Читать книгу When the Wilderness Calls – Bertrand W. Sinclair Collection - Bertrand William Sinclair - Страница 45

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A perceptible wind from out the east blew squarely in our teeth all the way down the Sicannie. Slight as it was, a man could no more face it steadily than he could hold his nostrils to sulphur fumes blown from a funnel. All day it held us back from our best speed. Time and again we were forced to halt in the lee of a wooded point, where with threshing of arms we drove the sluggish blood back into our numbing finger-tips. Twice the frost struck its fangs into my cheeks, despite the strap of rabbit fur that covered my face between eyes and mouth. Barreau rubbed the whitened places with snow till the returning blood stung like a searing iron. Twice I performed a like office for him. So it came that night had fallen when we lifted up our voices at the gate of the stockade. And while we waited for it to open, our dogs whining at the snarl of their fellows inside, some one in the glimmer behind us hailed the post in French. A minute later the frosty creak of snowshoes sounded near and a figure came striding on our track. As he reached us the gate swung open. A group of men stood just within. One held a lantern so that the light fell upon our faces—and, incidentally, their own. They were strangers, to the last man. Barreau ripped out an oath. For a second we surveyed each other. Then one of the men spoke to him who had come up with us:

“Is there aught afoot?” he asked, with a marked Scotch accent.

“Not that I have seen, Donald,” the other replied.

“Then,” said the first, speaking to Barreau, “come ye in an’ put by your dogs. Dinna stand there as if ye looked for harm.”

“I am very sure there will be no harm done us,” Barreau drawled, unmoved in the face of this strange turn of affairs. “But I am of two minds about coming in.”

The Scot shrugged his shoulders. “That’s as ye like,” he observed. “’Tis not for me tae compel ye. ’Tis merely the factor’s word that if ye came, he desired speech wi’ ye. Ye will find him noo at the store.”

Barreau considered this a moment. “Lead the way then, old Bannockburn,” he said lightly, “we will take our dog-team with us.”

“Keep an eye to the rear, Bob,” he muttered to me. “This may be a trap. But we’ve got to chance it to find out how things stand.”

I nodded acquiescence to this; for I myself craved to know how the thing had been brought to pass.

The group of men scattered. Save the Scot with the lantern, not one was in sight when Barreau halted the dogs and turned the toboggan on its side by the front of the store. Our lantern-bearer opened the door and stepped inside, motioning us to enter. My eyes swept the long room for sign of violent deeds. But there were none. The goods lay in their orderly arrangement upon the shelves. The same up-piled boxes and bales threw huge shadows to the far end. There was no change save in the men who stood by the fire. Instead of Montell warming his coat-tails before the crackling blaze, a thin-faced man stood up before the fire; a tall man, overtopping Barreau and myself by a good four inches. He bowed courteously, looking us over with keen eyes that were black as the long mustache-end he turned over and over on his forefinger. A thatch of hair white as the drifts that hid the frozen earth outside covered his head. He might have been the colonel of a crack cavalry regiment—a leader of fighting men. His voice, when he spoke, bore a trace of the Gaul.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted, “it is a very cold night outside. Come up to the fire.”

He pushed a stool and a box forward with his foot and turned to a small, swarthy individual who had so far hovered in the background.

“Leave us now, Dufour,” he said. “And you, Donald, come again in a half hour.” “Oui, M’sieu.” Dufour gathered up his coat and departed obediently, the Scot following.

As nonchalantly as if he were in the house of a friend Barreau drew his box up to the fire and sat down; thrust the parka hood back from his face and held his hands out to the blaze. But I noticed that he laid the rifle across his knees, and taking my cue from this I did the same when I sat down. A faint smile flitted across the tall man’s features. He also drew a seat up to the fire on the opposite side of the hearth so that he faced us.

“It is to Mr. Barreau I speak, is it not?” he inquired politely.

“It is,” Barreau acknowledged. “And you, I take it, are Factor Le Noir of King Charles’ House.”

“The Black Factor, as they call me—yes,” he smiled. “I am glad to have met you, Mr. Barreau. You are a hardy man.”

“I did not come seeking compliments,” Barreau returned curtly. “Why are you here—you and your voyageurs, making free with another man’s house? And what have you done with Simon Montell and his daughter? and the forty-odd men that were here two days ago?”

“One thing at a time,” Le Noir answered imperturbably. “Is it possible that you do not know of the arrangement which was made?”

“It is obvious that there was an arrangement,” Barreau snorted. “What I would know is the manner of its carrying out.”

