_ CHAPTER VI. SPRING TRADE
So passed out of Fort de Seviere one who was destined to be interwoven with its fortunes.
Anders McElroy watched him go until the shadow of the great trees on the eastern shore, long in the level sun, quenched the light on his silken head and the men of the five canoes had taken up a song of the boats, their voices lifting clear and fresh on the wings of the new day, until the first canoe turned with the curve of the river above and was lost, the second and the third, and even until the last had passed from view and only the song came back.
Then he turned back into the gate and the tender mouth that was all Irish above the square Scottish jaw was set tight together.
His foot touched the wickered jug and he called Jean Saville.
"Take this, Jean," he said, "and give each of the men a cup. 'Tis a shame to waste it."
But for himself he had no taste for the stranger's gift of payment.
He was thinking of the red flower in Maren Le Moyne's black hair and a vexation, past all reason held him.
But the spring was open and there was soon more to occupy his mind than a maid and a posy and a reckless blade from Montreal.
At dusk of a day within that week a trapper brought word of a hundred canoes on the river a day's journey up-country, laden with packs of winter beaver, and bound for the post.
The Indians were coming down to trade.
Picturesque they were, in their fringed buckskin cunningly tanned and beaded, their feathers and their ornaments of elk teeth and claws of the huge, thick-coated bears. At day-dawn they came, having camped for the night a short distance above the fort, to the letter display of their arrival, and they swept down in a flotilla of graceful craft made of the birch bark and light as clouds upon the water.
All was in readiness for them, for the factor had been expecting them for a fortnight back; and, when the crackling shots of the braves announced their coming, McElroy gave orders that the three small cannon mounted on a half-moon of narrow breastwork to the south of the main gate, and just before a small opening in the stockade for use in case of attack, should be fired in salute.
These were the quiet and friendly Assiniboines, and the first of the tribes, being the nearest, to reach the factory that year.
De Seviere was early awake and all was astir within its walls, for this was the great time of the four seasons. Eagerly the maids and the younger matrons flocked down to the great gate to peer out at the gathering craft, afloat like the leaves of autumn upon the breast of the little river,--two braves to a canoe, the gallant front of the young men flanking and preceding that which held the leader of the expedition, chief of the tribe, distinguished by its flag fluttering in the morning wind upon a pole at the stern,--at the bedizened figure of the chief himself, and lastly those canoes which held the women, the few children, and even a dog or two.
Thus they came, those simple children of the forest and the lakes, the open ways and the fastnesses, of the untrammelled summers, and the snow-hindered winters, to the doors of the white man, dependent at last upon him for the implements of life,--the gun, the trap, the knife, the kettle, and the blanket.
Presently Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader of Fort de Seviere, came down the main way between the cabins, passing alone between the rows of the populace, and went forward to the lading to receive the guests.
The canoes had by this time swept swiftly and with utmost skill into two half-moons, their points cutting to the landing; and down the reach of water between them, slightly ruffled into little waves and sparkling ripples by the soft wind and the deftly dipping paddles, there came the larger craft of Quamenoka the leader.
"Welcome, my brothers!" called Ridgar, in their own tongue, for this man had been born on the shores of Hudson Bay and knew the speech of every tribe, from the almost extinct Nepisingues, of the Nepigon, to the far-away Ouinebigonnolinis on the sea coast. His hair was thickly silvered from the years he had spent in the service of the H. B. C., and his heart was full of knowledge gathered from the four winds. Therefore, his worth was above price and he would have been factor of a post of his own, instead of chief trader for young Anders McElroy.
"We greet our brother," gravely replied Quamenoka as he stepped from his canoe, gathering his blanket around his body with a practised sweep.
Swiftly four headmen disembarked from the first four canoes of the half-moon which closed in with scarce a paddle dip, so deft were the braves with their slender, shining blades of white ash, and stood behind.
Side by side, conversing in a few sentences, the trader and the chief entered the post, followed by the headmen and proceeded to the factory, where McElroy stood to welcome them in the open door.
They entered, to the ceremony of the pipe, the speech, and the bargain, while those without made a great camp two hundred strong all along the bank of the stream, beached the canoes, stacked the beaver packs, set up the tepees of the seventeen sticks, and built the little fires without which no camp is a camp.
