The Call of the North by Stewart Edward White
S >>
Stewart Edward White >> The Call of the North
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 THE CALL OF THE NORTH
Beyond the butternut, beyond the maple,
beyond the white pine and the red, beyond
the oak, the cedar, and the beech, beyond
even the white and yellow birches lies a
Land, and in that Land the shadows fall
crimson across the snow.
THE CALL OF THE NORTH
Being a Dramatized Version of
CONJURORS HOUSE
A Romance of the Free Forest
BY
Stewart Edward White
AUTHOR OF THE WESTERNERS,
THE BLAZED TRAIL,
ETC.
THE CALL OF THE NORTH
Chapter One
The girl stood on a bank above a river flowing north. At her back
crouched a dozen clean whitewashed buildings. Before her in
interminable journey, day after day, league on league into
remoteness, stretched the stern Northern wilderness, untrodden save
by the trappers, the Indians, and the beasts. Close about the
little settlement crept the balsams and spruce, the birch and
poplar, behind which lurked vast dreary muskegs, a chaos of
bowlder-splits, the forest. The girl had known nothing different
for many years. Once a summer the sailing ship from England felt
its frozen way through the Hudson Straits, down the Hudson Bay, to
drop anchor in the mighty River of the Moose. Once a summer a
six-fathom canoe manned by a dozen paddles struggled down the
waters of the broken Abitibi. Once a year a little band of
red-sashed _voyageurs_ forced their exhausted sledge-dogs across
the ice from some unseen wilderness trail. That was all.
Before her eyes the seasons changed, all grim, but one by the very
pathos of brevity sad. In the brief luxuriant summer came the
Indians to trade their pelts, came the keepers of the winter posts
to rest, came the ship from England bringing the articles of use or
ornament she had ordered a full year before. Within a short time
all were gone, into the wilderness, into the great unknown world.
The snow fell; the river and the bay froze. Strange men from the
North glided silently to the Factor's door, bearing the meat and
pelts of the seal. Bitter iron cold shackled the northland, the
abode of desolation. Armies of caribou drifted by, ghostly under
the aurora, moose, lordly and scornful, stalked majestically along
the shore; wolves howled invisible, or trotted dog-like in
organized packs along the river banks. Day and night the ice
artillery thundered. Night and day the fireplaces roared defiance
to a frost they could not subdue, while the people of desolation
crouched beneath the tyranny of winter.
Then the upheaval of spring with the ice-jams and terrors, the
Moose roaring by untamable, the torrents rising, rising foot by
foot to the very dooryard of her father's house. Strange spirits
were abroad at night, howling, shrieking, cracking and groaning in
voices of ice and flood. Her Indian nurse told her of them all--of
Mannabosho, the good; of Nenaubosho the evil--in her lisping
Ojibway dialect that sounded like the softer voices of the forest.
At last the sudden subsidence of the waters; the splendid eager
blossoming of the land into new leaves, lush grasses, an abandon of
sweetbrier and hepatica. The air blew soft, a thousand singing
birds sprang from the soil, the wild goose cried in triumph.
Overhead shone the hot sun of the Northern summer.
From the wilderness came the _brigades_ bearing their pelts, the
hardy traders of the winter posts, striking hot the imagination
through the mysterious and lonely allurement of their callings.
For a brief season, transient as the flash of a loon's wing on the
shadow of a lake, the post was bright with the thronging of many
people. The Indians pitched their wigwams on the broad meadows
below the bend; the half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright
teeth and wicked dark eyes at whom it might concern; the traders
gazed stolidily over their little black pipes, and uttered brief
sentences through their thick black beards. Everywhere was gay
sound--the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay
color--the red sashes of the _voyageurs_, the beaded moccasins and
leggings of the _metis_, the capotes of the _brigade_, the
variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses
around the edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the year
passed. Again the nights were long, again the frost crept down
from the eternal snow, again the wolves howled across barren wastes.
Just now the girl stood ankle-deep in green grasses, a bath of
sunlight falling about her, a tingle of salt wind humming up the
river from the bay's offing. She was clad in gray wool, and wore
no hat. Her soft hair, the color of ripe wheat, blew about her
temples, shadowing eyes of fathomless black. The wind had brought
to the light and delicate brown of her complexion a trace of color
to match her lips whose scarlet did not fade after the ordinary and
imperceptible manner into the tinge of her skin, but continued
vivid to the very edge; her eyes were wide and unseeing. One hand
rested idly on the breech of an ornamented bronze field-gun.
