to do. That was, raise an outcry, which might hasten the cruelty of Le Grand Diable. [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] CHAPTER III. NOVICE AND EXPERT. Though many years have passed since that dismal storm in the spring of 1815, when Hamilton and I spent a long disconsolate night of enforced waiting, I still hear the roaring of the northern gale, driving round the house-corners as if it would wrench all eaves from the roof. It shrieked across the garden like malignant furies, rushed with the boom of a sea through the cedars and pines, and tore up the mountain slope till all the many voices of the forest were echoing back a thousand tumultuous discords. Again, I see Hamilton gazing at the leaping flames of the log fire, as if their frenzied motion reflected something of his own burning grief. Then, the agony of our utter helplessness, as long as the storm raged, would prove too great for his self-control. Rising, he would pace back and forward the full length of the hunting- room till his eye would be caught by some object with which the boy had played. He would put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of the dead. Afterwards, lanterns, which we had placed on the oak center table on coming in, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, and each of us involuntarily walked across to a window and drew aside the curtains to see how daylight was coming on. The white glare of early morning flooded the room, but the snow-storm had changed to driving sleet and the panes were iced from corner to corner with frozen rain-drift. How we dragged through two more days, while the gale raved with unabated fury, I do not know. Poor Eric was for rushing into the blinding whirl, that turned earth and air into one white tornado; but he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and we prevailed on him to come back. On the third night, the wind fell like a thing that had fretted out its strength. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet and reflecting a white dazzle that made one's eyes blink. Great icicles hung from the naked branches of the sheeted pines and snow was wreathed in fantastic forms among the cedars. We had laid our plans while we waited. After lifting the canvas from the camping-ground and seeking in vain for more trace of the fugitives, we despatched a dozen different search-parties that very morning, Eric leading those who were to go on the river-side of the Chateau, and I some well-trained bushrangers picked from the habitants of the hillside, who could track the forest to every Indian haunt within a week's march of the city. After putting my men on a trail with instructions to send back an Indian courier to report each night, I hunted up an old habitant guide, named Paul Larocque, who had often helped me to thread the woods of Quebec after big game. Now Paul was habitually as silent as a dumb animal, and sportsmen had nicknamed him The Mute; but what he lacked in speech he made up like other wild creatures in a wonderful acuteness of eye and ear. Indeed, it was commonly believed among trappers that Paul possessed some nameless sense by which he could actually feel the presence of an enemy before ordinary men could either see, or hear. For my part, I would be willing to pit that "feel" of Paul's against the nose of any hound that dog- fanciers could back. "Paul," said I, as the habitant stood before me licking the short stem of an inverted clay pipe, "there's an Indian, a bad Indian, an Iroquois, Paul,"—I was particular in describing the Indian as an Iroquois, for Paul's wife was a Huron from Lorette—"An Iroquois, who stole a white woman and a little boy from the Chateau three days ago, in the morning." There, I paused to let the facts soak in; for The Mute digested information in small morsels. Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was not at all the picturesque figure which fancy has painted of his class. Instead of the red toque, which artists place on the heads of habitants, he wore a cloth cap with ear flaps coming down to be tied under his chin. His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat of some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above brightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on an invisi...