The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys
by Ethel C. Brill · English · Gutenberg #43293 · 466,281 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys
Author: Ethel C. Brill
Illustrator: W. H. Wolf
Release date: July 24, 2013 [eBook #43293]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43293
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET CACHE: AN ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY STORY FOR BOYS ***
“MONGA LOOKED BACK ONCE JUST IN TIME TO SEE ONE OF THE GIANTS SPRING UP
OUT OF THE ROCKS.”
“The Secret Cache.” (See Page 277)
THE
SECRET
CACHE
AN ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY
STORY FOR BOYS
BY
E. C. BRILL
_ILLUSTRATED_
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY
STORIES FOR BOYS
_By_ E. C. BRILL
Large 12 mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
THE SECRET CACHE
SOUTH FROM HUDSON BAY
THE ISLAND OF YELLOW SANDS
Copyright, 1932, by
Cupples & Leon Company
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. The Birch Bark Letter 7
II. The Sloop “Otter” 14
III. Driven Before the Gale 22
IV. The Isle Royale 29
V. The Half-Breed Brother 37
VI. Down the Northwest Shore 46
VII. At Wauswaugoning 55
VIII. The Blood-Stained Tunic 62
IX. The Giant Iroquois 70
X. The Looming Sailboat 77
XI. The Fire-Lit Orgy 85
XII. The Hungry Porcupine 92
XIII. The Painted Thwart 100
XIV. Sailing Towards the Sunrise 110
XV. The Rift in the Rock 117
XVI. The Cache 127
XVII. The Sealed Packet 137
XVIII. The Fleeing Canoe 147
XIX. The Bay of Manitos 156
XX. Hugh Climbs the Ridge 164
XXI. The Grinning Indian 172
XXII. Blaise Follows Hugh’s Trail 178
XXIII. A Captive 185
XXIV. In the Hands of the Giant 193
XXV. The Chief of Minong 201
XXVI. Escape 209
XXVII. What Blaise Overheard 217
XXVIII. Confusing the Trail 223
XXIX. The Cedar Barrier 234
XXX. The Flight From Minong 242
XXXI. With Wind and Waves 249
XXXII. The Fire at the End of the Trail 256
XXXIII. The Capture of Monga 264
XXXIV. Monga’s Story 272
XXXV. The Fall of the Giant 280
XXXVI. How Blaise Missed His Revenge 290
XXXVII. The Packet is Opened 297
THE SECRET CACHE
I
THE BIRCH BARK LETTER
On the river bank a boy sat watching the slender birch canoes bobbing
about in the swift current. The fresh wind reddened his cheeks and the
roaring of the rapids filled his ears. Eagerly his eyes followed the
movements of the canoes daringly poised in the stream just below the
tossing, foaming, white water. It was the first day of the spring
fishing, and more exciting sport than this Indian white-fishing Hugh
Beaupré had never seen. Three canoes were engaged in the fascinating
game, two Indians in each. One knelt in the stern with his paddle. The
other stood erect in the bow, a slender pole fully ten feet long in his
hands, balancing with extraordinary skill as the frail craft pitched
about in the racing current.
The standing Indian in the nearest canoe was a fine figure of a young
man, in close-fitting buckskin leggings, his slender, muscular, bronze
body stripped to the waist. Above his black head, bent a little as he
gazed intently down into the clear water, gulls wheeled and screamed in
anger at the invasion of their fishing ground. Suddenly the fisherman
pointed, with a swift movement of his left hand, to the spot where his
keen eyes had caught the gleam of a fin. Instantly his companion
responded to the signal. With a quick dig and twist of the paddle blade,
he shot the canoe forward at an angle. Down went the scoop net on the end
of the long pole and up in one movement. A dexterous flirt of the net,
and the fish, its wet, silvery sides gleaming in the sun, landed in the
bottom of the boat.
The lad on the bank had been holding his breath. Now his tense
watchfulness relaxed, and he glanced farther up-stream at the white water
boiling over and around the black rocks. A gleam of bright red among the
bushes along the shore caught his eye. The tip of a scarlet cap, then a
head, appeared above the budding alders, as a man came, with swift,
swinging strides, along the shore path.
“Holá, Hugh Beaupré,” he cried, when he was close enough to be heard
above the tumult of the rapids. “M’sieu Cadotte, he want you.”
The lad scrambled to his feet. “Monsieur Cadotte sent you for me?” he
asked in surprise. “What does he want with me, Baptiste?”
“A messenger from the New Fort has come, but a few moments ago,” Baptiste
replied, this time in French.
Hugh, half French himself, understood that language well, though he spoke
it less fluently than English.
“From the Kaministikwia? He has brought news of my father?”
“That M’sieu did not tell me, but yes, I think it may be so, since M’sieu
sends for you.”
Hugh had scarcely waited for an answer. Before Baptiste had finished his
speech, the boy was running along the river path. The French Canadian
strode after, the tassel of his cap bobbing, the ends of his scarlet sash
streaming in the brisk breeze.
Hastening past the small cabins that faced the St. Mary’s River, Hugh
turned towards a larger building, like the others of rough, unbarked
logs. Here he knew he should find Monsieur Cadotte, fur trader and agent
for the Northwest Fur Company. Finding the door open, the lad entered
without ceremony.
Monsieur Cadotte was alone, going through for a second time the reports
and letters the half-breed messenger had brought from the Company’s
headquarters on the River Kaministikwia at the farther end of Lake
Superior. The trader looked up as the boy entered.
“A letter for you, Hugh.” He lifted a packet from the rude table.
“From my father?” came the eager question.
“That I do not know, but no doubt it will give you news of him.”
A strange looking letter Cadotte handed the lad, a thin packet of birch
bark tied about with rough cedar cord. On the outer wrapping the name
“Hugh Beaupré” was written in a brownish fluid. Hugh cut the cord and
removed the wrapper. His first glance at the thin squares of white,
papery bark showed him that the writing was not his father’s. The letter
was in French, in the same muddy brown ink as the address. The
handwriting was good, better than the elder Beaupré’s, and the spelling
not so bad as Hugh’s own when he attempted to write French. He had little
difficulty in making out the meaning.
“My brother,” the letter began, “our father, before he died, bade me
write to you at the Sault de Ste. Marie. In March he left the Lake of
Red Cedars with one comrade and two dog sleds laden with furs. At the
Fond du Lac he put sail to a bateau, and with the furs he started for
the Grand Portage. But wind and rain came and the white fog. He knew
not where he was and the waves bore him on the rocks. He escaped
drowning and came at last to the Grand Portage and Wauswaugoning. But
he was sore hurt in the head and the side, and before the setting of
the sun his spirit had left his body. While he could yet speak he told
me of you, my half-brother, and bade me write to you. He bade me tell
you of the furs and of a packet of value hid in a safe place near the
wreck of the bateau. He told me that the furs are for you and me. He
said you and I must get them and take them to the New Northwest Company
at the Kaministikwia. The packet you must bear to a man in Montreal.
Our father bade us keep silence and go quickly. He had enemies, as well
I know. So, my brother, I bid you come as swiftly as you can to the
Kaministikwia, where I will await you.
Thy half-brother,
Blaise Beaupré or Attekonse, Little Caribou.”
Hugh read the strange letter to the end, then turned back to the first
bark sheet to read again. He had reached the last page a second time when
Cadotte’s voice aroused him from his absorption.
“It is bad news?” the trader asked.
“Yes,” Hugh answered, raising his eyes from the letter. “My father is
dead.”
“Bad news in truth.” Cadotte’s voice was vibrant with sympathy. “It was
not, I hope, _la petite vérole_?” His despatches had informed him that
the dreaded smallpox had broken out among the Indian villages west of
Superior.
“No, he was wrecked.” Hugh hesitated, then continued, “On his spring trip
down his boat went on the rocks, and he was so sorely hurt that he lived
but a short time.”
“A sad accident truly. Believe me, I feel for you, my boy. If there is
anything I can do——” Cadotte broke off, then added, “You will wish to
return to your relatives. We must arrange to send you to Michilimackinac
on the schooner. From there you can readily find a way of return to
Montreal.”
Hugh was at a loss for a reply. He had not the slightest intention of
returning to Montreal so soon. He must obey his half-brother’s summons
and go to recover the furs and the packet that made up the lads’ joint
inheritance. Kind though Cadotte had been, Hugh dared not tell him all.
“He bade us keep silence,” Little Caribou had written, and one word in
the letter disclosed to Hugh a good reason for silence.
Jean Beaupré had been a free trader and trapper, doing business with the
Indians on his own account, not in the direct service of any company.
Hugh knew, however, that his father had been in the habit of buying his
supplies from and selling his pelts to the Old Northwest Company. Very
likely he had been under some contract to do so. Yet in these last
instructions to his sons, he bade them take the furs to the _New_
Northwest Company, a secession from and rival to the old organization. He
must have had some disagreement, an actual quarrel perhaps, with the Old
Company. The rivalry between the fur companies was hot and bitter. Hugh
was very sure that if Monsieur Cadotte learned of the hidden pelts, he
would inform his superiors. Then, in all probability, the Old Northwest
Company’s men would reach the cache first. Certainly, if he even
suspected that the pelts were destined for the New Company, Cadotte would
do nothing to further and everything to hinder Hugh’s project. The boy
was in a difficult position. He had to make up his mind quickly. Cadotte
was eying him sharply and curiously.
“I cannot return to Montreal just yet, Monsieur Cadotte,” Hugh said at
last. “This letter is from my half-brother.” He paused in embarrassment.
Cadotte nodded and waited for the boy to go on. The trader knew that Jean
Beaupré had an Indian wife, and supposed that Hugh had known it also.
Part Indian himself, Cadotte could never have understood the lad’s
amazement and consternation at learning now, for the first time, of his
half-brother.
“My father,” Hugh went on, “bade Blaise, my half-brother, tell me to—come
to the Kaministikwia and meet Blaise there. He wished me to—to make my
brother’s acquaintance and—and receive from him—something my father left
me,” he concluded lamely.
Cadotte was regarding Hugh keenly. The boy’s embarrassed manner was
enough to make him suspect that Hugh was not telling the truth. Cadotte
shrugged his shoulders. “It may be difficult to send you in that
direction. If you were an experienced canoeman, but you are not and——”
“But I _must_ go,” Hugh broke in. “My father bade me, and you wouldn’t
have me disobey his last command. Can’t I go in the _Otter_? I still have
some of the money my aunt gave me. If I am not sailor enough to work my
way, I can pay for my passage.”
“Eh bien, we will see what can be done,” Cadotte replied more kindly.
Perhaps the lad’s earnestness and distress had convinced him that Hugh
had some more urgent reason than a mere boyish desire for adventure, for
making the trip. “I will see if matters can be arranged.”
II
THE SLOOP “OTTER”
His mind awhirl with conflicting thoughts and feelings, Hugh Beaupré left
Cadotte. The preceding autumn Hugh had come from Montreal to the Sault de
Ste. Marie. Very reluctantly his aunt had let him go to be with his
father in the western wilderness for a year or two of that rough,
adventurous life. Hugh’s Scotch mother had died when he was less than a
year old, nearly sixteen years before the opening of this story. His
French father, a restless man of venturesome spirit, had left the child
with the mother’s sister, and had taken to the woods, the then untamed
wilderness of the upper Great Lakes and the country beyond. In fifteen
years he had been to Montreal to see his son but three times. During each
brief stay, his stories of the west had been eagerly listened to by the
growing boy. On his father’s last visit to civilization, Hugh had begged
to be allowed to go back to Lake Superior with him. The elder Beaupré,
thinking the lad too young, had put him off. He had consented, however,
to his son’s joining him at the Sault de Ste. Marie a year from the
following autumn, when Hugh would be sixteen.
Delayed by bad weather, the boy had arrived at the meeting place late,
only to find that his father had not been seen at the Sault since his
brief stop on his return from Montreal the year before. The disappointed
lad tried to wait patiently, but the elder Beaupré did not come or send
any message. At last, word arrived that he had left the Grand Portage, at
the other end of Lake Superior, some weeks before, not to come to the
Sault but to go in the opposite direction to his winter trading ground
west of the lake. There was no chance for Hugh to follow, even had he
known just where his father intended to winter. By another trader going
west and by a Northwest Company messenger, the boy sent letters, hoping
that in some manner they might reach Jean Beaupré. All winter Hugh had
remained at the Sault waiting for some reply, but none of any sort had
come until the arrival of the strange packet he was now carrying in his
hand. This message from his younger brother seemed to prove that his
father must have received at least one of Hugh’s letters. Otherwise he
would not have known that his elder son was at the Sault. But there was
no explanation of Jean Beaupré’s failure to meet the boy there.
Hugh was grieved to learn of his parent’s death, but he could not feel
the deep sorrow that would have overwhelmed him at the loss of an
intimately known and well loved father. Jean Beaupré was almost a
stranger to his older son. Hugh remembered seeing him but the three times
and receiving but one letter from him. Indeed he was little more than a
casual acquaintance whose tales of adventure had kindled a boy’s
imagination. It was scarcely possible that Hugh’s grief could be deep,
and, for the time being, it was overshadowed by other feelings. He had
been suddenly plunged, it seemed, into a strange and unexpected
adventure, which filled his mind to the exclusion of all else.
He must find some way to reach the Kaministikwia River, there to join his
newly discovered Indian brother in a search for the wrecked bateau and
its cargo of pelts. Of that half-brother Hugh had never heard before. He
could not but feel a sense of resentment that there should be such a
person. The boy had been brought up to believe that his father had loved
his bonny Scotch wife devotedly, and that it was his inconsolable grief
at her death that had driven him to the wilderness. It seemed, however,
that he must have consoled himself rather quickly with an Indian squaw.
Surely the lad who had written the letter must be well grown, not many
years younger than Hugh himself.
As he walked slowly along the river bank, Hugh turned the bark packet
over and over in his hand, and wondered about the half-breed boy who was
to be his comrade in adventure. Attekonse had not spent his whole life in
the woods, that was evident. Somewhere he had received an education, had
learned to write French readily and in a good hand. Perhaps his father
had taught him, thought Hugh, but quickly dismissed that suggestion. He
doubted if the restless Jean Beaupré would have had the patience, even if
he had had the knowledge and ability to teach his young son to write
French so well.
Uncertain what he ought to do next, the puzzled boy wandered along,
glancing now and then at the canoes engaged in the white-fishing below
the rapids. That daring sport had lost its interest for him. At the
outskirts of an Indian village, where he was obliged to beat off with a
stick a pack of snarling, wolf-like dogs, he turned and went back the way
he had come, still pondering over the birch bark letter.
Presently he caught sight once more of Baptiste’s scarlet cap. No message
from Cadotte had brought the simple fellow this time, merely his own
curiosity. Hugh was quite willing to answer Baptiste’s questions so far
as he could without betraying too much. Seated in a sheltered, sunny spot
on an outcrop of rock at the river’s edge, he told of his father’s death.
Then, suddenly, he resolved to ask the good-natured Canadian’s help.
“Baptiste, I am in a difficulty. My half-brother who wrote this,”—Hugh
touched the bark packet—“bids me join him at the Kaministikwia. It was my
father’s last command that I should go there and meet this Blaise or
Little Caribou, as he calls himself. We are to divide the things father
left for us.”
“There is an inheritance then?” questioned Baptiste, interested at once.
“Nothing that amounts to much, I fancy,” the lad replied with an
assumption of carelessness; “some personal belongings, a few pelts
perhaps. For some reason he wished Blaise and me to meet and divide them.
It is a long journey for such a matter.”
“Ah, but a dying father’s command!” cried Baptiste. “You must not disobey
that. To disregard the wishes of the dead is a grievous sin, and would
surely bring you misfortune.”
“True, but what can I do, Baptiste? Monsieur Cadotte doesn’t feel greatly
inclined to help me. He wishes me to return to Montreal. How then am I to
find an opportunity to go to the Kaministikwia?”
Baptiste took a long, thoughtful pull at his pipe, then removed it from
his mouth. “There is the sloop _Otter_,” he suggested.
“Would Captain Bennett take me, do you think?”
“I myself go as one of the crew. To-morrow early I go to Point aux Pins.
Come with me and we shall see.”
“Gladly,” exclaimed Hugh. “When does she sail?”
“Soon, I think. There were repairs to the hull, where she ran on the
rocks, but they are finished. Then there is new rigging and the painting.
It will not be long until she is ready.”
That night Hugh debated in his own mind whether he should tell Cadotte of
his proposed visit with Baptiste to Point aux Pins. He decided against
mentioning it at present. He did not know what news might have come in
Cadotte’s despatches, whether the trader was aware of the elder Beaupré’s
change of allegiance. At any rate, thought the lad, it would be better to
have his passage in the _Otter_ arranged for, if he could persuade her
captain, before saying anything more to anyone.
Early the next morning Baptiste and Hugh embarked above the rapids in
Baptiste’s small birch canoe. The distance to Point aux Pins was short,
but paddling, even in the more sluggish channels, against the current of
the St. Mary’s River in spring flood was strenuous work, as Hugh,
wielding the bow blade, soon discovered. Signs of spring were everywhere.
The snow was gone, and flocks of small, migrating birds were flitting and
twittering among the trees and now and then bursting into snatches of
song. The leaves of birches, willows and alders were beginning to unfold,
the shores showing a faint mist of pale green, though here and there in
the quiet backwaters among rocks and on the north sides of islands, ice
still remained.
At Point aux Pins, or Pine Point, was the Northwest Company’s shipyard.
In a safe and well sheltered harbor, formed by the long point that ran
out into the river, the sailing vessels belonging to the company were
built and repaired. The sloop _Otter_, which had spent the winter there,
was now anchored a little way out from shore. The repairs had been
completed and a fresh coat of white paint was being applied to her hull.
Tents and rude cabins on the sandy ground among scrubby jack pines and
willows housed the workers, and near by, waiting for the fish cleanings
and other refuse to be thrown out, a flock of gulls, gray-winged, with
gleaming white heads and necks, rode the water like a fleet of little
boats. As the canoe approached, the birds, with a splashing and beating
of wings, rose, whirled about in the air, and alighted again farther out,
each, as it struck the water, poising for a moment with black-tipped
wings raised and half spread.
On a stretch of sand beyond the shipyard, Baptiste and Hugh landed,
stepping out, one on each side, the moment the canoe touched, lifting it
from the water and carrying it ashore. Then they sought the master of the
sloop.
Captain Bennett was personally superintending the work on his ship. To
him Baptiste, who had been previously engaged as one of the small crew,
made known Hugh’s wish to sail to the Kaministikwia. The shipmaster
turned sharply on the lad, demanding to know his purpose in crossing the
lake. Hugh explained as well as he could, without betraying more than he
had already told Cadotte and Baptiste.
“Do you know anything of working a ship?” Captain Bennett asked.
“I have sailed a skiff on the St. Lawrence,” was the boy’s reply. “I can
learn and I can obey orders.”
“Um,” grunted the Captain. “At least you are a white man. I can use one
more man, and I don’t want an Indian. I can put you to work now. If you
prove good for anything, I will engage you for the trip over. Here,
Duncan,” to a strapping, red-haired Scot, “give these fellows something
to do.”
So it came about that Hugh Beaupré, instead of going back at once to the
Sault, remained at the Point aux Pins shipyard. He returned in the
_Otter_, when, three days later, she sailed down the St. Mary’s to the
dock above the rapids where she was to receive her lading. In the
meantime, by an Indian boy, Hugh had sent a message to Cadotte informing
him that he, Hugh Beaupré, had been accepted as one of the crew of the
_Otter_ for her trip to the Kaministikwia. Cadotte had returned no reply,
so Hugh judged that the trader did not intend to put any obstacles in the
way of his adventure.
The goods the sloop was to transport had been received the preceding
autumn by ship from Michilimackinac too late to be forwarded across
Superior. They were to be sent on now by the _Otter_. A second Northwest
Company ship, the _Invincible_, which had wintered in Thunder Bay, was
expected at the Sault in a few weeks. When the great canoe fleet from
Montreal should arrive in June, part of the goods brought would be
transferred to the _Invincible_, while the remainder would be taken on in
the canoes. Hugh was heartily glad that he was not obliged to wait for
the fleet. In all probability there would be no vacant places, and if
there were any, he doubted if, with his limited experience as a canoeman,
he would be accepted. He felt himself lucky to obtain a passage on the
_Otter_.
The sloop was of only seventy-five tons burden, but the time of loading
was a busy one. The cargo was varied: provisions, consisting largely of
corn, salt pork and kegs of tried out grease, with some wheat flour,
butter, sugar, tea and other luxuries for the clerks at the
Kaministikwia; powder and shot; and articles for the Indian trade,
blankets, guns, traps, hatchets, knives, kettles, cloth of various kinds,
vermilion and other paints, beads, tobacco and liquor, for the fur
traders had not yet abandoned the disastrous custom of selling strong
drink to the Indians.
