The Wilderness Trail

For a little while, there was silence, as the older one pierced the younger with his glance.

“I have so much to say to you, Captain McTavish, that I hardly know where to begin,” he said finally, speaking in a calm, but strong, voice. “I see you here under most peculiar circumstances.”

“Yes, sir, you do, and, because of their nature, I am both glad and sorry.”

“I am only sorry,” came back the stern reply. “However, I have been busy thanking heaven all night that you were deserted in the right spot to drag my little girl from the water, and save her life. It was a brave act, McTavish, and I appreciate it.”

“Thank you, sir. I thought I was saving Charley Seguis until afterward.”

“You would have been a fool not to throw him back in the water, if it had been he.” The factor's tones dripped venom like a snake's mouth at the mention of the half-breed. “But will you kindly explain to me why you broke out of Fort Severn?

“Because I considered my imprisonment there an injustice. But that is only my feeling in the matter. There was, also, a duty side to the question. I could not remain there longer, and feel that I was a man.”

“And what was this duty, pray?” The voice was sarcastic.

“The finding of J – your daughter.”

“What right have you to consider yourself so duty-bound in that direction that you overturn discipline, disregard my commands, and make a laughing-stock of me?”

“Only the right of a lover, Mr. Fitzpatrick. To that right, I set no limits.”

“You are very quick to find an imagined right, young man,” Fitzpatrick said, grimly. “How about myself, the girl's father, the one who, most of all, should give up everything to such a search? Did I leave the Company's business to take care of itself?”

“No, but it is well I did, or else you would never have seen Jean again. I don't think, Mr. Fitzpatrick, that there is anything gained arguing in this circle. What else have you to say to me?”

“My daughter has told me everything,” went on the factor painfully, shifting on his rough bed. “In fact, she got quite excited over your chivalrous treatment of her, while you were together. Of course I believe my daughter, and, when she tells me that you acted merely as friends, I take her word. At the same time, Captain McTavish, there does not come to my mind the slightest reason why you should have forced yourself into the same cabin with her.”

Donald briefly explained the situation, outlining the treachery of Maria and her Indian son, Tom, who should, by this time, be safe in Fort Severn.

“If I had not done as I did, I should have frozen to death,” he concluded.

“Better you should,” cried the factor passionately, “than that my little girl should be ruined for life before the whole world.”

“How will she be ruined?” demanded the young man, crisply. “No one knows the story except Braithwaite and his two men, and I think we can keep their mouths closed easily enough.”

“It is impossible!” said the other. “You know yourself that Napoleon Sky's tongue is swiveled two ways, and is the only successful perpetual-motion machine ever invented. If we bribed them, we could be held up regularly for blackmail, and even that would fail; the news would leak out somewhere. I know these wild places; I know what rumor can do. Perhaps, the wind whispers it; perhaps, the birds carry it, or the streams call it out at night. Whatever is done, I know this: that rumor will leap across a practically uninhabited country like wild-fire, and, by the time the brigades come down in the spring, I could not hold my head up among the curious eyes, jerked thumbs, and tongues in cheek. What I want to know, Captain McTavish, is, what can you do about it?”

“Is the Reverend Mr. Gates in the camp?”

“Yes.”

“I'll marry Jean this afternoon, providing she will have me?”

“You shall not!” cried the factor suddenly, with great fierceness, turning his fiery eyes upon the younger man in an expression of hate. “You shall not – ever!”

“Really, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” replied Donald, gently, “I cannot agree to that, and I might as well tell you now that I intend to marry Jean somewhere, some time, if human effort can bring it about, and the sooner the better.”

“You wouldn't dare say that to me, if I weren't laid up,” hissed Fitzpatrick, his hands clenching and unclenching.

“Yes, sir, I would! I have never said it before, because I hadn't the right. Jean loves me, and will marry me; that is all I want to know.”

“And you leave me, her father, out of it? You don't even ask my permission?”

“Why should I? You said I should never marry her. If that is your attitude, I don't care to consult you; I shall go ahead with this matter in my own way.”

“Look here, McTavish!” The voice was suddenly calm, but its timbre held a note that drew Donald's immediate attention. “Do you realize, when you say that, that you are deliberately, and to my face, riding over all authority, not only from the Company's standpoint, but from a father's? I am talking to you now in coolness, and I ask well-considered replies. Do you realize that you are damning yourself forever in my sight by your words and your attitude?”

“I am sorry, sir,” replied the other, with genuine regret; “but, in matters of this kind, I can only consult my own feelings and determinations. You ask what is impossible of me; I ask what is impossible of you. I think we had better separate while outwardly calm to avoid any more useless and bitter words.”

“I am glad to know your attitude,” retorted the factor, dryly. “Now, let me put to you one more question. I beseech you, for your own good and happiness, to answer it as I wish. You may have a week, if you like to think it over. I ask you, for the last time: Will you give up all hope or thought of ever marrying Jean? Will you promise never to see her or communicate with her again? Will you retire to your post, and stay there until I can get you shifted to the West?”

With the lover, there could be but one answer, but, for some almost occult reason, he hesitated. The tone, grave, portentous, almost menacing, the paternal, kindly attitude, the pleading that unconsciously crept through the other's words; all these gave Donald to know that some crisis was at hand. For an instant, he thought of the silent, heavy moment before the breaking of a summer thunder-storm; and, mentally, he prepared himself for some sort of a shock – what, he did not know. Then, finally, he answered the factor's questions.

“I do not need a week, a day, or an hour, to think these matters over,” he said. “All I can give is a final and inclusive, 'No!' to all of them.”

