The Wilderness Trail
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“Are you a man or a stick,” she complained, “that you let the blood of your brother go unavenged? It's nearly three weeks since some coward shot him, and you haven't made a move to find the guilty man.”
“Nor will I, until the business here is settled,” Seguis retorted, in a tone of finality. “Do you expect me to leave this camp when the traders are expected, and go on some wild-goose chase out of personal revenge? For my part, I think Tom would have been sorrowed over a little more if he hadn't been such a fool. Why he went gunning for McTavish out of pure spite, I don't see. We need every man we can get in this camp.”
Seguis was a remarkably fine-looking half-breed. He had the proud carriage and graceful movements of the Indian, combined with the bright eyes and more attractively shaped head of a Caucasian. His hair was smooth and black, but lacked the coarseness of his mother's race, while his brain and method of thinking were wholly that of his father. With this endowment there had come to him, early in life, an aspiration to rise above his own sort, a desire to be a thorough white man. And in this he had always been supported by his mother, who, knowing her past, carried in her heart bitterness fully the equal of Angus Fitzpatrick's. It was only when her elder son had reached manhood, and bore easily, as by right, the manners of the superior race that the idea of carrying him upward ruthlessly had come to her.
Catherine de' Medici placed three successive sons on the throne of France. Old Maria was less ambitious, but none the less unscrupulous, and her methods revealed an uncanny natural knowledge of diplomacy and statecraft. Her whole life was bound up in the achievements of Charley Seguis, and she rarely, if ever, considered the question of personal perquisites should her schemes result successfully. She was content to be the background of his operations; and the background of a picture, although it be subordinate to the main object, rarely goes absolutely unnoticed.
The strangest part of her plan lay in the fact that as yet Seguis was totally unaware of his parentage. In the cunning scheme she had evolved, it was her intention to remove Donald McTavish completely, though unostentatiously; then could come the great revelation and the noise of conquest. Reasoning thus, she had taken her story to Angus Fitzpatrick, anxious, hesitant, and fearful. But in him, to her great joy, she had found an arrogant and eager, ally. This had been during the summer. It was now the first of March, and time was flying. The work must be completed before the spring thaws. The loss of Tom was not the grief to her that she made pretense it was. Her references to it this morning had a deeper purpose. She continued the conversation, despite Seguis's tone of annoyance.
“Tom may have been a fool,” she croaked, “but you're hardly the person to say so. Perhaps you'd have changed your song, if he'd put that dog, McTavish, out of the way – curse his charmed life!”
Seguis laughed harshly.
“You did your best, and Tom did his; I suppose it is up to me next. But why do you imagine I would be so glad if the captain was disposed of? I've nothing against him.”
“No? What's the matter with you? You're as soft as a rotten tree! What were you hanging around Fort Severn for all last summer, without a look for the Indian girls? Why were you singing love-songs under the trees of nights? Why did you cease to eat, and carry around a face as long as a sick fox's, eh? Ah, you are angry, and you shift! And, yet, you ask me what you have against this McTavish! With him out of the way, there's no reason why you shouldn't – ”
“Hush, hush, mother! There are men coming. Don't talk so loud!” Seguis moved uncomfortably. “Leave me, now. There's some truth in what you say. I'll think it over.”
Old Maria, bent and shriveled, hobbled off, croaking, to hide the expression of malignant triumph on her leathery face. Her words had bitten deeper than Seguis cared to admit, even to himself. The short summer months, the hunter's love- and play-time, had been a season of misery for him, because of Jean Fitzpatrick's pure and beautiful face. Subconsciously, he knew that in mind and spirit he was her equal; the white strain in him, which now governed all his thoughts and actions, felt the call of its own blood. Hence, it had been with sad, rather than bitter, feelings that he witnessed Donald's courtship of the girl. More fiercely than ever, he realized the limitations of his kind. The bar sinister was a veritable millstone around his neck which dragged him down to a level he abhorred.
It was with a kind of gnawing hopelessness that he had gone away from the fort in the fall, and endeavored to forget his misery in the thousand activities of the free-traders' brotherhood. For McTavish personally, he had always retained a strong feeling of friendship, as was shown on the occasion of sending the Hudson Bay man forth on the Death Trail. But, now, the old hunger returned strong upon him at his mother's words, and he resolved to give himself every opportunity for contemplation of the dangerous theme.
