Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 13

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It was not until the 3rd of September that at last he managed to get away to pay his respects to the officers of the North-West Company at Fort Gibraltar, near the mouth of the Assiniboine. Each day so far there had been something to prevent the visit, but at last, though time was wearing on, he succeeded. He was accompanied by Mr. Hillier and had John McLeod and myself in attendance. We rowed across Red River in the late afternoon, rounded the knob of bank into the Assiniboine, and landed immediately below the fort.

Up the bank we mounted where it was marked with a gouge of much coming and going and from there had a view of the plain, the wide expanse tufted here and there with clumps of brush and clusters of trees. Fort Gibraltar was set a little way back from the river, a palisaded fort. A few tepees were pitched near the gate and their occupants, with dark eyes, watched us.

“Some métis among these, by the look of them,” remarked Hillier.

“What are métis, sir?” I asked out of my ignorance.

“It is just the French word for half-breed,” he explained, “like Noël for Christmas,” he added with a genial smile. “The French say métis, we say half-breed. Same thing. And both, I trust, without reproach, sans reproche,” and again he smiled.

The gate was open. Beside it I saw a massive métis or half-breed in an attire part Indian, part from the trade room—buckskin and fustian. He had a red sash round his waist and from it a pistol butt protruded. He eyed us frowning as we approached.

“Is Mr. Willis within?” inquired Captain Macdonell.

The man cast back his head and lowering his eyelids examined him from top to toe in a manner that annoyed me. Within the palisade were several small houses, one, we discovered later, for the wintering partner (as the North-West Company called those who, in the Hudson’s Bay, were styled factors), two for the men, a trading store, two “hangards” or stables, a blacksmith’s shop, an ice-house where ice cut from the river was kept for the preservation of their victuals and the cooling of their drinks in summer, and above it a watch-tower that they called, with their French turn, a guérite.

The sentry indicated the chief officer’s house with a pointing hand, then evidently decided he might leave the gate and announce us.

“Come this way, messieurs,” said he. “I shall go with you. What is the name?” he added as we drew near one of the houses.

“My respects to Mr. Willis,” replied the Governor. “My name is Macdonell—Captain Miles Macdonell.”

The door of the officers’ house stood open and the sentry had no sooner stepped within and called, “A Captain Macdonell to see you,” than Mr. Willis was on the threshold to greet us. He was a man of medium height, well built, yet with a suggestion of some bodily frailty, of recent, or present, illness in his appearance. That was a hearty enough welcome he gave us. There was no antagonism in his eyes. Somehow we all had the impression that we were expected. We presumed that our arrival had been reported by watching half-breeds and Indians.

“Captain Macdonell,” said John Willis, extending his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“I am glad to be here, sir,” replied Macdonell. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Hillier, late of His Majesty’s navy, now of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”

They put their heels together and bowed to each other, then shook hands cordially.

“And one of the Company’s young officers,” continued the Governor, “Mr. John McLeod.”

The physique of John McLeod engaged John Willis’s attention. His eyes roved over him as he bowed.

“And Mr. Baxter, my secretary.” A secretary, appointed by the Earl of Selkirk, was to come out that year, a Mr. Spencer, but I was so styled temporarily.

It was all, from the point of view of deportment, courtly. These preliminaries over, with a circling of a hand in air almost as though to put it amiably upon Captain Macdonell’s shoulder, Willis led us along a corridor in which were odours of meat being cooked. We passed into a comfortable room where two men rose on our entrance.

“I do not know if I need to introduce you,” said Mr. Willis. “At least you are namesakes—Captain Macdonell and another Macdonell, Alexander, often called Tête Jaune—Yellowhead.”

The Governor smiled.

“Indeed we are related,” he replied. “We are cousins, and not only cousins but brothers-in-law. How are you, Alexander?”

“Delighted to meet you, cousin,” said Alexander, but there was little evidence, I thought, of friendliness or delight in his eyes.

Yellowhead had his soubriquet with reason, and he carried his head proudly. These Macdonells ran to size. He was nearly as tall as our Governor and with quick alert movements—a dashing fellow, as McLeod remarked to me afterwards, talking of that visit.

The other man was heavy and dissipated-looking. A mountain of a man he seemed as he rose. There was a red glint in his eyes that were inclined to be peeping; his nose was short, his upper lip long, his chin heavy. I found him both repellant and interesting.

“And let me introduce Court Nez, one of the free-traders,” said Willis. “Just Court Nez—known by no other name on the prairies and desiring no other name. Court Nez—Captain Macdonell of the Lord Selkirk Settlement Scheme, of which you may have heard; and Mr. Hillier, gentlemen, late of His Majesty’s navy and now of our rivals,” and he smiled tolerantly. “Mr. McLeod, and Mr. Baxter.”

