CHAPTER IX
ON SNARE LAKE
When Bob MacNair left Chloe Elliston's camp, he swung around by the wayof Mackay Lake, a detour that required two weeks' time and addedimmeasurably to the discomfort of the journey. Day by day, upon lake,river, and portage, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack wondered much athis silence and the unwonted hardness of his features.
These two Indians knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they hadstood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vastwilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They hadslept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faceddeath in a hundred guises, and they loved him as men love their God.They had followed him during the lean years when, contrary to thewishes of his father, the stern-eyed factor at Fort Norman, he hadrefused the offers of the company and devoted his time, winter andsummer, to the exploration of rivers and lakes, rock ridges andmountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lostcopper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the Northin 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire sovast as to stagger belief.
But, as the canoe forged northward, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarackheld their peace, and when they arrived at the fort, MacNair growled anorder, and sought his cabin beside the wall of the stockade.
A half hour later, when the Indians had gathered in response to thehurried word of Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack, MacNair stepped fromhis cabin and addressed them in their own language, or rather in thejargon--the compromise language of the North--by means of which theminds of white men and Indians meet on common ground. He warned themagainst Pierre Lapierre, the _kultus_ breed of whom most of themalready knew, and he told them of the girl and her school at the mouthof the Yellow Knife. And then, in no uncertain terms, he commandedthem to have nothing whatever to do with the school, nor with Lapierre.Whereupon, Sotenah, a leader among the young men, arose, and after along and flowery harangue in which he lauded and extolled the wisdom ofMacNair and the benefits and advantages that accrued to the Indians byreason of his patronage, vociferously counselled a summary descent uponthe fort of the _Mesahchee Kloochman_.
The proclamation was received with loud acclaim, and it was with nolittle difficulty that MacNair succeeded in quieting the turbulence andrestoring order. After which he rebuked Sotenah severely and laidthreat upon the Indians that if so much as a hair of the white_kloochman_ was harmed he would kill, with his own hand, the man whowrought the harm.
As for Pierre Lapierre and his band, they must be crushed and drivenout of the land of the lakes and the rivers, but the time was not yet.He, MacNair, would tell them when to strike, and only if Lapierre'sIndians were found prowling about the vicinity of Snare Lake were theyto be molested.
The Indians dispersed and, slinging a rifle over his shoulder, MacNairswung off alone into the bush.
Bob MacNair knew the North; knew its lakes and its rivers, its forestsand its treeless barrens. He knew its hardships, dangers andlimitations, and he knew its gentler moods, its compensations, and itspossibilities. Also, he knew its people, its savage primitive childrenwho call it home, and its invaders--good and bad, and worse than bad.The men who infest the last frontier, pushing always northward forbarter, or for the saving of souls.
He understood Pierre Lapierre, his motives and his methods. But thegirl he did not understand, and her presence on the Yellow Knifedisturbed him not a little. Had chance thrown her into the clutches ofLapierre? And had the man set about deliberately to use her school asan excuse for the establishment of a trading-post within easy reach ofhis Indians? MacNair was inclined to believe so--and the matter causedhim grave concern. He foresaw trouble ahead, and a trouble that mighteasily involve the girl who, he felt, was entirely innocent ofwrongdoing.
His jaw clamped hard as he swung on and on through the scrub. He hadno particular objective, a problem faced him and, where other men wouldhave sat down to work its solution, he walked.
In many things was Bob MacNair different from other men. Just andstern beyond his years, with a sternness that was firmness rather thanseverity; slow to anger, but once his anger was fairly aroused terriblein meting out his vengeance. Yet, withal, possessed of anunderstanding and a depth of sympathy, entirely unsuspected by himself,but which enshrined him in the hearts of his Indians, who, in all theworld were the men and women who knew him.
