CHAPTER XV
MASKWA'S FIND
A fork of fire leaped up under the quick hands of the Indians. The deadspruce boughs crackled merrily. Baptiste Verenne lay back on a pile ofgreen branches before the flames and hummed to the kettles that theymight the more quickly melt their contents of snow into steam and boilthe tea. His high tenor voice chanted the air of _L'Exile_, a song offar-off France. Very softly and dreamily he sang:
"_Combien j'ai douce souvenance Du joli lieu de ma naissance! Ma coeur, qu'ils etaient beaux, les jours de France! O mon pays! sois mes amours, O mon pays! sois mes amours. Toujours!_"
Over the spruce fire the kettles began to drone to his music as he wenton more tenderly:
"_Te souvient-il que notre mere, Au foyer de notre chaumiere, Nous pressait sur son coeur joyeux Ma chere? Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux. Tous deux._"
Almost while Baptiste sang, the meal was ready. The Hudson's Bay menthawed their strips of jerked caribou over the coals and washed the meatdown with small pails of hot tea. They snatched a few whiffs from theirpipes before the command to march was given.
The afternoon sun shed abundance of light but afforded no warmth. Thetraveling was through a cheerless cold that intensified by degrees. Thetoil of marching had begun to tell on the men; they moved with lesselasticity, their limbs began to lag as from some indefinable hinderingpressure. This pressure seemed to come from without like unfriendlyhands holding them back, but they knew it was really the weakeningfibers protesting from within.
Only three of the travelers were untouched by this peculiar lethargy.Maskwa ran as ever with his unchanging, lurching stride. Dunvegan,knowing not the hint of weariness, traveled mechanically, his minddwelling on personal things. And Baptiste Verenne still hummed of hissunny France, asking:
"_Te souvient-il du lac tranquille Que' effleurait l'hirondelle agile, Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile, Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau. Si beau? Ma coeur, te souv_----"
"G'wan, Baptiste, ye Frinch rogue," cried Terence Burke, "ye've nosister here to ask that. An' phwat the divil's the use o' askin'? Shureit's not France but Greenland we're in. An' it's on a howly treadmill o'snow we're walkin'."
Pete Connear kicked the Irishman's calves from behind with the toes ofhis snowshoes.
"Walk faster, man," he urged. "It makes it twice as easy and the frostdoesn't touch you then."
But Terence shivered in the trail. The sweat of the morning's travel hadchilled on him at the noonday halt, and he felt the lowering temperaturekeenly.
"It's so beastly cowld," he groaned dismally, "that me thoughts freeze'fore Oi can express thim."
The sailor kicked him again to cheer him on. "Bucko! Bucko!" he growled.
And Baptiste Verenne, smiling, flashed white teeth over his shoulder andremarked:
"Mebbe you don' lak remembaire somet'ing lak dat in your own countree!Eh, dat so, M'sieu Burke?"
Terence frowned. Baptiste's smile grew more mischievous as he continued:
"_Te souvient-il de cette amie, Douce compagne de ma vie? Dans les bois, en cueillant la fleur Jolie, Helene appuyait sur mon coeur. Son coeur._
_Oh, qui rendra mon Helene, Et la montagne, et le grand chene? Leur souvenir fait tous les jours ma peine. Mon pays sera mes amours. Toujours!_"
The latter half of the day wore to a desolate grayness. The Hudson's Bayforce was now in Nor'west country, and a strict lookout had to bemaintained. Night approached quickly as the sun dipped. Maskwa, keepingcloser to the main body, signaled that he had found something. Dunveganran up to him hastily.
The Indian stood pointing to the tracks made by a single person onsnowshoes. The marks lay diagonally across their line of progress.
"Strong Father, see," Maskwa requested.
"Some trapper," commented the chief trader. "The shoes are Ojibwaypattern."
"Yes," assented Maskwa, quietly. "I made the shoes."
Dunvegan scanned him sharply in the gathering dark.
"You?" he cried, astonished. "How do you know that?"
"By the knots," Maskwa answered, stooping to point out little dents inthe snow pattern. "See how they lie in a curve? No one but Maskwa makesthem that way!"
"Whose feet?" demanded Dunvegan, with swift suspicion. "Whose feet arein those shoes?"
The fort runner felt the pressed flakes gently before speaking. He aroseimmediately from the stooping posture.
"The Little Fool's," was his response. "And he has just passed here!"
"Gaspard Follet's tracks!" exclaimed the chief trader incredulously."Maskwa, are you sure you are not mistaken?"
"I am not mistaken, Strong Father," the Ojibway declared gravely. "Inthe summer moons I made the shoes for the Little Fool. Give me leave tofollow. I will bring him to you. He is no farther away than the ridge ofbalsam."
"Go," ordered Dunvegan curtly.
