CHAPTER III.
NOVICE AND EXPERT.
Though many years have passed since that dismal storm in the spring of1815, when Hamilton and I spent a long disconsolate night of enforcedwaiting, I still hear the roaring of the northern gale, driving roundthe house-corners as if it would wrench all eaves from the roof. Itshrieked across the garden like malignant furies, rushed with the boomof a sea through the cedars and pines, and tore up the mountain slopetill all the many voices of the forest were echoing back a thousandtumultuous discords. Again, I see Hamilton gazing at the leaping flamesof the log fire, as if their frenzied motion reflected something of hisown burning grief. Then, the agony of our utter helplessness, as long asthe storm raged, would prove too great for his self-control. Rising, hewould pace back and forward the full length of the hunting-room till hiseye would be caught by some object with which the boy had played. Hewould put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of thedead. Afterwards, lanterns, which we had placed on the oak center tableon coming in, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, andeach of us involuntarily walked across to a window and drew aside thecurtains to see how daylight was coming on. The white glare of earlymorning flooded the room, but the snow-storm had changed to drivingsleet and the panes were iced from corner to corner with frozenrain-drift. How we dragged through two more days, while the gale ravedwith unabated fury, I do not know. Poor Eric was for rushing into theblinding whirl, that turned earth and air into one white tornado; but hecould not see twice the length of his own arm, and we prevailed on himto come back. On the third night, the wind fell like a thing that hadfretted out its strength. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts,crusted over by the frozen sleet and reflecting a white dazzle that madeone's eyes blink. Great icicles hung from the naked branches of thesheeted pines and snow was wreathed in fantastic forms among the cedars.
We had laid our plans while we waited. After lifting the canvas from thecamping-ground and seeking in vain for more trace of the fugitives, wedespatched a dozen different search-parties that very morning, Ericleading those who were to go on the river-side of the Chateau, and Isome well-trained bushrangers picked from the _habitants_ of thehillside, who could track the forest to every Indian haunt within aweek's march of the city. After putting my men on a trail withinstructions to send back an Indian courier to report each night, Ihunted up an old _habitant_ guide, named Paul Larocque, who had oftenhelped me to thread the woods of Quebec after big game. Now Paul washabitually as silent as a dumb animal, and sportsmen had nicknamed himThe Mute; but what he lacked in speech he made up like other wildcreatures in a wonderful acuteness of eye and ear. Indeed, it wascommonly believed among trappers that Paul possessed some nameless senseby which he could actually _feel_ the presence of an enemy beforeordinary men could either see, or hear. For my part, I would be willingto pit that "feel" of Paul's against the nose of any hound thatdog-fanciers could back.
"Paul," said I, as the _habitant_ stood before me licking the short stemof an inverted clay pipe, "there's an Indian, a bad Indian, an Iroquois,Paul,"--I was particular in describing the Indian as an Iroquois, forPaul's wife was a Huron from Lorette--"An Iroquois, who stole a whitewoman and a little boy from the Chateau three days ago, in the morning."
There, I paused to let the facts soak in; for The Mute digestedinformation in small morsels. Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was notat all the picturesque figure which fancy has painted of his class.Instead of the red toque, which artists place on the heads of_habitants_, he wore a cloth cap with ear flaps coming down to be tiedunder his chin. His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coatof some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds abovebrightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on aninvisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggytrousers up, pulled the red scarf, that held them to his waist,tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for me to go on.
"That Iroquois, who belongs to the North-West trappers----"
"_Pays d'En Haut?_" asks Paul, speaking for the first time.
"Yes," I answered, "and they all disappeared with the woman and thechild the day before the storm."
The Mute's eyes were back on the snow.
"Now," said I, "I'll make you a rich man if you take me straight to theplace where he's hiding."
Paul's eyes looked up with the question of how much.
"Five pounds a day." This was four more than we paid for the cariboohunts.
