CHAPTER XVIII
A DOUBLE SURPRISE.
"_Arretez!_" The sentinel's challenge from the gates of Fort Brondelrang out sharply in the near-dawn.
Through the blinding smother of great, soft-falling snowflakes he hadheard rather than seen the advance of a dog train toiling up the risingground upon which the post was situated. It came, he thought, as aNor'west train would come, making no unnecessary clamor, but without anyprecautions for secrecy. The storm-laden air choked the first cry of thewatchman, preventing it from reaching the clogged ears of theapproaching party. Again his hail was lifted up.
"_Hola! Arretez!_" he commanded, the strident tone cutting the snow.
Instantly the leading team pulled up. The others lined behind it.Brondel's sentinel could discern five bulky sledges, each accompanied bya driver and a guard with rifle on shoulder. Their faces and garmentsplastered thickly by moist flakes, the men looked like tall, whitestumps suddenly moved out of the forest and set before the stockades.Identities were impossibly vague in the storm and in the gray dark whichpreceded the morning.
"_Qui vive?_" asked the keeper of the post gate doubtfully.
"The Niskitowaney fur train," answered the muffled voice of one of thehalfbreeds who drove.
"The password?"
"Marseillaise!"
The gate bars rattled with release; a gap yawned in the stockade.
"_Entrez_," came the permission.
Walking with the leading sledge, Maskwa whirled as he passed thesentinel and felled him with a quick blow of the rifle butt. Quickly heremoved the unconscious man's weapons and threw him on the sled.
"Strong Father, the thing is easy, as I told you," the Ojibway mutteredto the first snow-coated giant guard, who was in reality Bruce Dunvegan.
"Too easy," was Bruce's answer. "Listen! There is no stir about thebuildings, no sound. That puzzles me, Maskwa."
"Men sleep soundest just before the light breaks," explained the fortrunner in a tone of satisfaction.
"Perhaps." Dunvegan's tone was doubtful.
As they stood in the palisade entrance, listening keenly for any crywhich would mean their discovery, the pulses of the Hudson's Bay mensurged faster and faster. The cold chill of the storm-beaten atmospherechanged suddenly to an electric glow. The fever of waiting strainflushed their bodies. They began to breathe hard and shift weapons fromleft hands to armpits and back again.
But no clamor beat out of the post structures; a ghostly blur they lay,walled round with gigantic drifts. The only vibration whichcommunicated itself to the ear was the velvet brushing of falling snowagainst the high stockades.
Faces turned in the direction whence they had come, the ten figures withthe dog teams remained poised in perfect silence, anxious, eager,expectant. Then, quite near, the wilderness voice they awaited spoke outabruptly.
"Yir-r-r-ee-ee!" echoed the weird, panicky screech of a lynx.
Maskwa curved his hands about his mouth and replied with the hornedowl's full-throated whoop.
"Kee-yoo-oo-oo-oo!" he quavered in a quick, ever-diminishing tremolo.
At the pre-arranged signal the rest of the Oxford House force movedswiftly up and passed through Brondel's guardless gate. Two Indians hadbeen left with the bound prisoners and the Nor'west sledge teams in thefringe of the timber.
"Are you ready, men?" Dunvegan asked.
"Aye, aye, sir," cried Connear quaintly. "This is what we have all beenwaiting for."
To the chief trader it was an incredible thing that they reached thebuildings in the center of the yard without any alarm being raised. The_giddes_ whined. Instantly a howling response arose from the quarterswhere the fort dogs were kept. Gripping their arms tightly, the invaderswaited for the uproar that should follow the huskies' wailing and forthe man-to-man struggle which must succeed the awakening of the post.
No uproar came! The expected onslaught failed to materialize!
Even Maskwa became mystified. "Strong Father," he whispered, "this isbeyond my wisdom."
"And mine," admitted Dunvegan, worried as well as puzzled by the utterlack of the expected developments.
"Can the post be deserted? Have they had warning and fled?"
"No! In case of warning the stockades would have been lined withfighters. There is something extraordinarily wrong about the place. Asentinel isn't set in a deserted fort, you know. And yet, why is thereno sign of life? Maskwa, it's uncanny!"
Although totally unfamiliar with the ground and the plan of FortBrondel, Dunvegan decided to investigate without delay. He pressed openthe door of the dark building in front of him, the latch offering noresistance.
