Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 32

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The conference, by our Governor’s plan, was to begin with dignity, and, if all went well, end with a dram. The sentry had orders to announce the visitors smartly. It was I, however, as it happened, who announced them first.

“This must be they coming now, sir,” said I, “for I see a man in a red coat.”

“So he has donned it to call on me! It may have impressed some of our settlers, Baxter, but all it arouses in me is suspicion. Well, here they are.”

The sentry stepped in at the door.

“Mr. McDonald of Garth,” said he, “and Captain Duncan Cameron.”

“How do you do, gentlemen? How do you do, Mr. McDonald? We have met before but I have not so far had the pleasure of a visit from—er—Captain Cameron.”

Cameron was a man very large, and very self-important of carriage I thought him as I stood at attention to one side, self-important to the point of being ludicrous. I preferred the other man, he with the broken arm. Cameron was so grand that he must surely, thought I, have no sense of proportion. My own captain, the Governor, Miles Macdonell, was punctiliously bowing to them, Spencer with him.

“I have been busy since my arrival,” said Cameron, consequential of manner.

“Let me introduce Sheriff Spencer,” said Miles, “and Mr. Baxter.” McDonald gave a genial nod of his head to both of us but Cameron raised his, closed his eyes, and bowed with them shut. His companion looked at him as though half-astonished, half-amused and, if he did not suffer from a facial twitch, then he winked to me—or thus at least I decided.

“Sheriff?” inquired Cameron. “Sheriff? I did not know you had any with civil or forensic titles here, did not know you had a sheriff.”

Macdonell raised his brows.

“Much as I was unaware, sir,” he retorted, “of your military rank. Might I ask the regiment, Captain?” for there was no regimental insignia on Cameron’s coat.

“The Voyageurs’ Corps.”

“The Voyageurs’ Corps. Let me see: I have heard of it. It was a short-lived regiment, was it not? It was disbanded, in fact, a year or two ago, I think.”

Cameron evaded him.

“By order of the officer in command at Michilimackinac,” he explained, “I received my commission. Alexander Macdonell, a cousin of yours, I understand, is by the same order commissioned a lieutenant, and Seraphim Lamar of my staff at Fort Gibraltar an ensign.”

“Well, well,” murmured the Governor and determined then, I imagine, to make full inquiries regarding these military titles. There were, however, the courtesies of a host to remember, so though he was dubious of the red coat and the commission he seemed to be ready to let the subject rest for the nonce.

“Might I respond by asking What regiment? of you?” said Cameron.

“Surely. There is nothing to hide—explain,” answered Macdonell. “I have spent many years in actual service. Back in 1782 I received my commission as ensign in the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, and served in that regiment till its reduction in 1784. Ten years later I was appointed lieutenant in the second battalion of the Royal Canadian Volunteers to which my father, the Speaker of the Assembly in Upper Canada, had been gazetted as captain. In 1796 I received from Lord Dorchester my commission as captain. My father was then lieutenant-colonel of the regiment.”

“Well, well,” murmured Cameron.

“But why are we standing?” asked the Governor. “Pray be seated, gentlemen,” and he glanced at me.

I moved chairs forward for them. They looked one to another as they sat down. Cameron cleared his throat violently several times.

“Let us get straight to business,” he began. “And first let me say this: The sentiment of the natives here—who are not ignorant of the state of things—will show you, if rightly represented, how far it is necessary for the existence of your infant colony that a perfect understanding and an intercourse of mutual good offices should exist between us.”

Here was a preliminary speech to consider and all considered it; and all heard it, McDonald of Garth included to judge by a frown he gave, as a threat thinly veiled—a threat that the Indians might be raised against our Colony. The Governor, I knew, was disappointed that McDonald of Garth was not the spokesman but, glancing at him then and noting the frown and, afterwards, his relaxed and patient posture, hoped he was just allowing the grandiose Cameron to fire off his artillery and that later he would speak to better purpose. Miles Macdonell was not a man to be threatened. McDonald, looking at him, probably so considered. He seemed to have a sudden itching in his face by the way he rubbed it over.

Cameron opened his eyes wide to stare fixedly at the Governor, at Spencer, and then at his companion as though for evidence of the effect on them of that volley. He ignored me. And he saw blank faces.

“I have two charges to make against the Colony,” he said. “First of all it would appear, Captain Macdonell, that you are not yet conversant with the usages of this country. Do you know the French word cache?”

“Surely.”

“A private cache is looked upon as sacred,” said Cameron. “Men have been killed——”

He hesitated because McDonald of Garth impatiently moved, turned in his chair as if for a more direct scrutiny of him.

“I am not threatening—I am explaining,” Cameron went on. “Men have been killed for robbing a cache. It is a highly serious offence among the natives. A party of our voyageurs in the farther Indian Countries had occasion to do more than cache some provisions, to leave them in a storehouse, and I have information that the store was robbed by your people.”

“I think I know to what you refer,” replied Captain Macdonell. “The officer I sent in command of that party had sufficient evidence that pemican was being held there for later export contrary to my orders. The gentleman in charge at the place did not deny the assumption.”

“Nor admit it,” said Cameron.

“Quite,” said the Governor. “Therefore, as purchase was refused, my men—being within the confines of the territory over which I have authority—took a certain quantity for which payment will be made according to the terms of my embargo.”