During the loading Hugh had an opportunity to say good-bye to Cadotte.
The latter’s kindness and interest in the boy’s welfare made him ashamed
of his doubts of the trader’s intentions.
III
DRIVEN BEFORE THE GALE
On a clear, sunny morning of the first week in May, the Northwest
Company’s sloop _Otter_, with a favoring wind, made her way up-stream
towards the gateway of Lake Superior. At the Indian village on the curve
of the shore opposite Point aux Pins, men, women, children and
sharp-nosed dogs turned out to see the white-sailed ship go by. Through
the wide entrance to the St. Mary’s River, where the waters of Lake
Superior find their outlet, the sloop sailed under the most favorable
conditions. Between Point Iroquois on the south and high Gros Cap, the
Great Cape, on the north, its summit indigo against the bright blue of
the sky, she passed into the broad expanse of the great lake. The little
fur-trading vessels of the first years of the nineteenth century did not
follow the course taken by the big passenger steamers and long freighters
of today, northwest through the middle of the lake. Instead, the Captain
of the _Otter_ took her almost directly north.
The southerly breeze, light at first, freshened within a few hours, and
the sloop sailed before it like a gull on the wing. Past Goulais Point
and Coppermine Point and Cape Gargantua, clear to Michipicoton Bay, the
first stop, the wind continued favorable, the weather fine. It was
remarkably fine for early May, and Hugh Beaupré had hopes of a swift and
pleasant voyage. So far his work as a member of the crew of six was not
heavy. Quick-witted and eager to do his best, he learned his duties
rapidly, striving to obey on the instant the sharply spoken commands of
master and mate.
At the mouth of the Michipicoton River was a Northwest Company trading
post, and there the _Otter_ ran in to discharge part of her cargo of
supplies and goods. She remained at Michipicoton over night, and, after
the unloading, Hugh was permitted to go ashore. The station, a far more
important one, in actual trade in furs, than the post at the Sault, he
found an interesting place. Already some of the Indians were arriving
from the interior, coming overland with their bales of pelts on dog
sleds. When the Michipicoton River and the smaller streams should be free
of ice, more trappers would follow in their birch canoes.
As if on purpose to speed the ship, the wind had shifted to the southeast
by the following morning. The weather was not so pleasant, however, for
the sky was overcast. In the air was a bitter chill that penetrated the
thickest clothes. Captain Bennett, instead of appearing pleased with the
direction of the breeze, shook his head doubtfully as he gazed at the
gloomy sky and the choppy, gray water. A sailing vessel must take
advantage of the wind, so, in spite of the Captain’s apprehensive
glances, the _Otter_ went on her way.
All day the wind held favorable, shifting to a more easterly quarter and
gradually rising to a brisk blow. The sky remained cloudy, the distance
thick, the water green-gray.
As darkness settled down, rain began to fall, fine, cold and driven from
the east before a wind strong enough to be called a gale. In the wet and
chill, the darkness and rough sea, Hugh’s work was far harder and more
unpleasant. But he made no complaint, even to himself, striving to make
up by eager willingness for his ignorance of a sailor’s foul weather
duties. There was no good harbor near at hand, and, the gale being still
from the right quarter, Captain Bennett drove on before it. After
midnight the rain turned to sleet and snow. The wind began to veer and
shift from east to northeast, to north and back again.
Before morning all sense of location had been lost. Under close-reefed
sails, the sturdily built little _Otter_ battled wind, waves, sleet and
snow. She pitched and tossed and wallowed. All hands remained on deck.
Hugh, sick and dizzy with the motion, chilled and shivering in the bitter
cold, wished from the bottom of his heart he had never set foot upon the
sloop. Struggling to keep his footing on the heaving, ice-coated deck,
and to hold fast to slippery, frozen ropes, he was of little enough use,
though he did his best.
The dawn brought no relief. In the driving snow, neither shore nor sky
was to be seen, only a short stretch of heaving, lead-gray water.
Foam-capped waves broke over the deck. Floating ice cakes careened
against the sides of the ship. On the way to Michipicoton no ice had been
encountered, but now the tossing masses added to the peril.
Midday might as well have been midnight. The falling snow, fine, icy,
stinging, shut off all view more completely than blackest darkness. The
weary crew were fighting ceaselessly to keep the _Otter_ afloat. The
Captain himself clung with the steersman to the wheel. Then, quite
without warning, out of the northeast came a sudden violent squall. A
shriek of rending canvas, and the close-reefed sail, crackling with ice,
was torn away. Down crashed the shattered mast. As if bound for the
bottom of the lake, the sloop wallowed deep in the waves.
Hugh sprang forward with the others. On the slanting, ice-sheathed deck,
he slipped and went down. He was following the mast overboard, when
Baptiste seized him by the leg. The dangerous task of cutting loose the
wreckage was accomplished. The plucky _Otter_ righted herself and drove
on through the storm.
With the setting of the sun, invisible through the snow and mist, the
wind lessened. But that night, if less violent than the preceding one,
was no less miserable. Armored in ice and frozen snow, the sloop rode
heavy and low, battered by floating cakes, great waves washing her decks.
She had left the Sault on a spring day. Now she seemed to be back in
midwinter. Yet, skillfully handled by her master, she managed to live
through the night.
Before morning, the wind had fallen to a mere breeze. The waves no longer
swept the deck freely, but the lake was still so rough that the
ice-weighted ship made heavy going. Her battle with the storm had sprung
her seams. Two men were kept constantly at the pumps. No canvas was left
but the jib, now attached to the stump of the mast. With this makeshift
sail, and carried along by the waves, she somehow kept afloat.
From the lookout there came a hoarse bellow of warning. Through the
muffling veil of falling snow, his ears had caught the sound of surf. The
steersman swung the wheel over. The ship sheered off just as the foaming
crests of breaking waves and the dark mass of bare rocks appeared close
at hand.
Along the abrupt shore the _Otter_ beat her way, her captain striving to
keep in sight of land, yet far enough out to avoid sunken or detached
rocks. Anxiously his tired, bloodshot eyes sought for signs of a harbor.
It had been so long since he had seen sun or stars that he had little
notion of his position or of what that near-by land might be. Shadowy as
the shore appeared in the falling snow, its forbidding character was
plain enough, cliffs, forest crowned, rising abruptly from the water, and
broken now and then by shallow bays lined with tumbled boulders. Those
shallow depressions promised no shelter from wind and waves, even for so
small a ship as the _Otter_.
No less anxiously than Captain Bennett did Hugh Beaupré watch that
inhospitable shore. So worn was he from lack of sleep, exhausting and
long continued labor and seasickness, so chilled and numbed and weak and
miserable, that he could hardly stand. But the sight of solid land,
forbidding though it was, had revived his hope.
A shout from the starboard side of the sloop told him that land had
appeared in that direction also. In a few minutes the _Otter_, running
before the wind, was passing between forest-covered shores. As the shores
drew closer together, the water became calmer. On either hand and ahead
was land. The snow had almost ceased to fall now. The thick woods of
snow-laden evergreens and bare-limbed trees were plainly visible.
Staunch little craft though the _Otter_ was, her strained seams were
leaking freely, and her Captain had decided to beach her in the first
favorable spot. A bit of low point, a shallow curve in the shore with a
stretch of beach, served his purpose. There he ran his ship aground, and
made a landing with the small boat.
His ship safe for the time being, Captain Bennett’s next care was for his
crew. That they had come through the storm without the loss of a man was
a matter for thankfulness. Everyone, however, from the Captain himself to
Hugh, was worn out, soaked, chilled to the bone and more or less battered
and bruised. One man had suffered a broken arm when the mast went over
side, and the setting of the bone had been hasty and rough. The mate had
strained his back painfully.
All but the mate and the man with the broken arm, the Captain set to
gathering wood and to clearing a space for a camp on the sandy point. The
point was almost level and sparsely wooded with birch, mountain ash and
bushes. Every tree and shrub, its summer foliage still in the bud, was
wet, snow covered or ice coated. Birch bark and the dry, crumbly center
of a dead tree trunk made good tinder, however. Baptiste, skilled in the
art of starting a blaze under the most adverse conditions, soon had a
roaring fire. By that time the snow had entirely ceased, and the clouds
were breaking.
Around the big fire the men gathered to dry their clothes and warm their
bodies, while a thick porridge of hulled corn and salt pork boiled in an
iron kettle over a smaller blaze. The hot meal put new life into the
tired men. The broken arm was reset, the minor injuries cared for, and a
pole and bark shelter, with one side open to the fire, was set up. Before
the lean-to was completed the sun was shining. In spite of the sharp
north wind, the snow and ice were beginning to melt. A flock of
black-capped chickadees were flitting about the bare-branched birches,
sounding their brave, deep-throated calls, and a black and white
woodpecker was hammering busily at a dead limb.
No attempt was made to repair the ship that day. Only the most necessary
work was done, and the worn-out crew permitted to rest. A lonely place
seemed this unknown bay or river mouth, without white man’s cabin,
Indian’s bark lodge or even a wisp of smoke from any other fire. But the
sheltered harbor was a welcome haven to the sorely battered ship and the
exhausted sailors. Wolves howled not far from the camp that night, and
next morning their tracks were found in the snow on the beach close to
where the sloop lay. It would have required far fiercer enemies than the
slinking, cowardly, brush wolves to disturb the rest of the tired crew of
the _Otter_. Hugh did not even hear the beasts.
IV
THE ISLE ROYALE
Shortly after dawn work on the _Otter_ was begun. The water was pumped
out, most of the cargo piled on the beach, and the sloop hauled farther
up by means of a rudely constructed windlass. Then the strained seams
were calked and a few new boards put in. A tall, straight spruce was
felled and trimmed to replace the broken mast, and a small mainsail
devised from extra canvas. The repairs took two long days of steady
labor. During that time the weather was bright, and, except in the deeply
shaded places, the snow and ice disappeared rapidly.
From the very slight current in the water, Captain Bennett concluded that
the place where he had taken refuge was a real bay, not a river mouth. He
had not yet discovered whether he was on the mainland or an island. The
repairs to his ship were of the first importance, and he postponed
determining his whereabouts until the _Otter_ was made seaworthy once
more. Not a trace of human beings had been found. The boldness of the
wolves and lynxes, that came close to the camp every night, indicated
that no one, red or white, was in the habit of visiting this lonely spot.
On the third day the sloop was launched, anchored a little way from shore
and rigged. While the reloading was going on, under the eyes of the mate,
the Captain, with Baptiste and Hugh at the oars, set out in the small
boat for the harbor mouth.
The shore along which they rowed was, at first, wooded to the water line.
As they went farther out and the bay widened, the land they were skirting
rose more steeply, edged with sheer rocks, cliffs and great boulders.
From time to time Captain Bennett glanced up at the abrupt rocks and
forested ridges on his right, or across to the lower land on the other
side of the bay. Directly ahead, some miles across the open lake, he
could see a distant, detached bit of land, an island undoubtedly. Most of
the time, however, his eyes were on the water. He was endeavoring to
locate the treacherous reefs and shallows he must avoid when he took his
ship out of her safe harbor.
An exclamation from Baptiste, who had turned his head to look to the west
and north, recalled the Captain from his study of the unfamiliar waters.
Beyond the tip of the opposite or northwestern shore of the bay, far
across the blue lake to the north, two dim, misty shapes had come into
view.
“Islands!” Captain Bennett exclaimed. “High, towering islands.”
Baptiste and Hugh pulled on with vigorous strokes. Presently the Captain
spoke again. “Islands or headlands. Go farther out.”
The two bent to their oars. As they passed beyond the end of the low
northwestern shore, more high land came into view across the water.
“What is it, Baptiste? Where are we?” asked Hugh, forgetting in his
eagerness that it was not his place to speak.
“It is Thunder Cape,” the Captain replied, overlooking the breach of
discipline, “the eastern boundary of Thunder Bay, where the Kaministikwia
empties and the New Fort is situated.”
“Truly it must be the Cap au Tonnerre, the Giant that Sleeps,” Baptiste
agreed, resting on his oars to study the long shape, like a gigantic
figure stretched out at rest upon the water. “The others to the north are
the Cape at the Nipigon and the Island of St. Ignace.”
“We are not as far off our course as I feared,” remarked the Captain with
satisfaction.
Hugh ventured another question. “What then, sir, is this land where we
are?”
Captain Bennett scanned the horizon as far as he could see. “Thunder Cape
lies a little to the north of west,” he said thoughtfully. “We are on an
island of course, a large one. There is only one island it can be, the
Isle Royale. I have seen one end or the other of Royale many times from a
distance, when crossing to the Kaministikwia or to the Grand Portage, but
I never set foot on the island before.” Again he glanced up at the steep
rocks and thick woods on his right, then his eyes sought the heaving blue
of the open lake. “This northwest breeze would be almost dead against us,
and it is increasing. We’ll not set sail till morning. By that time I
think we shall have a change of wind.”
Their purpose accomplished, the oarsmen turned the boat and started back
towards camp. Hugh, handling the bow oars, watched the shore close at
hand. They were skirting a rock cliff, sheer from the lake, its
brown-gray surface stained almost black at the water line, blotched
farther up with lichens, black, orange and green-gray, and worn and
seamed and rent with vertical cracks from top to bottom. The cracks ran
in diagonally, opening up the bay. As Hugh came into clear view of one of
the widest of the fissures, he noticed something projecting from it.
“See, Baptiste,” he cried, pointing to the thing, “someone has been here
before us.”
The French Canadian rested on his oars and spoke to Captain Bennett.
“There is the end of a boat in that hole, M’sieu, no birch canoe either.
How came it here in this wilderness?”
“Row nearer,” ordered the shipmaster, “and we’ll have a look at it.”
The two pulled close to the mouth of the fissure. At the Captain’s order,
Baptiste stepped over side to a boulder that rose just above the water.
From the boulder he sprang like a squirrel. His moccasined feet gripped
the rim of the old boat, and he balanced for an instant before jumping
down. Hugh, in his heavier boots, followed more clumsily. Captain Bennett
remained in the rowboat.
The wrecked craft in which the two found themselves was tightly wedged in
the crack. The bow was smashed and splintered and held fast by the ice
that had not yet melted in the dark, cold cleft. Indeed the boat was half
full of ice. It was a crude looking craft, and its sides, which had never
known paint, were weathered and water stained to almost the same color as
the blackened base of the rocks. The wreck was quite empty, not an oar or
a fragment of mast or canvas remaining.
The old boat had one marked peculiarity which could be seen even in the
dim light of the crack. The thwart that bore the hole where the mast had
stood was painted bright red, the paint being evidently a mixture of
vermilion and grease. It was but little faded by water and weather, and
on the red background had been drawn, in some black pigment, figures such
as the Indians used in their picture writing. Hugh had seen birch canoes
fancifully decorated about prow and stern, and he asked Baptiste if such
paintings were customary on the heavier wooden boats as well.
“On the outside sometimes they have figures in color, yes,” was the
reply, “but never have I seen one painted in this way.”
“I wonder what became of the men who were in her when she was driven on
these rocks.”
Baptiste shook his head. “It may be that no one was in her. What would he
do so far from the mainland? No, I do not think anyone was wrecked here.
This bateau was carried away in a storm from some beach or anchorage on
the north or west shore. There is nothing in her, though she was right
side up when she was driven in here by the waves. And here, in this
lonely place, there has been no one to plunder her.”
“Do no Indians live on this big island?” queried Hugh.
“I have never heard of anyone living here. It is far to come from the
mainland, and I have been told that the Indians have a fear of the place.
They think it is inhabited by spirits, especially one bay they call the
Bay of Manitos. It is said that in the old days the Ojibwa came here
sometimes for copper. They picked up bits of the metal on the beaches and
in the hills. Nowadays they have a tale that spirits guard the copper
stones.”
“If there is copper on the island perhaps this boat belonged to some
white prospector,” suggested Hugh.
Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps, but then the Indian manitos
must have destroyed him.”
“Well, at any rate the old manitos haven’t troubled us,” Hugh commented.
Again Baptiste shrugged. “We have not disturbed their copper, and—we are
not away from the place yet.”
The inspection of the wreck did not take many minutes. When Baptiste made
his report, the Captain agreed with him that the boat had probably
drifted away from some camp or trading post on the mainland, and had been
driven into the cleft in a storm. As nothing of interest had been found
in the wreck, he ordered Baptiste and Hugh to make speed back to camp.
By night the reloading was finished and everything made ready for an
early start. After sunset, the mate, adventuring up the bay, shot a
yearling moose. The crew of the _Otter_ feasted and, to celebrate the
completion of the work on the sloop, danced to Baptiste’s fiddle. From
the ridges beyond and above the camp, the brush wolves yelped in response
to the music.
Baptiste’s half superstitious, half humorous forebodings of what the
island spirits might do to the crew of the _Otter_ came to nothing, but
Captain Bennett’s prophecy of a change of wind proved correct. The next
day dawned fair with a light south breeze that made it possible for the
sloop to sail out of harbor. She passed safely through the narrower part
of the bay. Then, to avoid running close to the towering rocks which had
first appeared to her Captain through the falling snow, he steered across
towards the less formidable appearing northwest shore. That shore proved
to be a low, narrow, wooded, rock ridge running out into the lake. When
he reached the tip of the point, he found it necessary to go on some
distance to the northeast to round a long reef. The dangerous reef
passed, he set his course northwest towards the dim and distant Sleeping
Giant, the eastern headland of Thunder Bay.
To the relief of Hugh Beaupré, the last part of the voyage was made in
good time and without disaster. The boy looked with interest and some awe
at the towering, forest-clad form of Thunder Cape, a mountain top rising
from the water. On the other hand, as the _Otter_ entered the great bay,
were the scarcely less impressive heights of the Isle du Paté, called
to-day, in translation of the French name, Pie Island. Hugh asked
Baptiste how the island got its name and learned that it was due to some
fancied resemblance of the round, steep-sided western peak to a French
paté or pastry.
By the time the sloop was well into Thunder Bay, the wind, as if to speed
her on her way, had shifted to southeast. Clouds were gathering and rain
threatened as she crossed to the western shore, to the mouth of the
Kaministikwia. The river, flowing from the west, discharges through three
channels, forming a low, triangular delta. The north channel is the
principal mouth, and there the sloop entered, making her way about a mile
up-stream to the New Fort of the Northwest Company.
From the organization of the Northwest Fur Company down to a short time
before the opening of this story, the trading post at the Grand Portage,
south of the Pigeon River, and about forty miles by water to the
southwest of the Kaministikwia, had been the chief station and
headquarters of the company. The ground where the Grand Portage post
stood became a part of the United States when the treaty of peace after
the Revolution established the Pigeon River as the boundary line between
the United States and the British possessions. Though the Northwest
Company was a Canadian organization, it retained its headquarters south
of the Pigeon River through the last decade of the eighteenth century. In
the early years of the nineteenth, however, when the United States
government proposed to levy a tax on all English furs passing through
United States territory, the company headquarters was removed to Canadian
soil. Near the mouth of the Kaministikwia River on Thunder Bay was built
the New Fort, later to be known as Fort William after William
McGillivray, head of the company.
V
THE HALF-BREED BROTHER
The Northwest Fur Company’s chief post was bustling with activity. The
New Fort itself, a stockaded enclosure, had been completed the year
before, but work on the log buildings within the walls was still going
on. Quarters for the agents, clerks and various employees, storehouses,
and other buildings were under construction or receiving finishing
touches. When the sloop _Otter_ came in sight, however, work ceased
suddenly. Log cabin builders threw down their axes, saws and hammers,
masons dropped their trowels, brick makers left the kilns that were
turning out bricks for chimneys and ovens, the clerks broke off their
bartering with Indians and half-breed trappers, and all ran down to the
riverside. There they mingled with the wild looking men, squaws and
children who swarmed from the camps of the voyageurs and Indians. When
the _Otter_ drew up against the north bank of the channel, the whole
population, permanent and temporary, was on hand to greet the first ship
of the season.
From the deck of the sloop, Hugh Beaupré looked on with eager eyes. It
was not so much of the picturesqueness and novelty of the scene, however,
as of his own private affairs that he was thinking. Anxiously he scanned
the crowd of white men, half-breeds and Indians, wondering which one of
the black-haired, deerskin-clad, half-grown lads, who slipped so nimbly
between their elders into the front ranks, was his half-brother. Many of
the crowd, old and young, white and red, came aboard, but none sought out
Hugh. He concluded that Blaise was either not there or was waiting for
him to go ashore.
Hugh soon had an opportunity to leave the ship. He had feared that he
might be more closely questioned by Captain Bennett or by some of the
crew about what he intended to do at the Kaministikwia, and was relieved
to reach shore without having to dodge the curiosity of his companions.
Only Baptiste asked him where he expected to meet his brother. Hugh
replied truthfully that he did not know.
