Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 14

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In lack of any straight pine or fir such as we had seen, plentifully, northward, we had to be content with a slender young aspen as flagpole for that ceremony of September 4th. William Hillier saw to the felling of it, the lopping of its branches, the peeling of its bark, and fitted it atop with a pulley.

Indians, their interest aroused by the search for that tall and slender tree, gathered round to watch the proceedings like children at a fair. Some of our men found occasion to catch the dark eye of a woman here and there and wink to her. The response was sometimes a drooping of eyelids and a sudden retreat, sometimes a coy glint and a giggle, sometimes a glare like promise of murder.

Hillier ran a halliard through block or pulley and the pole was elevated. While that work was in progress Chief Peguis arrived, slow of motion, benign, yet with an air, I thought, of giving the rule.

“What you do now?” he asked.

“Put up flag,” replied Captain Macdonell.

“King George man flag?”

“Yes, King George man flag, and Hudson’s Bay Company,” the Governor told him.

“Hudson Bay. Good.”

The time drew near for the ceremony—and for John Willis and other officers from Fort Gibraltar to be with us, if our invitation was to be accepted. Out through the mesh of bankside foliage of oak and elm we all looked hopefully. Yes, there came a canoe from the mouth of the Assiniboine. White men were in it.

During the winter at Nelson Encampment, Captain Macdonell had given us military drill, to which some had objected, but those who definitely refused to accept it he had left behind at York Factory as unsatisfactory, to return across the Atlantic. We at Red River with him could at least shoulder arms, present arms, form fours, form two deep, form fours, be as we were—and so forth. A smart little body of men we may perhaps have looked but I knew that many were amused at the rôle we played. There we stood by in readiness to give the ceremony the authentic military touch that our Governor desired.

“Now, men,” said he, “we want this to be well done. Our friendly rivals of the North-West Company will be witnesses to our ceremony of taking seizen.”

Already more Indians, accompanied by métis or half-breeds, had come along through the bush, realising that something out of the usual was afoot there, and were looking on wide-eyed. John McLeod had been given charge of the twelve-pounders with which a salute was to be fired. I was in the nature of a sergeant beside the saluting party.

Up the bank from the canoe came Willis, Frobisher, and Captain Macdonell’s cousin, Alexander. The Governor and Hillier went down to meet them. Court Nez, I noticed, was not there. We were to see and hear more of him—much more—later, and through him I was to hear of my lost father (oh, more than that, indeed!) as in due course you shall hear. As he was not an officer of the North-West Company, Willis had not extended the invitation to him. On the farther side of Red River, the side from which they had come, the west side, upon the bluff, knots of people were visible, gathering there. We were told afterwards that the servants at Fort Gibraltar had been instructed not to come over.

As the visitors drew near I turned to the group that stood at ease, winked at them, and in the manner decreed by Captain Macdonell rasped, “At-tention!”

There was something as of observing ambassadors in the deportment of these North-Westers as they approached.

“Shoulder arms!” I rasped.

Captain Macdonell would have been depressed could he have got inside my head at that moment and known my thoughts. It was pleasant enough to watch these evolutions being performed with precision, but I perceived a touch of the ludicrous in them.

“Present arms!” I ordered.

The officers clustered there by the pole while we stood rigid, eyes front. I was aware of the river flowing past and of high white clouds sailing over, of some heedless half-breed children playing among the bushes and of Sinclair and Heney (the local officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company) drawing near—with something of moodiness, thought I, in their manner, due perhaps, I hazarded, to their clear knowledge of what the Governor thought of the failure to have a store of pemican—as ordered—awaiting his arrival. Chief Peguis, bowing with dignity to all gathered there, joined the party.

I was impressed by the diversity of attire in that gathering. There were long-tailed, high-collared blue coats, brass-buttoned, and coats with capots, hooded coats. The capot, of course, at that season hung down the back. The métis had a marked tendency to complete their dress, whether of broadcloth or of buckskin, with a bright scarf round the waist—with long ends, tasselled. Buffalo-hide leggings were worn by many of the watching full-bloods, hip high, and long fringed skin tunics. Some had a softly tanned buffalo robe over a shoulder and under an arm, adding to the suggestion of toga and the Roman aspect. Some had taken to wearing our calico shirts over the high leggings in the same manner that they would have worn a deerskin coat. One or two, I noticed, Peguis, for example, and Ouckidoat (a chief who had come in from the prairie to see the new-comers) were entirely dressed in white men’s clothes which they had donned just as we would, shirt-tails tucked in; but they kept their hair in braids, did not discard ear-rings, and had refused the foot-constricting shoe, retaining moccasins. One or two of the white men also wore moccasins instead of shoes. The moccasin is the last thing an Indian, imitating the invaders, discards and the first thing a white man, imitating the aborigines, adopts.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Hillier in that cheerful way of his, “it was kind of you to come over to witness the ceremony,” and he took a crisp parchment roll from his pocket, opened it, glanced at John McLeod who stood beside the twelve-pound swivel guns, and then began to read: “Between the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson Bay of the one part and the Right Honourable Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, on the other part WHEREAS ...”