Even his own father had not understood this son, who devoured books asravenously as his dogs devoured salmon. Again and again heremonstrated with him for wasting his time when he might be working forthe company. Always the younger man listened respectfully, andcontinued to read his books and to search for the lost mines with adetermination and singleness of purpose that aroused the secretapprobation of the old Scotchman, and the covert sneers and scoffingsof others.
And then, after four years of fruitless search, at the base of a ridgethat skirted the shore of an unmapped lake, he uncovered the mouth ofan ancient tunnel with rough-hewn sides and a floor that sloped fromthe entrance. Imbedded in the slime on the bottom of a pool ofstinking water, he found curious implements, rudely chipped from flintand slate, and a few of bone and walrus ivory. Odd-shaped,half-finished tools of hammered copper were strewn about the floor, andthe walls were thickly coated with verdigris. Instead of the sharpring of steel on stone, a dull thud followed the stroke of his pick,and its scars glowed with a red lustre in the flare of the smokingtorches.
Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack looked on in stolid silence, while theyoung man, with wildly beating heart, crammed a pack-sack with samples.He had found the ancient mine--the lost mine of the Indians, which mensaid existed only in the fancy of Bob MacNair's brain! Carefullysealing the tunnel, the young man headed for Fort Norman; and never didOld Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack face such a trail. Down the ragingtorrent of the Coppermine, across the long portage to the Dismal Lakes,and then by portage and river to Dease Bay, across the two hundredmiles of Great Bear Lake, and down the Bear River to their destination.
Seven hundred long miles they covered, at a man-killing pace thatbrought them into the fort, hollow-eyed and gaunt, and with theirbodies swollen and raw from the sting of black flies and mosquitoesthat swarmed through the holes in their tattered garments.
The men wolfed down the food that was set before them by an Indianwoman, and then, while Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack slept, thechief trader led Bob MacNair to the grave of his father.
"'Twas his heart, lad, or somethin' busted inside him," explained theold man. "After supper it was, two weeks agone. He was sittin' i' hischair wi' his book an' his pipe, an' me in anither beside him. He gi'a deep sigh, like, an' his book fell to the ground and his pipe. WhenI got to him his head was leant back ag'in his chair--and he was dead."
Bob MacNair nodded, and the chief trader returned to the store, leavingthe young man standing silent beside the fresh-turned mound with itsrudely fashioned wooden cross, that stood among the other grass-grownmounds whose wooden crosses, with their burned inscriptions, wereweather-grey and old. For a long time he stood beside the littlecrosses that lent a solemn dignity to the rugged heights of Fort Norman.
It cannot be said that Bob MacNair had loved his father, in thegenerally accepted sense of the word. But he had admired and respectedhim above all other men, and his first thought upon the discovery ofthe lost mine was to vindicate his course in the eyes of this stern,just man who had so strongly advised against it.
For the opinion of others he cared not the snap of his fingers. But,to read approval in the deep-set eyes of his father, and to hear thedeep, rich voice of him raised, at last, in approbation, rather thanreproach, he had defied death and pushed himself and his Indians to thelimit of human endurance. And he had arrived too late. The bitternessof the young man's soul found expression only in a hardening of the jawand a clenching of the mighty fists. For, in the heart of him, he knewthat in the future, no matter what the measure of the world might be,always, deep wi
thin him would rankle the bitter disappointment--therealization that this old man had gone to his grave believing that hisson was a fool and a wastrel.
Slowly he turned from the spot and, with heavy steps, entered thepost-store. He raised the pack that contained the samples from thefloor, and, walking to the verge of the high cliff that overlooked theriver, hurled it far out over the water, where it fell with a dullsplash that was drowned in the roar of the rapids.
"Ye'll tak' charge here the noo, laddie?" asked McTurk, the grizzledchief trader, the following day when MacNair had concluded theinspection of his father's papers. "'Twad be what _he'd_ ha'counselled!"
"No," answered the young man shortly, and, without a word as to thefinding of the lost mine, hurried Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack intoa canoe and headed southward.