In a little space the quiet shore was all a-bustle and activity reigned where the silence of the spring morning had lain, dew-heavy.
Among those most eager who peered at the gate, and who presently ventured forth to the better view the bustling concourse of braves and squaws, was Maren Le Moyne, her dark eyes wide, soft lips apart, and face all a-quiver with keen enjoyment of the scene.
These were the first she had ever seen of those Indians who came from the west. Who knew? Perhaps those moccasined feet had trod the virgin forest of her dreams, those sombre eyes looked upon the Whispering Hills, those grave faces been lifted to the sweet wind that sang from the west and whose caress she felt even now upon her cheeks.
Perhaps,--perhaps, even, some swift forest-runner among them, far on his quest of the home of the caribou or with news of some friendly tribe, had come upon a man, an old man rugged of frame and face, with blue eyes like lakes in his swarthy darkness, and muscles that bespoke the forge and hammer.
Who knew?
Maren's strongly modelled chin twitched a bit while the little flame of tenderness that flickered ever behind the graveness of her eyes leaped up. She longed for their speech that she might go among them and ask.
A little way along the stockade wall to the north there lay a great rock, flat and smooth of surface, and here the girl drew apart from the women and sat herself down thereon, hands clasping her knees and the level sun in her eyes. Her thoughts were soon faraway on the misty trail they had worn for themselves in the many years they had traversed the wilderness in search of what it held, and the eyes between the narrowed lids became blank with introspection. And as she sat thus, a little way withdrawn from the scurrying activity of the scene, there came a step on the soft green sod and a slim form in buckskins halted beside her.
It was young Marc Dupre, and his devil-may-care face was alert and smiling.
"Is that seat big enough for two, Ma'amselle?" he asked impertinently, though the heart in him was thumping a bit. This was a woman, he recalled having thought, for whom one would fillip the face of Satan, and he was uncertain whether or no he had made a right beginning.
Maren started and looked swiftly up at him.
"It is, M'sieu," she said quietly, "if those two are in simple, sensible accord. Not if one of the two coquettes."
Over the handsome features of the youth there spread a deep red flush.
"Forgive me, Ma'amselle," he said, "my speech was foolish as my heart. They are both sobered."
"Then," said the girl, drawing aside the folds of her dress, "you may sit beside me."
With a sudden diffidence he sank upon the stone, this handsome boy whose tongue was ever ready and whose heart of a light o' love had taken toll from every maid in the settlement, and for the first time in his life he had no sprightly word, no quip for his careless tongue.
They sat in silence, and presently he saw that her eyes were again half-closed and the dreaming look had settled back in them. She had forgotten his presence.
Never before in his experience had a woman sat thus unmoved beside him when he longed to make her speak, and it stilled him with silent wonder.
He thought of the words of Pierre Garcon that day on the river bank when this maid was new to the post, "if there is, I would not be the one to waken it and not be found its master," and they sent a thrill to his inmost being.
Who would awaken her; he wondered, as he watched the cheek beside him from the tail of his eye, a round womanly cheek, sweet and full and rich as a damask rose with the thick lashes above shining like jet.
Obedient to her silence, he sat still while she dreamed her dream out to its conclusion, and presently she straightened with a little breath like a sigh, unclasped her hands from her knees and turned her glance upon him as if she saw him for the first time.
His head whirled suddenly and he sought for some common word to cover his rare confusion.
"See, Ma'amselle," he said, pointing, "the well-lashed packs of the fat winter beaver. Truly they come well laden, these Assiniboines, and we may well thank le bon Dieu for the wealth of skins. Is it not a heartening sight?"
The eyes of Maren Le Moyne left his face and swept swiftly down the gentle slope to where the Indians had piled their bales of furs. At the sight they darkened like the waters of a lake when a little wind runs over its surface.
"A heartening sight? Nay, M'sieu," she said, shaking her head, "I can find no joy in it."
"What?"
The trapper was aghast.
"No pleasure in the fruits of a fat season?"
"See the packs of marten, the dark streaks showing a bit at the edges where the fur rounds over the dried skin. How were those pelts taken, M'sieu?"
"How? Why, most cunningly, Ma'amselle,--in traps of the H. B. Company, set with utmost skill, perhaps on a stump above the line of the heavy snows, or balanced nicely at the far end of a slender pole set leaning in the ground. The delicate hand of a seasoned player must match itself with the forest instinct of these small creatures. The little pole holds little snow and the scent of the bait calls the marten up, when, snap! it is fast and waiting for the trapper and the lodge of the Assiniboines, the women and the drying."