McDonald, the chief trader, passed from the house to the store
where his bartering with the Indians was daily carried on; the
other Scotchman in the Post, Galen Albret, her father, and the head
Factor of all this region, paced back and forth across the veranda
of the factory, caressing his white beard; up by the stockade,
young Achille Picard tuned his whistle to the note of the curlew;
across the meadow from the church wandered Crane, the little Church
of England missionary, peering from short-sighted pale blue eyes;
beyond the coulee, Sarnier and his Indians _chock-chock-chocked_
away at the seams of the long coast-trading bateau. The girl saw
nothing, heard nothing. She was dreaming, she was trying to
remember.
In the lines of her slight figure, in its pose there by the old gun
over the old, old river, was the grace of gentle blood, the pride
of caste. Of all this region her father was the absolute lord,
feared, loved, obeyed by all its human creatures. When he went
abroad, he travelled in a state almost mediaeval in its
magnificence; when he stopped at home, men came to him from the
Albany, the Kenogami, the Missinaibe, the Mattagami, the
Abitibi--from all the rivers of the North--to receive his commands.
Way was made for him, his lightest word was attended. In his house
dwelt ceremony, and of his house she was the princess.
Unconsciously she bad taken the gracious habit of command. She had
come to value her smile, her word; to value herself. The lady of a
realm greater than the countries of Europe, she moved serene, pure,
lofty amid dependants.
And as the lady of this realm she did honor to her father's
guests--sitting stately behind the beautiful silver service, below
the portrait of the Company's greatest explorer, Sir George
Simpson, dispensing crude fare in gracious manner, listening
silently to the conversation, finally withdrawing at the last with
a sweeping courtesy to play soft, melancholy, and world-forgotten
airs on the old piano, brought over years before by the _Lady
Head_, while the guests made merry with the mellow port and ripe
Manila cigars which the Company supplied its servants. Then
coffee, still with her natural Old World charm of the _grande
dame_. Such guests were not many, nor came often. There was
McTavish of Rupert's House, a three days' journey to the northeast;
Rand of Fort Albany, a week's travel to the northwest; Mault of
Fort George, ten days beyond either, all grizzled in the Company's
service. With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch
younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for
their Factors daughter. Once in two or three years appeared the
inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their
six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing
like gonfalons in the water. Then this post of Conjuror's House
feasted and danced, undertook gay excursions, discussed in public
or private conclave weighty matters, grave and reverend advices,
cautions, and commands. They went. Desolation again crept in.
The girl dreamed. She was trying to remember. Far-off,
half-forgotten visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious,
beautiful women, peopled the clouds of her imaginings. She heard
them again, as voices beneath the roar of rapids, like far-away
bells tinkling faintly through a wind, pitying her, exclaiming over
her; she saw them dim and changing, as wraiths of a fog, as shadow
pictures in a mist beneath the moon, leaning to her with bright,
shining eyes full of compassion for the little girl who was to go
so far away into an unknown land; she felt them, as the touch of a
breeze when the night is still, fondling her, clasping her, tossing
her aloft in farewell. One she felt plainly--a gallant youth who
held her up for all to see. One she saw clearly--a dewy-eyed,
lovely woman who murmured loving, broken words. One she heard
distinctly--a gentle voice that said, "God's love be with you,
little one, for you have far to go, and many days to pass before
you see Quebec again." And the girl's eyes suddenly swam bright,
for the northland was very dreary. She threw her palms out in a
gesture of weariness.
Then her arms dropped, her eyes widened, her head bent forward in
the attitude of listening.
"Achille!" she called. "Achille! Come here!"
The young fellow approached respectfully.
"Mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Don't you hear?" she said.
Faint, between intermittent silences, came the singing of men's
voices from the south.
"_Grace a Dieu_!" cried Achille. "Eet is so. Eet is dat
_brigade_!"
He ran shouting toward the factory.