“Baxter!” exploded Court Nez, staring at me. “Did you say Baxter?” and he made a fresh scrutiny of me.

“Yes, Mr. Baxter,” repeated Willis giving him a glance of anxiety.

Court Nez laughed.

“Well, so far as that goes,” he rumbled, “why the hell not?”

“Drunk,” I considered. “And carries it not as well as might be wished.”

“Be seated, gentlemen, be seated,” begged Willis. He clapped his hands together and there appeared a young métis, by no means subservient of manner though prompt in his attention. “More chairs, Pierre.” The chairs were brought and all sat down. “We were just having a dram,” Willis continued, “before we dine.” He wagged a head sideways at Court Nez and added, in a bantering voice, “He has his drams all the time. The rest of us usually wait till the day is getting on. Your cousin was joining him in one for an appetiser.”

“Before you dine!” exclaimed Captain Macdonell, “I had not intended to arrive to pay my respects just before a meal.”

“Oh, well, you’ll stay to it anyhow,” Willis invited him. “By the odours in the corridor it should not be long.”

At that moment a girl passed through the room, which had two doors. She put a spell on me. She was clearly a half-breed but she was dressed in white woman’s clothes though wearing moccasins which allowed her to enter so silently. Her hair was of a lustrous black, parted in centre, drawn back, and hung on either side of her face in thick plaits. But what caught me most was the velvet softness of her eyes. They met mine in a quick survey of all those who had arrived, and I had the impulse then—so strong that I had to hold myself in my chair to thwart it, so strong that I have never forgotten it—to be up and to follow her. I had heard the phrase “his head reeled” but had had no personal understanding of it till then. Janet Lennox had never affected me thus.

Court Nez raised his great head and laughed raucously.

“What’s the joke?” asked Willis.

“Youthful bad manners,” answered Court Nez, and casting back his head he laughed again, loudly, to Willis’s embarrassment and continued speaking, addressing himself to me: “Aye, you have come to a great country, Mr. Baxter! Wild ducks, buffalo tongues, bear fat, saskatoon berries, fresh whitefish, Indian women. But be careful, young man, be careful.”

I then was embarrassed and, I know, reddened. The Governor gave me a quick inquiring inspection while Hillier sounded Court Nez shrewdly and, by his expression, passed the same verdict upon him that I had passed earlier—had him mentally docketed as drunk.

A diversion was created by the entrance of another to introduce, Mr. Willis’s chief officer, Benjamin Frobisher. There was again much drawing of heels together and bowing, and we had all just seated ourselves—Frobisher on a stool from under the table, that he found for himself—when the lad Pierre hurried in with more tumblers on a tray which he set down. Willis saw to the charging of the glasses and then, with a lead from him, they were all duly elevated with more bows one to another.

Frankly, to me such ways were somewhat new. I felt awkward but I watched and imitated the procedure. A few minutes later I was aware of the girl passing back, but because of the attention I had brought upon myself earlier at first sight of her, I forced myself to immediate contemplation of a bearskin rug at my feet.

“Can any one tell me,” inquired Court Nez conversationally, “why the French half-breeds in this country are so much darker in complexion than the Scots half-breeds?”

“Are they so?” asked Hillier.

“My God, man,” said Court Nez, “would I want any one to explain why they are so, if they are not so? Bois-brûlés they are sometimes called: burnt wood: charcoal. There you are! But no matter—forget my question. Another sip,” and he raised his glass again and gulped.

John Willis turned to our Governor.

“Did you have a fair journey?” he asked politely.

“Not too bad,” Captain Macdonell replied. “There was a storm on Lake Winnipic but we had a naval man with us,” and he nodded to Hillier, “to give us confidence.”

“Your Company has a shorter way than ours to travel into the Indian Countries,” said Willis. “York Factory is, I suppose, about a third as far from here as Montreal, our headquarters and port. Of course, because of the length of our journey we break it always at Fort William. Mosquitoes, I suppose, especially ashore at the carrying-places, were your worst trouble?” and he began, merrily descriptive, to slap his cheeks and the backs of his hands as though slaying these pests.

It was obvious to me that he was working hard as a good host. He had felt, I suspected, the antipathy of Alexander Macdonell to us, the new-comers. Alexander, we discovered in course of talk, was visiting him from one of the North-West forts out on the prairie. Willis, I am sure, wished he would not look so sullen on his cousin and these men who had courteously come to pay their respects, and also hoped that his other guest—Court Nez, the free-trader—would not embarrass them further.

“Your Indians up there,” said Alexander, “are all more or less subservient—tame. Down here it is a different matter. We have the warlike Dakotas fairly close, and we have the Assiniboines out on the plains. I doubt if they will be pleased to see farmers coming into the country.”

At that moment Mr. Willis looked beyond his guests into the corridor, and nodded. Evidently he had received some sign for——

“Well, gentlemen, we will go in to supper,” said he.

