CHAPTER IV
CHLOE SECURES AN ALLY
A shout from the bank heralded the appearance of the first scow, which was closely followed by the two others. When they had landed, Lapierre issued a few terse orders, and the scowmen leaped to his bidding. The overturned scow was righted and loaded, and the remains of the demolished whiskey-kegs burned. Lapierre himself a.s.sisted the three women to their places, and as Chloe seated herself near the bow, he smiled into her eyes.
"Vermilion was a good riverman, but so am I. Do you think you can trust your new pilot?"
Somehow, the words seemed to imply more than the mere steering of a scow. Chloe flushed slightly, hesitated a moment, and then returned the man"s smile frankly.
"Yes," she answered gravely, "I know I can."
Their eyes met in a long look. Lapierre gave the command to shove off, and when the scows were well in the grip of the current, he turned again to the girl at his side. Their hands touched, and again Chloe was conscious of the strange, new thrill that quickened her heart-beats. She did not withdraw her hand, and the fingers of Lapierre closed about her palm. He leaned toward her. "Only quarter Indian," he said softly. "My grandmother was the daughter of a great chief."
The girl felt the hot blood mount to her face and gently withdrew her hand. Somehow, she could not tell why, the words seemed good to hear.
She smiled, and Lapierre, who was watching her intently, smiled in return.
"We are approaching quick water; we will cover many miles today, and tonight beside the camp-fire we will talk further."
Chloe"s eyes searched the scows. "Where are the two who attacked Lena?
Your men captured them."
Lapierre"s smile hardened. "Those who deserted me for Vermilion? Oh, I--dismissed them from my service."
Hour after hour, as the scows rushed northward, Chloe watched the sh.o.r.es glide past; watched the swirling, boiling water of the river; watched the solemn-faced scowmen, and the silent, vigilant pilot; but most of all she watched the pilot, whose quick eye picked out the devious channel, and whose clear, alert brain directed, with a movement of the lancelike pole, the labours of the men at the sweeps.
She contrasted his manner--quiet, graceful, sure--with that of Vermilion, the very swing of whose pole proclaimed the vaunting, arrogant braggart. And she noted the difference in the att.i.tude of the scowmen toward these two leaders. Their obedience to Vermilion"s orders had been a surly, protesting obedience; while their obedience to Lapierre"s slightest motion was the quiet, alert obedience that proclaimed him master of men, as his own silent vigilance proclaimed him master of the roaring waters.
When the sun finally dipped behind the barren scrub-topped hills, the scows were beached at the mouth of a deep ravine, from whose depths sounded the trickle of a tiny cascade. Lapierre a.s.sisted the women from the scow, issued a few short commands, and, as if by magic, a dozen fires flashed upon the beach, and in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time Chloe found herself seated upon her blankets inside her mosquito-barred tent.
Supper over, Harriet Penny immediately sought her bed, and Lapierre led Chloe to a brightly burning camp-fire.
Nearby other fires burned, surrounded by dark, savage figures that showed indistinct in the half-light. The girl"s eyes rested for a moment upon Lapierre, whose thin, handsome features, richly tanned by long exposure to the Northern winds and sun, presented a pleasing contrast to the swart flat faces of the rivermen, who sat in groups about their fires, or lay wrapped in their blankets upon the gravel.
"You have decided?" abruptly asked Chloe, in a voice of ill-concealed eagerness. Lapierre"s face became at once grave, and he gazed sombrely into the fire.
"I have pondered deeply. Through the long hours, while the scow rushed into the North, there came to me a vision of my people. In the rocks, in the bush, and the ragged hills I saw it; and in the swirl of the mighty river. And the vision was good!"
The voice of the man"s Indian grandmother spoke from his lips, and the soul of her glowed in his deep-set eyes.
"Even now _Sakhalee Tyee_ speaks from the stars of the night sky. My people shall learn the wisdom of the white man. The power of the oppressor shall be broken, and the children of the far places shall come into their own."
The man"s voice had dropped into the rhythmic intonation of the Indian orator, and his eyes were fixed upon the names that curled, lean and red, among the dry sticks of the camp-fire. Chloe gazed in fascination into the rapt face of this man of many moods. The soul of the girl caught the enthusiasm of his words, and she, too, saw the vision--saw it as she had seen it upon the wave-lapped rock of the river-bank.
"You will help me?" she cried; "will join forces with me in a war against the ruthless exploitation of a people who should be as free and unfettered as the air they breathe?"
Lapierre bent his gaze upon her face slowly, like one emerging from a trance.
"Yes," he answered deliberately; "it is of that I wish to speak. Let us consider the obstacles in our path--the matter of official interference. The government will soon learn of your activities, and the government is p.r.o.ne to look askance at any tampering with the Indians by an inst.i.tution not connected with the Church or the State."
"I have my permit," Chloe answered, "and many commendatory letters from Ottawa. The men who rule were inclined to think I would accomplish nothing; but they were willing to let me try."
"That, then, disposes of our most serious difficulty. Will you tell me now where you intended to locate?"