“To be brief, then,” the other said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if he measured out his words, “for a consideration Simon Montell has abandoned the field. While my Company permits no competitor in the trade, according to our charter, yet sometimes it is cheaper to buy than to fight.”

Barreau’s shoulders stiffened. “Your charter is a dead letter,” he declared. “You know it as well as I. That, however, is beside the point. You have made terms with Montell—but you have made none with me.”

“Possession is nine points of the law,” Le Noir returned tranquilly. “Having bought we will now fight, if it be necessary. One does not pay twice for the same goods. Be wise, and seek redress from—well, if the fat man has tricked you, make him pay.”

“Suppose I choose instead to make the Company pay,” Barreau drawled. “What if I come to you with a hundred well-armed red men at my back?”

“Ah, it is of that I wished to speak with you,” the Black Factor crossed his legs and emphasized his remarks with a waggling forefinger. “Of that very thing. I know that you are not easily turned aside, but this time—listen. To-night, here within these stockade walls, there are four redcoat men from MacLeod. They have come seeking”—he paused significantly—“you can guess whom they seek. Now, if, when you leave here, your tracks should point to the Indian camps of the west—why, then the redcoats shall be shown it. And I will send twenty men to help them. But if you take the south trail these four will return empty-handed.”

Barreau sat a minute or two pondering this. “You win,” he said at length. “I am not the man to beat my fists on a stone. Give us flour and tea—and your word as a gentleman that the Police shall not be put on our track—and we quit the Sicannie.”

“You shall have the tea and the flour,” Le Noir agreed. “There are the shelves. Take what you want. I give my word for the Police. I would beg of you to stay to-night, but these government men have sharp ears and eyes. Should they get a hint—I cannot put a blanket over the mouths of my men——” he spread his hands as if to indicate that anything might happen.

Throughout our brief stay Barreau’s thinly veiled vigilance did not once relax. The supplies he selected I carried to the door while he stood back watching me with his rifle slung in the hollow of his arm. If this wary attitude irked Le Noir he passed it by. To me it seemed that Barreau momentarily expected some overt act.

Eventually we had the food, a hundred pounds of flour, a square tin of tea, a little coffee, some salt and pepper and half a dozen extra pairs of moccasins lashed on the toboggan. Then he stirred up the surly dogs and we went crunching over the harsh snow to the stockade wall attended by Donald and his lantern, and the Factor himself swathed to the heels in a great coat of beaver.

At the drawing of the bar and the inward swing of the great gate, Barreau put a final question to Le Noir. “Tell me, if it is not betraying a confidence,” he said ironically, “how much Montell’s flitting cost the Company?”

“It is no secret,” the Factor replied. “Sixty thousand dollars in good Bank of Montreal notes. A fair price.”

“A fair price indeed,” Barreau laughed “Good-night, M’sieu the Black.”

The gate creaked to its close behind us as the dogs humped against the collars. A hundred yards, and the glimmering night enfolded us; the stockade became a vague blur in the hazy white.

Barreau swung sharp to the west. This course he held for ten minutes or more. Then down to the river, across it and up to the south flat. Here he turned again and curtly bidding me drive the dogs, tramped on ahead peering down at the unbroken snow as he went. We plodded thus till we were once more abreast of the stockade. For a moment I lost sight of Barreau; then he called to me and I came up with him standing with his back to the cutting wind that still thrust from out the east like a red-hot spear.

He took the dog-whip from me without a word, swinging the leaders southward. In the uncertain light I could see no mark in the snow. But under my webbed shoes there was an uneven feeling, as if it were trampled. We bore straight across the flat and angled up a long hill, and on the crest of it plunged into the gloomy aisles of the forest. Once among the spruce, Barreau halted the near-winded dogs for a breathing spell.

“We will go a few miles and make camp for the night,” he said. “This is Montell’s trail.”

“The more miles the better,” I rejoined. “I’m tired, but I have no wish to hobnob with the Policemen.”

“Faugh!” he burst out. “There are no Policemen. That was as much a bluff as my hundred well-armed Indians. Le Noir is a poser. Do you think I’d ever have gotten outside that stockade if there had been a redcoat at his call? Oh, no! That would have been the very chance for him—one that he would have been slow to overlook. I know him. He’s well named the Black Factor. His heart is as black as his whiskers and the truth is not in him—when a lie can make or save a dollar for his god—which is the Company. We have not quite done with him yet, I imagine. Hup there, you huskies—the trail is long and we are two days behind!”