Lords of the North Part 3

"And you're quite sure she isn't in the house?" replied my relative.

"Quite!" he answered pa.s.sionately.

"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 a 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 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 das.h.i.+ng 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 Baccha.n.a.lians caroused before the British conquest, pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sing 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, s.h.i.+vering 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 n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.ce. 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.

CHAPTER III.

NOVICE AND EXPERT.

Though many years have pa.s.sed 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s.

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 invisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf, that held them to his waist, tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for me to go on.

"That Iroquois, who belongs to the North-West trappers----"

"_Pays d'En Haut?_" asks Paul, speaking for the first time.