"Good-by."
Suddenly, the door leading into the rear room opened, and in the frame stood the heavy figure of Angus Fitzpatrick, his eyes glittering under the beetling white brows. For a silent moment, he took in the scene before him.
"Jean," he said harshly, "what does this mean? You know my orders.
Do you disobey me?" The girl flushed painfully.
"Mr. McTavish is going now, father," she said, quietly. "I"m sending him away."
"I"ll look to that Indian woman," muttered Fitzpatrick. "She had orders not to admit him." Then, aloud:
"Mr. McTavish, in the future, kindly do not confuse your business at this factory with your personal desires. I do not wish it."
"Very well," replied the captain impersonally, without looking at the factor.
His eyes were fixed hungrily upon the face of the girl, searching for a sign of tender emotion. But there was none. Only confusion, fear, and surprise struggled for mastery there. Hopelessly, he bowed stiffly to her, and went out of the door.
Crossing the courtyard by a path that was a veritable canyon of snow, he gained his quarters in the barracks. There, he found Peter Rainy, gaunt and with a wrinkled, leathern face, starting to gather the packs for the early start next morning. Donald filled and lit his pipe solemnly, and then sat down to ponder.
Something intangible and ill-favored had been streaked across the clean page of his life. Angus Fitzpatrick"s increasing malice toward him was not the sudden whim of an irascible old man. He knew that, all other things being equal, the factor was really just, in a rough and ungracious way. Any other man in the service would have hesitated long before accusing him, with his father"s and grandfather"s records, glorious as they were, and his own unimpeachable, as far as he knew. Some event or circ.u.mstances over which he had no control had raised itself, and defamed him to these persons who held his honor and his happiness in their hands. This much he sensed; else why had the factor taken such half-hidden, but malicious, joy in sending him forth on these two Herculean tasks; else, why had the rumor poisoned the mind of Jean against him, and held her aloof and unapproachable?
That Jean should not love him under the circ.u.mstances did not surprise him, but he groped in vain for an explanation of old Fitzpatrick"s evident hatred. The old factor and the elder McTavish, now commissioner, had known each other for years, the latter"s inc.u.mbency of the York factory having kept them in fairly close touch. This in itself, thought Donald, should be a matter in his favor, and not an obstacle, as it appeared to be. Pondering, searching, he racked his weary brain feverishly until Peter Rainy un.o.btrusively announced that dinner was ready. Then, occupied with other things, he put the matter from his mind.
The sluggish dawn had barely cast its first glow across the measureless snows when Rainy roused him from heavy sleep. After a breakfast of boiled fat, meat, tea and hard bread, they gathered the four dogs together, and with much difficulty got them into traces. Mistisi, the leader, a bad dog when not working, strained impatiently in the moose-hide harness. Donald, when the packs had been strapped securely on, gave a quick final inspection, and then a word that sent the train moving toward the gate in the wall.
But few men were about, and an indifferent wave of the hand from these sped the party on its way. Outside the gate, Peter Rainy took the lead, breaking a path for the dogs with his snowshoes, while McTavish walked beside the loaded sled. Their course ran westward up the frozen d.i.c.key River, which now lay adamant beneath the iron cold and drifting snow. Forty miles they would follow it, to the fork that led on the north to Beaver Lake, and on the south to Bolsover. Taking the south branch, they would then struggle across the wind-swept body of water, and follow the river ten miles farther, to a headland upon which stood the snow-m.u.f.fled block-house of Fort d.i.c.key.
If you draw a straight line north from Ashland, Wisconsin, and follow it for six hundred and fifty miles, you will find yourself in the vicinity of Fort d.i.c.key, in the midst of the most appalling wilderness on the face of the globe. In that journey, you will have crossed Lake Superior and the great tangle of spruce that extends for two hundred miles north of it. North of Lake St.
Joseph, which is the head of the great Albany River, whence the waters drain to Hudson Bay, you will strike north across the Keewatin barrens: Bald, fruitless rocks, piled as by an indifferent hand; great stretches of almost impenetrable forest, ravines, lakes, rivers, and rapids; all these will hinder and baffle your progress. Add to such conditions snow, ice, and eighty degrees of frost, and you have the situation that Donald McTavish faced the day he left Fort Severn.
CHAPTER III
A MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE
"What do you know about this murder?"
Donald sat at the dinner table in Fort d.i.c.key with John Buller and Pierre Cardepie, his two a.s.sistants. A roaring log fire barely fought off the cold as they ate their caribou steak, beans, bread, and tea.
"Not much," replied Buller. "The day after you left, one of the Indians tore in at midnight with the news. He said that he and his partner, the murdered man, had been met by Charley Seguis while running their trap-line, and that Charley had drawn the other aside in private conversation. Half an hour later, there had been sudden words, followed by blows, and, before Johnny could defend himself, Seguis had stabbed him. What they had been talking about the Indian didn"t know, for Charley had hurried off immediately after the murder."
"What direction did he take?" asked McTavish.
"The rumor declared that he went north, toward Beaver Lake."
