One after another a young half-breed would come hurrying down the street, his hair close cut and his face well washed, wearing all the finery for which he had been able to get credit, now that he had a prospect of wages coming in erelong. The resident population joined those idling about the warehouses and the boat-yard, for this was the greatest event of the year for them, with one exception--that is, the return of the much smaller brigade bearing the fur down from the northern country. This would come in the fall. Now it was spring, and the great fur brigade of the Company was starting north on its savage annual journey.
Here and there among these were strange faces also to be of the north-bound company now embarking. Good Father Le Fevre pa.s.sed among them all, speaking to this or that man of the half-breeds pleasantly, they having each a greeting for him in turn. This was by no means his first trip with the brigade, and hundreds of the natives knew him.
The boys stood wondering at the enormous loads which these men carried from the warehouses out to the boats. Here a man might have on his back a great slab of side-meat weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds, and on top of that a sack of flour or so. It was not unusual to see a slight young chap carrying a load of two or three hundred pounds, and some of the older and more powerful men engaged in a proud sort of rivalry among themselves, shouldering and carrying out literally enormous loads. It was said of one of these men that he once had carried a cook-stove weighing five hundred pounds on his back from the boat landing up the hill to one of the posts, a distance of many hundred yards.
"Well, at this rate," said Rob, after a time, "it won"t take long before we"ll be loaded and on our way. These men are simply wonders.
Aren"t they?"
Uncle d.i.c.k nodded his quiet a.s.sent.
"Our boat"s getting loaded, too," said Jesse, pointing to where the _Midnight Sun_ stood swinging in the current. "Look at them fill her up."
It was true; the factor in charge of the embarkation-work was checking out the cargo for each boat. Each scow had its number, and that number was credited to a certain fur-post along the great route to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. The supplies intended for each boat, therefore, went into the proper boats. All the cargo intended for Uncle d.i.c.k"s party was marked in black, "M. S.," in courtesy to the name of this boat, the _Midnight Sun_, which carried no number at all.
"We"ll not go as heavily loaded as some of the others," Uncle d.i.c.k explained, "although it is only courteous that we should take all we can, since transportation is so hard. We need only enough to take us to the mouth of the river and over the Rat Portage to the Yukon. Of course we"ll forget all about our boat when we get below the rapids, but they"ll tow her down alongside the steamer.
"I have told you," he went on, "that this is a starving country. Now you can see why. They can"t possibly carry into that far-away region as much stuff as they need to eat and to wear. The Company does the best it can, and so do all these mission men do the best they can.
"Now you see how the brigade goes north--not in birch-bark canoes, but in scows, to-day. The scow has even taken the place of the old York boat. That was the boat which they formerly used on the Saskatchewan and some of these rivers for their up-stream work. It"s a good deal like a Mackinaw boat. You"ll see here, too, one or two scows with blunt ends, such as they call the "sturgeon" nose. They tow a little easier than the square-ended scow. But these new square-facers are the best things in the world for going down-stream with the current."
"Hadn"t we better get our packs ready?" asked Rob, methodical as ever.
"Yes," replied their leader, "you ought to get the bed rolls made up and the tent in its bag before very long. I don"t think we"ll be started a great while before sundown, but we"ll get ready.
"It"s enough to get ready," he continued. "Don"t carry your own stuff down to the boats."
"Why not?" asked John, curiously. "We can do it easily enough."
"Well, you"re in another sort of country now," said Uncle d.i.c.k to him, quietly. "Follow customs of the country. You must remember that the Hudson"s Bay Company is a very old monopoly, and it has its own ways.
Always it treats the natives as though they were children and it was the Great Father. A factor is a sort of king up here. He wouldn"t think of carrying a pound of his own luggage for anything in the world. If he began that sort of thing the natives would not respect him as their _bourgeois_."
"_Bourgeois?_ What does that mean?" asked John, again.
"Well, about the same as boss, I suppose. It"s always necessary in dealing with ignorant and savage peoples to take the att.i.tude that you are the boss, and that they are to do what you tell them. If you get too familiar or lower yourself too much with primitive people, they don"t respect you, because they think you"re afraid of them.
"Now, that has always been the custom of the Hudson"s Bay Company in this work. In the old days, when things were more autocratic, when a factor went on a journey his people picked him up and carried him into his boat, and when he went ash.o.r.e they picked him up and carried him out again. If anybody got wet or tired or hungry be sure it wasn"t the boss!
"You see, young gentlemen, while I don"t want you, of all things in the world, ever to be sn.o.bbish, I do want you to be observant. So just take this advice from me, and let these men do your work right at the start. They expect it, and they will treat you all the better--and of course you will treat them well."
"Who is that old pirate standing over there by the boat landing?"
asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a tall, dark, and sinewy man with full black beard, who seemed to have a certain authority among the laborers.
"That"s Cap. Shott. I"ve told you that he was the first man who ever ran the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca River. His real name is Louis Faisoneure. He"s seventy-seven years old, but still he likes to go down with the brigade, part way at least.
"The quiet young man just beyond him is his son, Francois. He is the real captain--or commodore, as they call it--of the brigade, and has been for several years. He"ll be the steersman on our boat, so that in one way you might say that the _Midnight Sun_, although not a Company boat, will pretty much be the flag-ship of the brigade this year.
They"re treating us as well as they know how, and I must say we"ll have no cause to complain."
"Cap. Shott," as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look, as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant scarf, and his generally ferocious appearance, gave him a peculiarly wild and outlandish look, although personally he was gentle as a child.
"Well, Cap. Shott," said Uncle d.i.c.k, approaching him, "we start to-day, eh?"
