CHAPTER X
THE CAUSE INVINCIBLE
Off Caribou Point Wahbiscaw, the bowsman of Dunvegan's canoe, cried outsharply in his native tongue. The craft turned aside from a jagged reefof rock that poked like a pike's nose almost to the surface. Then theysped on with increasing rapidity. The Cree knew every channel, everyfang, every shoal, every bar in the shallows of Oxford Lake. And ofevery other lake and river in his district there was a map in his mind.
It is the unequalled gift of the true red man to remember country overwhich he has travelled but once. Not only does he recall the trails orthe waterways but the things which go to make those trails or waterways.He can place the smooth current, the broken, the rapid, the eddy, therocks, the bends of shore. Even the Indian youth quickly acquires suchpower of recollection. The retentive faculty is developed to an enormousdegree by those who roam in the wilderness.
Ahead of the brigade loomed Wasita Island, a cliff of crag and sprucesunk to its knees in some volcanic crater which had opened under itaeons ago. Its headlands were scarred and seamed, old in time, markedwith the brand of chaos that had once rocked the mighty northland as thetornado rocks the balsams.
Dunvegan, mechanically doing his work as steersman, scanned the shoresfor a glimpse of a canoe. At last he placed it on the island margindrawn up in a little cove called Spirit Bay. It was directly in thecourse of the brigade. His heart beats quickened.
"Faster," he commanded the paddlers, and steered closer to the islandshore.
"Spirit Bay?" questioned the stolid Cree bowsman.
"So!" answered his leader. He made a motion for the rest of the fleetto continue on its way.
The chief trader's canoe slipped over a white sandbar and nosed inagainst the rock alongside the other empty craft which required no tyingin the absence of any lake swell.
"Behold the canoe of _ayume-aookemou_, the praying man," spokeWahbiscaw, puzzled.
But with a command for him to wait in silence Dunvegan was climbing therocks. Up on the peak of the boulder-like island he found Desiree andFather Brochet.
"See," she laughed, her beauty increased tenfold by the splendor of sunand sky, "we have come this far to bid you farewell. Are you notgrateful? It is far to come to say a sentence or two!"
She gave him her hands, smiling saucily into his eyes. No vision he hadever seen or dreamed of was so entrancing, so tempting, and yet sohuman!
"Grateful? Ah--yes!" he breathed. "But pray God you may come this farto meet me on my return! Would you?" He retained the hands that madehim quiver.
"Who knows?" Desiree pouted teasingly. "The snows will be lying deep.You may come in a blizzard! Who knows?"
Like a red ring her lips allured. Father Brochet piously turned hisback. If there was a passionate kiss, he did not see it. He heard onlythe heart strain in Dunvegan's voice; saw only the great yearning in hiseyes.
"Your vow?" he asked. "Will you hold it till I come?"
"Yes--and after," she plagued.
"Till I come," Dunvegan pleaded.
"Yes," Desiree answered, softening. "I told you I would never marry aHudson's Bay man."
"Keep it well, then," he adjured--"till I come!"
It took effort to release her warm palms! Dunvegan turned hastily to thepriest.
"Good-bye, Brochet." Their hands welded.
"_A Dieu_," murmured his friend.
There was a mist in Dunvegan's eyes as he walked. Father Brochet notedthat he stumbled a little in reaching the canoe.
"Wik! Wik!" Wahbiscaw called. The craft slanted through the channel andwas gone.
Brochet, watching closely, saw a great void grow in Desiree's eyes.
"Ah," he mused, "if this had been return!"
September smiled between the scarlet curtains of the moose maples uponDunvegan's arrival in the Katchawan Valley. October glared through thebare lattice work of the branches at the upstanding walls of tradingroom, store and blockhouse. November swept wrathfully down the openforest lanes, blustering a frosty challenge to the hive of men toilingat the roofing over, the gabling in, the palisading.
But the challenge rang too late. Kamattawa's stockades grinned backundaunted. Behind them crouched the broad-bulked buildings,weather-proof, grim, impregnable alike to destructive elements andpredatory foes.