When we were all seated at table in the dining-room, Willis, as though with his best manners as a host, leant forward and addressed the Governor.

“Tell me,” he said, “a little more of what I have only had rumours about so far, chiefly from Mr. Fidler of the Hudson’s Bay Company while he was engaged on surveying the land close by. This Selkirk Scheme—tell me of it. The Earl of Selkirk has bought some considerable tract hereaway, has he not?”

“Yes, sir. Roughly, south from the middle of Lake Winnipic and the little Winnipic Lake—or Winnipigosis—to the height of land between the waters running to the Missouri and Mississippi and those running to Hudson Bay; and from the source of the Winnipic River westward to a line drawn down from where the fifty-second parallel intersects the Assiniboine.”

“Grand God!” exclaimed cousin Alexander. “He has not bought much! And from whom did he purchase?”

“From the Hudson’s Bay Company,” answered our Governor, easily.

“The Hudson’s Bay Company lays claim to these lands, then—sufficient claim to consider it can sell them?” asked Alexander, while Willis frowned anxiously from one to the other, feeling no doubt, as I did—as indeed I think all who listened felt—that there was a quality as of suave sparring in the talk of these two.

“Oh, surely, yes. By the original charter, cousin. I remember even the words of part of it,” and lightly Captain Macdonell chanted: “ ‘And all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be that lie within the entrance of the straits called Hudson Straits together with all the lands, countries and territories upon the coasts and confines of the seas, straits, bays——’ and so forth.”

“The charter gives them not ownership but merely trade and commerce, does it not?” persisted Alexander.

“It begins by saying sole trade and commerce,” agreed Captain Macdonell, “but goes on, after having dealt with those matters, to say that the Governor and Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay are made and created the true and absolute lords and proprietors.”

“I am sorry to press the point, cousin,” said Alexander, “but did not that charter of the English king specify all straits, sounds, lands and what-not, got at through Hudson Straits not already claimed by any other Christian power?”

Court Nez threw back his head and laughed as though greatly enjoying himself.

“All without by your leave of the Indians,” said he.

“Yes, some such words were in the charter,” admitted the Governor in answer to his cousin, “words to the effect of ‘lands not now actually possessed by any of our subjects or by the subjects of any Christian prince or state.’ The earliest French claim to my knowledge was that of Henry the Fourth of France towards the end of the sixteenth century. I have been refreshing my memory of all that, I may say, since receiving my commission as governor from Lord Selkirk. And I must remind you that it was in the reign of Henry the Seventh of England that Cabot, commissioned by that monarch, sailed out of Bristol and discovered the North American continent—the continent. Henry the Seventh of England well predated Henry the Fourth of France.”

“Yes, yes, of course I know all that,” said Alexander, and smiled. He seemed to me then amiable enough. “Columbus landed on an island. Cabot landed on the mainland. And, by the way, there is a legend that Norsemen were on the continent even before Cabot. So we might continue this erudite conversation! But what I am thinking of chiefly now is that the North-West Company, which I serve, is in a way successor to the old French traders who were here on these plains under the old régime.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Miles Macdonell. “That no doubt explains why the Indians—who know its history—look upon the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men as being King George men but do not look so upon the Nor’-Westers.”

I saw at once that the terms of that agreement with him annoyed Alexander more than disagreement could have done. His eyes flashed. His body stiffened.

“But of course,” added the Governor, “any possible, or impossible, French claims, by the fall of Quebec and the treaty of Utrecht need no longer be considered.”

Pierre, who had been attending to the dishes and the plates, at a sign from Willis passed round, refilling the glasses.

“Let us have a toast, gentlemen,” suggested Willis, “to the success of Captain Macdonell and his party.”

Court Nez chuckled to himself over that. He appeared to be enjoying himself vastly. He rose to his feet, glass in hand. Frobisher and Willis rose also. Alexander looked at them as with contempt, then half-rose. The toast was drunk and when they were all seated again our Governor stood up and bowed graciously to his host and to the others.

“I appreciate the courtesy,” he said.

He had hardly seated himself when Alexander spoke again.

“While agreeing with you,” said he, “that by the Treaty of Utrecht the French claim went, and seeing it as possible—just possible—that some of the Indians hereabout may still consider the Hudson’s Bay people a little more King George’s, so to speak, than the Nor’-Westers, I fear you will have trouble with the aboriginal inhabitants who know nothing of the claims of kings of Europe to their land. They are an interesting people, you know. They have communal ideas. That any single individual could own a piece of ground is beyond their comprehension. They tolerate our posts because they are trading posts. Farther west they do not even tolerate posts. A leathern tepee, here to-day and gone to-morrow, is well enough, but to fell trees and build a lodge of wood—no. The tribes of the prairies here will resent any fencing and No trespass notices, so to speak. I think you would be well advised to urge your noble employer not to waste his substance on the project.”

