The Land of Frozen Suns Part 12

"I guess that's the proper card," he uttered at last. "I can make it back, all right, if it does come bad weather. I got to get her home, that's sure. You can kinda keep out of sight till we get started, can't you, George?"

"That's as it happens," Barreau returned indifferently. "Meantime, have you grub-staked any of these hunters? Are the Indians beginning to come in?"

Montell nodded. "Quite a few. Two or three camps up the river, the boys say. Some of 'em wouldn't make no deal till you showed up. Don't you let none of 'em have too big a debt, George."

Barreau shrugged his shoulders at this last caution. He sat staring into the fire, his lean, dark face touched with its red glow. Then abruptly he got up and opened the door.

"It's dark, Bob," he said to me. "Let us go to the cabin." And without another word to Montell he left the store, I following.

It was just dark enough so that we could distinguish the outline of the post buildings, and the black, surrounding wall of the stockade. The burned stable had been rebuilt during our absence. Within it horses sneezed and coughed over their fodder. On the flat beyond the post I could hear the night-herder whistle as he rode around the grazing mules.

From this window and that, lights shone mistily through the sc.r.a.ped-and-dried deer-skin that served for gla.s.s. And at the far end of the stockade a group of men chattered noisily about a roaring fire. Yet the lights and sounds, the buildings of men and the men themselves seemed inconsequential, insignificant, proportioned to their surroundings like the cheeping of a small frog at the bottom of a deep well. The close-wrapping wilderness, with its atmosphere of inexorable solitude, enfolded us with silence infinitely more disturbing than any clamor. It may have been my mood, that night, but it seemed a drear and lonely land; the bigness of the North, its power, the implacable, elemental forces, had never taken definite form before. Now, all at once, I saw them, and I did not like the sight.

We did not make our way straight to the cabin. Barreau had no mind to go hungry. He stopped at the mess-house and bade the cook send our supper to us, when it was ready. Then we went to the cabin, flung our lean packs in a corner, built a fire, and sat by it smoking till a voluble Frenchman brought the warm food.

Again Barreau had fallen into wordless brooding. For the hour or more that pa.s.sed after we had eaten he lay on his bed staring at the pole-and-dirt roof. He was still stretched thus, an unlighted cigarette between his lips, when I took off my clothes and laid me down to sleep.

And when at daybreak I wakened and sat up sleepily, Barreau's bedding was neatly smoothed out on the bunk. His smoking material, which had lain on the table, was gone; likewise his rifle, cartridge-belt, and the pack-rigging he had cast aside the evening before. It seemed that Mr.

Barreau must have gone a-journeying.

I opened the door and looked about me. Here and there men busied themselves at sundry occupations. The sun had but cleared the tree-tops, and on flat and hillsides deep black shadows still nestled. My roving eyes finally settled on one of these blots of shade, and presently I saw four figures, mounted, two of them leading extra horses, ascending the south bank. Looking more closely I observed that one was a woman. Mr.

Montell, I decided, was taking time by the forelock. I stood with hands jammed in my trousers pockets, wis.h.i.+ng that I, too, were homeward bound, wondering if Bolton had got either of my letters, and if he had made any attempt to trace me-and a lot of other footless speculation.

CHAPTER XIII-A FORETASTE OF STRONG MEASURES

Thus thrown upon my own resources, I betook myself to the roomy cabin where the cook reigned supreme. Thence, with breakfast disposed of, to the store. I found there a small, bewhiskered man bowed over a ledger, and a dozen husky packers stowing goods on the shelves. The clerical person gazed at me over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles in a colorless, uninterested sort of way. I took him to be the bookkeeping machine of the concern, and such proved to be the case. And when I asked for "George," prudently refraining from mention of surnames he told me primly that "Mr. Barreau" had gone up the river, leaving word that I was to make myself at home in the meantime. Having delivered himself of this message, he resumed his task. So I continued my round of the post until I located old Ben Wise. What between chatting with Ben, and sundry games of seven-up with one or two of the others whom I knew, and long spells of sitting alone in the cabin smoking over the fire, I managed to murder time for three days. At the end of which period Barreau returned.