Night came without the appearance of the looked-for French supply-trains, and, as usual, the camp retired early. As many of the men as possible used the small rooms in the great log house, which occupied two-thirds of its length. It was in one of these that Donald had been confined during his stay among the free-traders.
A high wind was blowing, and it was intensely cold. Suddenly, during the most terrible hours of the night, a frightened cry rang through the camp. Men, with heads and faces buried under mountainous blankets or in sleeping-bags, did not hear, and the shivering wretch who had tried to give the alarm ran frantically from room to room, rousing the sleepers. Those who were sheltered by shed-tents awoke to see a rosy light spreading across the snow where they lay – a light that was not the aurora. Then, upon the rushing wind sounded an ominous roar and a mighty crackling. The great log house was afire, and the wind exulted in the flames, tossing them back and forth and upward with fiendish glee. Shouting hoarsely, the trappers leaped, wet and steaming, out of their covers, and ran to the conflagration.
How the blaze had started was no mystery, for, in the little rooms the men occupied, each was permitted his tiny fire for cooking. Perhaps, the uneasy foot of a sleeper, perhaps a gust of wind between the chinks, had sent an ember underneath the inflammable logging of the walls.
Charley Seguis, although heavy with slumber, was among the first to run out of the building. In an instant, he took in the situation. With a lake like rock, and but one or two buckets, it was utterly impossible to check the flames with water; one or two men were making a desperate attempt to throw snow on the fire; but the wind whirled this away as fast as it was shot into the air. The building was doomed.
“Save the furs! Save the furs!” Seguis commanded at the top of his voice, and set an example by plunging into the council chamber, to reappear in a moment with two small bales of pelts. Instantly, the others followed his example.
Fortunately, the fire had started at the opposite end, so there was a fighting chance to save the valuable skins, although the flames were leaping along the beams with lightning rapidity. Presently, it was seen that the crowding of men endeavoring to pass in and out at the same time would be fatal to the contents of the wareroom, and Seguis, with a few rapid commands, formed a chain from the interior to a point well beyond the danger zone. He himself took the post of hazard in the midst of the piled pelts, and with quick thrusts of his arms kept a steady stream of bales flowing.
Such men as could not get on the pelt-brigade, he soon had rescuing bedding, traps, and other valuables from the little rooms, some of which were already seething infernos.
Urged by the high wind, the flames licked hungrily at the dry logs, and presently such a terrific heat radiated from the fire that the snow fled away in tiny rivulets, and the iron ground was laid bare. Fast as they worked, the men could not outspeed the devouring element. Flying embers clattered upon the tindery roof, and in a moment the whole top of the long structure was ablaze.
Charley Seguis, grabbing bales and passing them with both hands, suddenly brushed a six-inch ember from the pack of otter in front of him with a curse, and looked up. Here and there spots of fire dropped among the furs. He said nothing, but redoubled his efforts. In fifteen minutes, three-quarters of the work was done, and the drops of fire from above had become a steady rain.
“Get the chief out of there!” yelled someone. “The walls will fall on him!”
The man who was standing next the entrance shouted to Seguis, but all he got was a round cursing and a command to stay where he was. The half-breed was fighting now for more than a few bales of furs; he was fighting for the very existence of the free-traders. For, should their skins be lost, their value as an organization would be gone; and gone, too, all the labor of months, with its accompanying intrinsic worth.
Now, there were but twenty bales left; now, but fifteen. Seguis's hands were raw from burns, his fur cap smoldered in half-a-dozen places. But the man at the door was brave, and Seguis kept on. Ten – five! Could he hold out? Three – two! One! … Swearing horribly with agony, drenched with perspiration, Seguis burst out of the narrow doorway just as the walls collapsed inward from both sides.
Quick hands wrapped blankets about him, and beat out the fire in his cap. Still holding the last bale in his hand, he stood grimly, watching the destruction of the only free warehouse within five hundred miles. Higher and higher the flames mounted; the circle of men was driven slowly backward by the fearful heat; the surrounding snow was eaten away for fifty yards on every side.