Unobtrusively, calling as little attention to himself as possible, the
boy made his way through the crowd, but not towards the New Fort. No
doubt the Fort, with all its busy activity in its wilderness
surroundings, was worth seeing, but he did not choose to visit the place
for fear someone might ask his business there. He was keenly aware that
his business was likely to be, not with the Old Northwest Company, but
with its rival, the New Northwest Company, sometimes called in derision
the X Y Company. In a quandary where to look for his unknown brother, he
wandered about aimlessly for a time, avoiding rather than seeking
companionship.
The ground about the New Fort was low and swampy, with thick woods of
evergreens, birch and poplar wherever the land had not been cleared for
building or burned over through carelessness. Away from the river bank
and the Fort, the place was not cheerful or encouraging to a lonely boy
on that chill spring day. The sky was gray and lowering, the wind cold,
the distance shrouded in fog, the air heavy with the earthy smell of
damp, spongy soil and sodden, last year’s leaves. Hugh had looked forward
with eager anticipation to his arrival at the Kaministikwia, but now all
things seemed to combine to make him low spirited and lonely.
That the X Y Company had a trading post somewhere near the New Fort Hugh
knew, but he had no idea which way to go, and he did not wish to inquire.
At last he turned by chance into a narrow path that led through the woods
up-river. He was walking slowly, so wrapped in his own not very pleasant
thoughts as to be scarcely conscious of his surroundings, when a voice
sounded close at his shoulder. It was a low, soft voice, pronouncing his
own name, “Hugh Beaupré,” with an intonation that was not English.
Startled, Hugh whirled about, his hand on the sheathed knife that was his
only weapon. Facing him in the narrow trail stood a slender lad of less
than his own height, clad in a voyageur’s blanket coat over the deerskin
tunic and leggings of the woods and with a scarlet handkerchief bound
about his head instead of a cap. His dark features were unmistakably
Indian in form, but from under the straight, black brows shone hazel eyes
that struck Hugh with a sense of familiarity. They were the eyes of his
father, Jean Beaupré, the bright, unforgettable eyes that had been the
most notable feature of the elder Beaupré’s face.
“Hugh Beaupré?” the dark lad repeated with a questioning inflection. “My
brother?”
“You are my half-brother Blaise?” Hugh asked, somewhat stiffly, in
return.
“_Oui_,” the other replied, and added apologetically in excellent French,
“My English is bad, but you perhaps know French.”
“Let it be French then, though I doubt if I speak it as well as you.”
A swift smile crossed the hitherto grave face. “I was at school with the
Jesuit fathers in Quebec four winters,” Blaise answered.
Hugh was surprised. This new brother looked like an Indian, but he was no
mere wild savage. The schooling in Quebec accounted for the well written
letter. Before Hugh could find words in which to voice his thoughts,
Blaise spoke again.
“I was on the shore when the _Otter_ arrived. I thought when I saw you,
you must be my brother, though you have little the look of our father,
neither the hair nor the eyes.”
“I have been told that I resemble my mother’s people.” Hugh’s manner was
still cool and stiff.
Without comment upon the reply, Blaise went on in his low, musical voice
with its slightly singsong drawl. “I wished not to speak to you there
among the others. I waited until I saw you take this trail. Then, after a
little while, I followed.”
“Do you mean you have been following me around ever since I came ashore?”
Hugh exclaimed in English.
“Not following.” The swift smile so like, yet unlike, that of Jean
Beaupré, crossed the boy’s face again. “Not following, but,”—he dropped
into French-“I watched. It was not difficult, since you thought not that
anyone watched. We will go on now a little farther. Then we will talk
together, my brother.”
Passing Hugh, Blaise took the lead, going along the forest trail with a
lithe swiftness that spurred the older lad to his fastest walking pace.
After perhaps half a mile, they came to the top of a low knoll where an
opening had been made by the fall of a big spruce. Blaise seated himself
on the prostrate trunk, and Hugh dropped down beside him, more eager than
he cared to betray to hear his Indian brother’s story.
A strange tale the younger lad had to tell. Jean Beaupré had spent the
previous winter trading and trapping in the country south of the Lake of
the Woods, now included in the state of Minnesota. Blaise and his mother
had remained at Wauswaugoning Bay, north of the Grand Portage. Just at
dusk of a night late in March, Beaupré staggered into their camp, his
face ghastly, his clothes blood stained, mind and body in the last stages
of exhaustion. At the lodge entrance he fell fainting. It was some time
before his squaw and his son succeeded in bringing him back to
consciousness. In spite of his weakness he was determined to tell his
story. Mustering all his failing strength, he commenced.
Before the snow had begun to melt under the spring sun, he had started,
he told them, with one Indian companion and two dog sleds loaded with
pelts, for Lake Superior. Travelling along the frozen streams and lakes,
he reached the trading post at the Fond du Lac on the St. Louis River.
While he was there, a spell of unusually warm early spring weather
cleared the river mouth. The winter had been mild, with little ice in
that part of the lake. At Fond du Lac Beaupré obtained a bateau, as the
Canadians called their wooden boats, and rigged it with mast and sail. He
and his companion put their furs aboard, and started up the northwest
shore of Lake Superior.
Thus far he succeeded in telling his story clearly enough, then, worn out
with the effort, he lapsed into unconsciousness. Twice he rallied and
tried to go on, but his speech was vague and disconnected. As well as he
could, Blaise pieced together the fragments of the story. Somewhere
between the Fond du Lac and the Grand Portage the bateau had been wrecked
in a storm. When he reached this part of his tale, Jean Beaupré became
much agitated. He gasped out again and again that he had hidden the furs
and the “packet” in a safe cache, and that Blaise and his other son Hugh
must go get them. He called the furs his sons’ inheritance, for he was
clearly aware that he could not live. The pelts were a very good season’s
catch, and the boys must take them to the New Northwest Company’s post at
the Kaministikwia. But it was the packet about which he seemed most
anxious. Hugh must carry the packet to Montreal to Monsieur Dubois.
Blaise asked where his brother was to be found, and received instructions
to go or send to the Sault. Before the lad learned definitely where to
look for the furs and the packet, Jean Beaupré lapsed once more into
unconsciousness. He rallied only long enough for the ministrations of a
priest, who happened to be at the Grand Portage on a missionary journey.
Though Hugh had scarcely known his father, he was much moved at the story
of his death. He felt a curious mixture of sympathy for and jealousy of
his Indian half-brother, when he saw, in spite of the latter’s controlled
and quiet manner, how strongly he felt his loss. Hugh respected the depth
of the boy’s sorrow, yet he could not but feel as if he, the elder son,
had been unrightfully defrauded. The half-breed lad had known their
common father so much better than he, the wholly white son. For some
minutes after Blaise ceased speaking, Hugh sat silent, oppressed by
conflicting thoughts and feelings. Then his mind turned to the present,
practical aspect of the situation.
“It will not be an easy search,” he remarked. “Have you no clue to the
spot where the furs are hidden?”
“None, except that it is a short way only from the place where the
wrecked boat lies.”
“Where the boat lay when father left it,” commented Hugh thoughtfully.
“It may have drifted far from there by now.”
“That is possible. I could not learn from him where the wreck happened,
though I asked several times. The boat was driven on the rocks. That is
all I know.”
“And his companion? Was he drowned?”
Blaise shook his head. “I know not. Our father said nothing of Black
Thunder, but I think he must be dead, or our father would not have come
alone.”
“How shall we set about the search?”
“We will go down along the shore,” Blaise replied, taking the lead as if
by right, although he was the younger by two or three years. “We will
look first for the wrecked bateau. When we have found that, we will make
search for the cache of furs.”
Hugh’s thoughts turned to another part of his half-brother’s tale. “Tell
me, Blaise,” he said suddenly, “what was it caused my father’s death,
starvation, exhaustion, hardship? Or was he hurt when the boat was
wrecked? You spoke of his blood-stained clothes.”
“It was not starvation and not cold,” the half-breed boy replied gravely.
“He was hurt, sore hurt.” The lad cast a swift glance about him, at the
still and silent woods shadowy with approaching night. Then he leaned
towards Hugh and spoke so low the latter could scarcely catch the words.
“Our father was sore hurt, but not in the wreck. How he ever lived to
reach us I know not. The wound was in his side.”
“But how came he by a wound?” Hugh whispered, unconsciously imitating the
other’s cautious manner.
Blaise shook his black head solemnly. “I know not how, but not in the
storm or the wreck. The wound was a knife wound.”
“What?” cried Hugh, forgetting caution in his surprise. “Had he enemies
who attacked him? Did someone murder him?”
Again Blaise shook his head. “It might have been in fair fight. Our
father was ever quick with word and deed. The bull moose himself is not
braver. Yet I think the blow was not a fair one. I think it was struck
from behind. The knife entered here.” Blaise placed his hand on a spot a
little to the left of the back-bone.
“A blow from behind it must have been. Could it have been his companion
who struck him?”
“Black Thunder? No, for then Black Thunder would have carried away the
furs. Our father would not have told us to go get them.”
“True,” Hugh replied, but after a moment of thought he added, “Yet the
fellow may have attacked him, and father, though mortally wounded, may
have slain him.”
A quick, fierce gleam shone in the younger boy’s bright eyes. “If he who
struck was not killed by our father’s hand,” he said in a low, tense
voice, “you and I are left to avenge our father.” It was plain that
Christian schooling in Quebec had not rooted out from Little Caribou’s
nature the savage’s craving for revenge. To tell the truth, at the
thought of that cowardly blow, Hugh’s own feelings were nearly as fierce
as those of his half-Indian brother.
VI
DOWN THE NORTHWEST SHORE
Hugh slept on board the _Otter_ that night and helped with the unloading
next day. His duties over, he was free to go where he would. To
Baptiste’s queries, he replied that he had seen his half-brother and had
arranged to accompany him to the Grand Portage. Later he would come again
to the Kaministikwia or return to the Sault by the southerly route.
Having satisfied the simple fellow’s curiosity, Hugh went with him to
visit the New Fort.
Baptiste had a great admiration for the Fort. Proudly he called Hugh’s
attention to the strong wooden walls, flanked with bastions. He obtained
permission to take his friend through the principal building and display
to him the big dining hall. There, later in the year, at the time of the
annual meeting, partners, agents and clerks would banquet together and
discuss matters of the highest import to the fur trade. He also showed
Hugh the living quarters of the permanent employees of the post, the
powder house, the jail, the kilns and forges. When the Fort should be
completed, with all its storehouses and workshops, it would be almost a
village within walls. Outside the stockade was a shipyard and a tract of
land cleared for a garden. Hugh, who had lived in the city of Montreal,
was less impressed with the log structures, many of them still
unfinished, than was the voyageur who had spent most of his days in the
wilds. Nevertheless the lad wondered at the size and ambitiousness of
this undertaking and accomplishment in the wilderness. Far removed from
the civilization of eastern Canada, the trading post was forced to be a
little city in itself, dependent upon the real cities for nothing it
could possibly make or obtain from the surrounding country.
To tell the truth, however, Hugh found more of real interest and novelty
without the walls than within. There, Baptiste took him through the camps
of Indians, voyageurs and woodsmen or coureurs de bois, where bark lodges
and tents and upturned canoes served as dwellings. In one of the wigwams
Blaise was living, awaiting the time when he and his elder brother should
start on their adventurous journey.
Already Blaise had provided himself with a good birch canoe, ribbed with
cedar, and a few supplies, hulled corn, strips of smoked venison as hard
and dry as wood, a lump of bear fat and a birch basket of maple sugar. He
also had a blanket, a gun and ammunition, an iron kettle and a small axe.
Hugh had been able to bring nothing with him but a blanket, his hunting
knife and an extra shirt, but, as he had worked his passage, he still
possessed a small sum of money. Now that he was no longer a member of the
crew of the _Otter_, he had no place to sleep and wondered what he should
do. Blaise solved the problem by taking him about a mile up-river to the
post of the New Northwest or X Y Company, a much smaller and less
pretentious place than the New Fort, and introducing him to the clerk in
charge. Blaise had already explained that he and Hugh were going to get
the elder Beaupré’s furs and would bring them back to the New Company’s
post. So the clerk treated Hugh in a most friendly manner, invited him to
share his own house, and even offered to give him credit for the gun,
canoe paddle and other things he needed. Hugh, not knowing whether the
search for the furs would be successful, preferred to pay cash.
From the X Y clerk the lad learned that his father, always proud and
fiery of temper, had, the summer before, taken offence at one of the Old
Company’s clerks. The outcome of the quarrel had been that Beaupré had
entered into a secret agreement with the New Company, promising to bring
his pelts to them. The clerk warned both boys not to let any of the Old
Company’s men get wind of their undertaking. The rivalry between the two
organizations was fierce and ruthless. Both went on the principle that
“all is fair in love or war,” and the relations between them were very
nearly those of war. If the Old Company learned of the hidden furs, they
would either send men to seek the cache or would try to force the boys to
bring the pelts to the New Fort. The X Y clerk even hinted that Jean
Beaupré had probably been the victim of some of the Old Company’s men who
had discovered that he was carrying his furs to the rival post. Hugh,
during his winter at the Sault, had heard many tales of the wild deeds of
the fur traders and had listened to the most bitter talk against the X Y
or New Northwest company. Accordingly he was inclined to believe there
might be some foundation for the agent’s suspicions. Blaise, however,
took no heed of the man’s hints. When Hugh mentioned his belief that his
father had been murdered because of his change of allegiance, the younger
boy shrugged his shoulders, a habit caught from his French parent.
“That may be,” he replied, “but it is not in that direction _I_ shall
look for the murderer.” And that was the only comment he would make.
To avoid curiosity and to keep their departure secret if possible, the
boys decided not to go down the north branch of the Kaministikwia past
the New Fort, but upstream to the dividing point, then descend the lower
or southern channel. Early the third morning after Hugh’s arrival, they
set out from the New Northwest post. Up the river against the current
they paddled between wooded shores veiled by the white, frosty mist.
Without meeting another craft or seeing a lodge or tent or even the smoke
of a fire, they passed the spot where the middle channel branched off,
went on to the southern one, down that, aided by the current now, and out
upon the fog-shrouded waters of the great bay. Hugh could not have found
his way among islands and around points and reefs, but his half-brother
had come this route less than two weeks before. With the retentive memory
and excellent sense of direction of the Indian, he steered unhesitatingly
around and among the dim shapes. When the sun, breaking through the fog,
showed him the shore line clearly, he gave a little grunt of
satisfaction. He had kept his course and was just where he had believed
himself to be.
This feat of finding his way in the fog gave the elder brother some
respect for the younger. Before the day was over, that respect had
considerably increased. As the older boy was also the heavier, he had
taken his place in the stern, kneeling on his folded blanket. Wielding a
paddle was not a new exercise to Hugh. He thought that Blaise set too
easy a pace, and, anxious to prove that he was no green hand, he
quickened his own stroke. Blaise took the hint and timed his paddling to
his brother’s. Hugh was sturdy, well knit and proud of his muscular
strength. For a couple of hours he kept up the pace he had set. Then his
stroke grew slower and he put less force into it. After a time Blaise
suggested a few minutes’ rest. With the stern blade idle and the bow one
dipped only now and then to keep the course, they floated for ten or
fifteen minutes.
Refreshed by this brief respite and ashamed of tiring so soon, Hugh
resumed work with a more vigorous stroke, but it was Blaise who set the
pace now. In a clear, boyish voice, which gave evidence in only an
occasional note of beginning to break and roughen, he started an old
French song, learned from his father, and kept time with his paddle.
“Je n’ai pas trouvé personne
Que le rossignol chantant la belle rose,
La belle rose du rosier blanc!”
Roughly translated:
“Never yet have I found anyone
But the nightingale, to sing of the lovely rose,
The lovely rose of the white rose tree!”
At first Hugh, though his voice broke and quavered, attempted to join in,
but singing took breath and strength. He soon fell silent, content to dip
and raise his blade in time to the younger lad’s tune. An easy enough
pace it seemed, but the half-breed boy kept it up hour after hour, with
only brief periods of rest.
Hugh began to feel the strain sorely. His arms and back ached, his breath
came wearily, and the lower part of his body was cramped and numb from
his kneeling position. He had eaten breakfast at dawn and, as the sun
climbed the sky and started down again, he began to wonder when and where
his Indian brother intended to stop for the noon meal. Did Blaise purpose
to travel all day without food, Hugh wondered. He opened his lips to ask,
then, through pride, closed them again. Blaise, just fourteen, was nearly
three years younger than Hugh. What Blaise could endure, the elder lad
felt he must endure also. He did not intend to admit hunger or weariness,
so long as his companion appeared untouched by either. With empty stomach
and aching muscles, the white boy plied his paddle steadily and doggedly
in time to the voyageur songs and the droning, monotonous Indian chants,
the constantly repeated syllables of which had no meaning for him.
It was the weather that came to Hugh’s rescue at last. After the lifting
of the chill, frosty, morning fog, the day was bright. The waters of
Thunder Bay were smooth at first, then rippled by a light north breeze.
As the day wore on, the breeze came up to a brisk blow. Partly protected
by the islands and points of the irregular shore, the two lads kept on
their way. The wind increased. It roughened every stretch of open water
to waves that broke foaming on the beaches or dashed in spray against the
gray-brown rocks. Paddling became more and more difficult. Blaise ceased
his songs. As they rounded a low point edged with gravel and sand, and
saw before them a stretch of green-blue water swept by the full force of
the wind into white-tipped waves, the half-breed boy told Hugh to steer
for the beach. A few moments later he gave his elder brother a quick
order to cease paddling.
Realizing that Blaise wished to take the canoe in alone, Hugh, breathing
a sigh of relief, laid down his paddle. The muscles of his back and
shoulders were strained, it seemed to him, almost to the breaking point,
and he felt that, in spite of his pride, he must soon have asked for
rest. Without disturbing the balance of the wobbly craft, he tried to rub
his cramped leg muscles. He feared that in trying to rise and step out,
he might overturn the boat, to the mirth and disgust of his Indian
brother.
With a few strong and skillful strokes, Blaise shot the canoe into the
shallow water off the point. When the bow struck the sand, with a sharp
command to Hugh, he rose and stepped out. As quickly as he could, Hugh
got to his feet, and managed to step over the opposite side without
stumbling or upsetting the canoe. Raising the light bark craft, the two
carried it up the shelving shore, to the bushes that edged the woods,
well beyond the reach of the waves.
The canoe carefully deposited in a safe spot, Hugh turned to Blaise.
“Shall we be delayed long, do you think?” he asked.
Blaise gave his French shrug. “It may be that the wind will go down with
the sun.”
“Then, if we are to stay here so long, a little food wouldn’t come
amiss.”
The younger boy nodded and began to unlash the packages which, to
distribute the weight evenly, were securely tied to two poles lying along
the bottom of the canoe. Hugh sought dry wood, kindled it with sparks
from his flint and steel, and soon had a small fire on the pebbles. From
a tripod of sticks the iron kettle was swung over the blaze, and when the
water boiled, Blaise put in corn, a little of the dried venison, which he
had pounded to a powder on a flat stone, and a portion of fat. He had
made no mention of hunger, but when the stew was ready, Hugh noticed that
he ate heartily. Meanwhile the elder boy, tired and sore muscled, watched
for some sign of weariness in his companion. If Blaise was weary he had
too much Indian pride to admit the fact to his new-found white brother.
The open lake was now rich blue, flecked with foamy whitecaps, the air so
clear that the deep color of the water formed a sharp cut line against
the paler tint of the sky at the horizon. The May wind was bitterly cold,
so the lads rigged a shelter with the poles of the canoe and a blanket.
The ground was so hard the poles could not be driven in. Three or four
inches down, it was either frozen or composed of solid rock. The boys
were obliged to brace each pole with stones and boulders. The blanket,
stretched between the supports, kept off the worst of the wind, and
between the screen and the fire, the two rested in comfort. Hugh soon
fell asleep, and when he woke he was pleased to find that Blaise had
dropped off also. Perhaps the latter was wearier than he had chosen to
admit.
The wind did not go down with the sun, and the adventurers made camp for
the night. Both blankets would be needed for bedding, so the screen was
taken down and the canoe propped up on one side. Then a supply of wood
was gathered and balsam branches cut for a bed. After a supper of corn
porridge and maple sugar, the two turned in. Blaise went to sleep as soon
as he was rolled in his blanket, but Hugh was wakeful. He lay there on
his fragrant balsam bed in the shelter of the canoe, watching the
flickering light of the camp fire and the stars coming out in the dark
sky. Listening to the rushing of the wind in the trees and the waves
breaking on the pebbles and thundering on a bit of rock shore near at
hand, surrounded on every side by the strange wilderness of woods and
waters, the boy could not sleep for a time. He kept thinking of his
roving, half-wild father, and of the strange legacy he had left his sons.