Again he stood thinking, then darted off into the forest like a hare;but I knew his strange, silent ways, and confidently awaited his return.How he could get two pair of snow-shoes and two poles inside of fiveminutes, I do not attempt to explain, unless some of his numeroushalf-breed youngsters were at hand in the woods; but he was back againall equipped for a long tramp, and as soon as I had laced on theracquets, we were skimming over the drift like a boat on billows. In themazy confusion of snow and underbrush, no one but Paul would have foundand kept that tangled, forest path. Where great trunks had fallen acrossthe way, Paul planted his pole and took the barrier at a bound. Then heraced on at a gait which was neither a run nor a walk, but an easy trotcommon to the _coureurs-des-bois_. The encased branches snapped likeglass when we brushed past, and so heavily were snow and icicles frozento the trees we might have been in some grotesque crystal-walled cavern.The _habitant_ spoke not a word, but on we pressed over the brushwood,now so packed with snow and crusted ice, our snow-shoes were not oncetripped by loose branches, and we glided from drift to drift. In vain Itried to discern a trail by the broken thicket on either side, and Inoticed that my guide was keeping his course by following the marksblazed on trees. At one place we came to a steep, clear slope, where theearth had fallen sheer away from the hillside and snow had filled theincline. First prodding forward to feel if the snow-bank were solid,Paul promptly sat down on the rear end of his snow-shoes, and, quickerthan I can tell it, tobogganed down to the valley. I came leapingclumsily from point to point with my pole, like a ski-jumping Norwegian,risking my neck at every bound. Then we coursed along the valley, the_habitant's_ eyes still on the trees, and once he stopped to emit agurgling laugh at a badly hacked trunk, beneath which was a snowed-upsap trough; but I could not divine whether Paul's mirth were over aprospect of sugaring-off in the maple-woods, or at some foolish_habitant_ who had tapped the maple too early. How often had I known myguide to exhaust city athletes in these swift marches of his! But I hadbeen schooled to his pace from boyhood and kept up with him at everystep, though we were going so fast I lost all track of my bearings.
"Where to, Paul?" I asked with a vague suspicion that we were headingfor the Huron village at Lorette. "To Lorette, Paul?"
But Paul condescended only a grunt and whisked suddenly round a headlandup a narrow gorge, which seemed to lead to the very heart of themountains and might have sheltered any number of fugitives. In the gorgewe stopped to take a light meal of gingerbread horses--a cake that isthe peculiar glory of the _habitant_--dried herrings and sea biscuits.By the sun, I knew it was long past noon and that we had been travelingnorthwest. I also vaguely guessed that Paul's object was to interceptthe North-West trappers, if they had planned to slip away from the St.Lawrence through the bush to the Upper Ottawa, where they could meetnorth-bound boats. But not one syllable had my taciturn guide uttered.Clambering up the steep, snowy banks of the gorge, we found ourselves inthe upper reaches of a mountain, where the trees fell away in scraggyclumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the hill-crest.Paul grunted, licked his pipe-stem significantly and pointed his pole tothe hill-top. The dark peak of a solitary wigwam appeared above thesnow. He pointed again to the fringe of woods below us. A dozen wigwamswere visible among the trees and smoke curled up from a centralcamp-fire.
"_Voila, Monsieur?_" said the _habitant_, which made four words for thatday.
The Mute then fell to my rear and we first approached the general camp.The campers were evidently thieves as well as h
unters; for frozen porkhung with venison from the branches of several trees. The sap troughmight also have belonged to them, which would explain Paul's laugh, asthe whole paraphernalia of a sugaring-off was on the outskirts of theencampment.
"Not the Indians we're after," said I, noting the signs of permanency;but Paul Larocque shoved me forward with the end of his pole and acurious, almost intelligent, expression came on the dull, pock-pittedface. Strangely enough, as I looked over my shoulder to the guide, Icaught sight of an Indian figure climbing up the bank in our verytracks. The significance of this incident was to reveal itself later.
As usual, a pack of savage dogs flew out to announce our coming withfurious barking. But I declare the _habitant_ was so much like anyragged Indian, the creatures recognized him and left off their vicioussnarl. Only the shrill-voiced children, who rushed from the wigwams;evinced either surprise or interest in our arrival. Men and women werehaunched about the fire, above which simmered several pots with thesavory odor of cooking meat. I do not think a soul of the company asmuch as turned a head on our approach. Though they saw us plainly, theysat stolid and imperturbable, after the manner of their race, waitingfor us to announce ourselves. Some of the squaws and half-breed womenwere heaping bark on the fire. Indians sat straight-backed round thecircle. White men, vagabond trappers from anywhere and everywhere, layin all variety of lazy attitudes on buffalo robes and caribou skins.