"Yes. And those hundreds of beaver, M'sieu?"
Marc Dupre's eyes were shining and the red in his cheeks flushing with pleasure.
What more to a man's liking than the exploitation of knowledge gained first-hand in the pursuit of his life's work?
"Again the trap," he said, "set this time at the edge of a stream where the beaver huts peek through the ice, or lift their tops above the open water. Neatly they are set, cunning as an Indian himself; hidden in the soft slime at the margin if the water runs, waiting with open jaws in the small runway above the dam where the creatures come out from the swim. A sleek head lifting above the ripples a scrambling foot or two,--snap! again the price of a pound and a half of powder, a tie of tobacco. No footmark must the hunter leave, Ma'amselle, unsplashed with water, no tainting touch of a hand ungloved on chain or stake or trap itself. Ah! one must know the woods and the stream, the cold and the snow and the winds."
"You know them, M'sieu, I have no doubt," said Maren, "for you follow the trapping trail. And those beautiful silver fox, frosty and fine as the sparkle of a winter morning? The heavy hides of the bear, soft and glossy and thick as a folded blanket?"
"All the trap,--unless the latter drops through the flimsy roof of some well-hidden dead-fall, covered with brush."
The girl was not looking at him, her glance being still on the bustling camp below. The fingers on her knee were laced tight together.
Now she began to speak in a low voice, deep and even.
"Aye! All you have said is true. Wealth, indeed, is in those packs, and patience and cunning and utmost skill, defiance of the snows and the crackling cold, long miles on snowshoes and the hardships of the trail, the nights in the bough-tied huts, the pack galling the shoulders. But what is all this beside that which waits the runner of the trail at every 'set' in those many miles? Here he finds his leaning-pole. There have been little tracks up its slim roadway, but those were covered by the fall of three days back and the little creature who made them hangs there at the end, three small feet beating the cold air feebly, a tiny head squirming from side to side, two dull black eyes set at the distorted world. He has caught his marten. It has not frozen, for the snow was light and the forest still and thick, and three days have passed, M'sieu. Three days! Mon Dieu! How much were those three days worth? The trapper taps the squirming head and puts the bit of fur in his pack-bag. On to the next. The beaver? Dead, M'sieu, thanks to the good God, drowned in its own sweet water. The pack is heavy with small bodies ere the Assiniboine reaches the place where he has laid his trap for the silver fox. And what greets him here? Only a foot gnawed off in the silence of the day and the night, and some beauty gone staggering away to lie and suffer with starvation in the cold."
The youth was staring at the averted face beside him, mouth open and utter amazement on his features.
Maren went on.
"And lastly, M'sieu, far at the end of the trail,--at the outer, rim of the circle traced by his traps,--he comes eagerly, to peep and peer for what might have happened at the head of the little dip leading down to the stream where the firs bend heavily under their weight of snow.
"Here he had laid his cunningest instrument, a thing of giant jaws, of sharp ragged points, each inlocking with the other, the whole unholy thing hung to a chain at whose other end there lay a ball of iron, weighing, M'sieu, some eighty pounds. That was for the great shy bear, rocking along ire his quest of berries or some tree that should ring hollow under his scratching claws, bespeaking the hive of the wild bees. The oiled and fur-wrapped Indian stoops down and looks along the dip. Ah! There he sees that which brings a glint to his small eyes. No bear, M'sieu, nor yet the trap he had left, but a thrashed and broken space where the snow went flying in clouds and the bushes were torn from their roots, where the very tree-trunks bore marks of the conflict and a wide and terrible trail led wildly off to the deeper forest.
"He takes it up.
"All day he follows it. At night he camps and sleeps by his fire in comfort. By daybreak again he is swinging along on that trail. Its word is plain to him. At first it raged, that great shaggy creature, tall as an ox and slow, raged and fought and broke its teeth on the strange thing that bit to the bone with its relentless jaws, and tore along the white silence dragging its hindering ball, that, catching on bush and root, skinned down the flesh from the shining bone. And presently the wild trail narrowed to undisturbed snow, with naught save two great footprints, one after the other. With the cunning of a man, M'sieu, the tortured animal has gathered in its arms that chain and ball, and is walking upright. For another day and night the trapper follows this trail of tragedy and at their end he comes upon it.