Twice Hugh rose to replenish the fire, when it began to die down, before
he grew drowsy and drifted away into the land of dreams.
VII
AT WAUSWAUGONING
Hugh woke chilled and stiff, to find Blaise rekindling the fire. The
morning was clear and the sun coming up across the water. Winds and waves
had subsided enough to permit going on with the journey.
Cutting wood limbered Hugh’s sore muscles somewhat, and a hot breakfast
cheered him, but the first few minutes of paddling were difficult and
painful. With set teeth he persisted, and gradually the worst of the
lameness wore off.
Skirting the shore of Lake Superior in a bark canoe requires no small
amount of patience. Delays from unfavorable weather must be frequent and
unavoidable. On the whole, Hugh and Blaise were lucky during the first
part of their trip, and they reached the Pigeon River in good time.
Rounding the long point to the south of the river mouth, they paddled to
the north end of Wauswaugoning Bay.
Hugh was gaining experience and his paddling muscles were hardening. He
would soon be able, he felt, to hold his own easily at any pace his
half-brother set. So far Blaise had proved a good travelling companion,
somewhat silent and grave to be sure, but dependable, patient and for the
most part even tempered. His lack of talkativeness Hugh laid to his
Indian blood, his gravity to his sorrow at the loss of the father he had
known so much better than Hugh had known him. Blaise, the older boy
decided, was, in spite of his Quebec training and many civilized ways,
more Indian than French. Only now and then, in certain gestures and quick
little ways, in an unexpected gleam of humor or sudden flash of anger,
did the lad show his kinship with Jean Beaupré.
Satisfactory comrade though the half-breed boy seemed, Hugh was in no
haste to admit Blaise to his friendship. Since first receiving his
letter, Hugh had felt doubtful of this Indian brother, inclined to resent
his very existence. Their relations from their first meeting had been
entirely peaceful but somewhat cool and stiff. As yet, Hugh was obliged
to admit to himself, he had no cause for complaint of his half-brother’s
behavior, but he felt that the real test of their companionship was to
come.
The search for the cache of pelts had not yet begun, but was to begin
soon. It was into his wife’s lodge at Wauswaugoning Bay that Jean Beaupré
had stumbled dying. Somewhere between Grand Portage Bay, which lies just
to the west and south of Wauswaugoning, and the Fond du Lac at the mouth
of the St. Louis River, the bateau must have been wrecked and the furs
hidden.
The two boys landed on a bit of beach at the north end of the bay, hid
the canoe among the alders, and set out on foot. Blaise fully expected to
find his mother awaiting him, but the cleared spot among the trees was
deserted. Of the camp nothing remained but the standing poles of a lodge,
from which the bark covering had been stripped, and refuse and cast-off
articles strewn upon the stony ground in the untidy manner in which the
Indians and most of the white voyageurs left their camping places. With a
little grunt, which might have meant either disappointment or disgust,
Blaise looked about him. He noticed two willow wands lying crossed on the
ground and pegged down with a crotched stick.
“She has gone that way,” said the boy, indicating the longest section of
willow, pointing towards the northeast.
“If she travelled by canoe, it is strange we did not meet her,” Hugh
remarked.
Blaise shrugged. “Who knows how long ago she went? The ashes are wet with
rain. I cannot tell whether the fire burned two days ago or has been out
many days. There is another message here.” He squatted down to study the
shorter stick. At one end the bark had been peeled off and a cross mark
cut into the wood. The marked end pointed towards a thick clump of
spruces.
The boy rose and walked towards the group of trees, Hugh following
curiously. Blaise pushed his way between the spruces, and, before Hugh
could join him, came out again carrying a mooseskin bag. In the open
space by the ashes of the fire, he untied the thong and dumped the
contents. There was a smaller skin bag, partly full, a birch bark package
and a bundle of clothing. Tossing aside the bundle, Blaise opened the
small bag, thrust in his hand, then, with the one word “manomin,” passed
the bag to Hugh. It was about half full of wild rice grains, very hard
and dry. The bark package Blaise did not open. He merely sniffed at it
and laid it down. Hugh, picking it up and smelling of it, recognized the
unmistakable odor of smoked fish. The bundle, which the younger boy
untied next, contained two deerskin shirts or tunics, two pairs of
leggings of the same material and half a dozen pairs of moccasins. All
were new and well made, the moccasins decorated with dyed porcupine
quills, the breasts of the tunics with colored bead embroidery.
The lad’s face lighted with a look of pleasure, and he glanced at Hugh
proudly. “They are my mother’s work,” he said, “made of the best skins,
well made. Now we have strong new clothes for our journey.”
“We?” replied Hugh questioningly.
“Truly. There are two suits and six pairs of moccasins. Look.” He held up
one of the shirts. “This she made larger than the other. She knows you
are the elder and must be the larger.” He handed the shirt to Hugh,
following it with a pair of the leggings. Looking over the moccasins, he
selected the larger ones and gave them also to his white brother. “They
are better to wear in a canoe than boots,” he said.
For a moment Hugh was silent with embarrassment. He was touched by the
generosity of the Indian woman, who had put as much time and care on
these clothes for her unknown stepson as upon those for her own boy. He
flushed, however, at the thought of accepting anything from the squaw who
had taken his mother’s place in his father’s life. Yet to decline the
gift would be to offer a deadly insult not only to the Indian woman but
to her son as well.
“I am obliged to your mother,” Hugh stammered. “It was—kind of her.”
Blaise made no other reply than a nod. He appeared pleased with the
appearance and quality of the clothes, but took it as a matter of course
that his mother should make them for Hugh as well as for himself.
“I wish she had left more food,” he said after a moment, “but at this
time of the year food is scarce. That manomin is all that remained of the
harvest of the autumn. We have eaten much of our food. We must fish when
we can.”
“Can’t we buy corn and pork from the traders at the Grand Portage?” Hugh
inquired.
Blaise shook his head doubtfully. “We will try,” he said.
He put the food back in the mooseskin bag and hung it on a tree. Then he
turned to Hugh and said softly and questioningly, “You wish to see where
we laid him?”
Hugh nodded, a lump rising in his throat, and followed his brother.
Beyond the clump of spruces, in a tiny clearing, was Jean Beaupré’s
grave. Hugh was surprised and horrified to see that it was, in
appearance, an Indian grave. Poles had been stuck in the ground on either
side, bent over and covered with birch bark. The boy’s face flushed with
indignation.
“Why,” he demanded, “did you do that?” He pointed to the miniature lodge.
Blaise looked puzzled. “It is the Ojibwa custom.”
“Father was not an Ojibwa. He was a white man and should have been buried
like a white man and a Christian,” Hugh burst out.
Blaise drew himself up with a dignity strange in so young a lad. “He
_was_ buried like a Christian,” he replied quietly. “Look.” He pointed to
the rude cross set up in front of the opening to the shelter, instead of
the pole, with offerings and trophies hung upon it, usually placed beside
Ojibwa graves. “The good father absolved him and read the burial service
over him,” the lad went on, “and I placed the cross there. Then the
friends of my mother covered the spot according to the Ojibwa custom. Our
father was an Ojibwa by adoption and it was right they should do that.
Now no Ojibwa will ever disturb that spot.”
Hugh’s anger had been cooling. After all, his father had thrown in his
lot with the Indians and they had meant to honor him. At least he had
received Christian burial, and it was something to know that his grave
would not be disturbed. In silence Hugh turned away. He could not quite
bring himself to apologize for his hasty words.
The relations between the half-brothers were more than ordinarily cool
the rest of that day. Blaise, travelling overland by a trail he knew,
went to the Grand Portage Bay in quest of supplies. Even before the
formation of the Northwest Company, the bay had been a favorite stopping
place, first for the French, and then for the English traders who
followed the Pigeon River route to the country west of the lake. An old
Indian trail led from the bay to a spot on the river above the falls and
rapids that make its lower course unnavigable. Gitchi Onegam
Kaministigoya the Indians had called the trail and the bay, “the great
carrying place of the river that is hard to navigate.” Early in the
history of the fur trade, the white traders began to use that trail,
portaging their goods some nine miles from the bay to the river and
bringing the bales of furs back over the same route.
Since the Old Northwest Company had removed its headquarters to Thunder
Bay and had practically abandoned the Pigeon River route for the
Kaministikwia, Grand Portage was not so busy a place, but the Old Company
still maintained a post at the partly deserted fort on the north shore of
the bay. On the west side the chief post and headquarters of the New
Company also remained open for business. Blaise visited both posts, only
to find that, as the winter’s supplies were almost exhausted and no one
knew when fresh stores would arrive, nothing could be spared.
Anxious to avoid questions, Hugh had not accompanied Blaise. He occupied
himself with fishing from the canoe, and caught one lake trout of about
three pounds weight. Making a grill of willow twigs resting on stones
over the coals, he had the trout ready to broil when Blaise returned. The
common way of cooking fish among both the Indians and white men of the
woods was to boil them, but Hugh, recently from the civilized world,
preferred his broiled, baked or fried.
Blaise, after one mouthful, deigned to approve his elder brother’s
cooking. “It is good,” he said. “I have not eaten fish so cooked since I
ate it on Fridays in school at Quebec.”
Neither lad had anything more to say during the meal or for some time
afterwards. Finally Blaise put his hand in the leather pouch he wore at
his belt, drew out something and handed it to Hugh. The latter unwrapped
the bit of soft doeskin and found his father’s gold seal ring. He glanced
quickly up at Blaise.
“It is yours,” the younger brother said. “I gave it not to you before,
because I liked not to part with it.”
Moved by a generous impulse, Hugh stretched out his hand to return the
ring, but Blaise would not take it.
“No,” he said firmly. “You are the elder son. It is yours.”
The adventurers intended to continue their trip next day, but fate was
against them. Before dawn rain was beating on the canoe that sheltered
them, and the thundering of the waves on the rocks in the more exposed
part of the bay sounded in Hugh’s ears as he woke. That storm was the
beginning of a period of bad weather, rain, fog, and wind that cleared
the air, but rose to a gale, lashing the waters of the bay to
white-capped waves that did not diminish until hours after the wind had
blown itself out. Eight days the two camped in a hastily built wigwam on
Wauswaugoning Bay, fishing when they could, and snaring one lean hare and
a few squirrels. They hunted for larger game and found some deer tracks,
but did not catch sight of the animals. As for birds, they saw none but
gulls, a loon or two and an owl, and did not care to try anything so
tough and strong for food. So they were obliged to consume a good part of
their corn.
VIII
THE BLOOD-STAINED TUNIC
But a few days of May remained when Hugh and Blaise left Wauswaugoning.
Their progress was necessarily slow, not only on account of delays due to
wind and weather, but because they were obliged to skirt the shore
closely, entering each bay and cove, rounding every point, and keeping
keen watch for any sign of the wrecked boat. They had no clue to the spot
where it lay. It might have been thrown up on the open shore, or driven
into some rock-infested bay or stream mouth. At each stream they made a
close examination, ascending a short distance, by canoe where that was
possible, or up over the rocky banks on foot. They had searched the
mouths of more than a dozen streams and creeks when they came to one,
where Blaise, in entering, cautioned Hugh to steer far to one side.
Almost across the river mouth extended a long bar of sand and gravel,
covered by an inch or two of water, for the river was still high from the
spring flood. Bars or rock reefs were, Hugh was learning, common
characteristics of the streams emptying into Superior. To enter them
without accident required care and caution.
The bar was passed, but further progress up-stream proved impossible. The
current was strong, and just ahead were foaming rapids where the water
descended among rocks and over boulders. Steering into a bit of quiet
backwater behind the bar, the boys found a landing place and carried the
canoe ashore. Then they scrambled up the bank a short distance, searching
the stream mouth for signs of the wreck. Caught in a blossoming
serviceberry bush growing on a rock at the very edge of the river, Blaise
found an old moccasin. He examined the ragged, dirty, skin shoe in
silence for a moment. Then, hazel eyes gleaming, he held the thing out to
Hugh.
“It is my mother’s work,” he said in tense tones. Hugh snatched the worn
moccasin. “Do you mean this was my father’s?”
Blaise nodded. “It is my mother’s work,” he repeated. “I would know it
anywhere, the pattern of quills, the shaping, even the skin. It is from
the elk hide our father brought from the region of the great river.” He
made a gesture towards the southwest, and Hugh knew he referred to the
Mississippi. “See, it is just like ours,” Blaise concluded, holding up
one foot.
Hugh glanced from the almost new moccasin to the ragged one, and drew a
long breath. “Then it may be about here somewhere father was wrecked.”
“We must make search,” was the brief reply.
Thoroughly they searched, first the banks of the stream, then the lake
beach, parallel ridges of flat flakes of rock pushed up by the waves.
They even examined the ground beyond the beach, a rough slope composed of
the same sort of dark rock flakes, partly decomposed into crumbly soil.
The two pushed through the bushes and small trees that sparsely clothed
the stony ground, but nowhere did they find any sign of wrecked boat or
hidden cache. Yet they did find something, something that hinted of
violence and crime.
Well up from the shore and not far from the stream bank, Hugh came upon
an open space, where a ring of blackened stones and ashes showed that a
cooking fire had burned. He took one look, turned and plunged into the
bushes to find Blaise. But he stopped suddenly. His foot had come in
contact with something that was not a rock, a stump or a stick. Stooping,
he pulled from under a scraggly wild raspberry, where it had been dropped
or thrust, a bundle. Unrolling it, he found it to be a ragged deerskin
tunic, damp, dirty and bearing dark stains. The boy stood transfixed
staring at the thing in his hands. After a moment he raised his head and
shouted for Blaise.
Blaise answered from near by, but to Hugh it seemed a long time before
the younger boy came through the bushes. In silence the elder handed the
other the stained shirt. Blaise took it, examined it quickly and uttered
an Indian grunt.
“Blood?” asked Hugh pointing to the stains.
Blaise grunted assent.
“Father’s blood?” Hugh’s voice broke.
Blaise looked up quickly. “No, no. Black Thunder’s.”
“How do you know?”
“By this.” The lad pointed to a crude figure, partly painted, partly
embroidered in black wool, on the breast of the tunic. “This is Black
Thunder’s mark, the thunder bird. Without doubt this shirt was his.”
“But how did it come here? There’s no sign of the wrecked boat.”
Blaise shook his head in puzzlement. “I do not understand,” he said
slowly.
The half-breed lad was keen witted in many ways, but the white boy’s mind
worked more quickly on such a problem. “It may be,” Hugh speculated,
“that they were wrecked farther along the shore. Coming on by land, they
camped here and some accident happened to Black Thunder, or perhaps he
had been bleeding from a hurt received in the wreck, and he changed his
shirt and threw away the bloody one.”
“Where was it?” asked Blaise.
“Under this raspberry bush, rolled up.”
“And why think you they camped here?”
“I’ll show you.”
Hugh led the way to the little clearing. Carefully and absorbedly Blaise
examined the spot.
“Someone has camped here,” he concluded, “but only a short time, not more
than one night. He made no lodge, for there are no poles. He cut no
boughs for beds, and he left scarce any litter. It may be he cooked but
one meal and went on. If he lay here for the night, the marks of his body
no longer remain. If anyone was slain here,” he added after a moment,
“the rains washed out the stains. It was a long time ago that he was
here, I think.”
“If Black Thunder was killed here,” Hugh questioned, “what was done with
his body?”
Blaise shrugged. “There is the lake, and a body weighted with stones
stays down.”
“Then why was his blood-stained shirt not sunk with him?”
“That I know not,” and the puzzled look returned to the lad’s face.
“Might it not be that father was wearing Black Thunder’s shirt and that
the stains are from his wound?”
“He wore his own when he came to the lodge, and the stains are in the
wrong place. They are on the breast. No, he never wore this shirt. The
blood must be Black Thunder’s.”
The sun was going down when the two boys finally gave up the search for
the wrecked boat or some further trace of Jean Beaupré and his companion.
Neither lad had any wish to camp in the vicinity. Blaise especially
showed strong aversion to the spot.
“There are evil stories of this river,” he explained to his brother. “If
our father camped here, it was because he was very weary indeed. He was a
brave man though, far braver than most men, white or red.”
“Why should he have hesitated to camp here?” Hugh inquired curiously.
“It’s true we have seen pleasanter spots along this shore, yet this is
not such a bad one.”
“There are evil stories of the place,” Blaise repeated in a low voice.
“The lake from which this river flows is the abode of a devil.” The boy
made the sign of the cross on his breast and went on in his musical
singsong. “On the shores of that lake have been found the devil’s tracks,
great footprints, like those of a man, but many times larger and very far
apart. So the lake is called the ‘Lake of Devil Tracks’ and the river
bears the same name. It is said that when that devil wishes to come down
to the shore of the great lake to fish for trout, it is this way he
comes, striding along the bed of the river, even at spring flood.”
Hugh Beaupré, half Scotch, half French, and living in a time when the
superstitious beliefs of an earlier day persisted far more actively than
they do now, was not without his share of such superstitions. But this
story of a devil living on a lake and walking along a river, struck him
as absurd and he said so with perfect frankness.
“Surely you don’t believe such a tale, Blaise, and neither did my
father.”
“I know not if the tale is true,” the younger boy answered somewhat
sullenly. “Men say they have seen the footprints and everyone knows there
are devils, both red and white. Why should not one live on that lake
then? How know we it was not that devil who killed Black Thunder and left
the bloody tunic under the raspberry bush as a warning to others not to
camp on his hunting ground? I am no coward, as I will speedily show you
if you want proof, but I will not camp here. If you stay, you stay
alone.”
“I don’t want to stay,” Hugh replied quickly. “Devil or not, I don’t like
the place. We’ll go on till we find a better camping ground.”
In the light of the afterglow, which was tinting sky and water with pale
gold, soft rose and lavender, and tender blue, they launched their canoe
again and paddled on. The peace and beauty around him made the sinister
thing he had found under the raspberry bush, and the evil deed that thing
suggested, seem unreal to Hugh, almost as unreal as the devil who lived
at the lake and walked down the river to his fishing. Nevertheless he
turned his eyes from the soft colors of sky and water to scan the shore
the canoe was skirting. Not a trace of the wrecked bateau appeared,
though both boys watched closely.
Several miles beyond the Devil Track River, they made camp on a sloping
rock shore wooded with spruce and balsam, where nothing worse than a
plague of greedy mosquitoes disturbed their rest. Hugh thought of
suggesting that the horde of voracious insects might have been sent by
the evil spirit of Devil Track Lake to torment the trespassers. Fearing
however that a humorous treatment of his story might offend the halfbreed
lad’s sensitive pride, he kept the fancy to himself.
Going on with their journey the next morning, the two came to the spot
known to the French fur traders and to the English who followed them as
the Grand Marais, the great marsh or meadow. There a long sand and gravel
point connects with a low, marshy shore, a higher, rocky stretch, once a
reef or island, running at right angles to the gravel spit. The T-shaped
projection forms a good harbor for small boats. Closely scanning every
foot of beach and rock shore, Hugh and Blaise paddled around the T. On
the inner side of the spit, they caught sight of what appeared to be part
of a boat half buried in the sand and gravel. They landed to investigate.
The thing was indeed the shattered remnants of a wreck, old and weathered
and deep in sand and pebbles. It was not Jean Beaupré’s boat, but a birch
canoe.
Leaving the T, the lads skirted the low, curving shore. When they rounded
the little point beyond, they discovered that the waves, which had been
increasing for some hours, had reached a height dangerous to a small
boat. The time was past noon, and Blaise thought that the sea would not
be likely to go down before sunset. So he gave the word to turn back and
seek a camping ground. In the angle of the T just where the sand spit
joined the rocky reef, they found shelter.
Realizing that they must conserve their scanty food supply, the two,
instead of eating at once, went fishing in the sheltered water. Hugh, in
the stern of the canoe, held the hand line, while Blaise paddled. Luck
was with them and when they went ashore an hour later they had four fine
trout, the smallest about three and the largest at least eight pounds. In
one thing at least, cooking fish, Hugh excelled his younger brother. He
set about broiling part of his catch as soon as he had cleaned them.
Without touching their other supplies, the lads made a hearty meal of
trout.
The wind did not fall till after sunset. Knowing it would be some hours
before the lake would be calm enough for canoe travel, the boys prepared
to stay where they were till morning. The night was unusually mild for
the time of year, so they stretched themselves under their canoe and let
the fire burn itself out.
IX
THE GIANT IROQUOIS
At dawn Hugh woke and found his half-brother stirring.
“I go to see how the lake appears,” Blaise explained.
“I’ll go with you,” was Hugh’s reply, and Blaise nodded assent.