Chapter Two
Men, women, dogs, children sprang into sight from nowhere, and ran
pell-mell to the two cannon. Galen Albret, reappearing from the
factory, began to issue orders. Two men set about hoisting on the
tall flag-staff the blood-red banner of the Company. Speculation,
excited and earnest, arose among the men as to which of the
branches of the Moose this _brigade_ had hunted--the Abitibi, the
Mattagami, or the Missinaibie. The half-breed women shaded their
eyes. Mrs. Cockburn, the doctor's wife, and the only other white
woman in the settlement, came and stood by Virginia Albret's side.
Wishkobun, the Ojibway woman from the south country, and Virginia's
devoted familiar, took her half-jealous stand on the other.
"It is the same every year. We always like to see them come," said
Mrs. Cockburn, in her monotonous low voice of resignation.
"Yes," replied Virginia, moving a little impatiently, for she
anticipated eagerly the picturesque coming of these men of the
Silent Places, and wished to savor the pleasure undistracted.
"Mi-di-mo-yay ka'-win-ni-shi-shin," said Wishkobun, quietly.
"Ae," replied Virginia, with a little laugh, patting the woman's
brown hand.
A shout arose. Around the bend shot a canoe. At once every paddle
in it was raised to a perpendicular salute, then all together
dashed into the water with the full strength of the _voyageurs_
wielding them. The canoe fairly leaped through the cloud of spray.
Another rounded the bend, another double row of paddles flashed in
the sunlight, another crew broke into a tumult of rapid exertion as
they raced the last quarter mile of the long journey. A third
burst into view, a fourth, a fifth. The silent river was alive
with motion, glittering with color. The canoes swept onward, like
race-horses straining against the rider. Now the spectators could
make out plainly the boatmen. It could be seen that they had
decked themselves out for the occasion. Their heads were bound
with bright-colored fillets, their necks with gay scarves. The
paddles were adorned with gaudy woollen streamers. New leggings,
of holiday pattern, were intermittently visible on the bowsmen and
steersmen as they half rose to give added force to their efforts.
At first the men sang their canoe songs, but as the swift rush of
the birch-barks brought them almost to their journey's end, they
burst into wild shrieks and whoops of delight.
All at once they were close to hand. The steersman rose to throw
his entire weight on the paddle. The canoe swung abruptly for the
shore. Those in it did not relax their exertions, but continued
their vigorous strokes until within a few yards of apparent
destruction.
"Hola! hola!" they cried, thrusting their paddles straight down
into the water with a strong backward twist. The stout wood bent
and cracked. The canoe stopped short and the _voyageurs_ leaped
ashore to be swallowed up in the crowd that swarmed down upon them.
The races were about equally divided, and each acted after its
instincts--the Indian greeting his people quietly, and stalking
away to the privacy of his wigwam; the more volatile white catching
his wife or his sweetheart or his child to his arms. A swarm of
Indian women and half-grown children set about unloading the
canoes. Virginia's eyes ran over the crews of the various craft.
She recognized them all, of course, to the last Indian packer, for
in so small a community the personality and doings of even the
humblest members are well known to everyone. Long since she had
identified the _brigade_. It was of the Missinaibie, the great
river whose head-waters rise a scant hundred feet from those that
flow as many miles south into Lake Superior. It drains a wild and
rugged country whose forests cling to bowlder hills, whose streams
issue from deep-riven gorges, where for many years the big gray
wolves had gathered in unusual abundance. She knew by heart the
winter posts, although she had never seen them. She could imagine
the isolation of such a place, and the intense loneliness of the
solitary man condemned to live through the dark Northern winters,
seeing no one but the rare Indians who might come in to trade with
him for their pelts. She could appreciate the wild joy of a return
for a brief season to the company of fellow-men.
When her glance fell upon the last of the canoes, it rested with a
flash of surprise. The craft was still floating idly, its bow
barely caught against the bank. The crew had deserted, but
amidships, among the packages of pelts and duffel, sat a stranger,
The canoe was that of the post at Kettle Portage.
She saw the stranger to be a young man with a clean-cut face, a
trim athletic figure dressed in the complete costume of the
_voyageurs_, and thin brown and muscular hands. When the canoe
touched the bank he had taken no part in the scramble to shore, and
so had sat forgotten and unnoticed save by the girl, his figure
erect with something of the Indian's stoical indifference. Then
when, for a moment, he imagined himself free from observation, his
expression abruptly changed. His hands clenched tense between his
buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here and there restlessly, and an
indefinable shadow of something which Virginia felt herself obtuse
in labelling desperation, and yet to which she discovered it
impossible to fit a name, descended on his features, darkening
them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice he ran his eye
over the vociferating crowd on the narrow beach.
