"Speak out," ordered Dunvegan sternly. "Where have you been all day? I haven"t seen you since Pierre Lazard put you out of the Mission House this morning."
"In the Black Forest," answered the dwarf. "I went in a canoe to be alone, for they put me out of the chapel. Who was it? Oh, yes, old Pierre. I will remember that. I went in a canoe and I saw a devil."
"What was it?" asked Bruce, smiling.
"I--I forget." Gaspard beat his forehead in a vain attempt at recollection.
The chief trader was well acquainted with the Fool"s frequent pilgrimages here and there, his harmless adventures, his constant lapses of memory. Where others sometimes doubted, he believed Follet"s imbecility was genuine. Else why was it kept up?
"You had better do your wandering within the stockades," he advised.
"The woods aren"t altogether safe for pleasure jaunts."
"Who would harm a silly head?" mumbled Gaspard.
"That"s no protection. Your head might be taken off first and its sanity inquired into afterwards. That"s a peculiar habit these roaming Nor"westers have."
"The Nor"westers!" echoed Gaspard Follet, in a strident scream, his whole face lighting with the gleam of certain knowledge born of suggestion. "One of them was the devil I saw in the Black Forest in the winter cabin. Name of the Virgin, how he frightened me! Now I remember well. It was the worst of them all. Any of you would have run as I did.
Don"t tell me you wouldn"t! Ferguson sits in yon cabin!"
The floor shook with the spring of the men to their feet. Dunvegan had instantly leaped the length of the room and lifted the dwarf in his hands, shaking him to search out the truth of the statement.
"Do you lie?" he cried tensely. "Speak! Is this an idiot"s fancy?"
Gaspard wriggled. His face no longer bore vacancy of expression. The flush of real intelligence mantled it.
"No, by the cross," he vowed. "I speak truth. I know what I saw. If you think I lie, take me there. Should the Black Nor"wester not sit in the cabin as I say, you may kill me."
Because Gaspard Follet was above all things a coward, this offer forced immediate conviction upon the group. As the chief trader set the fool upon his feet, he turned and saw Malcolm Macleod"s form bulking broad in the doorway.
"You have heard?"
"I have heard." The Factor"s tone boomed out, savage, exultant. The order that followed was given with a swiftness as sinister as it was explicit.
"Take a dozen men," he directed briefly. "Bring me the Nor"wester, living or dead. You understand?" Again he s.p.a.ced the words for them: "Living--or--dead!"
Clement Nemaire swung wide the stockade gates. Bearing a forty-foot fur canoe, Dunvegan and his men filed out on their mission. The entrance closed behind the mysterious going.
"_Bon fortune_," whispered Nemaire.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NOR"WESTER"S FLESH
A deeper blot within the shadow which the headland cast upon the water, Dunvegan"s craft silently rounded Caribou Point, beached softly upon the sand in the granite-walled cove, and spilled its crew into the aisles of the Black Forest. Beyond rose the craggy ridge called Mooswa Hill, a landmark to the Hudson"s Bay men in times of quiet, a pillar of fire when the Nor"westers struck.
The winter cabin Gaspard Follet had mentioned stood on a rock shoulder above the cove. Pine and spruce crowded it. In springtime the sh.o.r.e ice jammed to its threshold. The ooze and drip of the years were insidiously working its ruin. But still the halfbreed and the voyageurs sometimes used it for a night"s shelter on their journeys. Once it had saved the life of Basil Dreaulond in a great blizzard. Exhausted, he had reached it when he could never have made his remaining three miles to Oxford House.
A neck of the Black Forest hugged the incline where the hut stood.
Marshy beaver meadows, fringing the Bay, hedged the timber line, spreading across to Mooswa ridge and giving no solid footing except what was afforded by a dam traversing the black water. This ridge fell away gradually to where Oxford House was reared, but reaching the Hudson"s Bay post by land from Caribou Point was precarious business in the dark for no bridge, other than that which the beavers had built, spanned the mora.s.s. Hence the chief trader with his band had elected to come by water.
Very warily they emerged from the shelter of the tree boles into the clearing where the cabin rested.
"Lie down," commanded Dunvegan, in a whisper. "And go slow! The fellow may have friends with him."
They disappeared at once among the rock ferns, worming noiselessly upon their faces toward the rough log shelter. The c.h.i.n.ks of the logs streamed candlelight, but no sound came from within. The night seemed holding its breath. The intense stillness was broken only by the leap of maska-longe on the distant bars and the rubbing of elbows in the ferny brake.
At the cabin"s corner the chief trader touched three of his followers upon the shoulder. Immediately they obeyed his unspoken command, slipping cat-footed round the hut one to the back one to either side.
Possessed of sudden, sardonic humor, Dunvegan stooped and whispered in the ear of the dwarf whom they had taken at his word and brought along.
"Will you go in first?" he questioned, playing upon Gaspard"s cowardly spirit.
The Fool shuddered and shied. Stifling a laugh, the chief trader thrust him to the rear of his line. His heavy kick flung the door back, and he leaped swiftly inside. The hut had an occupant! He rose from a block seat at the sudden intrusion, striding uncertainly to the center of the floor. Neither man spoke. Dunvegan"s followers trooped in.
The chief trader"s glance searched out the stranger"s armament, the rifle in the corner, the belt of pistols on the rude table. The pistols Dunvegan threw down at the b.u.t.t of the leaning rifle. Then he whirled the table itself across that corner of the room, cutting off access to the weapons, and sat upon it. The tall, st.u.r.dily-built fellow watched him, unmoved. His crafty, blue eyes never wavered. He seemed conscious of no immediate danger.
"_Bon soir_," he spoke finally, giving them the greeting of the North with a southern accent.
"It"s not good," returned Dunvegan, curtly. "This is the worst night you ever struck in all your bad nights, Mr. Ferguson."
"Ferguson!" echoed the other in feigned surprise. Then he laughed cheerfully. "That isn"t my name, and I"m not a Nor"wester. I"m a Free Trader from the South. A Yank, if you must know--from Vermont! I"ll get out now that the Company has spotted me. I have some regard for my pelt.
Come, act square with me. The H. B. C. always gives a man a chance. It"s the first offense, you know. I"ll turn my canoe south on the minute."
"Hardly," replied the chief trader, coldly. "There"s some one waiting for you at Oxford House. You will not go far--if I am any judge of the Factor"s designs." He folded his arms and swung his legs comfortably under the table.
To the Fool, he added: "Gaspard, is this the same person you saw?"
"By the Virgin, yes," quavered Follet, and hid himself behind Connear"s bowed legs between which there was vision enough for his immediate needs.
""Tis that devil of a Black Ferguson," the idiot piped from his vantage ground. "He frightened me; he frightened me." Breaking into a foolish habit of improvising rhymes, he shrieked:
"The devil"s kin; the devil"s son; And all the devils rolled in one!"
Dunvegan silenced him with a word and addressed the Irishman.
"Burke," he asked, "can you corroborate this poor fool"s statement? We want the right man. The Factor won"t forgive any blundering."
"Fair as a Dane wid the same blue eyes! It"s him. It"s Black Ferguson."
"Do I look black?" demanded the baited man angrily.
"_Saprie!_ We no be see you on de inside," was Basil Dreaulond"s swift answer.
"I"m from the South," persisted the object of their quest, turning to Bruce. "A Free Trader, I tell you." His gestures were of irritation.
Dunvegan smiled a cold, triumphant smile. He delighted in the loss of his enemy"s cool demeanor, in the failure of his self-possession.