"Beside a boulder, where the snow is pushed away there lies a round heap of anguish, curled up, pinched nose flat on the snow and two ears laid lop to a vanquished head. It is still breathing, though the dull eyes open not at sound of the trapper, bold in his safety, who lifts his gun and ends it all.
"A fine pelt,--save that the right foreleg is somewhat spoiled.
"It lies there in that pile, M'sieu, and makes for wealth,--but to me it is no heartening sight. I have followed that trail to the deeper woods."
The eyes of the woman were deep as wells, flickering with light, and the dark brows frowned down the slope. She had drawn her hands tight around her knees, so tight that each knuckle stood out white from the surrounding tan.
The young man shut his open lips and drew in a breath that quivered.
"Ma'amselle," he said huskily, "nowhere in the wide world is there another woman so deep of heart, so strong in tenderness. Never before have I seen that side of the trapping. To a man that is shut. It needs the soul of a woman to see behind those things. And, oh, Ma'amselle!" his voice fell low and trembling, "I have seen more,--the divinity within your spirit. May the good God make me worthy that you may speak so to me again. I would I might serve you,--with my life I would serve you, Ma'amselle, for I have seen no woman like you." He was on his feet, this young Marc Dupre, and the hot blood was coursing fast in his veins. The awakening was coming, though not for Maren Le Moyne.
"May the time come when I may be a stone for your foot," he said swiftly. "I ask no better fate."
Maren looked up at him and a wonderful tenderness spread on her face.
"I think the time will come, M'sieu,--and, when it does, it will be worth while. I think it would be a lifting sight to see you in some great crisis, before some heavy test."
"You do?" he said slowly; "you do, Ma'amselle? Then, by Heaven, it would!"
"And some day I shall see it."
They little knew, these two in their glowing youth, how true was that word, nor how tragic that sight would be.
"And till then," said this wild youth of the forest, "until then may we be friends?" The head under the crimson cap was whirling.
"Friends?" smiled Maken, and her voice was very gentle; "assuredly, M'sieu--I had destined you for that some time ago."
As she turned away, her glance once more fell upon the long camp of the Assiniboines, and Marc Dupre faded from her mind.
Not so with him, left sitting on the flat stone, the blood hot in his face and a sudden mist before his eyes.
Her last words sang in his ears like the voice of many waters.
He did not look after her,--there was something within that held him silent, staring at the waters of the river, now sparkling like a stream of diamonds in the risen sun, the lightness gone from him and a trembling loosed in his bosom.
Within the big trading-room at the factory, seats had been placed, the chief and his headmen sat in a solemn circle, and McElroy, holding in his two hands the long calumet, stood in the centre of the small conclave.
Very gravely he pointed the stem, clinking with its dangling ornaments, to east and west, to the heavens and to the earth, and then with a deft motion swung it around his head.
"My brothers," he said, glancing around at the solemn visages of these his friends and people, "may the sun smile all day upon us together in peace."
Wherewith he smoked a moment at the carven mouthpiece and handed the pipe to Quamenoka.
With the utmost gravity Ridgar took it from the chief, passed it to the savage on his right, who likewise smoked and passed, it on, and presently the ceremony was done and the visit had begun.
"My brothers are late this year at the trading," said the factor. "For a fortnight has the ox waited in the pen, the bread of the feast been set. So do we love our brothers of the forest. What is the word of the west? What tribes come in to the factory with peltry? We would hear Quamenoka speak."
He fell silent, sat down in his chair, and waited.
In the hush of that moment a shadow falling in the open door of the factory caught his eye and he looked up to see the form of Maren Le Moyne leaning against the lintel, her face filled with eagerness, her eyes, clear as a child's and as far-seeing, fixed on the Indians. He glanced swiftly to that tight braid just above the temple, where he had last seen a small red flower nodding impishly, and was conscious of a feeling of relief to find it gone.
It was irregular, the intrusion of an outsider in the ceremony of the opening of the trade; but for his life the young factor of De Seviere could not have said so to this girl who went fearlessly where she listed and whose eyes held such mystery of strength and wistfulness.
Moreover, Quamenoka was speaking and the council harkened. _