Absorbed in the silent drama of a man's unguarded expression,
Virginia leaned forward eagerly. In some vague manner it was borne
in on her that once before she had experienced the same emotion,
had come into contact with someone, something, that had affected
her emotionally just as this man did now. But she could not place
it. Over and over again she forced her mind to the very point of
recollection, but always it slipped back again from the verge of
attainment. Then a little movement, some thrust forward of the
head, some nervous, rapid shifting of the hands or feet, some
unconscious poise of the shoulders, brought the scene flashing
before her--the white snow, the still forest, the little square pen
trap, the wolverine, desperate but cool, thrusting its blunt nose
quickly here and there in baffled hope of an orifice of escape.
Somehow the man reminded her of the animal, the fierce little woods
marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning to cower as would the
gentler creatures of the forest.
Abruptly his expression changed again. His figure stiffened, the
muscles of his face turned iron. Virginia saw that someone on the
beach had pointed toward him. His mask was on.
The first burst of greeting was over. Here and there one or
another of the _brigade_ members jerked their heads in the
stranger's direction, explaining low-voiced to their companions.
Soon all eyes turned curiously toward the canoe. A hum of
low-voiced comment took the place of louder delight.
The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to
his feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of
movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he
reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale
just above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead
silence fell. Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like
the slow agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at
last they formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre was the
bow of the canoe and the stranger from Kettle Portage. The men
scowled, the women regarded him with a half-fearful curiosity.
Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric
polarity. The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained
hostility. The desperation she had thought to read but a moment
before had vanished utterly, leaving in its place a scornful
indifference and perhaps more than a trace of recklessness. He was
ripe for an outbreak. She did not in the least understand, but she
knew it from the depths of her woman's instinct, and unconsciously
her sympathies flowed out to this man, alone without a greeting
where all others came to their own.
For perhaps a full sixty seconds the newcomer stood uncertain what
he should do, or perhaps waiting for some word or act to tip the
balance of his decision. One after another those on shore felt the
insolence of his stare, and shifted uneasily. Then his deliberate
scrutiny rose to the group by the cannon. Virginia caught her
breath sharply. In spite of herself she could not turn away. The
stranger's eye crossed her own. She saw the hard look fade into
pleased surprise. Instantly his hat swept the gunwale of the
canoe. He stepped magnificently ashore. The crisis was over. Not
a word had been spoken.
Chapter Three
Galen Albret sat in his rough-hewn armchair at the head of the
table, receiving the reports of his captains. The long, narrow
room opened before him, heavy raftered, massive, white, with a
cavernous fireplace at either end. Above him frowned Sir George's
portrait, at his right hand and his left stretched the row of
home-made heavy chairs, finished smooth and dull by two centuries
of use.
His arms were laid along the arms of his seat; his shaggy head was
sunk forward until his beard swept the curve of his big chest; the
heavy tufts of hair above his eyes were drawn steadily together in
a frown of attention. One after another the men arose and spoke.
He made no movement, gave no sign, his short, powerful form blotted
against the lighter silhouette of his chair, only his eyes and the
white of his beard gleaming out of the dusk.
Kern of Old Brunswick House, Achard of New; Ki-wa-nee, the Indian
of Flying Post--these and others told briefly of many things, each
in his own language. To all Galen Albret listened in silence.
Finally Louis Placide from the post at Kettle Portage got to his
feet. He too reported of the trade,--so many "beaver" of tobacco,
of powder, of lead, of pork, of flour, of tea, given in exchange;
so many mink, otter, beaver, ermine, marten, and fisher pelts taken
in return. Then he paused and went on at greater length in regard
to the stranger, speaking evenly but with emphasis. When he had
finished. Galen Albret struck a bell at his elbow. Me-en-gan, the
bowsman of the factor's canoe, entered, followed closely by the
young man who had that afternoon arrived.