The fort runner launched himself into the gloom of the stuntedshrubbery. Bunching where their leader was halted, the Hudson's Bay menwaited silently. Presently there sounded the double crunch of two pairsof raquettes on the brittle crust. The branches of the dwarfedevergreens swayed. Maskwa strode out, dragging a diminutive figure byone arm.
"Here, Strong Father, is the Little Fool," he announced without emotion.
At the sight of the Oxford House men Gaspard Follet began to utter aseries of joyous squeals.
"Blessed be the Virgin," he cried. "Here is safety. Oh! name of the deadsaints, I was lost, lost--lost!"
He sprang to Dunvegan, ingratiating himself, praising, fawning,beseeching. The Ojibway fort runner looked grimly at the antics of hisprize.
"The Little Fool is glad to meet with the Company's servants," heobserved in ironic fashion. "It gives him great joy."
Dunvegan looked into Maskwa's face, quite surprised at the tone.
"Why not?" he questioned.
"That did not dwell in his mind until I caught him," the Indiandeclared. "Neither was the Little Fool lost."
"What do you mean, Maskwa?" Dunvegan asked. "My brother, you speak inriddles. Gaspard has evidently wandered from Oxford House and lost hisway." To the idiot, he added: "Do you know where you are at all?"
"No, no," moaned Gaspard piteously. "I was lost, I tell you. I do notknow this country."
The Ojibway fort runner grunted in derision. "Strong Father," he said,"the Little Fool was not lost as you believe. He has been following theCaribou Ridge all day. And Strong Father will remember that the trail onthe Caribou Ridges, though it cannot be traveled with dog teams,shortens by half the distance to the fort of the French Hearts where wejourney. That is how the Little Fool thought to reach it first!"
The Indian stopped his speech abruptly and took a stride onward as ifthis circumstance was no concern of his. Dunvegan halted him, cryingout:
"Hold there, Maskwa! Do you pretend to suspect Gaspard?"
Maskwa made a gesture of complete unconcern. "I have spoken," hereturned placidly.
"Why," fumed Dunvegan, "such a thing in my estimation isincredible--preposterous! The idea of that dwarf, that idiot----No! It'stoo ridiculous!"
"I have spoken," repeated Maskwa, in the same even key.
When the chief trader attempted to question him by way of discoveringhis exact meaning, the Ojibway maintained a stubborn silence which hebroke only with a suggestion about the night camp.
"Turn to the ridge of balsam, Strong Father," he advised. "We shallfind it good to rest there."
Dunvegan accepted his trusted runner's hint. He knew that the Indian eyeread wilderness signs which no white man living could ever interpret. Heunderstood that the Indian brain gleaned an intelligence from inanimatethings which the greatest mind of civilization could never comprehend.Therefore he was content to follow the native wisdom and follow itunseeingly, for at Maskwa's word he had walked blindly to his ownultimate advantage some hundreds of times.
So the Oxford House men diverged from
their course on the first trackthat Gaspard Follet had tramped in the snowy ridge where it crossedBlazing Pine River. The Ojibway went ahead, and, when lost to the viewof his fellows among the timber, he paralleled Gaspard's trail at somedistance first on one side and then on the other. Soon he found what hesought and tramped on to the balsams, grunting with great satisfaction.
When Dunvegan and his retainers reached the balsam ridge, Maskwa stoodthere awaiting them. He called the chief trader aside.
"Strong Father," he began in a low voice, "does a lost man throw awayhis rifle and his food?"
"No! Great heavens, no!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "Why?"
Maskwa put his hand into a green tree and held out two objects.
"Because here is the rifle and the pack-sack of the Little Fool."
The chief trader wheeled with hot accusations for Gaspard Follet, butMaskwa checked them.
"Softly, Strong Father," was his caution. "I have something else to showyou first."
"But he is the spy," murmured Dunvegan, trying to keep his voice down inspite of his anger. "I see it all now--curse his blithering impudence!What dolts we have been at Oxford House! And he fooled Malcolm Macleod.Good Lord, what infants, what imbeciles! A fool, a dwarf, an idiot toget the best of us! Maskwa, I think we need some guidance such asyours."
"The Little One is a dwarf," conceded Maskwa, "but he is not an idiot.Neither is he a fool, though the name comes easily to my tongue. StrongFather, he has the wisdom of the beaver, and the heart of the fox. Butat last he is trapped!"
"I'll bind him," declared Dunvegan, full of vexation and self-contempt."I'll tie the rat fast lest he outwit the elephants."
"Wait," begged the Ojibway fort runner. "Come to the top of the ridge ofbalsam first. Then we can bind the Little Fool."
Maskwa pushed through the trees with a slouching movement. He set hisshoes without the slightest noise in the soft, deep undersnows of theevergreens. Dunvegan did likewise, taking care to snap no twig. On thecrest which commanded the open valley the Ojibway pushed aside the thickbranches hanging screen-like over the edge.
"Strong Father, look!" he directed.