CHAPTER XIII
THE RED TERROR
Nineteen years before these same rumors had come up from the south, andthe Red Terror had followed. The horror of it still remained with theforest people; for a thousand unmarked graves, shunned like apestilence, and scattered from the lower waters of James Bay to thelake country of the Athabasca, gave evidence of the toll it demanded.
From DuBrochet, on Reindeer Lake, authentic word first came to Lac Bainearly in the winter. Henderson was factor there, and he passed up thewarning that had come to him from Nelson House and the country to thesoutheast.
"There's smallpox on the Nelson," his messenger informed Williams, "andit has struck the Crees on Wollaston Lake. God only knows what it isdoing to the bay Indians, but we hear that it is wiping out theChippewayans between the Albany and the Churchill." He left the sameday with his winded dogs. "I'm off for the Revillon people to the west,with the compliments of our company," he explained.
Three days later, word came from Churchill that all of the company'sservants and her majesty's subjects west of the bay should preparethemselves for the coming of the Red Terror. Williams' thick face wentas white as the paper he held, as he read the words of the Churchillfactor.
"It means dig graves," he said. "That's the only preparation we canmake!"
He read the paper aloud to the men at Lac Bain, and every available manwas detailed to spread the warning throughout the post's territory.There was a quick harnessing of dogs, and on each sledge that went outwas a roll of red cotton cloth. Williams' face was still white as hepassed these rolls out from the company's store. They were ominous ofdeath, lurid signals of pestilence and horror, and the touch of themsent shuddering chills through the men who were about to scatter themamong the forest people.
Jan went over the Churchill trail, and then swung southward along theHasabala, where the country was crisscrossed with trap-lines of thehalf-breeds and the French. First, he struck the cabin of Croisset andhis wife, and left part of his cloth. Then he turned westward, whileCroisset harnessed his dogs and hurried with a quarter of the roll tothe south. Between the Hasabala and Klokol Lake, Jan found three othercabins, and at each he left a bit of the red cotton. Forty miles to thesouth, somewhere on the Porcupine, were the lines of Henry Langlois,the post's greatest fox-hunter. On the morning of the third day, Janset off in search of Langlois; and late in the afternoon of the sameday he came upon a well-beaten snow-shoe trail. On this he camped untilmorning. When dawn came he began following it.
He passed half a dozen of Langlois' trap-houses. In none of them wasthere bait. In three the traps were sprung. In the seventh he found theremains of a red fox that had been eaten until there was little but thebones left. Two houses beyond there was an ermine in a trap, with itshead eaten off. With growing perplexity, Jan examined the snow-shoetrails in the snow. The most recent of them were days old. He urged onhis dogs, stopping no more at the trap-houses, until, with a shriekingcommand, he brought them to a halt at the edge of a clearing cut in theforest. A dozen rods ahead of him was the trapper's cabin. Over it,hanging limply to a sapling pole, was the red signal of horror.
With a terrified cry to the dogs, Jan ran back, and the team turnedabout and followed him in a tangled mass. Then he stopped. There was nosmoke rising from the clay chimney on the little cabin. Its one windowwas white with frost. Again and again he shouted, but no sign of liferesponded to his cries. He fired his rifle twice, and waited with hismittened hand over his mouth and nostrils. There was no reply. Then,abandoning hope, he turned back into the north, and gave his dogs norest until he had reached Lac Bain.
His team came in half dead. Both Cummins and Williams rushed out tomeet him as he drove up before the company's store.
"The red flag is over Langlois' cabin!" he cried. "I fired my rifle andshouted. There is no life! Langlois is dead!"
"Great God!" groaned Williams.
His red face changed to a sickly pallor, and he stood with his thickhands clenched, while Cummins took charge of the dogs and Jan went intothe store for something to eat.
Mukee and Per-ee returned to the post the next day. Young Williamsfollowed close after them, filled with terror. He had found the plagueamong the Crees of the Waterfound.