"There is too much traffic upon the river," answered the girl. "The scow brigades pa.s.s and repa.s.s; and, at least until my little colony is fairly established, it must be located in some place uncontaminated by the presence of so rough, lawless, and drunken an element. As I told you before, I do not know where my ideal site is to be found. I had intended to talk the matter over with the factor at Fort Rae."
"What! That devil of a Haldane? The man who is hand-in-glove with Brute MacNair!"
"You forget," smiled the girl, "that until this day I never even heard of Brute MacNair."
The man smiled. "Very true. I had forgotten. But it is fortunate indeed that chance threw us together. I tremble to think what would have been your fate should you have acted upon the advice of Colin Haldane."
"But surely you know the country. You will advise me."
"Yes, I will advise you. I am with you in this venture; with you to the last gasp; with you heart and soul, until that devil MacNair is dead or driven out of the North, and his Indians scattered to the four winds."
"Scattered! Why scattered? Why not held together for their education and betterment? And you say you will be with me until MacNair is either dead or driven out of the North. What then--will you desert me then? This MacNair is only an obstacle in our path--an obstacle to be brushed aside that the real work may begin. Yet you spoke as though he were the main issue."
Lapierre interrupted her, speaking rapidly: "Yes, of course. Bear with me, I pray you. I spoke hastily, and without thinking. My feelings for the moment carried me away. As you see, the marks of the Brute"s hands are still too fresh upon me to regard him impersonally--an obstacle, as it were. To me he is a brute! A fiend! A demon! I _hate_ him!"
Lapierre shook a clenched fist toward the North, and the words fairly snarled between his lips. With an effort he controlled himself. "I have in mind the very place for your school, a spot accessible from all directions--the mouth of the Yellow Knife River, upon the north arm of Great Slave Lake. There you will be unmolested by the debauching rivermen, and yet within easy reach of any who may desire to take advantage of your school. The very place above all places! In the whole North you could not have chosen a better! And I shall accompany you, and direct the building of your houses and stockade.
"MacNair will learn shortly of your fort--everything is a "fort" up here--and he will descend upon you like a ramping lion. When he finds you are a woman, he will do you no violence. He will scent at once a rival trading-post and will hurt your cause in every way possible; will use every means to discredit you among the Indians, and to discourage you. But even he will do a woman no physical harm.
"And right here let me caution you--do not temporize with him. He stands in the North for oppression; gain at any cost; for debauchery--everything that you do not. Between you and Brute MacNair there can be no truce. He is powerful. Do not for a moment underrate either his strength or his sagacity. He is a man of wealth, and his hold upon the Indians is absolute. I cannot remain with you, but through my Indians I shall keep in touch with you, work with you; and together we will accomplish the downfall of this brute of the North."
For a long time the two figures sat by the fire while the camp slept, and talked of many things. And when, well toward midnight, Chloe Elliston retired to her tent, she felt that she had known this man always. For it is the way of life that stress of events, and not duration of time, marks the measure of acquaintance and intimacy.
Pierre Lapierre, Chloe Elliston had known but one day, and yet she believed that among all her acquaintances this man she knew best.
By the fire Lapierre"s eyes followed the girl until she disappeared within the tent, and as he looked a huge figure arose from the deep shadows of the scrub, and with a hand grasping the flap of the tent, turned and stared, silent and grim and forbidding, straight into Lapierre"s eyes.
The man turned away with a frown. The figure was Big Lena.
CHAPTER V
PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS
At the mouth of the Slave River the outfit was transferred to twelve large freight canoes, each carrying three tons, and manned by six lean-shouldered canoemen, in charge of one Louis LeFroy, Lapierre"s boss canoeman. Straight across the vast expanse of Great Slave Lake they headed, and skirting the sh.o.r.e of the north arm, upon the evening of the second day, entered the Yellow Knife River.
The site selected by Pierre Lapierre for Chloe Elliston"s school was, in point of location, as the quarter-breed had said, an excellent one. Upon a level plateau at the top of the high bank that slants steeply to the water of the Yellow Knife River, a short distance above its mouth, Lapierre set the canoemen to cutting the timber and brush from a wide area. The girl had come into the North fully prepared for a long sojourn, and in her thirty-odd tons of outfit were found all tools necessary for the clearing of land and the erection of buildings.
Brushwood and trees fell before the axes of the half-breeds and Indians, who worked in a sort of frenzy under the lashing drive of Lapierre"s tongue; and the night skies glowed red in the flare of the flames where the brush and tree-tops burned in the clearing.
Two days later a rectangular clearing, three hundred by five hundred feet, was completed, and early in the morning of the third day Chloe stood beside Lapierre and looked over the cleared oblong with its piles of smoking grey ashes, and its groups of logs that lay ready to be rolled into place to form the walls of her buildings.
Lapierre seemed ill at ease. Immediately upon the arrival of the outfit he had dispatched two of his own Indians northward to spy upon the movements of MacNair, for the man made no secret of his desire to be well upon his way before the trader should learn of the building of the fort on the river.