The Law of the North Part 35

"Drive, Basil," he urged. "Drive hard! I don't think there's a living soul left, but we can't take any chances."

In dashed the blades, but hardly had they dipped a dozen strokes when a string of lights starred the river round the first bend.

Dreaulond swore softly. "Nor'westers, ba gos.h.!.+ Some been away!"

"Hug the sh.o.r.e," Dunvegan whispered. "We may slip past them without their seeing us in this fog."

Paddling in silence, they worked their craft close against the rocky wall of the farther sh.o.r.e. Prey to mingled hope and fear, the four crouched low in the gunwales. The lights were still coming in file, and in a moment the hiding ones could see a fleet of canoes with torches in the bows. Swiftly the birch-barks skimmed the b.l.o.o.d.y streaks the torches cast on the black water. They changed their course slightly, and the leading one forged along within a few yards of Dunvegan's craft.

Discovery seemed certain. The chief trader whispered to Basil and felt for his weapons in the canoe bottom. Voices of the oncoming men struck sharp and clear through the moist air.

"It seemed like an earthquake!" someone was saying.

Instantly Dunvegan knew the voice--the Factor's! He dropped his weapons.

"Earthquake it sure was," a voice replied. "And the fort was on top of it. Your men have saved you the trouble of a siege, Macleod. They sure got to the powder!"

The pulses of the four leaped gladly. Now in the nebulous torch-glare they could make out the faces and figures in the foremost craft. There in the bow was Wahbiscaw, and behind him Malcolm Macleod. Amids.h.i.+ps Dunvegan saw Granger, the sandy-haired deputy he had met on Lake Lemeau and again at Kabeke Bluffs. Aft was his swarthy, black-bearded companion, Garfield. In his place as steersman squatted wise old Maskwa.

The keen-visaged Granger was casting piercing looks on all sides as they plunged on. He timed his paddle strokes with an oft-repeated phrase.

"They got to the powder; they sure did!"

And Garfield's white teeth split his black beard. "Yes, and where in thunder are they now?"

"Here," laughed Dunvegan, and from the gloom drove alongside them.

"Here. Keep down those guns!"

Granger, ever quick to defend, lowered his arms. "By the hinges of h.e.l.l!" he exclaimed. "You sneaked? You got to it and sneaked? Oh, what a jolt! Oh, Lord, what a jolt!"

All around the other canoes glided up. The chief trader looked on the faces of the Oxford House and Brondel men. The haggard, strained look in their eyes told of paddling night and day from Fort Brondel. And they had nearly made it! Dunvegan thanked G.o.d they hadn't.

As for the Hudson's Bay forces, they stared at the four in the canoe as at people escaped from the Pit. But the Factor stirred them from immobility.

"Ash.o.r.e!" he ordered. "Ash.o.r.e! Search the hill!"

"I'm afraid there's nothing to be found," observed Dunvegan, "except perhaps a few wretches to be put out of their misery. I guess there were tons of powder."

"How'd it happen?" Macleod demanded, as side by side their two canoes nosed in to sh.o.r.e through the channel where the watergate was blown to atoms.

"Ask Brochet. He was there from the first. He can tell you more than I."

So between Macleod and Granger, as they climbed the twisting path cut through rock to the landing by the watergate, the priest walked, outlining what had taken place. Behind them, with Dunvegan and Garfield, toiled Desiree. She would not be left alone below. Maskwa and Wahbiscaw had gone ahead with the rest of the Hudson's Bay men.

As they reached the top, Brochet finished his brief account of the affair in the fur-house.

The Factor took it in silence. Not so Granger!

"The game old devil!" he cried. "He sure kept his nerve to the last.

But he has made himself thunderin' hard to identify. Eh, Macleod? I guess you can't swear to his ident.i.ty now!"

"You should have arrested him as soon as you placed him at La Roche,"

the Factor answered. "And found me afterwards."

"Don't talk nonsense! We'd look fine playing a single-handed game like that, wouldn't we? It had to be worked a different way. You both had a.s.sumed names. We didn't know which was which. So we had to nail our plan in the middle and let it swing at both ends. You see how it swung?

If we had to take you, the Northwest Company would fight for us. If we had to take Ferguson, the Hudson's Bay Company sure was at our backs!

Good Lord--what's here? A quarry?"

A quarry indeed it looked, a huge, black cave amid the rocks, the heart of the granite headland blown out by a t.i.tanic blast. They stood on the edge of the slope, gazing at the torches of the Hudson's Bay men as they swarmed like gnomes in the bowels of the pit. They cl.u.s.tered and spread and crawled here and there, round the sides of the chasm, up over its lips, where ghostly as bale-fires little heaps of wreckage smoldered and flamed.

Then the reluctant lights came back one by one, and the tale of the bearers ran the same.

"Nothing!"

"Not a body!"

"Not a limb!"

Like a funeral bell Brochet's voice broke the grim silence. "Gone? All gone? And unshriven! G.o.d rest their souls." He knelt on the rocks.

While he muttered a prayer, Maskwa strode out of the dark. He had no torch, but he held something in his hands. Startled, the others craned and peered. A dozen torches flashed over the Ojibway, and in his arms the crimson light played upon a crumpled form.

"He breathes, Strong Father!"

Dunvegan sprang to one side of the burden, Granger to his other. As they placed the mangled figure on the ground the head came by chance upon the priest's knees.

"Ferguson!" Brochet whispered, awed. For though limbs and body were crushed and torn, the face remained unmarred.

"Aye, and a job for you," murmured Dunvegan.

But Granger had leaped at the name, dragging Macleod by the arm.

"Look!" he urged. "Look! Will you swear to him?"

The red glare bathed the white face. The Factor's eyes focused on the features and grew full of terrible light and would not come away.

"It's--it's--Funster," he choked.

Dunvegan saw his right hand clench and clutch the air. He held an imaginary weapon. The old scar was ripped from his heart. He was the primeval man, red with rage, thirsting for revenge, and baited blind because vengeance had been torn from his grasp.

And as if under the electric p.r.i.c.k of his tense words the Nor'wester stirred. He muttered once and opened his eyelids. Straight up into Macleod's awful face he stared, and his eyes suddenly gleamed with recognition.

"My son--my boy?" demanded the Factor hoa.r.s.ely.

The Nor'wester's lips strove a little and parted.

"Gaspard!" he groaned with his last breath.