Some activity was necessary lest the flying brands do damage to the shed-tents and the priceless bedding, but the work required only a few hands.
“Well, thank heaven, we saved the furs!” exclaimed the chief, at last.
“You saved 'em rather,” said a voice admiringly. Seguis interrupted, roughly.
“Tell the cook to make a couple of buckets of tea, and serve it around as soon as possible.”
“Pardon!” said the functionary referred to; “but there's no tea, or any other kind of provision in the camp. What little stock remained was stored in the far end of the building where the fire took hold first. I tried to get to it, but it was no use. There's no food.”
This was a serious state of affairs, for without his eternal hot tea the woodsman is almost as wretched as though tobacco had ceased to grow. And, now, it was almost a matter of life and death, for the men were mostly without shelter, and worn out with their long struggle. Charley Seguis walked up and down briskly for a while, thinking. The fire tumbled in upon itself with a great roar and geyser of sparks, throwing distant trees and forest aisles into quick relief. The first indications of dawn, almost obliterated by the brilliance of the blaze, now made themselves definitely evident. A few of the men, with rough fishing-tackle and axes, had already started toward the edge of the lake for the morning's catch.
Seguis watched them with somber eyes, pausing for a moment in his walk. Fish, fish, fish; nothing between starvation and life for forty men except that staple of fish. And suppose the French traders did not get through! Suppose something had gone wrong in that five hundred-odd miles to civilization!
Where, then? Where in this wilderness could he turn for abundant supplies easily secured – except one place. A grim smile set his face into hard lines. … Yes, he would go there. His mother's words of the day before returned to him. Perhaps he would see her! He called a man to him.
“Tell the boys to get ready to march. I'll leave five here to guard the furs. The rest of us are going up to the Hudson Bay camp, and get food. If we don't, we'll starve to death, or get scurvy, or something. Tell everybody to be ready at ten o'clock.”
CHAPTER XX
AWAITING THE HANGMAN
Stretched on a rough bed of blanket-covered branches, in a low, squat log cabin, a man lay smoking his pipe, and conversing in snatches with two other men who sat by the door, also smoking pipes.
The man on the bed was not yet thirty years old, but his face was furrowed with lines of care – not only lines of care, but of character. The hair about his temples was sprinkled with gray, a fact that added to the dignity of his countenance. In his whole attitude, as he lay, there was a certain masterful repose and self-confidence, an air of peace and understanding that sat well upon him.
The men at the door, on the other hand, were nervous and miserable, and shifted their positions uneasily now and again. A small fire burned in the middle of the room.
“What time is it, boys?” asked the man on the bunk.
“Three o'clock, Mac,” replied Timmins, pulling on his watch with fingers that shook, and straining his eyes in the dim light.
“Four or five hours more. That's what I hate, this waiting. I'll be mighty glad when I hear the steps outside.”
“Don't, Mac, for heaven's sake!” muttered Buxton hoarsely, his languid drawl gone for once. Then, he burst out: “McTavish, I can't stand this – this thing that's going to happen. It's murder, that's what it is! Why don't you tell all the circumstances of that night Indian Tom was killed?
“It wouldn't get me off, if I did. Can't you see that Fitzpatrick is going to get me, even if he has to do it with his own hands? I did tell about going to Peter Rainy in the woods, and it only strengthened the circumstantial evidence. If I told of the other person I was with when the shot came, it would only draw out a flood of revelations, and not in the slightest change the verdict. Besides, it would bring at least half-a-dozen people to their graves in shame and sorrow. No, Buxton, even if I could get myself off, I haven't any right to do it.”
Donald lighted his pipe again and fell into a somber reverie. For two weeks now, he had been in his cabin, awaiting the end. The men that sentenced him to death had ordained a fortnight in which he might change his mind, and save himself, if he would. Now, this was the finish. He sighed with relief. Then, a tender light came into his eyes. Only the day before, Jean Fitzpatrick, white and still with pain, had come to him, and had begged him, on her knees, to save himself at her expense.
“If you don't confess that I was with you that night, I'll do it myself,” she had cried, beside Herself.