He was dressed still in his costume of the _voyageur_--the loose
blouse shirt, the buckskin leggings and moccasins, the long
tasselled red sash. His head was as high and his glance as free,
but now the steel blue of his eye had become steady and wary, and
two faint lines had traced themselves between his brows. At his
entrance a hush of expectation fell. Galen Albret did not stir,
but the others hitched nearer the long, narrow table, and two or
three leaned both elbows on it the better to catch what should
ensue.
Me-en-gan stopped by the door, but the stranger walked steadily the
length of the room until he faced the Factor. Then he paused and
waited collectedly for the other to speak.
This the Factor did not at once begin to do, but sat
impassive--apparently without thought--while the heavy breathing of
the men in the room marked off the seconds of time. Finally
abruptly Galen Albret's cavernous voice boomed forth. Something
there was strangely mysterious, cryptic, in the virile tones
issuing from a bulk so massive and inert. Galen Albret did not
move, did not even raise the heavy-lidded, dull stare of his eyes
to the young man who stood before him; hardly did his broad arched
chest seem to rise and fall with the respiration of speech; and yet
each separate word leaped forth alive, instinct with authority.
"Once at Leftfoot Lake, two Indians caught you asleep," he
pronounced. "They took your pelts and arms, and escorted you to
Sudbury. They were my Indians. Once on the upper Abitibi you were
stopped by a man named Herbert, who warned you from the country,
after relieving you of your entire outfit. He told you on parting
what you might expect if you should repeat the attempt--severe
measures, the severest. Herbert was my man. Now Louis Placide
surprises you in a rapids near Kettle Portage and brings you here."
During the slow delivering of these accurately spaced words, the
attitude of the men about the long, narrow table gradually changed.
Their curiosity had been great before, but now their intellectual
interest was awakened, for these were facts of which Louis
Placide's statement had given no inkling. Before them, for the
dealing, was a problem of the sort whose solution had earned for
Galen Albret a reputation in the north country. They glanced at
one another to obtain the sympathy of attention, then back toward
their chief in anxious expectation of his next words. The
stranger, however, remained unmoved. A faint smile had sketched
the outline of his lips when first the Factor began to speak. This
smile he maintained to the end. As the older man paused, he
shrugged his shoulders.
"All of that is quite true." he admitted. Even the unimaginative
men of the Silent Places started at these simple words, and
vouchsafed to their speaker a more sympathetic attention. For the
tones in which they were delivered possessed that deep, rich throat
timbre which so often means power--personal magnetism--deep, from
the chest, with vibrant throat tones suggesting a volume of sound
which may in fact be only hinted by the loudness the man at the
moment sees fit to employ. Such a voice is a responsive instrument
on which emotion and mood play wonderfully seductive strains.
"All of that is quite true," he repeated after a second's pause;
"but what has it to do with me? Why am I stopped and sent out from
the free forest? I am really curious to know your excuse."
"This," replied Galen Albret, weightily, "is my domain. I tolerate
no rivalry here."
"Your right?" demanded the young man, briefly.
"I have made the trade, and I intend to keep it."
"In other words, the strength of your good right arm," supplemented
the stranger, with the faintest hint of a sneer.
"That is neither here nor there," rejoined Galen Albret, "the point
is that I intend to keep it. I've had you sent out, but you have
been too stupid or too obstinate to take the hint. Now I have to
warn you in person. I shall send you out once more, but this time
you must promise me not to meddle with the trade again."
He paused for a response. The young man's smile merely became
accentuated,
"I have means of making my wishes felt," warned the Factor.
"Quite so," replied the young man, deliberately, "_La Longue
Traverse_."
At this unexpected pronouncement of that dread name two of the men
swore violently; the others thrust back their chairs and sat, their
arms rigidly braced against the table's edge, staring wide-eyed and
open-mouthed at the speaker. Only Galen Albret remained unmoved.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, calmly.
"It amuses you to be ignorant," replied the stranger, with some
contempt. "Don't you think this farce is about played out? I do.
If you think you're deceiving me any with this show of formality,
you're mightily mistaken. Don't you suppose I knew what I was
about when I came into this country? Don't you suppose I had
weighed the risks and had made up my mind to take my medicine if I
should be caught? Your methods are not quite so secret as you
imagine. I know perfectly well what happens to Free Traders in
Rupert's Land."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8