"Could he give any motive for the deed?"
"No. So far as he knew, Johnny had never seen Charley Seguis before."
"Well, boys, I"m off in the morning after him. The factor is particularly keen for having him brought in right away. He also wants to know what I have done with all the furs that he claims have disappeared from this district during the last year." Donald"s tone was contemptuous.
"I didn"t know any had disappeared," said Buller, in amazement.
"Nor me! I tink dat Feetzpatreeck ees gone crazy in hees old age,"
added Cardepie, with a snort.
"Well, whatever it is, he claims the Company has lost twenty thousand pounds, and that I"m to blame for it," said Donald.
"There"s something wrong here, Mac," remarked Duller, decisively.
"This isn"t all accident, and, if you say so, I"ll go with you to-morrow."
"It"s awfully good of you, John, but I think I"ll tackle it alone."
And McTavish wearily rose from the table.
The next morning, he again took the trail, but this time alone. On his feet were the light moose-webbed snowshoes; from head to heel, he was clad in white caribou such as the Indian hunters affect, and on his _capote_ he bore the branching antlers that were left there as a decoy for the wary animals. With a long whip in one hand and his rifle held easily in the other, he strode beside the straining dog-train. In the east, the frost-mist hung low like a fog. In the south, the sun, which barely showed itself above the horizon each day, was commencing to engrave faint tree shadows on the snow. The west was purplish gray, but the north was unrelenting iron. There was no beaten path to guide him now, and sometimes the trees were so closely set as barely to permit the pa.s.sage of the sledge. On the new snow could be seen the dainty tracks of ermine, and beside them the cleanly indented marks of a fox. There were triplicate cl.u.s.ters of impressions, showing where the hare had pa.s.sed, and occasionally the huge, splayed imprints of a caribou.
But, though the life of the wild creatures was teeming at this season, there was no sound in all the leagues of forest, except the sharp crack of some freezing tree-trunk and the noise of Donald"s own pa.s.sage.
Late in the afternoon the traveler found the cabin of a white trapper for which he had started that morning.
"Can you tell me where Charley Seguis is?" he asked.
"Went north, toward Beaver Lake, three days ago," replied the other, shortly. "He stopped here on his way up, and said he was looking for better grounds."
"Going to set out a new line of traps then, was he?"
"Yes, Mr. McTavish," a.s.sented the trapper.
"Thanks," said McTavish, gathering up the whip. "I must be going."
"What! Going to travel all night? Better stay and bunk with me."
"Can"t do it, friend." And a few minutes later, the captain of Fort d.i.c.key was on his way again.
He knew that Charley Seguis had three days" start of him. He knew also that Charley was an exceptionally intelligent half-breed, and would travel well out of the district before allowing himself breathing s.p.a.ce. McTavish intended surprising him by the swiftness of pursuit. So, lighted on his way by the brilliant stars and the silent, flaunting banners of the northern lights, he plodded doggedly on until midnight. Then he built a fire, thawed fish for the dogs, and prepared food for himself, finally lying down on his bed of spruce boughs, his feet to the flames.
Two hours before dawn found him shivering with bitter cold, and heaping logs upon the fire for the morning tea; and, while the stars were fading, Mistisi, his leader, plunged into the traces for the long day"s march. It was grilling work. The cold seemed something vital, sentient, alive, which opposed him with all its might. The wind and snow appeared cunning allies of the one great enemy; and, to make matters worse, the very underbrush and trees themselves apparently conspired against this one microscopic human who dared invade the regions of death.
But Donald McTavish was not thinking of these things as he toiled north. His mind was centered on Charley Seguis, the Indian, the man who must be conquered. There lay his duty; hazardous, fatal, perhaps; but still his duty. It was the first law of the company that justice should be infallible among its servants, and right triumphant.
Donald crossed the tracks of two hunters that morning, but saw no one. By this time, he was well into the Beaver Lake district.
Seventy-five miles north were the low, desolate sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay, and as many miles directly east lay Fort Severn. At the thought, a short spasm of pain clutched his heart, for he could not forget that the lonely post contained the world for him.
The splendors and luxuries of civilization in great cities were as nothing to him now. Only the vast wild, and this one wonderful creature of the wild, Jean Fitzpatrick, spoke to him in a language that he understood. He had vague recollections of operas and theaters and dances, and all the colorful life of Montreal and Winnipeg; but they only stirred within him a sense of imprisonment and unrest.
"Better to fight and die alone in the deep woods than to live all one"s life as a jellyfish," was the concise fashion in which he summed the matter up.
At two o"clock that afternoon McTavish consulted a map he had made of the district near Fort d.i.c.key, and laid his course for the trapping shanty of an Indian called Whiskey Bill. It was on the bank of a little beaver stream that debouched into Beaver River.
The stream was frozen to a thickness of three feet, and Donald drove his dog team smartly down the snow-covered ice, riding on the sledge for the first time in many hours. But he finally arrived at Whiskey Bill"s shanty only to find the place deserted, and the little building slowly disintegrating under the investigations of animals.