They crawled out from under the canoe, and, leaving the beach, climbed up
the rocky cross bar of the T-shaped point. The younger boy in the lead,
they crossed the rough, rock summit, pushing their way among stunted
evergreens and bushes now leafed out into summer foliage. Suddenly Blaise
paused, turned his head and laid his finger on his lips. Hugh strained
his ears to listen, but could catch no sound but the whining cry of a
sea-gull and the rippling of the water on the outer rocks. Blaise had
surely heard something, for he dropped on hands and knees and crept
forward. Hugh followed in the same manner, trying to move as noiselessly
as the Indian lad. With all his caution, he could not avoid a slight
rustling of undergrowth and bushes. Blaise turned his head again to
repeat his gesture of silence.
After a few yards of this cautious progress, Blaise came to a stop.
Crawling up beside his brother, Hugh found himself on the edge of a steep
rock declivity. Lying flat, screened by an alder and a small balsam fir,
he looked out across the water. He saw what Blaise had heard. Only a few
hundred feet away were two canoes, three men in each. Even at that short
distance Hugh could barely detect the sound of the dipping paddles and
the water rippling about the prows. His respect for his half-brother’s
powers of hearing increased.
The sun had not yet risen, but the morning was clear of fog or haze. As
the first canoe passed, the figures of the men stood out clear against
lake and sky. Hugh’s attention was attracted to the man in the stern.
Indeed that man was too notable and unusual a figure to escape attention.
A gigantic fellow, he towered, even in his kneeling position, a good foot
above his companions. A long eagle feather upright from the band about
his head made him appear still taller, while his huge shoulders and
big-muscled arms were conspicuous as he wielded his paddle on the left
side of the canoe.
Hugh heard Blaise at his side draw a quick breath. “Ohrante!” he
whispered in his elder brother’s ear. “Do not stir!”
Obeying that whispered command, Hugh lay motionless, bearing with Spartan
fortitude the stinging of the multitude of mosquitoes that surrounded
him. When both canoes had rounded a point farther up the shore and
vanished from sight, Blaise rose to his feet. Hugh followed his example,
and they made their way back across the rocks in silence. By the time
camp was reached, the elder brother was almost bursting with curiosity.
Who was the huge Indian, and why had Blaise been so startled, even
frightened, at the sight of him?
“Who is Ohrante?” Hugh asked, as he helped to lift the canoe from the
poles that propped it.
“He is more to be feared than the devil of the lake himself,” was the
grim reply. Then briefly Blaise told how the big Indian, the summer
before, had treacherously robbed and slain a white trader and had
severely wounded his Ojibwa companion, scalped him and left him to die.
The wounded man had not died, though he would always be a cripple. He had
told the tale of the attack, and a party of Ojibwas, led by Hugh’s
father, had pursued Ohrante and captured him. They were taking him back
to stand trial by Indian law or to be turned over to white justice,—there
was some disagreement between Jean Beaupré and his companions as to which
course should be followed,—when the giant made his escape through the
help of two of the party who secretly sympathized with him and had fled
with him. From that day until this morning, when he had recognized the
big Indian in the passing canoe, Blaise had heard nothing of Ohrante.
“But two men went with him when he fled,” the boy concluded. “Now he has
five. He is bold to return so soon. I am glad he goes up the shore, not
down. I should not wish to follow him or have him follow us. He hated our
father and nothing would please him more than to get us in his hands. I
hope my mother is with others, a strong party. I think Ohrante will not
risk an encounter with the Ojibwas again so soon, unless it be with two
or three only.”
“Isn’t he an Ojibwa himself?” Hugh asked.
“No, he is a Mohawk, one of the Iroquois wolves the Englishmen have
brought into the Ojibwa country to hunt and trap for the Old Company. It
is said his mother was an Ojibwa captive, but Ohrante is an evil Iroquois
all through.”
“Monsieur Cadotte says the bringing in of Iroquois hunters is unwise
policy,” Hugh remarked.
“The company never did a worse thing,” Blaise replied passionately. “The
Iroquois hunters trap and shoot at all seasons of the year. They are
greedy for pelts good and bad, and care not how quickly they strip the
country of beasts of all kinds. If the company brings in many more of
these thieving Iroquois, the Ojibwa, to whom the land belongs, will soon
be left without furs or food.”
“That is short-sighted policy for the company itself, it seems to me,”
commented Hugh.
“So our father said. He too hated the Iroquois intruders. He told the men
of the company they did ill to bring strange hunters into lands where
they had no right. Let the Iroquois keep to their own hunting grounds.
Here they do nothing but harm, and Ohrante is the worst of them all.”
Hugh had scarcely heard the last part of the lad’s speech. His mind was
occupied with a thought which had just come to him. “Do you think,” he
asked suddenly, “that it was Ohrante who killed father?”
“I had not thought it till I saw him passing by,” Blaise replied gravely.
“I believed it might be another enemy. Now I know not what to think. I
cannot believe the traders have brought Ohrante back to hunt and trap for
them. And my heart is troubled for my mother. Once when she was a girl
she was a captive among the Sioux. To be captured by Ohrante would be
even worse, and now there is no Jean Beaupré to take her away.”
“Do you mean that father rescued her from the Sioux?” Hugh asked in
surprise.
“He found her among the Sioux far south of here on the great river. She
was sad because she had been taken from her own people. So he bought her
from the chief who wished to make her his squaw. Then our father brought
her to the Grand Portage. There the priest married them. She was very
young then, young and beautiful. She is not old even now, and she is
still beautiful,” Blaise added proudly.
Hugh had listened to this story with amazement. Had he misjudged his own
father? Was it to be wondered at that the warm-hearted young Frenchman
should have taken the only possible way to save the sad Ojibwa girl from
captivity among the cruel Sioux? The elder son felt ashamed of his bitter
thoughts. Blaise loved his mother and was anxious about her. Hugh tried
to comfort his younger brother as well as he could.
“The willow wand showed that your mother had gone up the shore,” he
hastened to say. “Ohrante is not coming from that way, but from the
opposite direction, and there are no women in his canoes. Surely your
mother is among friends by this time, and Ohrante, the outlaw, will never
dare attack them.”
“That is true,” Blaise replied. “She cannot have fallen into his hands,
and he, with so few followers, will not dare make open war.” He was
silent for a moment. Then he said earnestly, “There is but one thing for
us to do. We must first find the wreck and the cache, as our father bade
us. Then we must track down his murderer.”
Hugh nodded in perfect agreement. “Let us get our breakfast and be away
then.”
Blaise was untying the package of maple sugar. He took out a piece and
handed it to Hugh. “We make no fire here,” he said abruptly. “The
Iroquois is not yet far away. He might see the smoke. We will go now.
When the wind rises again we can eat.”
Hugh was hungry, but he had no wish to attract the attention of the huge
Mohawk and his band. So he made no objection, but nibbled his lump of
sugar as he helped to load the canoe and launch it. Before the sun peeped
over the far-away line where lake and sky met, the two lads were well on
their way again.
X
THE LOOMING SAILBOAT
Though favored by the weather most of the time for several days in
succession, the brothers went ahead but slowly. The discovery of the worn
moccasin and the stained tunic had raised their hopes of finding the
wrecked bateau soon. At any moment they might come upon it. Accordingly
they were even more vigilant than before, anxiously scanning every foot
of open shore, bay, cove, stream mouth and island.
One evening before sunset, they reached a beautiful bay with small
islands and wooded shores, where they caught sight of a group of bark
lodges. Blaise proposed that they land and bargain for provisions. There
proved to be about a dozen Indians in the encampment, men, squaws and
children. Luckily two deer and a yearling moose had been killed the day
before, and Blaise, after some discussion in Ojibwa, succeeded in
obtaining a piece of fresh venison and another of moose meat. The Indians
refused Hugh’s offer of payment in money, preferring to exchange the meat
for ammunition for their old, flint-lock muskets. They were from the deep
woods of the interior, unused to frequenting trading posts, and with no
idea of money, but they understood the value of powder and shot.
To one of the men Blaise spoke of having seen the outlaw Ohrante. The
Ojibwa replied that he had heard Ohrante had come from his hiding place
seeking vengeance on those who had captured him. He had never seen the
giant Iroquois, the man said, but he had heard that it was through his
great powers as a medicine man that he had escaped from his captors.
Without divulging that he was the son of the man who had led the
expedition against Ohrante, Blaise asked the Indian if he knew when and
where the outlaw had first been seen since his exile.
“I was told he was here at this Bay of the Beaver late in the Moon of the
Snow Crust,” the Ojibwa replied, and the boy’s hazel eyes gleamed.
Not until they had made camp did Blaise tell Hugh of the information he
had received.
“In the Moon of the Snow Crust!” the latter cried. “That is February or
March, isn’t it? And it was late in March that father died!”
The younger boy nodded. “Ohrante killed him, that I believe. Some day,
some day——” Blaise left the sentence unfinished, but his elder brother
had no doubt of the meaning. Hugh’s heart, like the younger lad’s, was
hot against his father’s murderer, but he remembered the powerful figure
of the Iroquois standing out dark against the dawn. How and when would
the day come?
After thoroughly exploring the Bay of the Beaver that night, the boys
were off shortly after dawn the next morning. Just as the sun was coming
up, reddening the white mist that lay upon the gently rippling water,
they paddled out of the bay. As they rounded the southern point, Blaise
uttered a startled exclamation.
Hugh, in the stern, looked up from his paddle. “A ship!” he cried.
Coming directly towards them, the light breeze scarce filling her sail,
was a ship. So high she loomed through the morning mist Hugh thought she
must be at least as large as the _Otter_, though she seemed to have but
one square sail. What was a ship doing here, so far south of the
Kaministikwia and even of the Grand Portage? Did she belong to some of
the Yankee traders who were now invading the Superior region? Hugh knew
he had been in United States waters ever since passing the mouth of the
Pigeon River.
And then, as the canoe and the ship approached one another, a curious
thing happened. The ship shrank. She was no longer as large as the
_Otter_. She was much smaller. She was not a ship at all, only a wooden
boat with a sail. There was something about the light and the atmospheric
conditions, the rising sun shining through the morning mist, that had
deceived the eye and caused the approaching craft to appear far taller
than it really was.
The sailboat was coming slowly in the light wind. As the boys paddled
past, they saw it was a small, flat-sided, wooden boat pointed at both
ends. It was well loaded and carried three men. Hugh shouted a greeting
and an inquiry. A tall fellow in blanket coat and scarlet cap, who was
steering, replied in a big, roaring voice and bad French, that they were
from the Fond du Lac bound for the Kaministikwia.
Blaise had been even more amazed than Hugh at the deceptive appearance of
the sailboat. When they landed later to inspect a stream mouth, the
half-breed said seriously that some spirit of the lake must have been
playing tricks with them. He wondered if one of the men aboard that
bateau was using magic.
“I doubt that,” Hugh answered promptly. “I think the queer light, the
sunrise through the mist, deceived our eyes and made the boat look
taller. Once on the way from Michilimackinac to the Sault, we saw
something like that. A small, bare rock ahead of us stretched up like a
high island. The Captain said he had seen the same thing before in that
very same spot. He called it ‘looming,’ but he did not think there was
anything magical about it.”
Blaise made no reply, but Hugh doubted if the lad had been convinced.
Several times during the rest of the trip down shore, the boys met canoes
loaded with trappers and traders or with families of Indians journeying
to the Grand Portage or to the New Fort. The two avoided conversation
with the strangers, as they did not care to answer questions about
themselves or their destination.
The journey was becoming wearisome indeed. The minuteness of the search
and the delays from bad weather prolonged the time. Moreover the store of
food was scant. The lads fished and hunted whenever possible without too
greatly delaying progress, but their luck was poor. Seldom were they able
to satisfy their hearty appetites. They lay down hungry under the stars
and took up their paddles at chilly dawn with no breakfast but a bit of
maple sugar. Hugh grew lean and brown and hard muscled. Except for the
redder hue of his tan, the light color of his hair and his gray eyes, he
might almost have been whole brother to Blaise. The older boy had become
expert with the paddle and could hold his own for any length of time and
at any pace the half-breed set. As a camper he was nearly the Indian
lad’s equal and he prided himself on being a better cook. It would take
several years of experience and wilderness living, however, before he
could hope to compete with his younger brother in woodcraft, weather
wisdom or the handling of a canoe in rough water.
As mile after mile of carefully searched shore line passed, without sign
of the wrecked bateau or trace of Jean Beaupré’s having come that way,
the boys grew more and more puzzled and anxious. Nevertheless they
persisted in their quest until they came at last to the Fond du Lac.
Fond du Lac means literally the “bottom of the lake,” but the name was
used by the early French explorers to designate the end or head of Lake
Superior, where the River St. Louis discharges and where the city of
Duluth now stands. To-day the name is no longer applied to the head of
the lake itself, but is restricted to the railway junction and town of
Fond du Lac several miles up the river. There was no town of Fond du Lac
or of Duluth in the days of this story. Wild, untamed, uninhabited, rose
the steep rock hills and terraces where part of the city now stands.
As they skirted the shore, the boys could see ahead of them a narrow line
stretching across the water to the southeast. That line was the long, low
point now known as Minnesota Point, a sand-bar that almost closes the
river mouth and served then, as it does now, to form a sheltered harbor.
Drawing nearer, they discovered that the long, sand point was by no means
bare, much of it being covered more or less thickly with bushes,
evergreens, aspens and willows. The two lads were weary, discouraged and
very hungry. Since their scanty breakfast of wild rice boiled with a
little fat, they had eaten nothing but a lump of sugar each, the last
remnant of their provisions. Nevertheless they paddled patiently along
the bar to the place where the river cut diagonally through it to reach
the lake. Entering the narrow channel, they passed through to absolutely
still water.
The sun was setting. Unless they went several miles farther to a trading
post or caught some fish, they must go to sleep hungry. They decided to
try the fishing. Luck with the lines had been poor throughout most of the
trip, but that night fortune favored the lads a little. In the shallower
water within the bar, they caught, in less than half an hour, two small,
pink-fleshed lake trout, which Hugh estimated at somewhat less than three
pounds each.
On the inner side of the point, the brothers ran their canoe upon the
sand beach. Then they kindled a fire and cooked their long delayed
supper. When the meal was over, nothing remained of the fish but heads,
fins, skin and bones.
Usually both fell asleep as soon as they were rolled in their blankets.
That night, on the low sand-bar, the mosquitoes came in clouds to the
attack, but it was not the annoying insects that kept the boys awake.
They wanted to talk over their situation.
“It seems,” Hugh said despondently, “that we have failed. That wrecked
boat must have been battered to pieces and washed out into the lake. Our
only chance of discovering the cache was to find the boat, and that
chance seems to be gone.”
“There is still one other chance, my brother,” Blaise replied quietly.
“Have you forgotten what we found at the River of Devil Tracks? We must
go back there and make search again.”
“You are right,” was Hugh’s quick rejoinder. “We didn’t find any sign of
the boat, yet it may once have been there or near by.”
Blaise nodded. “The bateau was perhaps driven on the bar at the river
mouth and afterwards washed out into the lake. We must make speed back
there. But, Hugh, if it was Ohrante who killed our father, he may also
have found the furs.”
“And carried them away.” Hugh slapped savagely at a mosquito. “I have
thought of that. I believe in my heart that Ohrante killed father. Yet
the murderer may not have taken the furs. Father told you he was wrecked
in a storm, and, unable to carry the furs with him, he hid them. That
much you say he made clear. When and where he was attacked we do not
know, but I believe it must have been after he cached the furs. When he
told of the wreck and the hiding of the pelts, he said nothing of his
wound?”
“Nothing then or afterwards of the wound or how he got it. He bade me
seek you out and find the furs and the packet. When I asked him how he
came by the hurt, he was beyond replying.”
Both boys were silent a moment listening to the howling of a lonely wolf
far off in the high hills to the north.
Then Hugh said emphatically, “We must go back and search every inch of
ground about that river. We will not give up while a chance remains of
finding the cache,” he added with stubborn determination.
XI
THE FIRE-LIT ORGY
Before starting back the way they had come, the brothers had to have
provisions. Early the next morning they went up the St. Louis River.
Beyond the bar the river widened to two miles or more. In midstream the
current was strong, but Hugh steered into the more sluggish water just
outside the lily pads, reeds and grass of the low shore. About three
miles above the mouth, a village of bark lodges was passed, where
sharp-nosed dogs ran out to yelp and growl at the canoe.
A short distance beyond the Indian village stood the log fort and trading
post of the Old Northwest Company’s Fond du Lac station, one of several
posts that were still maintained in United States territory. The two boys
landed and attempted to buy provisions. Blaise was not known to the clerk
in charge, and Hugh, when asked, gave his middle name of MacNair. Jean
Beaupré had passed this post on his way down the river, and the lads did
not know what conversation or controversy he might have had with the Old
Company’s men. So they thought it wise to say nothing of their
relationship to the elder Beaupré. Brought up to be truthful and
straightforward, Hugh found it difficult to evade the clerk’s questions.
The older boy left most of the talking to the younger, who had his share
of the Indian’s wiliness and secretiveness. Blaise saw nothing wrong in
deceiving enemies and strangers in any way he found convenient. To Hugh,
brother and comrade, Blaise would have scorned to lie, but he did not
scruple to let the Northwest Company’s man think that he and Hugh were on
their way from the south shore to the Kaministikwia in the hope of taking
service with the Old Company.
The post could spare but little in the way of provisions. Less than a
half bushel of hulled corn, a few pounds of wild rice, left from the
supply brought the preceding autumn from the south shore, and a very
small piece of salt pork were all the clerk could be persuaded to part
with. As they were leaving he gave the boys a friendly warning.
“Watch out,” he said, “for an Iroquois villain and his band. They are
reported to be lingering along the north shore and they are a bad lot. He
used to be a hunter for the company, but he murdered a white man and is
an outcast now, a fugitive from justice. The rascal is called Ohrante. If
you catch sight of a huge giant of an Indian, lie low and get out of his
way as soon and as fast as you can.”
On the way back to the river mouth, the lads stopped at the Indian
village. After much bargaining in Ojibwa, Blaise secured a strip of dried
venison, as hard as a board, and a bark basket of sugar. To these people
the lad spoke of the warning the clerk had given him, but they could tell
him no more of the movements of Ohrante than he already knew.
The brothers were glad to get away from the Indian encampment and out on
the river again. The village was unkempt, and disgustingly dirty and ill
smelling. It was evident that most of the men and some of the squaws were
just recovering from a debauch on the liquor they had obtained from the
traders.
“They are ruining the Ojibwa people, those traders,” Blaise said angrily,
after the two had paddled a short distance down-stream. “Once an Ojibwa
gets the habit of strong drink, he will give all he has for it. The rival
companies contend for the furs, and each promises more and stronger
liquor than the other. So the evil grows worse and worse. In the end, as
our father said, it will ruin the Ojibwa altogether.”
Hugh did not reply for a moment, then he said hesitatingly, “Did father
buy pelts with drink?”
“Not the way most of the others do,” Blaise replied promptly. “Liquor he
had to give sometimes, as all traders must, now the custom is started,
but our father gave only a little at a time and not strong. Whenever he
could he bought his furs with other things. Always he was a friend to the
Ojibwa. He became one of us when he married into the nation, and he was a
good son, not like some white men who take Ojibwa wives. Many friends he
had, and some enemies, but few dared stand against him. He was a strong
man and a true one.”
Blaise spoke proudly. Once again Hugh, though glad to hear so much good
of his adventurous father, felt a pang of jealousy that the half-breed
boy should have known and loved him so well.
Departure was delayed by rain and a brisk wind from the lake, that swayed
and bent the trees on the exposed bar, drove the waves high on the outer
shore and blew the sand into food and cooking fire. Not until late
afternoon of the next day did Hugh and Blaise succeed in getting away.
They paddled till midnight and, determined to make the greatest possible
speed up the shore, took but four hours’ rest. All the following day they
travelled steadily, then camped at a stream mouth and were away again at
dawn. Bad weather delayed them that day, however, and caused a late start
next morning. Eager to get ahead, they did not land to prepare food until
mid-afternoon. After the meal and a rest of not more than a half hour,
they resumed their paddles.
Even the going down of the sun did not persuade them to cease their
labor. There would be no moon till towards morning, but the brothers
paddled on through the darkening twilight. The wind was light, merely
rippling the water, and they wanted to get as far on their way as
possible.
Blaise, in the bow, was still steadily plying his blade, when, through
the blackness of the gathering night, he caught sight of a spark of
light. He uttered an exclamation and pointed to the light with his
paddle.
“A camp,” he said, speaking softly as if he feared being overheard even
at that distance. “It is best to avoid it.”
As they went on, the light grew stronger and brighter. A fire was blazing
in an open spot on an island or point. Tiny black figures became visible
against the flames. The sounds of shouts and yells were borne across the
water. Something out of the ordinary was going on. That was no mere
cooking fire, but a huge pile, the flames lighting up the land and water.
Around the blaze, the black figures were capering and yelling. Was it
some orgy of devils? Had the place where the fire burned been near the
Devil Track River, even Hugh might have thought this a feast of fiends.