There still remained the finer inside work; the flooring, the storeshelving, the compartment shaping, the counter making for the tradingroom, the stairs of the same and the grill in the supply loft above. Butall this could be accomplished with comparative luxury in the warmth ofthe fireplaces whose birch flames crackled defiance to the cold.
The incidents of the Hudson's Bay men's journey to the Valley and thelog of events during the post's building stand in bold orthography uponthe daybook of the Fort. One hundred spacious pages the story covers.And because Bruce Dunvegan was not given to write of trifles, the sheetsclaim a sequence of bold facts which prompt the imagination with theallurement of boundless suggestion.
For instance, there is a line telling that they encountered a squall onTrout Lake. But the yellow paper says nothing of how for hours theybucked the monstrous seas which broke over the canoe bows till eachbailer's muscles cramped under the strain of clearing shipped water, orhow the craft, sliding meteor-like down the passed surge crests, slappedand pounded in the wave troughs till the bottoms broke in rents and thedaring crews won the shore race with death by a scant paddle's stroke.
Likewise a brief obituary states that Gabriel Fonderel was killed in askirmish with some of Running Wolf's tribe at the Channel Du Loup. Yetthere is no word of how the now hostile Crees, strong in numbers and ledby the fiery Three Feathers held back Dunvegan's men for four days tillfinally the chief trader ran the rocky passage in the dark beneath avicious fire that wounded a half-dozen voyageurs besides snuffing outFonderel's breath.
Two burnings of the unfinished palisades by stealthy enemies; threenight attacks of combined bodies of Nor'westers and Running Wolf'sCrees; the finding of a full powder bag standing among the flour sacksdrying before the fire--all these were mildly noted!
But between the brief lines of this daybook which reposed uponDunvegan's desk in the trading room of Fort Kamattawa could be read thewhole round of a virile, courageous existence; could be felt the pulseof danger and hidden menace; could be witnessed the keen drama of theinimical wilderness conflict. Crowded into these northmen's short spanof months were years of endeavor. They took cognizance of no restraininglimits to this and that undertaking. Theirs were the herculean things,the endless creations, the hot ambitions. Out of the vast resources ofthe northland they established a well-defined era, a cycle of supremacy,an epoch of undying history which would round their full conquest of theland.
The powerful instruments of their healthy bodies were applied by theshrewdness of their concentrated minds, guarded always by the blessingof sane leadership. Through his wise counsels Bruce Dunvegan conservedthe powers of his retainers and turned them along the required channels,directing brain and sinew, blood and spirit, to the profit of theAncient and Honorable Company.
Over every part of the Fort hung his rigid, progressive discipline. Atdaybreak all the post Indians, the voyageurs, the H. B. C. servants wereengaged upon their various tasks, fashioning, constructing, finishing!They labored with care, but with the merriest of dispositions. At seventhey breakfasted. In an hour the hum of work rose again. Leisure couldwait for the deep winter snows!
Outside the trading room a great flagstaff was reared before the groundfroze too solidly. Up the pine stick ran the Company's crimson ensign,marking another step of conquest, flinging defiance to the Nor'westers,shutting out the stronghold of Fort La Roche from the Katchawan Valley.
Tumultuous cheering greeted the first flap of the banner. Shouts moresincere than patriotic cries rang out loudly. The Company's adherentsbut voiced their allegiance.
"_Vive La Compagnie!_" exulted the impetuous Baptiste Verenne, atypical voyageur.
"_Grace a Dieu!_" pealed his comr
ades, stridently--"_Grace a Dieu!_"Like some wild orison to an invisible god--the Company god it mightbe--their musical tongues chanted the phrase.
Could the Nor'westers have seen these outland sons thus greet theirflag, chests big with the emotional breath of love, cheeks bright withthe inspiring blood that comes of proud prestige, eyes burning with thefire of eternal loyalty, they would have stopped to think. Could BlackFerguson have witnessed the scene, he would have understood that he wascombating not iron determination alone; not reckless strength, notunswerving pertinacity, but a stern faith in a power so vast as to bealmost beyond comprehension; a belief in a precedence dominant andcomplete, a love of an ideal which even death could not conquer becauseit extended beyond through that exalted medium of heroism. And where theideal is raised to the clear eye of faith rests the cause invincible.
Law of the North (Originally published as Empery) Page 10