Lords of the North. Agnes C. Laut
of sugaring-off in the maple-woods, or at some foolish habitant who had tapped the maple too early. How often had I known my guide to exhaust city athletes in these swift marches of his! But I had been schooled to his pace from boyhood and kept up with him at every step, 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 heading for the Huron village at Lorette. "To Lorette, Paul?"
But Paul condescended only a grunt and whisked suddenly round a headland up a narrow gorge, which seemed to lead to the very heart of the mountains and might have sheltered any number of fugitives. In the gorge we stopped to take a light meal of gingerbread horses—a cake that is the 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 traveling northwest. I also vaguely guessed that Paul's object was to intercept the North-West trappers, if they had planned to slip away from the St. Lawrence through the bush to the Upper Ottawa, where they could meet north-bound boats. But not one syllable had my taciturn guide uttered. Clambering up the steep, snowy banks of the gorge, we found ourselves in the upper reaches of a mountain, where the trees fell away in scraggy clumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the hill-crest. Paul grunted, licked his pipe-stem significantly and pointed his pole to the hill-top. The dark peak of a solitary wigwam appeared above the snow. He pointed again to the fringe of woods below us. A dozen wigwams were visible among the trees and smoke curled up from a central camp-fire.
"Voilà, Monsieur?" said the habitant, which made four words for that day.
The Mute then fell to my rear and we first approached the general camp. The campers were evidently thieves as well as hunters; for frozen pork hung with venison from the branches of several trees. The sap trough might also have belonged to them, which would explain Paul's laugh, as the whole paraphernalia of a sugaring-off was on the outskirts of the encampment.
"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 a curious, almost intelligent, expression came on the dull, pock-pitted face. Strangely enough, as I looked over my shoulder to the guide, I caught sight of an Indian figure climbing up the bank in our very tracks. The significance of this incident was to reveal itself later.
As usual, a pack of savage dogs flew out to announce our coming with furious barking. But I declare the habitant was so much like any ragged Indian, the creatures recognized him and left off their vicious snarl. Only the shrill-voiced children, who rushed from the wigwams; evinced either surprise or interest in our arrival. Men and women were haunched about the fire, above which simmered several pots with the savory odor of cooking meat. I do not think a soul of the company as much as turned a head on our approach. Though they saw us plainly, they sat stolid and imperturbable, after the manner of their race, waiting for us to announce ourselves. Some of the squaws and half-breed women were heaping bark on the fire. Indians sat straight-backed round the circle. White men, vagabond trappers from anywhere and everywhere, lay in all variety of lazy attitudes on buffalo robes and caribou skins.
I had known, as every one familiar with Quebec's family histories must know, that the sons of old seigneurs sometimes inherited the adventurous spirit, which led their ancestors of three centuries ago to exchange the gayeties of the French court for the wild life of the new world. I was aware this spirit frequently transformed seigneurs into bush-rangers and descendants of the royal blood into coureurs-des-bois. But it is one thing to know a fact, another to see that fact in living embodiment; and in this case, the living embodiment was Louis Laplante, a school-fellow of Laval, whom, to my amazement, I now saw, with a beard of some months' growth and clad in buckskin, lying at full length on his back among that villainous band of nondescript trappers. 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 him both a favorite and a torment at the seminary. "Are you among the prophets?" and he sat up making room for me on his buffalo robe.
"I'll wager, Louis," said I, shaking his hand heartily and accepting the proffered seat, "I'll wager it's prophets spelt with an 'f' brings you here." For the young rake had been one of the most notorious borrowers at the seminary.
"Good boy!" laughed he, giving my shoulder a clap. "I see your time was not wasted with me. Now, what the devil," he asked as I surveyed the motley throng of fat, coarse-faced squaws and hard-looking men who surrounded 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 Louis looked with the assurance of privileged impudence straight across the fire 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, or cruelty. Her eyes fastened themselves on mine and held me, whether I would or no, while her whole face darkened.
"The lady evidently objects to having her place usurped, Louis," I remarked, for he was watching the silent duel between the native woman's questioning eyes and mine.
"The gentleman wants to know if the lady objects to having her place usurped?" called Louis to the squaw.
At that the woman flinched and looked to Laplante. Of course, she did not understand our words; but I think she was suspicious we were laughing at her. There was a vindictive flash across her face, then the usual impenetrable expression of the Indian came over her features. I noticed that her cheeks and forehead were scarred, and a cut had laid open 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 extraordinary number of trinkets she wore. Pendants hung from her ears like the pendulum of a clock. She had a double necklace of polished bear's claws and around her waist was a girdle of agates, which to me proclaimed that she was of a far-western tribe. In the girdle was an ivory-handled knife, 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 the lady out of countenance——" But at this moment the Indian who had come up the bank behind us came round and interrupted Laplante's merriment by tossing a piece of bethumbed paper between my comrade's knees.
"The deuce!" exclaimed Louis, bulging his tongue into one cheek and glancing at me with a queer, quizzical look as he unfolded and read the paper.
If he had not spoken I might not have turned; but having turned I could not but notice two things. Louis jerked back from me, as if I might try to read the soiled note in his hand, and in raising the paper displayed on the back the stamp of the commissariat department from Quebec Citadel.
Neither Laplante's suppressed surprise, nor my observations of his movement, escaped the big squaw. She came quickly round the fire to us both.
"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 clenched fist. Half in jest, half in earnest, just as Louis used to be punished at the seminary, she gave him a prompt box on the ear. He took it in perfect good-nature. And the whole encampment laughed. The squaw went back to the other side of the fire. Laplante leaned forward and threw the paper towards the flames; but without his knowledge, he overshot the mark; 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 a perceptible cooling of the cordiality he had first evinced.
I told him my errand, and that I wished to search every wigwam for trace of the lost woman and child. He listened with shut eyes.