In the distance the voices of the half-breed children at play rose and fell. The hissing and gurgling of Red River threaded the day. Looking round on the faces of those who had arrived to see what was afoot, Hillier suddenly realised that some Frenchmen were there, either free-traders or voyageurs of the North-West Company—perhaps both—and that many of the half-breeds must be French half-breeds. From his explanation to me of the meaning of the word métis he no doubt knew French but instead of translating for himself he turned to Mr. Heney.

“Would you, sir,” he requested, “be so kind as to translate as I go along?”

“With pleasure,” replied Heney.

Ishman—he who had come from the Jack River post at the north end of Lake Winnipic as interpreter to the Indians—was there also but it did not occur to Hillier to ask him to translate to the few full-bloods present.

At the words come to anon: “... absolute lords and proprietors of all these lands ...” I noticed Benjamin Frobisher glance at the flame-headed Alexander with, it seemed to me, a twinkle in his eyes. He appeared to be amused at the grim expression on Alexander’s face.

Hillier came to the final sentences and, as Heney uttered them again in French, nodded to John McLeod who, stepping to the halliard, raised and broke the flag. As it fluttered on the wind——

“Present arms!” I ordered the men, who had again been at attention after saluting the North-West officers.

Smartly they presented arms before the flag, and as they did so those beside the twelve-pounders let loose their booming salute—causing one of the half-breed women to jump all of two feet from the ground and then to laugh at herself, clapping a hand to her mouth. The last boom sounded.

“At—ease! Dis-miss! Break—off!”

Round a ready keg of rum all garnered. Pannikins were produced and, with a roll of the eyes to the fluttering flag above, toasts were drunk. The onlookers drew closer and had their share. Then the North-Westers, having witnessed this ceremony of taking seizen, seemed not desirous to prolong their stay. Together hosts and guests went down under the flutter of oak and elm leaves to the riverside. Willis, Frobisher, and Alexander Macdonell stepped into their canoes. Our Governor and Hillier came slowly up the bank towards us, talking quietly together. The rum keg provided for the men and the onlookers was empty.

“What you do now?” asked Peguis.

“We build lodge now,” said Captain Macdonell. “We build lodge for men. We go look good place.”

Peguis realised that he, too, ought to go, that it might be a loss to his dignity to stay.

“I tell my people come trade you whitefish,” he promised, and without a good-bye, accompanied by Ouckidoat, the other chief who had come to see the ceremony, departed.

The half-breeds and Indians who still remained, hopeful perhaps for the opening of another keg, understood that the show was over and drifted away.

“Whitefish—whitefish!” exclaimed Captain Macdonell. “A stopgap, that is all.”

He looked after the Hudson’s Bay Company’s regional officers who were moving away a trifle sheepishly—and no wonder, I considered! Hillier read his expression.

“Thanks to them, no pemican,” he said.

“Thanks to them. Oh, well, it simply means that we shall have to move most of the men sixty miles south to Pembina for the winter. For some reason the buffalo don’t come and winter at all in the occasional bush-tracts near here, as one might expect them to, but prefer to be up on the plateau or along what is called the coteau. One would think it would be too bleak for them there, but there they are. I recall hearing once from my brother John that they have even been seen rubbing their backs against the logs of the trading post there. The majority of our lads will have to go to Pembina and turn buffalo hunters with the métis. Some of them will remain here to build and we must at once, while there is natural hay handy, gather fodder for the bull and cow.”

“September, October,” murmured Hillier, as though to himself.

“Yes,” replied Captain Macdonell. “September, October, November, December: winter is not very far off.” He looked up at the sky. “But this is a good land so long as one knows how to cope with its climatic changes. I wonder if the first settlers are coming in this year or are staying at Hudson Bay.”

He stopped speaking. His gaze hardened as he looked over the river through the mesh of leaves, across to the mouth of Assiniboine. There was that in the puckering of his eyes that told us all not only thoughts of pemican lacking made his chin set grimly.

Where he looked we all looked—across the bronze flow of Red River—and saw a canoe, one of the long, light canoes, dart out of the Assiniboine and turn down Red River. The men who sat in it were digging in their paddles in swift unison. In the drift of the river they went quickly upon their way. Hillier, representing the Company in the recent ceremony, and Governor Miles Macdonell, who had taken seizen on behalf of Lord Selkirk, stood silent, watching. No one spoke till the canoe had disappeared round the first bend. Then——

“How far do you think they are going?” asked Hillier.

“To Fort William,” replied Captain Macdonell.

“And their errand?” inquired Hillier, but only, thought I, for confirmation of his own suspicions.

“To send word to the Montreal partners of their Company that we have arrived,” said our Governor in a hard voice.