But it was some miles away from the Devil Track. Moreover, his ears
assured him that the yells, sounding louder and louder, were from the
throats of men, not of spirits.
Blaise had been considering his whereabouts. With the Indian’s keen sense
of location and accurate memory of ground he has been over, he had
concluded that the place where the fire burned was the rocky end of an
island he remembered passing on the way down. The island lay close in,
only a narrow waterway separating it from the heavily wooded main shore
where trees grew down to the water’s edge.
Paddles dipped and raised noiselessly, the canoe slipped through the
water. Blaise set the pace, and Hugh kept the craft close in the shadow
of the wooded mainland. As they drew nearer the island, Blaise raised his
blade and held it motionless. Hugh immediately did the same. The canoe,
under good headway, slipped by, without a sound that could be
distinguished from the rippling of the water on the rocks of the island.
Hidden in the blackness beyond the circle of wavering firelight, the two
gazed on a fear-inspiring scene.
Close to the leaping flames, lighted clearly by the glare, rose the white
stem of a tall birch. Tied to the tree was a man, his naked body red
bronze in the firelight and streaked with darker color. Five or six other
figures were leaping and yelling like fiends about the captive, darting
in on him now and again to strike a blow with club, knife or fire brand.
The meaning of the horrid scene was plain enough. An unlucky Indian
captive was being tortured to death.
It was not the tortured man, however, or the human fiends dancing about
him that held Hugh’s fascinated gaze. Motionless, arms folded, another
figure stood a little back from the fire, a towering form, gigantic in
the flickering light.
Paddles raised, rigid as statues, scarcely daring to breathe, the two
lads remained motionless until the slackening and swerving of their craft
made it necessary for Blaise to dip his blade cautiously. They were
beyond the fire now and still in the deep shadow of the overhanging
trees. But the waterway between shore and island was narrow. Until they
had put a greater distance between themselves and the hideous, fire-lit
picture, they could feel no assurance of security. Keeping close to
shore, they used the utmost caution. At last a bend in the mainland, with
a corresponding curve in the island, hid the fire from sight. Looking
back, they could still see the light of the flames through the trees and
on the water, but the blazing pile itself was hidden from view.
Even then the two boys relaxed their caution but little. Near exhaustion
though they were, they paddled on and on, with aching muscles and heads
nodding with sleep. Not until they were several miles away from the
island orgy of Ohrante and his band, did the brothers dare to land and
rest. Too weary to cook a meal, each ate a lump of maple sugar, sucked a
bit of the hard, unchewable, dried venison, rolled himself in his blanket
and slept.
XII
THE HUNGRY PORCUPINE
Hugh was alone in a canoe struggling to make headway against the waves.
Bearing down upon him, with the roaring of the storm wind, was an
enormous black craft with a gigantic form towering in the bow and
menacing him with a huge knife. The boy was trying to turn his canoe, but
in spite of all his efforts, it kept heading straight for the terrifying
figure.
From somewhere far away a voice shouted, “Hugh, Hugh.” The shouts grew
louder. Hugh woke suddenly to find his half-brother shaking him by the
shoulder. Storm voices filled the air, wind roared through the trees,
surf thundered on the rocks. A big wave, curling up the beach, wet his
moccasins as he struggled to his feet.
Wide awake in an instant, Hugh seized his blanket and fled up over the
smooth, rounded pebbles out of reach of the waves. In a moment he
realized that Blaise was not with him. He looked back—and then he
remembered. The supplies, the canoe, where were they? He and his brother
had unloaded the canoe as usual the night before, had propped it up on
the paddles, and had crawled under it. But, overcome with weariness, they
had left the packets of food and ammunition lying where they had been
tossed, on the lower beach. Now, in the dull light of dawn, Hugh could
see the waves rolling in and breaking far above where the packages had
been dropped. The canoe had disappeared. It took him but a moment to
grasp all this. He ran back down the beach to join Blaise, who was
plunging in to his knees in the attempt to rescue what he could.
“The canoe?” Hugh shouted.
“Safe,” Blaise replied briefly, and made a dash after a retreating wave,
seizing a skin bag of corn just as it was floating away.
At the same instant Hugh caught sight of a packet of powder, and darted
after it, a bitter cold wave breaking over him just as he bent to snatch
the packet.
The two worked with frantic haste, heedless of the waves that soaked them
above the knees and sometimes broke clear over their heads as they
stooped to seize bag or package. They saved what they could, but the
dried meat, one sack of corn, Hugh’s bundle of extra clothing, the roll
of birch bark and the pine gum for repairing the canoe, had all gone out
into the lake. The maple sugar was partly dissolved. Some of the powder,
though the wrapping was supposed to be water-proof, was soaked, and
Hugh’s gun, which he had carelessly left with the other things, was so
wet it would have to be dried and oiled before it could be used. Blaise
had carried his gun to bed with him, and it was safe and dry.
Even the half-breed boy, who usually woke at the slightest sound, had
been so tired and had slept so heavily that the rising of the wind and
the pounding of the waves had not disturbed him. It was not until a
strong gust lifted the canoe from over his head, and a falling paddle
struck him sharply, that he woke. He had sprung up, seized the overturned
canoe and carried it to the shelter of a large rock. Then he had
returned, flung his gun and the paddles farther up the beach, and had
aroused the still sleeping Hugh.
When everything they had rescued had been carried beyond the reach of the
waves and placed in the lee of a rock out of the wind, the two boys
skirted the beach in the hope that the meat, corn or clothes might have
been cast up in some other spot. The beach, at the head of a small and
shallow cove, was not long. When Hugh had gone as far over pebbles and
boulders as he could, he scrambled up the rock point that bounded the
cove on the north and followed it to the end, without seeing anything of
the lost articles. As he reached the bare rock tip, the sun was just
coming up among red and angry clouds across the water, flushing with
crimson and orange the wildly heaving waves. The wind was a little east
of north. No rain had fallen where the boys were camped, but Hugh felt
sure from the clouds that a storm must have passed not many miles away.
The little cove being open and unprotected to the northeast, the full
force of the wind entered it and piled the waves upon the beach.
When Hugh returned to the camping place, he found that Blaise, who had
gone in the other direction, had had no better luck. The strong under
pull of the retreating waves had carried the lost articles out to deep
water.
Going on with the journey in such a blow was out of the question. The
boys made themselves as comfortable as possible behind a heap of boulders
out of the wind.
“I wish we knew in which direction Ohrante is bound,” Hugh said, as he
scraped the last morsel of his scanty portion of corn porridge from his
bark dish, with the crude wooden spoon he had carved for himself.
“He went up the shore as we came down,” Blaise replied. “He is probably
going down now. Somewhere he has met his enemies and has taken one
prisoner at least.”
“I wish we might have travelled farther before camping,” Hugh returned.
Blaise shrugged in his French fashion. “He cannot go on in this weather,
and we cannot either. Passing him last night was a great risk. I knew
that all their eyes would be blinded by the fire glare, so they could not
see into the shadows, else I should not have dared. All went well, yet we
must still be cautious and make but small fires and little smoke.”
“No column of smoke can ascend high enough in this gale to be seen,” Hugh
argued.
“But the smell will travel far, and the wind blows from us to them.
Caution is never wasted, my brother.”
Forced to discontinue the journey for most of the day, the lads spent the
time seeking food. They were far enough from Ohrante’s camp to have
little fear that any of his party would hear their shots, yet they chose
to hunt to the north rather than to the south. With some of the dry
powder and the shot that had been saved, Blaise started out first, while
Hugh spread the wet powder to dry on a flat rock exposed to the sun but
sheltered from the wind. Then he cleaned and dried his gun and greased it
with pork fat before leaving camp.
Hugh wandered the woods in search of game for several hours. He did not
go far back from shore. Traversing the thick woods, where there was much
undergrowth, was difficult and he did not greatly trust his own
woodcraft. He had no wish to humiliate himself in his half-brother’s eyes
by losing his way. Moreover, as long as he kept where the wind reached
him, he was not much annoyed by the mosquitoes, at their worst in June.
Whenever he reached a spot where the wind did not penetrate, the
irritating insects came about him in clouds, settling on his hands, face,
wrists and neck and even getting inside his rather low necked, deerskin
shirt.
Whether he did not go far enough into the woods or for some other reason,
his luck was not good. He shot a squirrel and a long-eared, northern hare
or snowshoe rabbit and missed another, but did not catch a glimpse of
deer, moose, or bear. Neither squirrel nor rabbit meat was at its best in
June, but it was at least better than no meat at all. Carrying his meager
bag, he returned late in the afternoon. He found Blaise squatting over a
small cooking fire. The iron kettle gave out a most appetizing odor. The
younger boy had secured three plump ruffed grouse. In the Lake Superior
wilderness of that day no laws prohibited the shooting of game birds out
of season. The stew which appealed so strongly to Hugh’s nostrils was
made up of grouse and squirrel meat, with a very little salt pork to give
it savor.
The wind had fallen and since noon the waves had been going down. By
sunset, though the lake was by no means smooth, travel had become
possible for skilled canoeists. Had Hugh and Blaise not been in such a
hurry to put distance between themselves and Ohrante, they would have
waited until morning. They were so anxious to go on that they launched
the canoe while the afterglow was still reflected in pink and lavender on
the eastern sky. A few miles would bring them to the Devil Track River,
but, not choosing to camp in that evil spot, Blaise insisted on landing
about a mile below the stream mouth.
Leaving their camp early next morning, the two started overland to the
Devil Track. All day long they sought for some trace of the hidden cache.
Not until after sunset did they cease their efforts. Weary and
disheartened they returned to their camping place, Hugh in the lead. They
had left the canoe turned bottom up over their supplies and well
concealed by a thicket of red-stemmed osier dogwoods. The elder brother’s
sharp exclamation when he reached the spot made the younger one hasten to
his side.
“Look!” cried Hugh, pointing to the birch craft.
Blaise did not need to be told to look. The ragged, gaping hole in the
bark was too conspicuous. “A porcupine,” he exclaimed.
“It was the devil in the form of a porcupine, I think,” Hugh muttered.
“What possessed the beast?”
“He smelled the pork and gnawed his way through to it. The porcupine
loves all things salt. We will see.”
Blaise was right. When the canoe was lifted, the boys discovered that the
small chunk of salt pork was gone, taken out through the hole the beast
had gnawed. Nothing else was missing.
“Either he didn’t like the other things or the pork was all he could
carry away at one trip,” said Hugh. “If we had stayed away a little
longer, he might have made off with the corn and the sugar as well.”
“The loss of the pork is bad,” Blaise commented gravely. “The hole in the
canoe is bad also, and we must delay to mend it.”
The loss of the pork was indeed serious. The rabbit and the squirrel Hugh
had shot the day before had been eaten, and nothing else remained but a
few handfuls of corn and a little sugar. So once more, after setting some
snares, the lads went to sleep supperless. They slept with the corn and
sugar between them for protection.
Blaise might have suspected that the fiend of the river had put a spell
on his snares, for in the morning he found them all empty. The dry, stony
ground showed no tracks. If any long-legged hare had come that way, he
had been wary enough to avoid the nooses.
After the scantiest of breakfasts the boys set about repairing the canoe.
Luckily the ball of wattap, the fine, tough roots of the spruce prepared
for use as thread, had not been lost when the waves covered the beach at
their former camp. From a near-by birch Blaise cut a strong, smooth piece
of bark without knotholes. With his knife he trimmed the ragged edges of
the hole. Having softened and straightened his wattap by soaking it, he
sewed the patch on neatly, using a large steel needle he had bought at
the trading post at the Kaministikwia.
In the meantime Hugh sought a pine grove up the river, where he obtained
some chunks of resin. The resin he softened with heat to a sticky gum and
applied it to the seams and stitches. Blaise went over them again with a
live coal held in a split stick, and spread the softened resin skillfully
with thumb and knife blade. Then the canoe was left bottom side up for
the gum to dry and harden.
In spite of the fact that the boys, on their way down the shore, had
searched the land to the east of the Devil Track with considerable
thoroughness, they were determined to go over it again. By means of a
fallen tree and the boulders that rose above the foaming rapids, they
crossed the river where it narrowed between rock walls. Late in the
afternoon, Blaise, scrambling up a steep and stony slope well back from
the stream, heard two shots in quick succession and then a third at a
longer interval, the signal agreed upon to indicate that one or the other
had come across something significant. The sounds came from the direction
of the lake, and Blaise hastened down to the shore.
XIII
THE PAINTED THWART
Blaise found Hugh stooping over a heap of shattered, water-stained
boards, crude planks, axe hewn from the tree.
“Can this be the boat, do you think?” Hugh asked.
Blaise shook his head doubtfully. “It was not here on the beach when we
came this way before.”
“Yet it may be part of the wreck washed from some outer rock and cast
here by that last hard blow,” reasoned the older boy.
“That is possible. If we could find more of it, the part that bears the
sign——”
“What sign? You told me of no sign. I have often wondered how, if we
found a wrecked boat, we should know whether it was the right one.”
“Surely I told you of the sign. The board that bears the hole for the
mast is painted with vermilion, and on it in black is our father’s sign,
the figure that means his Ojibwa name, ‘man with the bright eyes, the
eyes that make sparks.’ Twice the sign is there, once on each side of the
mast.”
Hugh was staring at his younger brother. Black figures on a vermilion
ground! Where had he seen such a thing, seen it recently, since he left
the Sault? Then he remembered. “Show me, Blaise,” he cried, “what that
figure looks like, that means father’s Indian name.”
Blaise picked up a smooth gray flake and with a bit of softer, dark red
stone scratched the figure.
“That is it,” Hugh exclaimed. “I have seen that wrecked boat, a bateau
with the thwart painted red and that very same figure drawn in black.”
“You have seen it?” The younger brother looked at the elder wonderingly.
“In your dreams?”
“No, I was wide awake, but it was a long way from here and before ever I
saw you, Blaise.” Rapidly Hugh related how he and Baptiste had examined
the old bateau in the cleft of the rocks of the Isle Royale.
Blaise listened in silence, only his eyes betraying his interest. “Truly
we know not where to search,” he said when Hugh had finished. “The bateau
drifted far. How can we find where it went upon the rocks?”
“I don’t believe it drifted far. If it was so badly damaged father had to
abandon it, could it have floated far? Surely it would have gone to the
bottom. When that boat was carried across to Isle Royale, I believe
father and Black Thunder were still in it with all their furs. The storm
drove them out into the lake, they lost their bearings, just as we in the
_Otter_ did. They were borne away and dashed by the waves into that crack
in the rocks. Near there somewhere we shall find the cache, if we find it
at all.”
Hugh spoke confidently, very sure of his own reasoning, but the younger
lad was not so easily convinced.
“How,” Blaise questioned, “did he come away from that island Minong if he
was wrecked there? He could not come by land and the bateau is still
there.”
“He made himself a dugout or birch canoe to cross in when the weather
cleared.”
“But then why came he not to Wauswaugoning by canoe?”
“Because,” persisted Hugh, “when he reached the mainland he fell in with
some enemy here at the Devil Track River. We know his wound was not
received in the wreck. You yourself say it was a knife wound. Black
Thunder wasn’t killed in the wreck either. They escaped unharmed but the
bateau was beyond repair. So they built a canoe and crossed to this
shore. Here they were set upon and Black Thunder was killed and father
sorely wounded.”
Again the sceptical Blaise shook his head. “Why were they away down here
so far below the Grand Portage? And why, if they had a canoe, brought
they not the furs and the packet with them?”
Hugh was aware of the weak links in his theory, yet he clung to it.
“Maybe they did bring them,” he said, “but couldn’t carry them overland,
so they hid them.”
“No, no. Our father told me that the furs were not far from the wreck. He
said that three or four times. I cannot be mistaken.”
“Perhaps their canoe wasn’t big enough to hold all of the pelts,” Hugh
speculated. “What they did bring may have fallen into Ohrante’s hands. So
father spoke only of the rest, hidden in a secret place near the wreck.
To me that seems reasonable enough. But,” he admitted honestly, “I don’t
quite understand how they came to be so far down the shore here, and, if
the packet is valuable, why didn’t father bring that with him if he
brought anything? And why didn’t he tell you that the storm drove him on
Isle Royale?”
“You forget,” Blaise said slowly, “that our father’s body was very weak
and his spirit just about to leave it. I asked him where to find the
bateau. He told me of the way it was marked, but he could say no more. I
think he could not hear my questions.”
Both lads were silent for several minutes, then Hugh said decisively,
“Well, Blaise, there are just two things we can do, unless we give up the
quest entirely. We can go back down the shore, searching the land for
some sign of the cache, or we can cross to Isle Royale, find the cleft in
the rocks where the bateau lies, and seek there for the furs and the
packet. I am for the latter plan. To search the whole shore from here to
the Fond du Lac for a hidden cache to which we have no clue seems to me a
hopeless task.”
“But to cross that long stretch of open water in a small canoe,” Blaise
returned doubtfully.
“We must choose good weather of course, and paddle our swiftest to reach
the island before a change comes. Perhaps we can rig some kind of sail
and make better time than with our paddles.”
It was plain that Hugh had made up his mind to return to Isle Royale.
Hitherto he had been content to let Blaise take the lead, but now he was
asserting his elder brother’s right to leadership. Better than his white
brother, Blaise understood the hazards of such an undertaking, but the
half-breed lad was proud. He was not going to admit himself less
courageous than his elder brother. If Hugh dared take the risk, he,
Little Caribou, as his mother’s people called him, dared take it also.
The brothers must provision themselves for the trip. Even if they reached
the island safely and in good time, they could not guess how long their
search might take, or how many days or weeks they might be delayed before
they could return. Fresh supplies might have reached the Grand Portage by
now and corn at least could be bought. From the Indians always to be
found near the posts, other food supplies and new moccasins might be
obtained.
Considering food supplies reminded the lads of their hunger. They decided
to devote the remaining hours of daylight to fishing for their supper.
They would start for the Grand Portage in the morning. Blaise paddled
slowly along a submerged reef some distance out from shore, while Hugh
fished.
In a very few minutes he felt a pull at his line. Hand over hand he
hauled it in, Blaise helping by managing the canoe so that the line did
not slacken even for an instant. Nearer and nearer Hugh drew his prize,
until he could see the gleaming silver of the big fish flashing through
the clear water. Then came the critical moment. He had no landing net,
and reaching over the side with net or gaff would have been a risk at
best. Without shifting his weight enough to destroy the balance, while
Blaise endeavored to hold the canoe steady with his paddle, Hugh must
land his fish squarely in the bottom. With a sudden swing, the long,
silvery, dark-flecked body, tail wildly flapping, was raised from the
water and flung into the canoe. Almost before it touched the bottom, Hugh
had seized his knife and dealt a swift blow. A few ineffectual flaps and
the big fish lay still.
“Fifteen pounds at least,” Hugh exulted. “I have seen larger trout, but
most of them were taken in nets.”
“They grow very big sometimes, two, three times as big, but it is not
good to catch such a big one with a line. Unless you have great luck, it
overturns your canoe.”
The sight of the big trout sharpened the boys’ hunger pangs and took away
all zest from further fishing. They paddled full speed for shore and
supper.
Favored by good weather they made a quick trip to the Grand Portage. In
the bay a small ship lay at anchor, and they knew supplies must have
arrived.
“That is not the _Otter_,” Hugh remarked as they paddled by.
“No, it is not one of the Old Company’s ships. I think it belongs to the
New Company.”
“I’m glad it isn’t the _Otter_,” Hugh replied. “I shouldn’t know how to
answer Baptiste’s questions.”
The ship proved, as Blaise had guessed, to belong to the New Company. She
sailed the day after the boys arrived, but had left ample supplies. They
had no difficulty in buying the needed stores, though Hugh’s money was
exhausted by the purchases. He left explanations to Blaise, confident
that his younger brother could not be persuaded to divulge the
destination or purpose of their trip.
Again bad weather held the lads at the Grand Portage and Wauswaugoning.
The last day of their stay, when they were returning from the New
Company’s post, they came upon the camp of the trappers whose bateau had
loomed like a ship through the morning mist when the boys were leaving
the Bay of the Beaver. Hugh recognized at once the tall fellow in the
scarlet cap who had replied to his shout of greeting. The trappers had
disposed of their furs at the Old Company’s post and were about to leave.
They were going to portage their supplies to Fort Charlotte above the
falls of the Pigeon River and go up the river in a canoe. Hugh inquired
what they intended to do with their small bateau which was drawn up on
the shore.
“You want it?” the leader questioned in his big voice.
“Will you sell it?” the boy asked eagerly.
The man nodded. “What you give?”
Hugh flushed with chagrin, remembering that all his money was gone.