He did not come alone, but at the head of a veritable flotilla of birch-bark canoes, laden with a picturesque mixture of Indians, squaws, round-faced pappooses, sharp-nosed dogs, and the household goods pertaining to these. By the appearance of things I inferred that he had been out to jog up the natives who had signified willingness to trade with the house of Montell. They beached the canoes, and pitched their lodges along the river bank, a little way from the stockade. In the two hours of daylight following the arrival of the vanguard other little parties came slipping quietly around the curve of the Sicannie, pitched their camps, and set about cooking food. The flat was speckled with twinkling dots of fire when dark vanquished the long twilight.

Barreau was tired, and had little to tell. I had come by a new deck of cards through favor of the colorless Mr. Cullen, and we played a silent game or two of euchre that night before turning in. By dawn we had breakfasted and were at the store, and the copper-skinned men of the lodges began to come in and cast their eyes upon such things as they desired.

All forenoon I watched this silent outfitting of the hunters, saw this one and that stand wrapped to the ears in his gaudy blanket, seeming not to see or to be conscious of aught that transpired. Then of a sudden he would point abruptly to a certain article, a trap or two, maybe, a caddy of tea, a flask of powder, and emit a guttural sound that Barreau interpreted to Cullen, who would solemnly make an entry in his notebook.

When the red brother had reached his trading limit, his squaw took the burden of his purchases on her back, and he strode forth wrapped in a dignity even more striking than his blanket, she following meekly at his heels.

"How do you manage to keep track of them all?" I asked Barreau, as we sat at dinner. "Suppose these Indians that you outfit now don't show up again? Can you trust them so absolutely? For my part I can hardly tell one from another."

"You'd find out that they have distinct individual characteristics,"

Barreau replied, "if you were with them long. I know most of these fellows well enough to pick them out of a crowd. In fact, a good many of them won't trade except with me-which is one strong hold I have over my slippery partner. And so far as trusting them, an Indian's word is good as gold. For every dollar's worth of stuff we let them have this fall they'll bring ten dollars' worth of pelts next spring-unless it is an extraordinary winter. Anyway, we don't stand to lose a great deal on what we trust them for. Where we will make money will be in the spring trade. They'll have plenty of furs left after their debt is paid, and they'll want guns and more powder, flour and tea for the summer, tobacco, and clothes and gew-gaws for the women and pappooses. If the winter is normal we're going to have a big trade; bigger even than I thought. I wouldn't mind," he concluded, with a short laugh, "if Montell had to go clear to Benton, and got snowed in there. That would eliminate one dangerous factor. But that's too much to hope for."

"It's a long trip," I reflected. "He can't get to the Missouri in time to send his daughter down on the last boat, even. The river will freeze any day now. Benton would be a dreary place for her to stay alone, I should think. He may stay there with her."

"Not likely," Barreau contended. "As it happens, she knows one or two rather nice families who are wintering at Benton, and she'll be apt to stay with them. He has been altogether too keen to have his finger in this winter's pie-when it wasn't needed there. No, the old fox has something up his sleeve-something that he's been leading up to ever since we left Benton. He'll be back, if he has to come on his hands and knees."

Barreau was right. Montell did come back, and the date of his return was only something more than forty-eight hours from the time of that conversation. We were stretched upon our respective bunks, I listening to Barreau's talk of long-dead traders who had undertaken to buck the Hudson's Bay Company, when some one tapped on the door; and at Barreau's laconic "come in," who but Montell himself should enter! He shut the door carefully behind him, and waddled to a seat. Barreau raised on one elbow.

"You!" he said sharply. "Back here already? What has happened now?"

Montell took off his hat and threw it petulantly on the floor. The expression on his face was sour as curdled milk.

"We couldn't make it, that's all," he growled. "I guess the H. B. C.'s gettin' busy all at once. Anyhow, we got headed off."

"How?" Barreau demanded.

Montell flung out his hands expressively.

"Easiest way in the world," he sputtered wrathfully. "Some feller with a good eye just trailed us up, and killed off our stock-shot 'em one by one. Finally we was afoot. So we turned back. Couldn't walk clear to MacLeod. d.a.m.n 'em, anyway!"