And he had answered:
“Princess, if you do, I'll deny it.”
But even that had not convinced her, and she had risen with a firm purpose in her mind. Then, in the supreme renunciation of his life, he had told her everything; that he was a nobody, according to law; that her father was merely working out to a triumphal conclusion the revenge he had plotted so many years, and that there was but one way of cleaning the slate, which bore the writing of so many lives.
“When your father has done away with me I think he will be satisfied, for my father's heart will be broken and all the ambitions that have carried him to where he is will fall to ashes. I have a mother and a sister – ah, they would love you, my mother and sister! – and think what these revelations would mean to them. Disgrace and dishonor!
“Donald, what about me?” she had cried, weeping. “You haven't thought about me. You speak of your father and your mother and sister, but you haven't even mentioned me. Am I nothing to you? Oh, forgive me! I don't mean that! But, Donald, if I lose you, I shall die, too. Don't you see I can't live without you? You found me a girl innocent and ignorant of life, and of men. You were a good man, and you gave me a good love. And I gave you my love, the love of a grown woman, suddenly on fire with things I had never suspected before. Love can't come to me again. Oh, can't you think of me? And yourself! Haven't you the desire to live life to its greatest fulfilment? Can you give me up this way?”
Utterly selfish was her grief. But it was the innocent, instinctive selfishness of the wild thing robbed of its due. Hers was a nature as strong in its renunciation as in its seeking, but she had not come to renunciation yet… She stroked his head, pushing back the fur cap that he wore.
“Oh, my lover, my boy, your hair is streaked with gray! Oh, my poor darling!”
He smiled wanly.
“That,” he said faintly, “came after I had thought of you – and given you up!”
Then, the greater woman awakened in her, the woman that has drawn man's head upon her breast to comfort him since the world began; the woman that has borne the sons and daughters of the earth amid pain and fear and ingratitude; the woman that has ever stood aside, alike in right and wrong, that the man may achieve his destiny.
So, then, stood Jean Fitzpatrick in sight of the trimmed tree-limb that was soon to bear the body of him whom she knew to be hers. Her weeping was stilled, and the eyes that looked into the eyes of Donald McTavish bore alike the pain and the glory of woman's eternal sacrifice. And to them both came the sense of peace that follows a bitter struggle won. They talked a while of intimate, tender things, and then she left him.
“Look at him, Timmins,” whispered Buxton in an awed whisper. “Did you ever see a face with such glory in it all your life? He's seen something that you and I will never see, here or hereafter!”
Timmins looked… The light gradually died out before his eyes.
“What time is it, boys?” asked Donald.
“Four o'clock, Mac,” answered Timmins, glancing with difficulty at the watch that shook in his fingers.
“Let me have my pencil and note-book, will you? I want to write a letter or two.” The men hesitated, and the condemned man smiled. “Oh, you needn't be afraid I'll try any funny business at this late date. I give you my word, and that's still good, isn't it?
“It sure is, Mac,” said Buxton, and he brought him the articles required.
When the prisoner had begun to write awkwardly by the flickering light, the men engaged in a whispered conversation.
“Say, Mac – ” Timmins began hesitatingly, and paused. Then, abruptly, he continued boldly: “I've got a proposition to make you.”
“What is it?”
“Buxton and me have agreed it's the only fair thing to do. You take my revolver, and bang us both over the head with it, and make your get-away. We'll frame up a good story of a desperate struggle, and all that, to tell 'em when we come to. Then, nobody'll suffer, and we won't all have murder on our souls. But give us time to fix the story up beforehand,” he concluded, whimsically. “You see, we mightn't be able to think alike afterward.”
Donald actually laughed.
“It's no go, boys,” he said gratefully; “but I'll always remember your – ” He halted blankly, and Buxton cleared his throat viciously, and spat into the fire. The fact that “always” consisted for him of perhaps four hours, at most, occurred to the man about to die with something of surprise for a moment. Then, he went on writing.
He had just sealed a letter, and given it to Timmins, when he thought he detected a noise outside the cabin. Whether it was a step or a gruff whisper, he could not say. He listened curiously. Who should be about at this hour? Surely, it was too early for the —
“I wonder, do they keep their grub in this shack?” came the whisper of a man, speaking to a companion.
