XV THE OJIBWA HUNTER
Walter was anxious to get a place ready for the Periers, but he foundthat every one of the fifty or sixty log cabins in Pembina was full tooverflowing. Indeed he marveled at the number of men, women, and childrenof all sizes that could be packed into a one-room cabin. The houses werebuilt of logs chinked with clay and moss, and roofed with bark or grassthatch, and few had more than one room.
A straggling, unkempt place was the settlement, the cabins set down hitor miss, with cart tracks wandering around among them. The tracks anddooryards were deep in mud, which was stiff with frost when the boysstarted out that morning. As the sun softened the ground, Walter foundwalking in the sticky stuff something like wading through thick glue, itclung to his moccasins so. Gardens were rare. The surroundings of most ofthe cabins were very untidy, cluttered with broken-down carts, disorderlypiles of firewood, odds, ends, and rubbish of all sorts. Shaggy, unkemptponies, hobbled or staked out, and wolfish looking sled dogs, runningloose, were everywhere.
The people were most of them _bois brules_ whose hair, skin, and featuresshowed all degrees of mixed blood from almost pure white to nearly pureIndian. They seemed good-natured and very hospitable. The merrymaking incelebration of the return of the hunt was not yet at an end. EverywhereLouis and his companion were urged to share in a feast of buffalo meat,to join in a gambling game or in dancing to the scraping of a fiddle. Sopressing were the invitations that declining was difficult.
The neatest, best kept buildings in the village were the mission chapeland presbytery. Father Dumoulin was setting a good example to his flockby cleaning up his garden patch. Looking up from his work, he greetedLouis by name. The priest was a striking looking man, tall and strong offrame, his height emphasized by his long, straight, black cassock. Hisface was strong too. Walter, though not of Father Dumoulin's church, feltinstantly that here was a man to command the respect of white men,half-breeds, and savages. When the priest learned that the boy was one ofthe newly arrived immigrants, he asked a number of questions.
Near Fort Daer, in the edge of the woods bordering the river, a clusterof better kept cabins housed some of the more thrifty of the Scotch. Inone of the largest and best of the houses, the two lads found the MacKayfamily settled for the winter. Neil was eager to arrange for an immediatebuffalo hunt, but Louis replied that he could not go for a while. Therewere things he must do for his mother, and Walter did not want to be awaywhen his friends arrived.
From the MacKay cabin the boys went on to Fort Daer. Like all the fortsin that part of the world, Daer and Pembina House, the old Northwestpost, consisted of log stockades enclosing a few buildings. They stood onopposite sides of the Pembina and the land about each had been cleared ofmost of its trees and bushes. The Pembina was a good-sized stream, deep,sluggish, and like the Red, colored with the mud it carried. At Fort DaerWalter talked with some of his countrymen, who were feeling somewhatencouraged. They had been well fed, and were grateful for warmth andshelter. Real winter, the bitterly cold winter of this northern country,might come at any moment now to stay.
If Walter was to hunt to help supply himself and the Periers with food,he needed a gun. With Louis he went to the Company store at Pembina Houseto buy one. He could not pay for it in money, but hoped that he might getit on credit, paying later in buffalo skins and other furs. The HudsonBay Company frowned on fur hunting as well as on Indian trading by thecolonists, but the settlers would be obliged to hunt that winter if theywished to eat. Louis thought that if Walter agreed to turn over to theCompany the pelts of the food animals he killed, and not to engage inbarter with the Indians, he might arrange for a gun and ammunition.
The two were explaining Walter's needs, when an Indian burst suddenlyinto the room. His buckskin clothing was covered with mud. Blood mattedhis black hair and stained one dark cheek which was disfigured by a greatscar. His eyes glittered, and his manner was wild and excited. The boysthought for a moment that he was going to attack the trader. The Indian,however, had no weapons,--no gun, hatchet, or knife. He began to talkrapidly, angrily. Walter could not understand a word of Ojibwa, but hecould see that the Indian's speech startled both Louis and the trader.The latter replied briefly in the same tongue, then darted out of thedoor, the Ojibwa after him. Before Walter could voice a question, Louiswas gone too. The Swiss boy turned to follow, hesitated, and decided tostay where he was.
In a few moments Louis was back again. "What is it? Are the Siouxcoming?" Walter asked anxiously.
"No, unless this affair is the work of spies."
"What affair? Could you understand what he said?"
"Most of it. He was so wild it was hard to follow him. He has beenattacked. He was down at the river loading his canoe. Two men came along.While one was talking to him, the other stole up behind him, knocked himover the head, and 'put him to sleep.' When he came to his senses, thegoods he had just bought and his gun and knife were gone. There was ahole cut in his canoe. Of course he may be lying. He may have hidden thethings and made up the story."
"Why would he do that?"
"To get a double supply of goods and ammunition. The trader believes himthough. He is sending men in search of those two fellows."
When the trader returned he added further details to the story. TheOjibwa, he said, was an honest, trustworthy hunter, who had been bringinghis furs to the Company for several years. He had come alone from RedLake to get his winter's supplies and ammunition. Having finished hisbargaining, he was loading his boat at the riverside when another canoe,with two men, appeared, coming up stream. One of the men shouted agreeting in Ojibwa, they turned their boat in to shore, jumped out, andengaged him in talk. Entirely unsuspicious of treachery, Scar Face wasanswering one man's questions, when the other struck him from behind andknocked him senseless.
"Does he know the fellows?" questioned Louis.
"He never saw them before."
"Could they be Sioux passing themselves off as Ojibwa?"
"No, one was a white man, he says, and the other,--the man who attackedhim,--was in white man's clothes, but looked like an Indian. He wore hishair in braids, had no beard, and spoke like a Cree. He was a very tallman, strong and broad shouldered."
"Do you think he is telling the truth?"
"I'm sure he is. Scar Face is a reliable fellow, always pays his debts,and has never tried to deceive us in any way. You saw the blood on hisface. He has a bad cut on the side of his head. One of our men isdressing it for him. No, he isn't lying. His description of the men isgood, and he was not in the fort when they were here."
"They have been here? You know who they are?"
"I think so; beyond doubt. Two fellows answering to the description werehere this morning and bought some tobacco. They said they had just comefrom St. Boniface with a letter for Father Dumoulin. The white man is aDeMeuron, a red-faced fellow with a sandy beard. I don't know his name.The other one is a _bois brule_ voyageur called Murray."
"Not Black Murray?" cried Walter.
"That's the name he goes by. You know him?"
"_Vraiment_, we know him," put in Louis emphatically. "So he did not goup the Assiniboine with the western brigade, but came this way. He musthave started before we did, to get here by water so soon. We found histracks and those of his companion, where they had landed to boil theirkettle. They were ahead of us then. He wasted little time at FortDouglas, _le Murrai Noir_."
"Whatever possessed him to attack that Ojibwa?" queried the puzzledtrader.
"I think I can guess," replied Louis slowly, "though I know not for sure.He wanted the Ojibwa's supplies. He plans, I think, to become a trader.To trade he must have some goods to commence with. This is not the firsttime he has obtained them dishonestly." Louis told the story of themissing sack of pemmican and Murray's bundle of trade articles.
The Hudson Bay man listened intently and nodded thoughtfully. "That mustbe what the rascal is up to. Well, I have sent men out on horseback, u
pand down the Red River. The thieves haven't come by here on the Pembina.They're not likely to show themselves in the neighborhood of the forts.Perhaps they will be caught, though I doubt it. They have a good startand there is plenty of cover to hide in until the going is safe. It isuseless to try to overtake them by canoe."
South from Hudson Bay: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys Page 16