Lords of the North Part 33

"Then cry on forever!"

With womanly ingrat.i.tude, she promptly called me "a goose" and other irrelevant names.

The rest of our talk that evening I do not intend to set down. In the first place, it was best understood by only two. In the second, it could not be transcribed; and in the third, it was all a deal too sacred.

We did, however, become impersonal for short intervals.

"I feel as if there were some storm in the air," said Frances Sutherland. "The half-breeds are excited. They are riding past the settlement in scores every day. O, Rufus, I know something is wrong."

"So do I," was my rejoinder. I was thinking of the strange gossip of the a.s.siniboine encampment.

"Do you think the _Bois-Brules_ would plunder your boats?" she asked innocently, ignorant that the malcontents were Nor'-Westers.

"No," said I. "What boats?"

"Why, Nor'-West boats, of course, coming up Red River from Fort William to go up the a.s.siniboine for the winter's supplies. They're coming in a few days. My father told me so."

"Is Mr. Sutherland an H. B. C. or Nor'-Wester?" I asked in the slang of the company talk.

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't think he knows himself. He says there are numbers of men like that, and they all know there is to be a raid. Why, Rufus, there are men down the river every day watching for the Nor'-Westers' Fort William express." "Where do the men come from?" I questioned, vainly trying to patch some connection between plots for a raid on North-West boats and plots for a fight by Nor'-West followers.

"From Fort Douglas, of course."

"H. B. C.'s, my dear. You must go to Fort Douglas at once. There will be a fight. You must go to-morrow with your father, or with me to-night," I urged, thinking I should take myself off and notify my company of the intended pillaging.

"With you?" she laughed. "Father will be home in an hour. Are you sure about a fight!"

"Quite," said I, trembling for her safety. This certainty of mine has been quoted to prove premeditation on the Nor'-Westers' part; but I meant nothing of the sort. I only felt there was unrest on both sides, and that she must be out of harm's way.

Truly, I have seldom had a harder duty to perform than to leave Frances alone in that dark house to go and inform my company of the plot.

Many times I said good-by before going to the canoe and times unnumbered ran back from the river to repeat some warning and necessitate another farewell.

"Rufus, dear," she said, "this is about the twentieth time. You mustn't come back again."

"Then good-by for the twenty-first," said I, and came away feeling like a young priest anointed for some holy purpose.

I declare now, as I declared before the courts of the land, that in hastening to the Portage with news of the Hudson's Bay's intention to intercept the Nor'-Westers' express from Fort William, I had no other thought but the faithful serving of my company. I knew what suffering the destruction of Souris had entailed in Athabasca, and was determined our brave fellows should not starve in the coming winter through my negligence.

Could I foresee that simple act of mine was to let loose all the punishment the Hudson's Bay had been heaping up against the day of judgment?

CHAPTER XXI

LOUIS PAYS ME BACK

What tempted me to moor opposite the ruins of Fort Gibraltar? What tempts the fly into the spider's web and the fish with a wide ocean for play-ground into one small net? I know there is a consoling fas.h.i.+on of ascribing our blunders to the inscrutable wisdom of a long-suffering Providence; but common-sense forbids I should call evil good, deify my errors, and give thanks for what befalls me solely through my own fault.

Bare posts hacked to the ground were all that remained of Fort Gibraltar's old wall. I had not gone many paces across the former courtyard, when voices sounded from the gravel-pit that had once done duty as a cellar. The next thing I noticed was the s.h.a.ggy face of Louis Laplante bobbing above the ground. With other vagabond wanderers, the Frenchman had evidently been rummaging old Nor'-West vaults.

"Tra-la, comrade," he shouted, leaping out of the cellar as soon as he saw me. "I, Louis Laplante, son of a seigneur, am resurrecting. I was a Plante! Now I'm a _Louis d'or_, fresh coined from the golden vein of dazzling wit. Once we were men, but they drowned us in a wine-barrel like your lucky dog of an English prince. Now we're earth-goblins re-incarnate! Behold gnomes of the mine! Knaves of the nethermost depths, tra-la! Vampires that suck the blood of whisky-cellars and float to the skies with dusky wings and dizzy heads! Laugh with us, old solemncholy! See the ground spin! Laugh, I say, or be a hitching-post, and we'll dance the May-pole round you! We're vampires, comrade, and you're our cousin, for you're a bat," and Louis applauded his joke with loud, tipsy laughter and staggered up to me drunk as a lord. His heavy breath and bloodshot eyes testified what he had found under the rubbish heaps of Fort Gibraltar's cellar. Embracing me with the affection of a long-lost brother, he rattled on with a befuddled, meaningless jargon.