Blaise came to the rescue by offering to trade some ammunition for the
boat. The man shook his head. Blaise added to his offer a small quantity
of food supplies, but still the fellow refused. “Too little,” he
grumbled, then added something in his curious mixture of Scotch-English
and Ojibwa. He was a Scotch half-breed and Hugh found his dialect
difficult to understand.
Blaise shrugged, walked over to the boat and examined it. He turned
towards the man and spoke in rapid Ojibwa. The fellow answered in the
same tongue, pointing to the lad’s gun.
“What does he say?” asked Hugh.
“I told him his bateau needs mending,” Blaise answered in French, “but he
will not trade for anything but my gun, which is better than his. I will
not give him the gun. Our father gave it to me.”
Hugh understood his half-brother’s feeling, but he was eager to secure
the boat. “He may have my gun,” he whispered. He knew that the tall
fellow understood some French. “Tell him if he will include the sail—he
had one, you know—I’ll give him my gun and some ammunition. Mine doesn’t
shoot as accurately as yours, but it looks newer.”
Blaise made the offer in Ojibwa, Hugh repeated it in English, and after
an unsuccessful attempt to get more, the man agreed. He put into the boat
the mast and canvas, which he had been using as a shelter, and Hugh
handed over the gun and ammunition.
The rest of the day was spent in making a few necessary repairs to the
bateau, and the following morning, before a light southwest breeze, the
lads set sail. Blaise knew nothing of this sort of water travel, but Hugh
had handled a sailboat before, though never one quite so clumsy as this
crude, heavy bateau. The boat was pointed at both ends, flat bottomed and
built of thick, hand-hewn boards. It carried a small, square sail on a
stubby mast. With axe and knife Hugh had made a crude rudder and had
lashed it to the stern in the place of the paddle the trappers had been
content to steer with. Blaise quickly learned to handle the rudder,
leaving Hugh free to manage the sail. It was a satisfaction to the older
boy to find something in which he excelled his younger brother and could
take the lead. It restored his self-respect as the elder. Blaise, on the
other hand, obeyed orders instantly and proved himself as reliable a
subordinate as he had been leader. The breeze holding steady, the bateau
made fairly good speed. They might possibly have made better time in a
canoe, but the new mode of travel was a pleasant change from the constant
labor of plying the blades.
Had the lads but known it, their wisest course would have been to cross
directly from the Grand Portage to the southwestern end of Isle Royale
and then skirt the island to its northeast tip. But they had no map to
tell them this. Indeed in those days the position of Isle Royale was but
imperfectly understood. It had been visited by scarcely any white men and
was avoided by the Indians. During the boys’ detention at the Grand
Portage, rain and fog had rendered the island, some eighteen or twenty
miles away, invisible. The day they set sail the sky was blue overhead,
but there was still haze enough on the water to obscure the distance. It
was not strange that they believed Isle Royale farther off than it really
was. From its northeastern end the _Otter_ had sailed to the
Kaministikwia, and Hugh took for granted that the shortest way to reach
the island must be from some point on Thunder Bay. He was aware of the
deep curve made by the shore to form the great bay, and realized that to
follow clear around that curve would be a loss of time. Instead of
turning north to follow the shore, he held on to the northeast, along the
inner side of a long line of narrow, rocky islands and reefs, rising from
the water like the summits of a mountain chain and forming a breakwater
for the protection of the bay.
It was from one of those islands, now called McKellar Island, south about
two miles from the towering heights of the Isle du Paté and at least
fifteen miles by water from the southern mouth of the Kaministikwia, that
the adventurers finally set out for Isle Royale. Before they dared
attempt the perilous sail across the long stretch of the open lake, they
remained in camp a day to let the southwest wind, which had risen to half
a gale, blow itself out. Wind they needed for their venture, but not too
much wind.
XIV
SAILING TOWARDS THE SUNRISE
“Truly the spirit of the winds favors us.” Blaise forgot for the moment
his Christian training and spoke in the manner of his Indian forefathers.
He had waked at dawn and, finding the lake merely rippled by a steady
west breeze, had aroused Hugh.
So anxious were the two to take advantage of the perfect weather that
they did not wait for breakfast, but hastily flung their blankets and
cooking utensils into the boat. With the two strong paddles included in
the purchase, they ran the bateau out of the little cove where it had
lain sheltered. Then, hoisting the sail, they steered towards the dawn.
Hugh Beaupré never forgot that sail into the sunrise. Ahead of him the
sky, all rose and gold and faint green blending into soft blue, met the
water without the faintest, thinnest line of land between. Before and
around the boat, the lake shimmered with the reflected tints that
glorified even the patched and dirty sail. Was he bound for the other
side of the world, for some glorious, unearthly realm beyond that
gleaming water? A sense of mingled dread and exultation swept over the
boy, his face flushed, his gray eyes sparkled, his pulse quickened. He
knew the feeling of the explorer setting out for new lands, realms of he
knows not what perils and delights.
The moment of thrill passed, and Hugh turned to glance at Blaise. The
younger boy, his hand on the tiller rope, sat like a statue, his dark
face tense, his shining hazel eyes betraying a kindred feeling to that
which had held Hugh in its thrall. Never before in all their days of
journeying together had the white lad and the half-breed felt such
perfect comradeship. Speech was unnecessary between them.
As the sun rose higher and the day advanced, Blaise was not so sure that
fortune was favoring the venture. The wind sank until the water was
broken by the merest ripple only. There was scarcely enough pressure
against the sail to keep the boat moving.
“At this rate we shall be a week in reaching the island,” said Hugh,
anxiously eying the canvas. “We can go faster with the paddles. Lash the
rudder and we’ll try the blades.”
For the first time since they had changed from canoe to sailboat Blaise
voiced an objection. “To paddle this heavy bateau is hard work,” he said.
“We cannot keep at it all day and all night, as we could in a bark canoe.
As long as the wind blows at all and we move onward, even slowly, we had
best save our strength. Soon we shall need it. Before the sun is
overhead, there will be no wind at all, and then we must paddle.”
Hugh nodded agreement, but, less patient than his half-brother, he found
it trying to sit idle waiting for the gentle breeze to die. Blaise had
prophesied truly. Before noon the sail was hanging loose and idle, the
water, blue under a cloudless sky, was without a wrinkle. It is not often
really hot on the open waters of Lake Superior, but that day the sun
glared down upon the little boat, and the distance shimmered with heat
haze. The bateau had no oars or oarlocks, only two stout paddles, and
paddling the heavy, clumsy boat was slow, hot work.
Pausing for a moment’s rest after an hour’s steady plying of his blade,
Hugh uttered an exclamation. “Look, Blaise,” he cried. “We haven’t so far
to go. There is the Isle Royale ahead, and not far away either.”
He pointed with his blade to the hazy blue masses across the still water.
High the land towered, with points and bays and detached islands.
Encouraged by the sight, the two bent to their paddles.
In a few minutes Hugh cried out again. “How strange the island looks,
Blaise! I don’t remember any flat-topped place like that. See, it looks
as if it had been sliced off with a knife.”
The distant shore had taken on a strange appearance. High towering land
it seemed to be, but curiously level and flattened at the top, like no
land Hugh had seen around Lake Superior.
“There is something wrong,” the boy went on, puzzled. “We must be off our
course. That is not Isle Royale, at least not the part I saw. Where are
we, Blaise? Are we going in the wrong direction? Can that be part of the
mainland?”
“It is not the mainland over that way,” Blaise made prompt reply. “It
must be some part of Minong.” He used the Indian name for the island.
“But I saw nothing the——” Hugh began, then broke off to cry out, “Look,
look, the island is changing before our eyes! It towers up there to the
right, and over there, where it was high a moment ago, it shrinks and
fades away!”
“It is some enchanted land,” the younger boy murmured, gazing in wonder
at the dim blue shapes that loomed in one place, shrank in another,
changed size and form before his awestruck eyes. “It is a land of
spirits.” He ceased his paddling to cross himself.
For a moment Hugh too was inclined to believe that he and his brother
were the victims of witchcraft. But, though not free from superstition,
he had less of it than the half-breed. Moreover he remembered the looming
of the very boat he was now in, when he had first seen it in the mists of
dawn, and also the rock that had looked like an island, when he was on
his way from Michilimackinac. The captain of the ship had told him of
some of the queer visions called mirages he had seen when sailing the
lakes. Turning towards Blaise, Hugh attempted to explain the strange
sight ahead.
“It is the mirage. I have heard of it. The Captain of the _Athabasca_
told me that the mirage is caused by the light shining through mist or
layers of cloud or air that reflect in some way we do not understand,
making images of land appear where there is no land or changing the
appearance of the real land. Sometimes, he said, images of islands are
seen upside down in the sky, above the real water-line. It is all very
strange and no one quite understands why it comes or how, but there is no
enchantment about it, Blaise.”
The younger boy nodded, his eyes still on the changing, hazy shapes
ahead. Without reply, he resumed his paddling. How much he understood of
his elder brother’s explanation, Hugh could not tell. At any rate Blaise
was too proud to show further fear of something Hugh did not seem to be
afraid of.
In silence the two plied their paddles under the hot sun, but the heavy
wooden boat did not respond like a bark canoe to their efforts. Progress
was very slow. White clouds were gathering in the south, moving slowly up
and across the sky, though the water remained quiet. The clouds veiled
the sun. The distant land shrank to a mere blue line, its natural shape
and size, and seemed to come no nearer for all their efforts. Both boys
were growing anxious. After the heat and stillness of the day, the
clouds, slow moving though they were, threatened storm. The two dug their
blades into the water, straining muscles of arms and shoulders to put all
their strength into the stroke.
A crinkle, a ripple was spreading over the green-blue water. A breeze was
coming up from the southwest. Hugh laid down his blade to raise the sail.
In the west the rays of the setting sun were breaking through the clouds
and dyeing them crimson, flame and orange. He was glad to see the sun
again, for it brought him assurance that he was keeping the course, not
swinging too far to north or south.
The breeze, very light at first, strengthened after sunset and became
more westerly, the most favorable direction. The clumsy boat and square
sail could not be made to beat against the wind, but Hugh’s course was a
little north of east. He could sail directly with the wind and yet be
assured of not going far out of his way. The farthest tip of land ahead,
now freed from the false distortions of mirage, he took to be the end of
the long, high shore, where, in the fissure, he and Baptiste had found
the old bateau. That land was still very far away, other islands or
points of the main island lying nearer.
As darkness gathered, the breeze swept away the clouds, and stars and
moon shone out. Sailing over the gently heaving water, where the
moonlight made a shimmering path, was a pleasant change from paddling the
heavy boat in the heat of the day. The boys’ evening meal consisted of a
few handfuls of hulled corn and some maple sugar, with the clear, cold
lake water for drink. Both Blaise at the tiller and Hugh handling the
sheet found it difficult to keep awake. The day had been a long one, but
they must remain alert to hold their course and avoid disaster.
They were approaching land now. In the moonlight, to avoid islands and
projecting rocks was not difficult. Sunken reefs were harder to discern.
Only the breaking of waves upon the rocks that rose near to the surface
betrayed the danger. So the steersman shunned points and the ends of
islands from which hidden reefs might run out. Hugh would have been glad
to camp on the first land reached, but he knew he ought to take advantage
of the favorable wind and get as near as possible to the spot where the
wreck lay. Shaking off his drowsiness, he gave his whole attention to
navigation.
Several islands and a number of points, that might belong either to the
great island or to smaller bordering ones, were passed before reaching a
low shore, well wooded, which Hugh felt sure he recognized. He remembered
that the _Otter_ had been obliged to go far out around the tip to avoid a
long reef. He warned Blaise to steer well out, but the latter did not go
quite far enough and the boat grazed a rock. No damage was done, however.
The bateau was now headed for a strip of much higher land, showing dark
between sky and water. Hugh thought that must be the towering,
tree-crowned, rock shore he recalled. To land there tonight was out of
the question. The moon had gone down, and to run, in the darkness, up the
bay to the spot where the _Otter_ had taken shelter might also prove
difficult. Hugh decided they had better tie up somewhere on the point
they had just rounded. He lowered the sail and both boys took up their
paddles. For some distance they skirted the steep, slanting rock shore
where the trees grew down as far as they could cling.
One mountain ash had lost its footing and fallen into the lake. To the
fallen tree Hugh tied the boat, in still water and under the shadow of
the shore. Then he and Blaise rolled themselves in their blankets and lay
down in the bottom. Heedless of the dew-wet planking they were asleep
immediately. The water rippled gently against the rough sides of the
boat, an owl in a spruce sent forth its eerie hoots, from across the
water a loon answered with a wild, mocking cry, but the tired lads slept
on undisturbed.
XV
THE RIFT IN THE ROCK
The brothers were in the habit of waking early, but it had been nearly
dawn when they lay down, and, in the shadow of the trees, they slept
until the sun was well started on his day’s journey. When they did wake,
Hugh’s first glance was towards the land across the water.
There was no mistaking that high towering shore, steep rocks at the base,
richly forest clad above. It was the same shore he had seen weeks before,
the first time dimly through fog and snow, again clear cut and distinct,
when he and Baptiste had rowed Captain Bennett out of the bay, and yet a
third time from the deck of the _Otter_ as she sailed away towards
Thunder Cape.
“We have come aright, Blaise,” said Hugh with satisfaction. “That is the
place we seek, and it can’t be more than a mile away. Do you see that
spot where the trees come to the water, that tiny break in the rocks? It
is a little cove with a bit of beach, and in that stretch of rocks to the
left is the crack where the old boat lies. I’m sure of the spot, because
from the _Otter_, when we were leaving, I noticed the bare rock pillars
of that highest ridge away up there, like the wall of a fort among the
trees. It doesn’t show quite so plainly now the birches are in leaf, but
I’m sure it is the same. There are two little coves almost directly below
that pillared rock wall, and the cliff is a little farther to the left.
Oh, but I am hungry,” he added. “We must have a good breakfast before we
start across.”
Over the short stretch of water that separated the low point from the
high shore, the bateau sailed before the brisk wind. The stretch of gray,
pillared rock, like the wall of a fortress, high up among the greenery,
served as a guide. As the boat drew nearer, the twin coves, shallow
depressions in the shore line separated by a projecting mass of rock,
came clear to view.
“Steer for the cliff just beyond the left hand cove,” Hugh ordered.
“We’ll run in close and then turn.”
Blaise obediently steered straight for the mass of rock with the vertical
fissures, as if his purpose were to dash the boat against the cliff. As
they drew close, Hugh gave a shout.
The crack had come into view, a black rift running at an angle into the
cliff. As the boat swung about to avoid going on the rocks, the younger
boy’s quick eye caught a glimpse, in that dark fissure, of the end of a
bateau. To give him that glimpse, Hugh had taken a chance of wrecking
their own boat. Now he was obliged to act quickly, lowering the sail and
seizing a paddle.
In the trough of the waves, they skirted, close in, the steep, rugged
rocks. Almost hidden by a short point was the bit of beach at the end of
the first of the twin coves. With a dexterous twist of the paddles, the
boys turned their boat and ran up on the beach. Landing with so much
force would have ground the bottom out of a birch canoe, but the heavy
planks of the bateau would stand far worse battering.
The appearance of the cove had changed greatly since that day when Hugh
and Baptiste had rowed past. Then the bushes, birches and mountain ash
trees that ringed the pebbles had been bare limbed. Now, with June more
than two-thirds gone, they were all in full leaf. Big clusters of buds
among the graceful foliage of the mountain ashes were almost ready to
open into handsome flowers. The high-bush cranberries bore white blossoms
here and there, and the ninebark bushes were covered with masses of
pinkish buds. Though Hugh’s mind was on the wreck, his eyes took note of
the almost incredible difference a few weeks had made. His nose sniffed
with appreciation the spicy smell of the fresh, growing tips of the
balsams, mingled with the heliotrope-like odor of the tiny twin-flowers
blooming in the woods. He did not let enjoyment of these things delay
him, however.
“Now,” he cried, when he and Blaise had pulled up the boat, “we must get
into that crack. We can’t reach it from the water in this wind. Perhaps
we can climb down from the top.”
Up a steep rock slope, dotted with fresh green moss, shiny leaved
bearberry, spreading masses of juniper and a few evergreen trees growing
in the depressions, he hastened with Blaise close behind. Along the top
of the cliff they made their way until they reached the rift. Though the
sides of the crack were almost vertical, trees and bushes grew wherever
they could anchor a root. Through branches and foliage, the boys could
get no view of the old boat at the bottom.
“We must climb down,” said Hugh.
“It will be difficult,” Blaise replied doubtfully. “To do it we must
cling to the roots and branches. Those trees have little soil to grow in.
Our weight may pull them over.”
“We must get down some way,” Hugh insisted. “We shall have to take our
chances.”
“The wind and waves will calm. We have but to wait and enter from the
water.”
Hugh had not the Indian patience. “The wind is not going down, it is
coming up,” he protested. “It may blow for a week. I didn’t come here to
wait for calm weather. I’m going down some way.”
He wriggled between the lower branches of a spruce growing on the very
verge of the crack and let himself down a vertical wall, feeling with his
toes for a support. Carefully he rested his weight on the slanting stem
of a stunted cedar growing in a niche. It held him. Clinging with fingers
and moccasined feet to every projection of rock and each branch, stem or
root that promised to hold him, he worked his way down. He heeded his
younger brother’s warning in so far as to test every support before
trusting himself to it. But in spite of his care, a bit of projecting
rock crumbled under his feet. His weight was thrown upon a root he had
laid hold of. The root seemed to be firmly anchored, but it pulled loose,
and Hugh went sliding down right into the old boat. The ice, which had
filled the wreck when he first saw it, had melted. The bateau was more
than half full of water, into which he plumped, splashing it all over
him. He was not hurt, however, only wet and shaken up a bit.
Blaise had already begun to follow his elder brother into the cleft, when
he heard Hugh crash down. Halfway over the edge, the younger boy paused
for a moment. Then Hugh’s shout came up to him. “All right, but be
careful,” the elder brother cautioned.
Light and very agile, the younger lad had better luck, landing nimbly on
his feet on the cross plank of the old boat. It was the vermilion painted
thwart that had held the mast. Eagerly both lads bent over it to make
out, in the dim light, the black figures on the red ground.
“It is our father’s sign,” Blaise said quietly, “our father’s sign, just
as I have seen it many times. This was his bateau, but whether it was
wrecked here or elsewhere we cannot tell.”
“I believe it was wrecked here,” Hugh asserted. “See how the end is
splintered. This boat was driven upon these very rocks where it now lies,
the prow smashed and rents ripped in the bottom and one side. But it is
empty. We must seek some sign to guide us to the furs. We need more
light.”
“I will make a torch. Wait but a moment.”
Blaise straightened up, hooked his fingers over the edge of a narrow,
rock shelf, swung himself up, and ascended the rest of the way as nimbly
as a squirrel. In a few minutes he came scrambling down again, holding in
one hand a roughly made torch, resinous twigs bound together with a bit
of bearberry vine. With sparks from his flint and steel, he lighted the
balsam torch. It did not give a very bright light, but it enabled the
boys to examine the old bateau closely. The only mark they could find
that might have been intended as a guide was a groove across the fore
thwart. At one end of the groove short lines had been cut diagonally to
form an arrow point.
“The cache, if it is on the island, must be sought that way,” said
Blaise.
“The arrow surely points up the crack. We’ll follow it.”
The smashed bow of the boat was firmly lodged among the fragments of rock
upon which it had been driven. Over those fragments, up a steep slope,
the boys picked their way for a few yards, until the walls drew together,
the fissure narrowing to a mere slit. By throwing the light of the torch
into the slit and reaching in arm’s length, Hugh satisfied himself that
there were no furs there. Nevertheless the arrow pointed in that
direction. He looked about him. The left hand wall was almost
perpendicular, solid rock apparently, with only an occasional vertical
crack or shallow niche where some hardy bit of greenery clung. But from
the right wall several blocks had fallen out. On one of those blocks Hugh
was standing. He held the torch up at arm’s length.
“There’s a hole up there. Such a place would make a good cache.”
“Let me up on your shoulders,” Blaise proposed, “and I will look in.”
Sitting on Hugh’s shoulders, Blaise threw the light of the torch into the
hole. Then he reached in his arm. “There are no furs here,” he said.
Hugh had been almost certain he had found the cache. He was keenly
disappointed. “Are you sure?” he cried.
“Yes. It is a small place, just a hole in the rock. Let me down.”
“There are no furs there,” Blaise repeated, when he had jumped down from
Hugh’s shoulders. “But something I found.” He held out a short piece of
rawhide cord.
Hugh stared at the cord, then at his half-brother. “You were not the
first to visit that hole then. What is the meaning of this?” He took the
bit of rawhide in his fingers.
“I think it means that the furs have been there, but have been taken
away,” was the younger lad’s slow reply. “It is a piece from the thong
that bound a bale of furs. That is what I think.”
“Someone has found the cache and taken away the pelts.”