"Come," he ordered. "If any man is clumsy enough to make a noise let himstay outside!"
Within the silent room, Dunvegan drew a candle-end and a match from hisinner pocket and struck a light. The faint beams showed that he was inthe store of the Northwest Fur Company's post. Shelves held neat arraysof goods; orderly piles of bales and boxes were ranged about the walls;but no person could be seen.
As many men as the store was capable of accommodating crowded afterDunvegan. In their shoepacks they walked soft-footed as panthers.
"These French Hearts must sleep as the dead," murmured Maskwa.
"Yes, or else they hide somewhere to pistol the half of us at a stroke,"the chief trader returned.
He lighted a fresh candle taken from a shelf. Its larger glimmerprojected giant shadows of the men upon the farther end of the store.The huge silhouettes loomed up with a mysterious vagueness suggestive ofthe advent of the real human figures. Dunvegan's followers passed theirown surmises to each other in low, husky whispers, remarking on such achance as their leader had recognized.
"If they are hiding in order to get to close quarters," observedConnear, "they'll be sorry in the end. For we can hit in a clinch aswell as they can. Eh, Terence Burke?"
"Yes, me enemy," muttered the vigorous-minded Irishman, whom no strangesituation could abash, "an' if it's thim same Donnybrook Fair tricksthey're after, they'll find me rifle butt makes a mighty foineblack-thorn."
Baptiste Verenne spoke to Black Fox, the Salteaux Indian, in a softaside.
"Black Fox, you be son of beeg medicine-mans," he whispered. "Mebbe yoube tell us w'at dis mean. Spik de wise word an' say w'y de Nor'westairesdon' joomp out for keel us queeck."
But the Salteaux shook his head.
"The French Hearts are fools and snakes," he replied. "Their ways aredark as the ways of evil spirits. Therefore they cannot be read."
"Dat mooch I be know, me," confided Baptiste.
Numerous whispers were making a very audible rustle. Bruce Dunvegan heldup his hand for silence. He began to examine what lay beyond the othertwo of the three doors in the store.
Throwing open the one on the right, his candle gleam flashed across alarge, empty floor. According to the custom of new forts built purelyfor aggressive purposes, Dunvegan judged that store, blockhouse, andtrading-room adjoined or were connected by passages. This section, hepresumed, was the blockhouse.
A hasty survey proved his conclusion correct. The light played aroundthe rough walls, revealing weapons, trophies of the chase and thevarious equipments used in wilderness life throughout the differentseasons. But, like the store, the blockhouse was without occupants ofany kind.
Dunvegan made a quick decision and gave a quicker order.
"Bring lights," was his command. "Let half your number hold theblockhouse and half occupy the store. It will take an army ofNor'westers to oust us now."
Immediately the chief trader's directions were carried out. The menassigned themselves promptly in equal bodies to both buildings.
There remained the trading-room and the factor's quarters to search.Dunvegan concluded that there was no separate house for the factor ofthe post, because a stairway led up through the store ceiling. Hesurmised that the residential apartments of the one in command ofBrondel lay above. Gently he opened the door in the left-hand wall ofthe store and saw a long, gloomy pa
ssageway.
"No light," Bruce commented. "Nothing there either, it seems!"
He closed the door again and set foot on the stairs.
"Guard those entrances well," was his adjuration. "Don't stir unless youget a signal from me. I'm going up to awaken the lord of Fort Brondel,whoever he may be, and let him know that he is a prisoner of theHudson's Bay Company."
Slowly Dunvegan ascended the stairway and reached the upper floor. Hestill had the candle in his hand, its pale flame revealing a sort ofliving-room which held a table, a stove, chairs, shelves of books, alounge covered with fur robes, a large wooden cupboard, a pair ofleather-padded stools, a writing-desk in the corner. The furnishingswere plain, though comfortable; they seemed such as any hard-workingfactor might possess.
Treading softly, the chief trader crossed to the door at the other endand pushed on it. It remained fast, bolted inside. He put his ear tothe wood. No sound!
Dunvegan stepped back a stride. Rising with a swift movement on the toesof the left foot, he planted his right sole flatly against the door witha straight, powerful body jolt. There came the crunching noise of metaltearing through hard wood, and the barrier swung back trembling on itshinges.