"So the knife cut well, did it? And the Sioux did not eat you by inches, beginning with your thumbs? Ha! Tres bien! Very good taste! You were not meant for feasts, my solemncholy? Some men are monuments. That's you, mine frien'! Some are champagne bottles that uncork, zip, fizz, froth, stars dancing round your head! That's me! 'Tis I, Louis Laplante, son of a seigneur, am that champagne bottle!"

Pausing for breath, he drew himself erect with ridiculous pomposity. Now there are times when the bravest and wisest thing a brave and wise man can do is take to his heels. I have heard my Uncle Jack MacKenzie say that vice and liquor and folly are best frustrated by flight; and all three seemed to be embodied in Louis Laplante that night. A stupid sort of curiosity made me dally with the mischief brewing in him, just as the fly plays with the spider-web, or the fish with a baited hook.

"There's a fountain-spout in Nor'-West vaults for those who know where to tap the spigot, eh, Louis?" I asked.

"I'm a Hudson's Bay man and to the conqueror comes the tribute,"

returned Louis, sweeping me a courtly bow.

"I hope such a generous conqueror draws all the tribute he deserves. Do you remember how you saved my life twice from the Sioux, Louis?"

"Generous," shouted the Frenchman, drawing himself up proudly, "generous to mine enemy, always magnificent, grand, superb, as becomes the son of a seigneur! Now I pay you back, rich, well, generous."

"Nonsense, Louis," I expostulated. "'Tis I who am in your debt. I owe you my life twice over. How shall I pay you?" and I made to go down to my canoe.

"Pay me?" demanded Louis, thrusting himself across my path in a menacing att.i.tude. "Stand and pay me like a man!"

"I am standing," I laughed. "Now, how shall I pay you?"

"Strike!" ordered Louis, launching out a blow which I barely missed.

"Strike, I say, for kicking me, the son of a seigneur, like a pig!"

At that, half a dozen more drunken vagabonds of the Hudson's Bay service reeled up from the cellar pit; and I began to understand I was in for as much mischief as a young man could desire. The fellows were about us in a circle, and now, that it was too late, I was quite prepared like the fly and the fish to seek safety in flight.

"Sink his canoe," suggested one; and I saw that borrowed craft swamped.

"Strike! _Sacredie!_ I pay you back generous," roared Louis. "How can I, Louis Laplante, son of a seigneur, strike a man who won't hit back?"

"And how can I strike a man who saved my life?" I urged, trying to mollify him. "See here, Louis, I'm on a message for my company to-night.

I can't wait. Some other day you can pay me all you like--not to-night, some-other-time----"

"Some-oder-time! No--never! Some-oder-time--'tis the way I pay my own debts, always some-oder-time, and I never not pay at all. You no some-oder-time me, comrade! Louis knows some-oder-time too well! He quit his cups some-oder-time and he never quit, not at all! He quit wild Indian some-oder-time, and he never quit, not at all! And he go home and say his confess to the cure some-oder-time, and he never go, not at all!

And he settle down with a wife and become a grand seigneur some-oder-time, and he never settle down at all!"

"Good night, Laplante! I have business for the company. I must go," I interrupted, trying to brush through the group that surrounded us.

"So have we business for the company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and you can't go," chimed in one of the least intoxicated of the rival trappers; and they closed about me so that I had not striking room.

"Are you men looking for trouble?" I asked, involuntarily fingering my pistol belt.

"No--we're looking for the Nor'-West brigade billed to pa.s.s from Fort William to Athabasca," jeered the boldest of the crowd, a red-faced, middle-aged man with blear eyes. "We're looking for the Nor'-Westers'

express," and he laughed insolently.