I had known, as every one familiar with Quebec's family histories mustknow, that the sons of old seigneurs sometimes inherited the adventurousspirit, which led their ancestors of three centuries ago to exchange thegayeties of the French court for the wild life of the new world.I was aware this spirit frequently transformed seigneursinto bush-rangers and descendants of the royal blood into_coureurs-des-bois_. But it is one thing to know a fact, another to seethat fact in living embodiment; and in this case, the living embodimentwas Louis Laplante, a school-fellow of Laval, whom, to my amazement, Inow saw, with a beard of some months' growth and clad in buckskin, lyingat full length on his back among that villainous band of nondescripttrappers. Something of the surprise I felt must have shown on my face,for as Louis recognized me he uttered a shout of laughter.
"Hullo, Gillespie!" he called with the saucy nonchalance which made himboth a favorite and a torment at the seminary. "Are you among theprophets?" and he sat up making room for me on his buffalo robe.
"I'll wager, Louis," said I, shaking his hand heartily and accepting theproffered seat, "I'll wager it's prophets spelt with an 'f' brings youhere." For the young rake had been one of the most notorious borrowersat the seminary.
"Good boy!" laughed he, giving my shoulder a clap. "I see your time wasnot wasted with me. Now, what the devil," he asked as I surveyed themotley throng of fat, coarse-faced squaws and hard-looking men whosurrounded him, "now, what the devil's brought you here?"
"What's the same, to yourself, Louis lad?" said I. He laughed the merry,heedless laugh that had been the distraction of the class-room.
"Do you need to ask with such a galaxy of nut-brown maidens?" and Louislooked with the assurance of privileged impudence straight across thefire into the hideous, angry face of a big squaw, who was glaring at me.The creature was one to command attention. She might have been a great,bronze statue, a type of some ancient goddess, a symbol of fury, orcruelty. Her eyes fastened themselves on mine and held me, whether Iwould or no, while her whole face darkened.
"The lady evidently objects to having her place usurped, Louis," Iremarked, for he was watching the silent duel between the native woman'squestioning eyes and mine.
"The gentleman wants to know if the lady objects to having her placeusurped?" called Louis to the squaw.
At that the woman flinched and looked to Laplante. Of course, she didnot understand our words; but I think she was suspicious we werelaughing at her. There was a vindictive flash across her face, then theusual impenetrable expression of the Indian came over her features. Inoticed that her cheeks and forehead were scarred, and a cut had laidopen her upper lip from nose to teeth.
"You must know that the lady is the daughter of a chief and a fighter,"whispered Louis in my ear.
I might have known she was above common rank from the extraordinarynumber of trinkets she wore. Pendants hung from her ears like thependulum of a clock. She had a double necklace of polished bear's clawsand around her waist was a girdle of agates, which to me proclaimed thatshe was of a far-western tribe. In the girdle was an ivory-handledknife, which had doubtless given as many scars as its owner displayed.
"What tribe, Louis?" I asked.
"I'll be hanged, now, if I'm not jealous," he began. "You'll stare thelady out of countenance----" But at this moment the Indian who had comeup the bank behind us came round and interrupted Laplante's merriment bytossing a piece of bethumbed paper between my comrade's knees.
"The deuce!" exclaimed Louis, bulging his tongue into one cheek andglancing at me with a queer, quizzical look as he unfolded and read thepaper.
If he had not spoken I might not have turned; but having turned I couldnot but notice two things. Louis jerked back from me, as if I might tryto read the soiled note in his hand, and in raising the paper displayedon the back the stamp of the commissariat department from QuebecCitadel.
Neither Laplante's suppressed surprise, nor my observations of hismovement, escaped the big squaw. She came quickly round the fire to usboth.
"Give me that," she commanded, holding out her hand to the French youth.