“I fear it,” agreed Blaise. Though he spoke quietly, his disappointment
was as strong as Hugh’s.
“That someone is probably one of the Old Company’s men. Then the furs are
lost to us indeed. Yet we do not know. How did anyone learn of the cache?
It may have been Black Thunder of course, but then what was the meaning
of the blood-stained shirt? No, we don’t know, Blaise. Our furs may be
gone for good, but we can’t be sure. Father may have put them in there
out of reach of the storm and later moved them to some other place, or
they may never have been in that hole at all. Some animal may have
carried that bit of rawhide there.”
Blaise shook his head. “What animal could go up there?”
“A squirrel perhaps, or a bird, a gull. Anyway we can’t give up the
search yet, just because we have found a bit of rawhide in a hole in the
rocks. That would be folly. Perhaps the arrow points up the rift to some
spot above. We can’t climb up here. We must go back.”
The two returned to the wreck and climbed up the way they had come down.
Hugh again in the lead, they followed along the top of the rift to its
head. There they sought earnestly for some sign that might lead them to
the cache, but found none. When at sunset they gave up the search for
that day, their fear that the furs had been stolen from the hole in the
rock had grown near to a certainty. Well-nigh discouraged, they went back
to the beach in the shallow cove where they had left their boat.
“Why is it, Blaise,” Hugh asked, as they sat by the fire waiting for the
kettle to boil, “that no Indians dwell on this big island? It is a
beautiful place and there must be game and furs for the hunting.”
Blaise gave his characteristic French shrug. “I know not if there is much
game, and Minong is far from the mainland. I have heard that there is
great store of copper in the rocks. The Ojibwas say that the island was
made by the giant Kepoochikan. Once upon a time the fish quarrelled with
Kepoochikan and tried to drown him by making a great flood. But he built
a big floating island and made it rich with copper and there he took his
family and all the kinds of birds and beasts there are. When the water,
which had spread over the whole earth, stopped rising, he told a gull to
dive down to the bottom and bring up some mud. The gull could not dive so
far, but drowned before he reached the bottom. Then Kepoochikan sent a
beaver. The beaver came up almost drowned, but with a ball of mud
clutched tight in his hands. Kepoochikan took the mud and made a new
earth, but he kept the island Minong for his home. After many years there
was another giant, the great Nanibozho, who was chief of all the Indians
on the new land Kepoochikan had made. Nanibozho is a good manito and
Kepoochikan a bad one. They went to war, and Nanibozho threw a great
boulder from the mainland across at Kepoochikan and conquered him. The
boulder is here on Minong yet they say. Since then Nanibozho has guarded
the copper of Minong, though some say his real dwelling place is on
Thunder Cape. Off the shore and in the channels of Minong he has set
sharp rocks to destroy the canoes that approach the island, and he has
many spirits to help him guard the treasure.”
“That is only a tale, of course,” said Hugh somewhat disdainfully. “We of
the ship _Otter_ camped here several days and we saw or heard no spirits.
We found nothing to fear.”
“You sought no copper,” was the retort. “It is said that sometimes
Kepoochikan and Nanibozho fight together on the rocks and hurl great
boulders about. Strange tales there are too of the thick forest, of the
little lakes and bays. There is one place called the Bay of Manitos,
where, so I have heard, dwell giant Windigos and great serpents and huge
birds and spirits that mock the lonely traveller with shouts and threats
and laughter.”
“Surely you do not believe such tales, Blaise,” Hugh protested, “or fear
such spirits.”
“I know that neither Kepoochikan nor Nanibozho made the world,” the
younger boy replied seriously. “My father and the priests taught me that
the good God made the world. But whether the tales of giants and spirits
are true, I know not. That I do not fear them I have proved by coming
here with you.”
To that remark Hugh had no answer. To believe or be inclined to believe
such tales and yet to come to the enchanted island, to come with only one
companion, surely proved his half-brother’s courage. Indeed the older boy
had no thought of questioning the younger’s bravery. He had come to know
Blaise too well.
XVI
THE CACHE
The night being clear, the boys did not trouble to prepare a shelter.
They merely cut some balsam branches and spread them smoothly on the
beach. Strange to say, the more superstitious half-breed lad fell asleep
immediately, while the white boy, who had scorned the notion of giants
and manitos, found sleep long in coming. That night seemed to him the
loneliest he had ever spent. Camp, on the trip down and up the main
shore, had, to be sure, usually been made far from the camps of other
men. But there _were_ men, both red and white, on that shore. When the
lake was not too rough, there was always the chance that the sound of
human voices and the dip of paddles might be heard at any time during the
night, as a canoe passed in the starlight.
Here, however, the whole length and breadth of the great island,—which
the two lads believed even larger than it really is, some fifty miles in
length and twelve or fourteen broad at its widest part,—there lived, so
far as they knew, not one human being. Never before had Hugh felt so
utterly lonely, such a small, insignificant human creature in an unknown
and unfeeling wilderness of woods, waters and rocks. The island was far
more beautiful and hospitable now than it had appeared when he visited it
before, but then, almost uncannily lonely and remote though the place had
seemed, he had had the companionship of Baptiste and Captain Bennett and
the rest of the ship’s crew.
Yet what was there to fear? It was not likely that Isle Royale contained
any especially fierce beasts. There were wolves and lynxes, but they were
skulking, cowardly creatures, and, in the summer at least, must find
plentiful prey of rabbits and other small animals. Moose too there were
and perhaps bears, but both were harmless unless attacked and cornered.
It was not the thought of any animal enemy that caused Hugh’s uneasiness,
as he lay listening to the night sounds. His feeling was rather of
apprehension, of dread of some unknown evil that threatened his comrade
and himself. He tried to shake off the unreasonable dread, but everything
about him seemed to serve to intensify the feeling, the low, continuous
murmur of the waves on the rocks, the swishing rustle of the wind in the
trees, the long-drawn, eerie cries of two loons answering one another
somewhere up the bay, the lonely “hoot-ti-toot” of an owl. Once from the
wooded ridges above him, there came with startling clearness the shrill
screech of a lynx. But all these sounds were natural ones, heard many
times during his adventurous journey. Why, tonight, did they seem to hold
some new and fearful menace?
Disgusted with himself, he resolved to conquer the unreasonable dread.
Will power alone could not triumph over his unrest, but physical
weariness won at last and he fell asleep. A brief shower, from the edge
of a passing storm-cloud, aroused him once, but the rain did not last
long enough to wet his blanket, and he was off to sleep again in a few
minutes.
Hugh woke with a start. Dawn had come, but the little cove was shrouded
in white mist. Beside him on the balsam bed, Blaise was sitting upright,
his body rigid, his bronze face tense. He was listening intently. Hugh
freed his arms from his blanket and raised himself on his elbow. Blaise
turned his head.
“You heard it?” he whispered.
“Something waked me. What was it?”
“A gun shot.”
“Impossible!”
“I heard it clearly. I had just waked.”
“Near by?”
“Not very far away. Up there somewhere.”
Blaise pointed to the now invisible woods above the sheer cliff that
formed the central shore of the cove between the beaches. “It is hard to
be quite sure of the direction in this fog, and there was only one shot.”
For some minutes the two lads sat still, listening, but the sound was not
repeated. It seemed incredible that any human being should be so near on
the big island where neither white men nor Indians were ever known to
come intentionally. Hugh was inclined to think Blaise mistaken. The
younger boy had certainly heard some sharp sound, but Hugh could scarcely
believe it was the report of a gun.
However, the mere suspicion that any other man might be near by was
enough to make the boys proceed with the greatest caution. Veiled by the
fog,—which had been caused by the warm shower falling on the lake during
the night,—they could be seen only by someone very near at hand, but
there were other ways in which they might be betrayed. The sound of their
voices or movements, the smell of the smoke from their cooking fire might
reveal their presence. The secret nature of their quest made them anxious
that their visit to the island should not become known. So they lighted
no fire, breakfasting on the cold remains of last night’s corn porridge
sprinkled with maple sugar. They talked little and in whispers, and took
care to make the least possible noise.
Having decided to give at least one more day to the search for the furs,
the lads climbed the steep slope and made their way to the head of the
fissure. Up there the fog was much less thick than down in the cove. The
crack in the rock had narrowed to a mere slit almost choked with tree
roots upon which fallen leaves and litter had lodged. Near the edge, in a
depression where there was a little soil, stood a clump of birch sprouts
growing up about the stump of an old broken tree. In their search for
some blaze or mark that might guide them, the two thought they had
examined every tree in the vicinity.
That morning, as he was about to pass the clump of birches, Hugh happened
to notice what a rapid growth the sprouts had made that season. The sight
of the new growth suggested something to him. He began to pull apart and
bend back the little trees to get a better view of the old stump. There,
concealed by the young growth, was the mark he sought. A piece of the
ragged, gray, lichen-scarred bark had been sliced away, and on the bare,
crumbly wood had been cut a transverse groove with an arrow point.
Hugh promptly summoned Blaise. The cut in the old stump seemed to prove
that the furs might not, after all, have been stolen from the hole in the
rocks. The arrow pointed directly along the overgrown crack, which the
lads traced for fifty or sixty feet farther, when it came abruptly to an
end. They had come to a hollow or gully. The crack showed distinctly in
the steep rock wall, but the bottom of the hollow and the opposite
gradual slope were deep with soil and thick with growth. The rift, which
widened at the outer end into a cleft, ran, it was apparent, clear
through the rock ridge that formed the shore cliff. The searchers had now
reached the lower ground behind that ridge. Which way should they turn
next?
That question was answered promptly. The abrupt face of the rock wall was
well overgrown with green moss and green-gray lichens. In one place the
short, thick growth had been scratched away to expose a strip of the gray
stone about an inch wide and six or seven inches long. The clean-cut
appearance of the scratch seemed to prove that it had been made with a
knife or some other sharp instrument. So slowly do moss and lichens
spread on a rock surface that such a mark would remain clear and distinct
for one season at least, probably for several years. There was no arrow
point here, but the scratch was to the left of the crack. The boys turned
unhesitatingly in that direction.
The growth in this low place was dense. They had to push their way among
old, ragged birches and close standing balsams draped with gray beards of
lichen which were sapping the trees’ life-blood. Everywhere, on the steep
rock wall, on each tree trunk, they sought for another sign. For several
hundred yards they found nothing, until they came to a cross gully
running back towards the lake. In the very entrance stood a small, broken
birch. The slender stem was not completely severed, the top of the tree
resting on the ground.
“There is our sign,” said Blaise as soon as he caught sight of the birch.
“It is only a broken tree,” Hugh protested. “I see nothing to show that
it is a sign.”
“But I see something,” Blaise answered promptly. “First, there is the
position, right here where we need guidance. The tree has been broken so
that it points down that ravine. The break is not old, not weathered
enough to have happened before last winter. Yet it happened before the
leaves came out. They were still in the bud. It was in late winter or
early spring that tree was broken.”
“Just about the time father must have been on the island,” Hugh
commented.
Blaise went on with his explanation. “What broke the tree? The wind?
Sound birches are not easily broken by wind. They sway, they bend,
sometimes they are tipped over at the roots. But the stem itself is not
broken unless it is rotten or the storm violent. Here are no signs of
strong wind. There are no other broken trees near this one.”
“That is true,” murmured Hugh looking about him.
“Now we will look at the break,” Blaise continued confidently. “See, the
trunk is sound, but it has been cut with an axe, cut deep and bent down.
And here, look here!” His usually calm voice was thrilling with
excitement. He was pointing to some small cuts in the white bark just
below the break.
“J. B., father’s initials!” cried Hugh.
Blaise laid his finger on his lips to remind his companion that caution
must still be observed. They had heard no further sound and had seen no
sign of a human being, but the half-breed lad had not forgotten the sharp
report that had so startled him in the dawn. It was best to move silently
and speak with lowered voice.
Blaise led the way down the narrow cross gully, so narrow that where a
tree grew,—and trees seemed to grow everywhere on this wild island where
they could push down a root,—there was scarcely room to get by. After a
few hundred yards of such going, the ravine began to widen. The walls
became higher and so sheer that nothing could cling to them but moss,
lichens and sturdy crevice plants. Under foot there was no longer any
soil, only pebbles and broken rock fragments. Ahead, beyond the deep
shadow of the cleft, lay sunlit water. This was evidently another of the
fissures that ran down through the outer rock ridge to the water,
fissures that were characteristic of that stretch of shore.
“We are coming back to the lake through another crack much like the one
where the old boat lies,” said Hugh. “We must be off the trail somewhere.
There is no place here to hide furs.”
Blaise, who was still ahead, did not answer. He was closely scanning the
rock wall on either side. A moment later, he paused and gave a little
grunt of interest or satisfaction.
“What is it?” Hugh asked.
Blaise took another step forward, and pointed to the right hand wall. A
narrow fissure extended from top to bottom. So narrow was the crack that
Hugh rather doubted whether he could squeeze into it.
“I will go first, I am smaller,” Blaise suggested. “If I cannot go
through, we shall know that no man has been in there.”
Slender and lithe, Blaise found that he could wriggle his way through
without much difficulty. The heavier, broader-shouldered Hugh found the
task less easy. He had to go sidewise and for a moment he thought he
should stick fast, but he managed to squeeze past the narrowest spot, to
find himself in an almost round hollow. This hole or pit in the outer
ridge was perhaps twenty feet in diameter with abrupt rock walls and a
floor of boulders and pebbles, among which grew a few hardy shrubs. It
was open to the sky and ringed at the top with shrubby growth. Hugh
glanced about him with a keen sense of disappointment. Surely the furs
were not in this place.
Blaise, on the other side of a scraggly ninebark bush, seemed to be
examining a pile of boulders and rock fragments. The older boy rounded
the bush, and disappointment gave way to excitement. By what agency had
those stones been heaped in that particular spot? They had not fallen
from the wall beyond. The pit had no opening through which waves could
wash. Had that heap been put together by the hand of man? Was it indeed a
cache?
Without a word spoken, the two lads set about demolishing the stone pile.
One after another they lifted each stone and threw it aside. As he rolled
away one of the larger boulders, Hugh could not restrain a little cry. A
bit of withered cedar had come to light. With eager energy he flung away
the remaining stones. There lay revealed a heap of something covered with
cedar branches, the flat sprays, withered but still aromatic, woven
together closely to form a tight and waterproof covering. Over and around
them, the stones had been heaped to conceal every sprig.
With flying fingers, the boys pulled the sprays apart. There were the
bales of furs each in a skin wrapper. The brothers had found the hidden
cache and their inheritance. Both lads were surprised at the number of
the bales. If the pelts were of good quality, no mean sum would be
realized by their sale. They would well repay in gold for all the long
search. Yet, to do the boys justice, neither was thinking just then of
the worth of the pelts. Their feeling was rather of satisfaction that
they were really carrying out their father’s last command. The long and
difficult search was over, and they had not failed in it.
They lifted the packages from a platform of poles resting on stones. The
whole cache had been cleverly constructed. No animal could tear apart the
bales, and, even in the severest storm, no water could reach them. Over
them the branches had formed a roof strong enough to keep the top stones
from pressing too heavily upon the furs.
“But where is the packet?” cried Hugh. “It must be inside one of the
bales, but which one I wonder.”
“I think it is this one,” Blaise replied.
The package he was examining seemed to be just like the others, except
that into the rawhide thong that bound it had been twisted a bit of
scarlet wool ravelled from a cap or sash. Blaise would have untied the
thong, but the impatient Hugh cut it, and stripped off the wrapping. The
bale contained otter skins of fine quality. Between two of the pelts was
a small, flat packet. It was tied with a bit of cedar cord and sealed
with a blotch of pitch into which had been pressed the seal of the ring
Hugh now wore.
“Shall we open this here and now, Blaise?” Hugh asked.
“That is for you to say, my brother. You are the elder.”
“Then I think we had best open it at once.”
Hugh broke the seal and was about to untie the cord, when from somewhere
above the rim of the pit, there rang out a loud, long-drawn call,
“Oh-eye-ee, oh-eye-ee-e.” It was not the cry of an animal. It was a human
voice.
XVII
THE SEALED PACKET
Hastily Hugh thrust the unopened packet into the breast of his deerskin
tunic, and looked up apprehensively at the border of green about the rim
of the pit. The man who had shouted could not be far away. There might be
others even nearer. If anyone should push through that protecting fringe
of growth, he would be looking directly down on the two lads. The bales
would be in plain view.
Hugh thought quickly. “We must conceal the furs again, Blaise,” he
whispered, “until we can find some way to get them to the boat.”
Blaise nodded. “We will take them away at night.”
Rapidly and with many an apprehensive glance upward, the two replaced the
bales on the platform of poles, covered the heap with the cedar boughs
and built up the stones around and over the whole. They were in too great
haste to do as careful a piece of work as Jean Beaupré had done. Their
rock pile would scarcely have stood close scrutiny without betraying
something suspicious. From above, however, its appearance was innocent
enough, and no chance comer would be likely to descend into the hole.
Squeezing through the narrow slit, the brothers examined the cleft that
ran down in a steep incline of rock fragments to the water. The simplest
plan would be to bring the boat in there. With strangers likely to appear
at any moment, it would be best to wait until nightfall. The two decided
to return to the cove where they had camped, and wait for darkness.
Back through the fissure and over the low ground behind the shore ridge,
they made their way cautiously, silently. They went slowly, taking pains
to efface any noticeable tracks or signs of their passage, and watching
and listening alertly for any sight or sound of human beings. A rustling
in the bushes caused both to stand motionless until they caught sight of
the cause, a little, bright-eyed squirrel or a gray-brown snowshoe rabbit
with long ears and big hind feet. Both boys would have liked that fresh
meat for the dinner pot, but they had no wish to attract attention by a
shot.
When they reached the top of the cliff, they found that the fog had
entirely disappeared, driven away by a light breeze. As they went down
the steep, open slope to the little beach, they knew themselves to be
exposed to the view of anyone who might happen to be looking out from the
woods bordering the cove. Anxiously they scanned woods, rocks and lake,
but saw no sign of any human being. Not a living creature but a fish duck
peacefully riding the water was to be seen. The boat and supplies were
undisturbed.
The boys stayed quietly in the cove during the remaining hours of
daylight. The beach was partially hidden from the water by the end of the
shore ridge, and screened on the land side by the dense growth of trees
and bushes bordering the pebbles. Beyond the beach was a vertical rock
cliff sheer to the water from its forested summit. Then came another
short stretch of pebbles bounded by a low rock wall and protected by the
jutting mass of rock, only scantily wooded, that formed the dividing line
between the twin coves. To anyone standing over there or among the trees
at the edge of the high central cliff, the boys and their boat would have
been in plain sight. The shot Blaise had heard in the early dawn had come
from somewhere above that cliff, but it was not likely that the man who
had fired that shot was still there. Doubtless he had been hunting. At
any rate the lads had no better place to wait for darkness to come. They
were at least far enough from the pit so their discovery by wandering
Indians or white hunters need not lead to the finding of the furs. As the
day wore on, the brothers cast many an anxious glance around the shores
of the cove. They were startled whenever a squirrel chattered, a
woodpecker tapped loudly on a branch, or two tree trunks rubbed against
one another, swayed by a stronger gust of wind.
As their food was ill adapted to being eaten raw, they permitted
themselves a small cooking fire, taking care to use only thoroughly dry
wood and to keep a clear flame with as little smoke as possible. After
the kettle had been swung over the fire, Hugh drew from his breast the
packet and examined the outside carefully. The wrapping was of oiled
fish-skin tied securely.
“Shall we open it, Blaise?” he asked again.
The younger boy cast a quick glance about him, at the rock slope they had
descended, the dense bushes beyond the pebbles, the forest rim along the
summit of the high central cliff, the rough, wave-eaten rock mass across
the cove. Then his eyes returned to his companion’s face and he nodded
silently.
Curious though he was, Hugh was deliberate in opening the mysterious
packet. He untied the cord and removed the outer cover carefully not to
tear it. Within the oiled skin wrapper was still another of the finest,
whitest, softest doeskin, tied with the same sort of bark cord. The cord
had been passed through holes in a square of paper-thin birch bark. On
the bark label was written in the same faint, muddy brown ink Blaise had
used:
“To be delivered to M. René Dubois,
At Montreal.
Of great importance.”
Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, with
drops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupré’s seal had been pressed. For
several minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then he
looked up at his half-brother’s equally grave face.
“I don’t like to open this,” Hugh said. “It is addressed to M. René
Dubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to take
it to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open it
in my presence and tell me what it contains.”
Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilization
to realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed to
someone else. “That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?” he inquired.
“No, I didn’t know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never lived
there, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don’t
remember that I ever heard of Monsieur René Dubois, but my relatives in
Montreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can’t, then I think
it would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. Shall
I take charge of this, Blaise?”
“You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet to
Montreal.”
To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woods
of the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard to
realize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the point
and had tied up there. They
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