"Mebbe so, _oui_," replied the old man. "We load h"all the boats bimeby now. Yes, pretty soon bimeby we start, mebbe so, _oui_."
"Well," said Uncle d.i.c.k, smiling, as he turned to the boys, "that"s about as definite as you can get anything. We"ll start when we start!
Just get your stuff ready to be embarked and tell the manager where it is. It will be on board all right."
"But what makes them start so late in the day?" demanded John, who was of an investigative turn of mind. "I should think the morning was the right time to start."
"Not so the great fur brigade," was his answer. "Nor was it the custom in the great fur brigades which went out with pack-trains from the Missouri in our own old days when there were buffalo and beaver. A short start was made on the first day, usually toward evening. Then when camp was made everything was overhauled, and if anything had been left behind it was not too far to send back to get it. Nearly always it was found that something had been overlooked.
"Now that"s the way we"ll do here, so they tell me. We"ll run down the river a few miles, each boat as it is loaded, and then we"ll make a landing. That will give each boat captain time to look over his stuff and his men--and, what is more, it will give each man time to run in across country and get a few last drinks. Some of them will come back to be confessed by their priest. Some will want to send supplies to their families who are left behind. On one excuse or another every man of the brigade will be back here in town to-night if we should start!
Of course by to-morrow morning they"ll be on hand again bright and early and ready for the voyage. You see, there are customs up here with which we have not been acquainted before."
It came out precisely as Uncle d.i.c.k had said. Very late in the afternoon--late by the clock, though not so late by the sun, which at this lat.i.tude sank very late in the west--there came a great shouting and outcry, followed by firing of guns, much as though a battle were in progress. Men, hurrying and crying excitedly as they ran, went aboard the boats. One after another the mooring-ropes were cast off.
The poles and oars did their work, and slowly, piecemeal, but in a vast aggregate, the great Mackenzie brigade was on its way!
The first boat of the fleet, as had been predicted, ran no more than three or four miles before it pulled ash.o.r.e at a landing-place which seemed well known to all. Here the scows came in slowly and clumsily, but without disorder and without damage, until the entire bank for a half-mile was turned into a sort of shipyard of its own.
Here and there men were working the little wooden pumps, because for the first day or two the scows were sure to leak.
The boys made their own camp that night aboard the boat. At each end was a short deck, and that in the rear offered s.p.a.ce for their blanket beds. Rob undertook to sleep on top of the cargo under the edge of the great tarpaulin which covered all. They had their little Yukon stove, which accompanied them, and on the front deck, where a box of earth had been provided, they set this up and did their own cooking, as they preferred.
In the morning Father Le Fevre paddled over to them in a canoe from his own scow.
"_Bon jour_, gentlemen!" said he. "I called to ask you if you would not like to have breakfast with us. Sister Eloise is known for her skill in cookery."
The leader of our little party accepted with great cheerfulness, so that they all climbed into the canoe, and presently were alongside the mission scow. All over the great fleet of scows everything now was silent. Each boat had its watchman, but he alone, of all the crew, had remained aboard.
"My poor children!" said Father Le Fevre, smiling as he looked about him. "They indeed are like children. Presently they will come. Then we shall see."
Our young travelers now became acquainted with yet others of the north-bound party. Sister Eloise, stout and good-natured, proved herself all that had been promised as a cook.
"Yes, yes, she has gone north before," said the good Father. "But always she has fear of the water. When we go on the rapids Sister Eloise knits or tells her beads or reads--very hard indeed she reads or knits or prays! She is afraid, but does not like me to know it,"
and his eye twinkled as he spoke.
"Sister Vincent de Paul goes north for the first time," he said, smiling now at the other of the gray-habited nuns who found themselves in these strange surroundings. "She is called to Fort Resolution, and may stay there for some years. We do not know.
"And here," he added, pulling up by the ear a swarthy little boy who seemed more Indian than white, "this we will call Charl". We are taking him back to his father, who is the factor at Resolution. His mother is native woman, as you see, and this boy has been at Montreal for two years at school. _Eh bien_, Charl", you will be good boy now?
If not I shall tell your papa!
"You see," he explained to the others who now for the first time were getting some acquaintance of this mission-work, "we try to do the best we know, and to make life easier for these people in the Far North. It is a hard fortune that they have. Always they starve--never have they enough. And every year the great brigade goes north so that they may last yet another year."
Presently there came down overland to the fleet yet other men who made part of the strange, wild company. Cap. Shott, friendly and paternal in his way, brought on for introduction to the party the Dominion judge, who every year goes north to settle the legal disputes which may have arisen at the several posts for a considerable distance to the north. The judge had with him his clerk and secretary, and there was also a commissioner, as well as another official, a member of the Indian Department, who was bound north to pay the tribesmen their treaty money.
There came also the wife of a member of the Anglican Church, which, as well as the Catholic Church, has missions all along the great waterway almost to the Arctic Sea. So that, as may be seen, the personnel of the brigade that year was of varied and interesting composition.
All came out as Uncle d.i.c.k and Father Le Fevre had said--by the time breakfast was over the half-breed boatmen began to come down at a trot overland from the town. Few of them had slept. All of them had been drinking most of the night. They came with their heads tied up, their eyes red, each man looking uncomfortable, but they all went aboard and made ready for their work. Father Le Fevre shook his head as he looked at them.
"Too bad, too bad, my children!" said he, "but you will not learn, you will not learn at all. However, two days on the river and your heads will be more clear. Providence has arranged, I presume, that there shall be two or three days" travel between the landing and the Grand Rapids. Else fewer of our boats would get through!"