"The deuce I will," he returned, twisting the paper up in his clenchedfist. Half in jest, half in earnest, just as Louis used to be punishedat the seminary, she gave him a prompt box on the ear. He took it inperfect good-nature. And the whole encampment laughed. The squaw wentback to the other side of the fire. Laplante leaned forward and threwthe paper towards the flames; but without his knowledge, he overshot themark; and when the trader was looking elsewhere the big squaw stooped,picked up the coveted note and slipped it into her skirt pocket.
"Now, Louis, nonsense aside," I began.
"With all my soul, if I have one," said he, lying back languidly with aperceptible cooling of the cordiality he had first evinced.
I told him my errand, and that I wished to search every wigwam for traceof the lost woman and child. He listened with shut eyes.
"It isn't," I explained in a low voice, eager to arouse his interest,"it isn't in the least, Laplante, that we suspect these people; but youknow the kidnappers might have traded the clothing to your people----"
"Oh! Go ahead!" he interjected impatiently. "Don't beat round the bush!What do you want of me?"
"To go through the tents with me and help me. By Jove! Laplante! Ithought at least a spark of the man would suggest that without myspeaking," I broke out hotly.
He was on his feet with an alacrity that brought old Paul Larocque roundto my side and the squaw to his.
"Curse you," he cried out roughly, shoving the squaw back. For a momentI was uncertain whether he were addressing the woman or myself. "Youmind your own business and go to your Indian! Here, Gillespie, I'll dothe tents with you. Get off with you," he muttered at the squaw,rumbling out a lingo of persuasive expletives; and he led the way to thefirst wigwam.
But the squaw was not to be dismissed; for when I followed theFrenchman, she closed in behind looking thunder, not at her abuser, butat me; and The Mute, fearing foul play and pole in hand, loyally broughtup the rear of our strange procession. I shall not retail that searchthrough robes and skins and blankets and boxes, in foul-smelling,vermin-infested wigwams. It was fruitless. I only recall the loweringface of the big squaw looking over my shoulder at every turn, withheavy brows contracted and gashed lips grinning an evil, maliciouschallenge. I thought she kept her hands uncomfortably near the ivoryhandle in the agate belt; but Larocque, good fellow, never took hisbeady eyes off those same hands and kept a grip of the leaping pole.
Thus we examined the tents and made a circuit of the people round thefire, but foun
d nothing to reveal the whereabouts of Miriam and thechild. Laplante and I were on one side of the robe, Larocque and thesquaw on the other.
"And why is that tent apart from the rest and who is in it?" I askedLaplante, pointing to the lone tepee on the crest of the hill.
The fire cracked so loudly I became aware there was ominous silenceamong the loungers of the camp. They were listening as well as watching.Up to this time I had not thought they were paying the slightestattention to us. Laplante was not answering, and when I faced himsuddenly I found the squaw's eyes fastened on his, holding them whetherhe would or no, just as she had mine.
"Eh! man?" I cried, seizing him fiercely, a nameless suspicion gettingpossession of me. "Why don't you answer?"
The spell was broken. He turned to me nonchalantly, as he used to faceaccusers in the school-days of long ago, and spoke almost gently, withdowncast eyes, and a quiet, deprecating smile.
"You know, Rufus," he answered, using the schoolboy name. "We shouldhave told you before. But remember we didn't invite you here. We didn'tlead you into it."
"Well?" I demanded.
"Well," he replied in a voice too low for any of the listeners but thesquaw to hear, "there's a very bad case of smallpox up in that tent andwe're keeping the man apart till he gets better. That, in fact, is whywe're all here. You must go. It is not safe."
"Thanks, Laplante," said I. "Good-by." But he did not offer me his handwhen I made to take leave.
"Come," he said. "I'll go as far as the gorge with you;" and he stood onthe embankment and waved as we passed into the lengthening shadows ofthe valley.