Each day added to the gloom at Lac Bain. For a time Jan could not fullyunderstand, and he still played his violin and romped joyfully withMelisse in the little cabin. He had not lived through the plague ofnineteen years before. Most of the others had, even to Mukee, theyoungest of them all.
Jan did not know that it was this Red Terror that came like a Nemesisof the gods to cut down the people of the great Northland, until theywere fewer in number than those of the Sahara desert. But he learnedquickly. In February, the Crees along Wollaston Lake were practicallywiped out. Red flags marked the trail of the Nelson. Death leaped fromcabin to cabin in the wilderness to the west. By the middle of themonth, Lac Bain was hemmed in by the plague on all sides but the north.
The post's trap-lines had been shortened; now they were abandonedentirely, and the great fight began. Williams assembled his men, andtold them how that same battle had been fought nearly two decadesbefore. For sixty miles about the post every cabin and wigwam thatfloated a red flag must be visited--and burned if the occupants weredead. In learning whether life or death existed in these places lay theperil for those who undertook the task. It was a dangerous mission. Itmeant facing a death from which those who listened to the old factorshrank with dread; yet, when the call came, they responded to a man.
Cummins and Jan ate their last supper together, with Melisse sittingbetween them and wondering at their silence. When it was over, the twowent outside.
"Mukee wasn't at the store," said Cummins in a thick, strained voice,halting Jan in the gloom behind the cabin. "Williams thought he was offto the south with his dogs. But he isn't. I saw him drag himself intohis shack, like a sick dog, an hour before dusk. There'll be a red flagover Lac Bain in the morning."
Jan stifled the sharp cry on his lips.
"Ah, there's a light!" cried Cummins. "It's a pitch torch burning infront of his door!"
A shrill, quavering cry came from the direction of Mukee's cabin, andthe two recognized it as the voice of the half-breed's father--awordless cry, rising and dying away again and again, like the wailingof a dog. Sudden lights flashed into the night, as they had flashedyears ago when Cummins staggered forth from his home with word of thewoman's death. He gripped Jan's arm in a sudden spasm of horror.
"The flag is up NOW!" he whispered huskily. "Go back to Melisse. Thereis food in the house for a month, and you can bring the wood into-night. Bar the door. Open only the back window for air. Stayinside--with her--until it is all over. Go!"
"To the red flags, that is where I will go!" cried Jan fiercely,wrenching his arm free. "It is your place to stay with Melisse!"
"My place is with the men."
"And mine?" Jan drew himself up rigid.
"One of us must shut himself up with her," pleaded Cummins. "It must beyou." His face gleamed white in the darkness. "You came--thatnight--because Melisse was here. SOMETHING sent you--SOMETHING--don'tyou understand? And since then she has never been near to death untilnow. You must stay with Melisse--WITH YOUR VIOLIN!"
"Melisse herself shall choose," replied Jan. "We will go into thecabin, and the one to whom she comes first goes among the red flags.The other shuts himself in the cabin until the plague is gone."
He turned swiftly back to the door. As he opened it, he stepped asideto let Cummins enter first, and behind the other's broad back he leapedquickly to one side, his eyes glowing, his white teeth gleaming in asmile. Unseen by Cummins, he stretched out his arms to Melisse, who wasplaying with the strings of his violin on the table.
He had done this a thousand times, and Melisse knew what it meant--akiss and a joyous toss halfway to the ceiling. She jumped from herstool and ran to him; but this time, instead of hoisting her above hishead, he hugged her up close to his breast, and buried his f
ace in hersoft hair. His eyes looked over her in triumph to Cummins.
"Up, Jan, up--'way up!" cried Melisse.
He tossed her until she half turned in midair, kissed her again as hecaught her in his arms, and set her, laughing and happy, on the edge ofthe table.
"I am going down among the sick Crees in Cummins' place," said Jan toWilliams, half an hour later. "Now that the plague has come to LacBain, he must stay with Melisse."
The Honor of the Big Snows Page 13