"No one hurt?" Barreau asked quietly.

"Barrin' blistered feet-no," Montell snapped.

His gaze involuntarily travelled to his own broad, shapeless feet, and a smile flickered across Barreau's countenance. There was a momentary lull.

"What are you going to do now?" Barreau inquired next.

"I'm goin' to take eight men, by G.o.d! and a string of mules, and hit it in the mornin'," Montell exploded. "I ain't goin' to have that girl winter here, if I know it. And I ain't goin' to be headed off from nothin' by the Hudson Bay or any other d.a.m.ned outfit. I'll show them bushwhackin' parties a trick or two. They'll find old Montell ain't so slow. I just come over here to let you know I was back, George, so's you wouldn't be gettin' into the foreground to-morrow mornin' when we're fixin' to start. You might just as well be accommodatin'."

"Oh, to be sure. As a favor from one gentleman to another," Barreau observed sarcastically. "Anything to oblige. But if I were you I should not try it again-not till you can take the outfit lock, stock, and barrel. You may find it only a waste of mules, if not worse. Evidently the Company is minded to pen the lot of us here, and teach us a lesson."

"Just so the girl's out of it," Montell muttered defiantly, "they got my permission to go ahead with their teachin'. We've held our own for quite a spell. But I got to get her clear. So I'm goin' to tackle it again."

"Very well," Barreau said indifferently. "But you had better take a few pair of snowshoes. You may need them."

"Maybe so," Montell returned. "But I bet I get a scalp or two if they go to settin' us afoot _this_ trip." And he gathered up his hat and left the cabin.

Barreau lay back on his bed a long time without remark. Then he said aloud, apropos of nothing in particular:

"I shouldn't be surprised if that was the way of it."

I looked over at him, and catching my interrogative gaze, he went on.

"I've simply been doing a bit of inductive reasoning. Taking things as they are in this country what more natural than that the Hudson's Bay Company should have become alarmed lest we grow to a formidable compet.i.tor, and have simply made up their minds that we must be ousted, by hook or by crook. They have a way of keeping posted, you know. I shouldn't be surprised if one or two of the men on our payroll were Company spotters. Here is Montell and his daughter, and myself. They might reason that by driving him back and intimidating him, forcing him to winter here, and then hara.s.sing us in every conceivable way till spring, they may make us glad to quit. For instance, they could try to kill off our stock and poison our dogs. And if there was a chance to burn us out, why that would be the finis.h.i.+ng touch. I shouldn't be surprised if that is their scheme. And then along in the winter they might even go so far as to have the Mounted Police pull one chestnut out of the fire for them, by revealing my whereabouts."

"How does it come," I asked, in some surprise, "that they haven't done that before, if they know that George Barreau, the fur-trader, is Slowfoot George of the MacLeod country?"

"For the very good reason that they want no Mounted Policemen in this neck of the woods," he said decidedly. "They don't want to establish a precedent. They have lorded it in the North for generations, and so long as they continue to do so the Canadian government will permit it. Once the Police begin to come here, the Company authority is at an end. Also their monopoly-for a Mounted Police post up here would mean open country, and a swarm of free traders. Of course, what I said, is mere theory, but I might be on the right track. If I am, we may look for merry times here this winter, and you and I may have to take to the deep snows before spring."

"Suppose-while we're theorizing," I ventured, "that Montell had an idea he could get along without you-if he wants to settle your chances of sharing in the profits, as you think-why mightn't he give the Police a quiet hint, if he gets through?"

"I can very well imagine him doing that," Barreau responded thoughtfully. "But he can't make it go without me; at least, not just yet. And I do not think he will get through, for all his determination."

I kept Barreau's prophecy in mind. Days of busy outfitting slipped by; I kept no track of the hunters who indebted themselves to the post, but they came and went by scores. The days merged into a week. At the end of it a black ruck of clouds came scudding out of the west. Thick and lowering they gathered over head, and one day at noon, while Barreau and I stood in the doorway of the store, watching a great mult.i.tude of damp snowflakes come eddying down through the still air, Montell, his daughter, and the eight men, came plodding afoot to the gate of the stockade.