“We do not want your payment in British bills at the customary rates—to quote the words of that absurd and arrogant embargo,” said Cameron, and raised his head, closed his eyes. The whiteness of the lids on his sunburnt face gave a repellant effect to me, bending over my table, quill in hand, but observing all under lowered brows. “That party, under orders from you, sir, broke into the storeroom of our fort at la Souris and carried away four hundred packages of pemican. They drew three stakes to get into the fort from the palisade. Mr. Spencer here, whom you call Sheriff Spencer, we were unable to arrest on hearing of the affair. But Mr. Howse, who assisted him actively, was arrested because of that on a charge of burglary.”

“I cannot think on what authority,” said Miles Macdonell.

Swiftly I saw him look sidelong at the Sheriff, expressionless himself but curious perhaps to see if Spencer showed any sign of regret for the manner in which he had conducted affairs that day. It was not that the Governor was going to blame him for his methods. There was, indeed, a part of him that had been amused over the whole thing though he had seen the possibility of the North-Westers making precisely the charge that Duncan Cameron voiced then.

“You forget, Captain Cameron,” he pointed out, “that I had issued an order and that it was being flagrantly flouted. You cannot deny,” he added, “that your Company continues, in face of it, to export all the provisions on which I put an embargo. The most important to me is the pemican. My order is flouted.”

“You question my authority to make the arrest of your Mr. Howse,” said Cameron, “and I question your authority to issue—or at least to compel—such an edict as you put your hand to with Mr. Secretary Sheriff Spencer witnessing.”

He then settled himself more solidly in his chair, sat large and mute, head back, eyelids superciliously lowered. McDonald of Garth beside him tossed one leg over the other, at ease.

“I think we might be able to come to some arrangement,” he suggested, and cupped a hand over his mouth and plucked his lips.

“Before we go further, gentlemen,” said Miles Macdonell, “would you care to have a dram?”

Cameron opened his eyes and looked seriously at him.

“Eh? A dram? Oh, yes, Captain Macdonell. A dram would go down well!” he exclaimed, much less pompous.

The Governor turned and nodded to me and I stepped to the door to bid his servant, who awaited instructions there, to attend to that.

“This matter,” McDonald of Garth persisted, “can surely be settled amicably. We don’t need to be at each other’s throats. You see, Captain Macdonell, the North-West Company needs pemican too as well as your colonists. It is needed for the voyageurs. Whitefish and geese by the lakes, moose meat in Athabasca, poor rabbits by the lakes and fat rabbits in Athabasca, salmon and wild sheep on the Pacific side of the Stone Mountains—these are part of the bill of fare. Everywhere pemican is needed. It is the staple. Could we not come to an agreement?”

The servant entered with a tray of goblets and bottles. There was a pause in the discussion till all four were served and then, after the formal elevation of the glasses and the “Slainté!” of these Highlanders——

“Where was I?” said McDonald of Garth. “Yes—take this very seizure you have made: four hundred bags of pemican. Couldn’t we make, on these, a basis for an understanding? You have two hundred down here in your storeroom now. The other two hundred you have at Brandon House. Could you not give instructions to Mr. Fidler to let us have those at Brandon House back again and you settle with us for the two hundred you have here? We need pemican as well as you, and that was a considerable seizure,” and he chuckled as though amused at it, and drank, smacking his lips.

Duncan Cameron leant forward and very heavily he spoke.

“We have somewhere about double the number of men at Fort Gibraltar that you have here,” he said.

It was another threat to the ears of all, McDonald of Garth included again, rather than a suggestion for a greater need for provisioning, because it took no account of the settlers, was spoken only as in comparison of the numbers of the staff at Gibraltar with the men visible at the administrative quarters at Point Douglas.

“Yes, yes,” said McDonald hastily. “We have lots of mouths to fill too. But, my dear Cameron, we must not forget that Captain Macdonell has all his settlers to think of along the riverside as well as the people under your nose here.” He turned to our Governor. “I want to discuss other aspects of provisioning with you, Captain Macdonell. Oatmeal is a thing that the North-West Company lacks badly. I understand that the Hudson’s Bay Company has shipped in a larger supply than usual, enough not only for its own people but for sale to the settlers till they can become their own millers. I was wondering if we could have, as well as a certain limiting of your embargo, a kind of trade agreement. For instance: Let us say on our side we promise to supply such and such a number of bags of pemican to you on condition that you use your influence with the Hudson’s Bay Company to let us have such and such a number of stone of oatmeal.”

Here was a new aspect of the commissariat question. Would that the Colony, I thought, was further advanced, with flourishing crops and grist mills. Would that we could ourselves supply that meal!

“I believe, sir,” replied Miles Macdonell, “that we could arrange something of that sort.”

“And something else: I heard at Bas de la Rivière that, because of the American army occupying Detroit, our Company is anxious regarding transportation of furs and provisions. I suppose because of the Royal Charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company that His Majesty’s ministers, as well as the Company, would have to be consulted regarding permission for us to use the York Fort, or York Factory, route. Should this war with America bring more fleets of theirs on the lakes, should they get up as far as Lake Superior, we might have serious trouble in the shipping of our furs to Montreal. A concession from the Hudson’s Bay Company to use their fort would be welcome. With all else amicably arranged perhaps you could pen a word to Lord Selkirk anent that, he being their chief shareholder. But we can leave that in abeyance. All that remains is for us to agree to meet and discuss the details of give and take in the pemican problem now that we have got this far towards an understanding.”

He rose then and Cameron, looking at him gloomily, rose also.

“A deoch-an-doruis,” suggested the Governor as he and Spencer stood up, Spencer watching him thoughtfully.

“Yes, yes, indeed,” said Cameron, less gloomy. “I see nothing against it.”

The doch-an-doruis being duly elevated and drunk, that conference was at end.