“Drink up, drink up,” begged Mr. Willis, “and let us forget this. After all, as you say, Captain Macdonell, France—whatever it owned once—owns nothing here now, and I have no doubt the earl had legal opinion before completing the transaction.”

Pierre, lounging against a sideboard looking on, was again active. The drained glasses he refilled at once. Court Nez emptied his immediately, signed to the half-breed to fill his goblet again, loosened his waistcoat buttons and, with glassy eyes, apparently gave himself up to reverie.

Anon, Alexander seemed to dismiss his captiousness towards his cousin, or at least appeared to hold no personal animus against him.

“By the way,” he said, “your elder brother John passed east just shortly before you came.”

“I knew he planned to resign this year,” said Miles Macdonell, and in his eye there showed gratitude for this change of manner. “I wish I had met him here.”

“How extraordin’ religious he is,” interjected Court Nez dreamily, reflectively, “stopping his canoe-men on Sundays for Mass. Aye, and he knows a good Madeira too. A fine honourable gentleman.”

Frobisher and Hillier, I observed, exchanged a humorous semi-blank stare.

“I feel sorry, cousin,” said Alexander, “that you are not, as he was, in the service of the North-West Company. It is too bad that you are with our rivals.”

“Comfort yourself, cousin,” replied our Governor, smiling and trying to return what might be sign of friendliness with sign of friendliness, “that I am not exactly with your rivals. I am here on behalf of Lord Selkirk to prepare the way for his settlers.”

“That is worse still,” declared Alexander, his voice acid again. “I wonder why he purchased such a large chunk of land? Does he expect to put farmers on all that at once?”

“I believe to begin with, and certainly for some time to come, there will be only a strip settled along the fertile bank of Red River, or Summerberry River as I believe some still call it,” Captain Macdonell told him.

“Even so it is too bad, too bad! Farming is utterly opposed to fur-getting. I am sorry you have become involved in that foolhardy scheme.”

Then it was that I felt suddenly, for myself, distracted and distressed, for as I looked round the table all who sat there were abruptly duplicated in my vision. I lost part of the conversation, but was brought back to it by Court Nez. There was something about this man that increasingly both fascinated and repelled me.

“Do these settlers of my lord Selkirk,” he asked, “have to believe in the existence of the Holy Trinity?”

I tittered. I thought the question was merely in the nature of drunken nonsense and was, I suppose, by my own condition, in a mood to appreciate it.

“Wasn’t that extraordinary of Lord Baltimore?” said Captain Macdonell. I wondered what he meant.

“He did that?” inquired Willis.

“Yes. In founding his settlement he had a stipulation that the settlers must believe in the Trinity. Lord Selkirk,” he went on, with some dignity in his voice, addressing himself directly to Court Nez, “is one of the most broad-minded men I have met, and the most tolerant. He did me the honour to discuss every conceivable angle of the scheme with me. There is to be entire religious liberty. According to the creeds of the farmers they will be ministered to.”

Court Nez began to laugh without opening his mouth, just shook, heaved, with suppressed mirth. Mr. Willis made a great show of interest.

“Well, cousin,” said Alexander, “be he broad-minded or no, it seems to me he plans the beginning of the end of the fur trade.”

“My dear Alec!” exclaimed the Governor. “Think of the extent of the land, the vastness of the land.”

I pulled myself together and had no difficulty in thinking of the vastness of the land. I was filled with a sense of its vastness, aware of expansive Rupert’s Land round me. Then I found that all were rising. There was much putting of heels together again and bowing. Alexander bowed stiffly. Court Nez (“known by no other name on the prairies, and desiring no other name,” Mr. Willis had said when introducing him to us), with tumbler in hand stood in the middle of the room, a smile on his face that almost hid his small eyes in creases.

Mr. Benjamin Frobisher came to the door with us. Mr. Willis accompanied us to the palisade where I had a desire, I remember, to ask if the gates there, as at York Factory, were closed every night at eight o’clock, to prove to them, if they suspected otherwise, that I was sober. Then I said to myself, “No matter, no matter.” We were bowed out with polite words of thanks for the entertainment by Captain Macdonell and Mr. Hillier, polite expressions of pleasure in having had them to entertain from John Willis.

“I trust you will be able to come over to-morrow,” said Captain Macdonell, “to see the ceremony of taking seizen.”

“Taking seizen?” inquired Mr. Willis.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Hillier here, in the Hudson’s Bay service, and with the rank of magistrate, is to deliver over formally to me on behalf of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson Bay, and I have to take over on behalf of Lord Selkirk. I propose to have the ceremony at noon. I shall be delighted to welcome you to witness it, and any of your officers you would desire to have accompany you.”