Instantly the wind of suction puffed out the candle. Bruce growled andsmothered a low imprecation. Stepping cautiously to the side of the jambbeyond the range of any sudden missile which might be sent through theopen doorway, he fumbled in his pockets for a match. He scratched ithurriedly against the wall, his eyes searching the gloom for a sign ofthe sleeper whom he must have awakened. He dabbed the match to the wick,and gazed more eagerly. But no figure launched from the blackness beyondthe threshold; there arose not even a rustle to show that someone'sslumber had been broken. To the listening Dunvegan there was somethingweird in this circumstance. He wondered if he should find the sleepingchamber as he had found the store and the blockhouse--empty!
His pondering, like his hesitation, occupied only a second. The air ofuncertainty left a tinge of suspense which Bruce hastened to dispel.Feeling some subtle magnetism, some unaccountable sensation of afamiliar presence, some tremendous unknown climax which his heartacknowledged blindly, he strode abruptly into the dark apartment, hisone hand holding the light well to the side, the other clasping theweapon in his belt.
"Another step, you beast, and husband or no husband, I'll kill you!"
Bitter as acid was the woman's voice which hurled the threat. Across theflickering candle rays Dunvegan's startled glance met a leveled pistoland beyond that the beautiful, defiant eyes of Desiree Lazard.
The unintelligible cry rising within the man choked in his dry throat.He gasped and trembled, causing the white light to play over bedstead,coverlet, and the loose-frocked figure crouching behind. His physicalcourage and indomitable will, sufficient to face the fierce Nor'westerswithin the very walls of their stronghold, was displaced by a nervelessweakness that banished self-control.
"One more step," she warned, marking his restless muscular twitching. "Imean it. As God hears me, I mean it!"
Dunvegan's mind was battling chaotically with amazement at Desiree'spresence, with wonder at her attitude, with a thousand conflictingemotions, each inspired by some swift-passing thought. Joy, doubt,jealousy, malice, love, judgment, forgiveness--these all mingled, heldmomentary sway, separated one by one and disappeared. Out of this chaosof human feeling Bruce retained no reigning passion. Wisely he let thehot mixture of mad ideas spend itself and give way to his usual coolreserve. Therein rested his salvation.
He still held the candle to one side, and his face was not clear. Evenhis figure remained shadowy in the sputtering gleam. That, he knew,accounted for Desiree's mistaking him for her husband.
Now deliberately and with a steady hand he moved his light to the frontso that its glimmer yellowed his wind-tanned face.
"Bruce!" Her voice was pitched in the unnatural, hysterical scream of aperson struggling with a nightmare.
The sense of the dramatic leaped through the blood of both. Dunveganglowed with the hectic pulse of old desire, but his cold reserve wasmaintained by a nerve-wrenching effort.
"You do not dream," he ventured in a measured tone. "I am a strictreality, though an intruding one."
At the sound of his voice Desiree dropped her loaded pistol on the bed.Her tense body shivered, as if at escape from menace or danger. Shecovered her face with her hands. The full bosom worked in a paroxysm ofsobs.
"My God! My God!" she moaned, her words coming like a prayer.
Dunvegan set the candle on a nearby stool and leaned back with foldedarms against the door jamb. Thus could he the better control himself,for Desiree's weeping tore his fibres. Irrelevantly he noted that shewas not prepared for slumber, but wore a flowing, open-throated daydress. This fact added to Bruce's mystification.
Presently Desiree glanced up, an expression of fear succeeding thedespair in her face. She rushed swiftly across the chamber to Dunvegan,her hands extended appealingly.
"Go," she pleaded. "Go before someone hears you! How you learned--howyou got here is nothing. Only go! Do you know what danger you stand in?"
"No," Bruce answered grimly. "I am not aware of any."
Her beauty even in tears burned its image in his tortured soul. To claspher tight would have given both physical and mental relief, but hisfingers clenched hard on his flexed biceps; he did not unfold his arms.
"Are you mad?" she cried earnestly, tempestuously. "You enter aNor'west fort! You force in the door of the factor's apartment! Andwhy? How did you find out I was here--and alone?"
"I didn't find out. Till two minutes ago I thought you were in Fort LaRoche."
"La Roche!" she echoed with astonishment. "Why there?"
"According to Black Ferguson's plan as I read it."
Desiree looked searchingly at the chief trader for a half-minute.