A month later the officers of the Hudson Bay Company in Winnipeg gaspedin surprise at the offer of young MacNair to trade the broad acres towhich his father had acquired title in the wheat belt of Saskatchewanand Alberta for a vast tract of barren ground in the subarctic. Theytraded gladly, and when the young man heard that his dicker had earnedfor him the name of Fool MacNair in the conclave of the mighty, hesmiled--and bought more barrens.
All of which had happened eight years before Chloe Elliston defied himamong the stumps of her clearing, and in the interim much hadtranspired. In the heart of his barrens he built a post and collectedabout him a band of Indians who soon learned that those who worked inthe mines had a far greater number of brass tokens of "made beaver" totheir credit than those who trapped fur.
Those were hard years for Bob MacNair; years in which he worked day andnight with his Indians, and paid them, for the most part, in promises.But always he fed them and clothed them and their women and children,although to do so stretched his credit to the limit--raised thelimit--and raised it again.
He uncovered vast deposits of copper, only to realize that, until hecould devise a cheaper method of transportation, the metal might aswell have remained where the forgotten miners had left it. And it waswhile he was at work upon his transportation problem that the shovelsof his Indians began to throw out golden grains from the bed of aburied creek.
When the news of gold reached the river, there was a stampede. ButMacNair owned the land and his Indians were armed. There was a short,sharp battle, and the stampeders returned to the rivers to nurse theirgrievance and curse Brute MacNair.
He paid his debt to the Company and settled with his Indians, whosuddenly found themselves rich. And then Bob MacNair learned a lessonwhich he never forgot--his Indians could not stand prosperity. Most ofthose who had stood by him all through the lean years when he hadprovided them only a bare existence, took their newly acquired wealthand departed for the white man's country. Some returned--broken husksof the men who departed. Many would never return, and for theirundoing MacNair reproached himself unsparingly, the while he devised aneconomic system of his own, and mined his gold and worked out histransportation problem upon a more elaborate scale. The harm had beendone, however; his Indians were known to be rich, and MacNair found hiscolony had become the cynosure of the eyes of the whiskey-runners, thechiefest among whom was Pierre Lapierre. It was among these men thatthe name of Brute, first used by the beaten stampeders, came intogeneral use--a fitting name, from their viewpoint--for when one of themchanced to fall into his hands, his moments became at once fraught withtribulation.
And so MacNair had become a power in the Northland, respected by theofficers of the Hudson Bay Company, a friend of the Indians, and aterror to those who looked upon the red man as their natural prey.
Step by step, the events that had been the milestones of this man'slife recurred to his mind as he tramped tirelessly through the scrubgrowth of the barrens toward a spot upon the shore of the lake--theonly grass plot within a radius of five hundred miles. Throwinghimself down beside a low, sodded mound in the centre of the plot, heidly watched the great flocks of water fowls disport themselves uponthe surface of the lake.
How long he lay there, he had no means of knowing, when suddenly hisears detected the soft swish of paddles. He leaped to his feet and,peering toward the water, saw, close to the shore, a canoe manned byfour stalwart paddlers. He looked closer, scarcely able to credit hiseyes. And at the same moment, in response to a low-voiced order, thecanoe swung abruptly shoreward and grated upon the shingle of thebeach. Two figures stepped out, and Chloe Elliston, followed by BigLena, advanced boldly toward him. MacNair's jaw closed with a snap asthe girl approached smiling. For in the smile was no hint offriendliness--only defiance, not unmingled with contempt.
"You see, Mr. Brute MacNair," she said, "I have kept my word. I toldyou I would invade your kingdom--and here I am."
MacNair did not reply, but stood leaning upon his rifle. His attitudeangered her.
"Well," she said, "what are you going to do about it?" Still the mandid not answer, and, stooping, plucked a tiny weed from among theblades of grass. The girl's eyes followed his movements. She startedand looked searchingly into his face. For the first time she noticedthat the mound was a grave.