Now, in these days of health officers and vaccination, people can haveno idea of the terrors of a smallpox scourge at the beginning of thiscentury. The _habitant_ is as indifferent to smallpox as to measles, andaccepts both as dispensations of Providence by exposing his children tothe contagion as early as possible; but I was not so minded, and hurrieddown the gorge as fast as my snow-shoes would carry me. Then Iremembered that the Indian population of the north had been reduced to askeleton of its former numbers by the pestilence in 1780, and recalledthat my Uncle Jack had said the native's superstitious dread of thisdisease knew no bounds. That recollection checked my sudden flight. Ifthe Indians had such fear, why had this band camped within a mile ofthe pest tent? It would be more like Indian character to reverseSamaritan practises and leave the victim to die. This man might, ofcourse, be a French-Canadian trapper, but I would take no risks of atrick, so I ordered Paul to lead me back to that tepee.
The Mute seemed to understand I had no wish to be seen by the campers.He skirted round the base of the hill till we were on the side remotefrom the tribe. Then he motioned me to remain in the gorge while hescrambled up the cliff to reconnoitre. I knew he received a surprise assoon as his head was on a level with the top of the bank; for he curledhimself up behind a snow-pile and gave a low whistle for me. I wasbeside him with one bound. We were not twenty pole-lengths from thewigwam. There was no appearance of life. The tent flaps had been lacedup and a solitary watch-dog was tied to a stake before the entrance.Down the valley the setting sun shone through the naked trees like awall of fire, and dyed all the glistening snow-drifts primrose and opal.At one place in the forest the red light burst through and struckagainst the tent on the hill-top, giving the skins a peculiar appearanceof being streaked with blood. The faintest breath of wind, a mere sighof moving air-currents peculiar to snow-padded areas, came up from thewoods with far-away echoes of the trappers' voices. Perhaps this washeard by the watch-dog, or it may have felt the disturbing presence ofmy half-wild _habitant_ guide; for it sat back on its haunches andthrowing up its head, let out the most doleful howlings imaginable.
"Oh! _Monsieur_," shuddered out the superstitious habitant shiveringlike an aspen leaf, "sick man moan,--moan,--moan hard! He die,_Monsieur_, he die, he die now when dog cry lak dat," and full of fearhe scrambled down into the gorge, making silent gestures for me tofollow.
For a time--but not long, I must acknowledge--I lay there alone,watching and listening. Paul's ears might hear the moans of a sick man,mine could not: nor would I return to the Chateau without ascertainingfor a certainty what was in that wigwam. Slipping off the snow-shoes, Irose and tip-toed over the snow with the full intention of silencing thedog with my pole; but I was suddenly arrested by the distinct sound ofpain-racked groaning. Then the brute of a dog detected my approach andwith a furious leaping that almost hung him with his own rope set up avicious barking. Suddenly the black head of an Indian, or trapper,popped through the tent flaps and a voice shouted in perfectEnglish--"Go away! Go away! The pest! The pest!"
"Who has smallpox?" I bawled back.
"A trader, a Nor'-Wester," said he. "If you have anything for him lay iton the snow and I'll come for it."
As honor pledged me to serve Hamilton until he found his wife, I was notparticularly anxious to exchange civilities at close range with a manfrom a smallpox tent; so I quickly retraced my way to the gorge andhurried homeward with The Mute. My old school-fellow's sudden changetowards me when he received the letter written on Citadel paper, and thebig squaw's suspicion of my every movement, now came back to me with asignificance I had not felt when I was at the camp. Either intuitionslike those of my _habitant_ guide, which instinctively put out feelerswith the caution of an insect's antennae for the presence of vague,unknown evil, lay dormant in my own nature and had been aroused by theincidents at the camp, or else the mind, by the mere fact of holdinginformation in solution, widens its own knowledge. For now, in additionto the letter from the Citadel and the squaw's animosity, came the onemissing factor--Adderly. I felt, rather than knew, that Louis Laplantehad deceived me. Had he lied? A lie is the clumsy invention of thenovice. An expert accomplishes his deceit without anything so grosslyand tangibly honest as a lie; and Louis was an expert. Though I had nota vestige of proof, I could have sworn that Adderly and the squaw andLouis were leagued against me for some dark purpose. I was indeedlearning the first lessons of the trapper's life: never to open my lipson my own affairs to another man, and never to believe another man whenhe opened his lips to me.