"What do you know?" was her suspicious question, barbed with a slightresentment of his curt words.
"I know, first, that Black Ferguson was informed by Gaspard Follet ofyour favoring Glyndon; second, that the clerk was approached throughFollet, and bribed to join the Nor'west ranks with his wife; third, thatthe foregoing was but a design of Black Ferguson's to get you beyond thestockades of Oxford House and in a place where he could lay hands onyou."
"But he can't," protested Desiree. "I am--you see, I was married."
"Can't!" Dunvegan exploded. The tone of the one word was eloquentconviction. He added darkly: "It is well that I have come in time."
"Ah! no," she cried, the fear for his safety, momentarily forgotten,returning. "You must leave instantly. I will lead you down in silence.Come!"
Her hand was throbbing on his arm, her hot breath beating up against hischeeks. Bruce freed himself, fighting to keep his feelings in check.
"There is no need," he returned. "I shall not stir from here."
She scanned his face. No madness was visible in it. Bruce laughed.
"I am quite sane," he answered her.
"You are in Fort Brondel," Desiree announced severely. "A Nor'westfort----"
"Your pardon," Dunvegan interrupted. "A Hudson's Bay fort!"
"Now you are surely mad."
A slight timidity touched her. She drew back.
"Mad enough to have taken this post! I command forty-odd men in therooms below."
Incredulity widened Desiree's eyes, but the chief trader's manner wasconvincing. She murmured a little in astonishment.
"We--of the post?" she stammered.
"Taken, too! The men become my prisoners--when I find them. You also area captive!"
"Thank God!" Desiree cried, flushing to the temples. "Thank God!"
It was Bruce's turn for bewilderment. The ecstatic fervor of the woman'svoice astounded him.
"What talk!" he exclaimed. "Prisoners don't generally rejoice. Yet thispost seems the place of riddles to-night. Oddest of all to me is thefact that I have met with no opposition--except from yourself!"
He smiled, bowing court
eously. Desiree smiled too, wanly and without theleast approach to mirth.
"Come," she suggested. "I will show you why."
Taking the candle, she led the way across the living room, down thestairs, and through the great store which belonged to the Northwest FurCompany. Under the wondering gaze of the men they passed and entered thepassage into which Bruce Dunvegan had glanced before. This passagewayextended for many paces. A closed door stopped their progress at thefarther end. Desiree laid her finger tips against it.
"The garrison of Fort Brondel is in there," she murmured.
"The trading room?"
"Yes."
"I had better call my fighters. And you? Wouldn't it be well for you togo back? There may be violence, and----"
"No necessity whatever," Desiree interrupted cynically. "They will notstrike a blow. I can vouch for that."
An instant she paused, as if summoning her will power to do a hatefulthing. Then she swung the door sharply back and held her light inside.
"Look!" she commanded with bitter irony.
Dunvegan looked. The scene in the huge interior of the trading roomstruck him with disgust as well as surprise. Around the long, roughtable over a score of men and halfbreed women lay in drunken stupor. Aliquor barrel crowned the board. At the table's end one man's debauchedface lay on the breast of his halfbreed Bacchante of the revel. Brucerecognized the features of Glyndon, enpurpled and drink-puffed. The restof the revelers had fallen into every imaginable attitude expressive ofuncontrolled muscle and befuddled mind.
The stench of spirits was overpowering. Dunvegan drew Desiree back.
"This is sickening," he cried.
She gazed at Bruce with an intensity that went to the heart of him. Thelook awakened glad, magnetic throbs, yet left uneasy forebodings for thefuture because her eyes prophesied things which could never be.
"Now you know," she replied, pointing at the table. "I have shown youwhy."
And in her words Dunvegan read the answer to more than one riddle.
Someone moved behind them ostentatiously in order to attract attention.Bruce turned quickly. The tall Ojibway fort runner stood there.
"What is it, Maskwa?"
"Two messengers clamoring at the gates, Strong Father. What is yourwill?"
"I will go with you, my brother," the chief trader decided. "It is wellto see who they are, myself." He walked with Desiree back into thestore.
"Bind the drunken Nor'westers in the trading room," he ordered the men."Come, Maskwa," he added to the Ojibway.
The fort runner stalked at his back through the snowy yard. Desireestood and watched them from the door, while away in the east the lightof dawn grew little by little.