Where Donald lay, with his ear almost against the logs, the voices were distinct through the chinks, but did not reach the two guards at the door. He remained silent. There was a sound of breathing, and then stealthy steps, as the men pursued their investigations along the walls. What should he do? Who were they? If he spoke, he might precipitate some calamity of which he had no inkling. Thinking hard, he could reason out no situation in the camp that would call for men to be slinking about looking for food. Besides, every one knew that the little cabin was not a storehouse.
Knowing their man and sure of their own ability to cope with any situation that might arise, Timmins and Buxton had not been over-careful in making the door of the cabin fast. At best, the bar was only a piece of wood that turned on a peg, and its main use was to keep the door tightly closed on account of the cold draft that entered every crack. McTavish had been under guard since the morning of his arrest, and the watchers were grown careless. Now, the piece of wood was not turned full across the edge of the entrance – in fact, it just managed to keep it shut. A good stiff pull would —
There was a jerk at the outside handle, a cracking and scraping of wood, an icy blast set the little fire roaring. An instant later, a long gun, with a muffled face behind it, appeared and covered the three men.
“Here, you in the corner, get up, and let's see who you are?” said the man with the gun, and Donald, before that uncompromising barrel, stood.
“Well, by the great Lucifer,” came the soft oath, “if it isn't McTavish!”
“What do you want?” demanded Donald; “and who are you?” He resented this intrusion. The time for letters was growing less and less.
“What, don't you recognize me?” The man thrust his head forward, and worked his face out of the capote that covered the features. It was Seguis.
“Well, this is luck,” the half-breed was saying to himself. “All I have to do now is to take him out of here, and the coast is clear for my own operations.”
He said a few words in Ojibway, and a couple of men appeared behind him in the doorway, as he stepped inside.
“Take off your snowshoes,” he ordered Timmins, and the under-storekeeper obeyed with real joy. Had Seguis known it, the two men in front of him were much farther from resistance than was their prisoner.
Under command, McTavish donned the rackets, and followed his new captor out of doors. He was entirely prepared for traveling, even to gauntlets, for the temperature of the cabin had been but a few degrees higher than that of outdoors.
Seguis, with a few words to a couple of followers, gave Donald into their charge, bidding him accompany them. Timmins and Buxton, chuckling together, said nothing of the event that Seguis had interrupted, and even McTavish, in his exalted nervous state, was not fool enough to remark: “Don't take me away! – for I'm due to be hanged in the morning.”
Seguis and his free-traders had found the approaches to the camp ridiculously easy. In fact, for the last few days sentries had been withdrawn, Fitzpatrick resting assured that the free-traders would not make an aggressive move. He had learned in a parley that all Seguis and his men asked was peace, and a chance to follow their own path. The factor was waiting for reinforcements from Fort Severn, which he had asked Braithwaite to secure, if possible, among the friendly trappers; and, until they should arrive, and the present matter of discipline be off his hands, he had no desire to make an attack. Consequently, Seguis's party had crept stealthily closer and closer to the camp, undetected. It was the time when sleep in the North country is almost a coma, and the quiet approach aroused no one. In the light of the aurora and the stars, two log cabins stood forth conspicuously. Knowing Fitzpatrick's love of ceremony and distinction, Seguis gathered that the larger and better one was his. If so, the other probably contained provisions.
During the time that he talked to McTavish and his guards, he had not realized the strange situation in which he found them. As he came nearer and nearer to Jean Fitzpatrick, his mind had grown more and more intense against McTavish. What had happened to the unfortunate Hudson Bay man, he only knew imperfectly. But that the former should be in constant communication with the girl was a spur to his jealous imagination. If he could but get his rival out of the way, for a while at least, things would be so much easier. The bird had fallen unexpectedly into his hand, and for a time he did nothing but congratulate himself. McTavish was now on his way to Sturgeon Lake temporarily, and was safely off the board… But, after a while, the strangeness of the situation in the cabin struck him, and he turned to Timmins.
“What was going on in this place when I came in?” he asked.