The factor stirred in his place, as much as his wounded shoulder would permit. All the paternal was gone from him now, and all the pleading. The eye that regarded the young man glittered balefully, and the lips were parted in a cruel smile.

“Well, sir,” he cried, almost triumphantly, “I shall have to tell you then that it is impossible for you to marry Jean under any circumstances.”

“Why?”

“Because, sir, you are not the legitimate son of Donald McTavish, chief commissioner of this company. You have no standing, and can inherit no money. If you are lucky, you may marry the daughter of a half-breed some time; but a white girl, even a poor white trapper's daughter, wouldn't have you.” He stopped, and watched cunningly the effect of his words… This was the sweetest moment of his life.

Donald, for his part, smiled easily. This was merely the fabrication of a feverish brain, he told himself.

“Will you kindly explain your assertion, sir?” he asked. “You haven't yet made yourself quite clear.”

“I mean,” said Fitzpatrick bluntly, “that, before your father married your mother in Montreal, he had contracted a previous marriage in the hunting-ground; a marriage amply attested, of which the certificate still exists. That, of course, makes his second marriage in Montreal illegal, makes him a bigamist, and you illegitimate. Moreover (and this is the best joke of all), unknown to him a son was born, to his first marriage, and that son, according to law, should inherit the family wealth and position. Now – ”

“Stop! Stop! You fiend!” shouted Donald, his hands to his ears, and a look of fury on his face. “Oh, God! If you weren't lying there, if your white hairs didn't protect you, I swear to heaven I'd kill you, if I swung for it. What you have made of my mother! What you have made of her!” It was characteristic of his nature that he thought of some one else in a crisis. So it had been in his boyhood; so it was now when the structure of his life came tumbling about his ears, just when it had seemed for a little while most beautiful.

The triumph died out of Fitzpatrick's face, and was supplanted by an expression of fear. But few times had he ever felt fear, bodily fear. This was one of them. Yet, since there was nothing to say, he kept silent. Donald walked up and down aimlessly, until he had won some measure of control over himself, his body shuddering with the struggle. Then, he faced his persecutor.

“How do you know this?” he asked, in a thin voice he scarcely recognized as his own. “What proof have you? Where did you learn it? If you can't show indisputable proofs for every word you say, I'll have you bounded out of the Company like a dog. I'll hound you over the face of the earth. I'll never let you rest, until you drop into your grave, and then I'll keep your stinking memory green as long as I live.”

Fitzpatrick smiled evilly beneath his mustache.

“And, if you do,” he asked, “how about – Jean?”

Trapped by his own vindictiveness, Donald could only groan aloud.

“Jean, Jean!” he muttered in desolation of spirit, “I wish she were here now.” Then, to Fitzpatrick: “You said there was a certificate. Where is it? Who has it? Who is the woman?”

“That I won't tell you.”

In one bound, Donald had leaped to the side of the bunk. He seized the factor by his wounded shoulder, and shook savagely, growling between his teeth: “You won't, eh, you won't tell me? I'll see about that!”

The old man, in mortal agony, strove to writhe out of the iron clutch. He tried to call for help, but the pain was too great for words. Finally, a bellow like that of a wounded bull escaped from between his grinding teeth.

“Ye-es, stop – I'll tell – oh, my God —stop!”

Donald released his hold, and the factor, with closed eyes, dropped back, half-fainting, upon the bunk, where he lay breathing stertorously.

“Speak! Who is the woman?” Donald commanded.

“Maria, the old squaw,” came the gasping reply.

“Has she the certificate?”

“Yes, I think so; I'm not sure. She had it last summer.”

“And this – this son you speak of, is – ?” Donald could not say the name.

“Charley Seguis.”

Bewildered, distraught, blinded, Donald turned on his heel, and, groping for support, staggered from the cabin.

CHAPTER XVII

THE COMPANION OF MANY TRAILS

Into the minds and hearts of the folk who live their lives in the wild, there are bred certain animal traits. The good trapper learns that, like rabbit or bob-cat, he must be able to freeze into statuesque immobility at the sudden appearance of danger. Nature, who does her best to protect her children, sees to it that the trapper's costume soon resembles nothing so much as a hoary tree-trunk. And the men who tramp the wild gradually assimilate the silent, furtive ways of the intelligent forest folk. The wounded caribou drags himself to some inaccessible thicket, there either to gain back strength or die unobserved and alone. Sickness and feebleness are the only inexcusable faults of wild animal life, and offer sufficient reason for death if hunger is fierce. Unconsciously, Donald McTavish had absorbed the trait of mute sufferings from his years in the heart of nature. Not only had he absorbed it, but it had been handed down to him through generations of wilderness-loving McTavishes; it was part of his blood, just as the hatred of wolves as destroyers of fur-bearing game was part of it.

So, now, with this burden upon his heart almost greater than he could bear, he hurried through the camp, seeing no one, not even hearing the greetings of friends who had not spoken to him before. At his tent, he mechanically fastened on his snowshoes, and strode away into the depths of the forest with his hurt, like a wounded animal. When, finally, the sounds from the camp no longer reached him, he sat down on a fallen tree that broke through the surface of the snow. For a long while, he did not reason: reason was beyond him now. He felt as though something had been done to his brain that rendered it stunned and helpless. Even yet, he did not fully realize the thing that had come to him.

“That fiend lies, curse him; he lies, I say!” he muttered, presently.

“But yet, if it wasn't true, he wouldn't dare,” was the unanswerable reply.

He knew Angus Fitzpatrick well enough to realize that the old man never took a step without being sure it would bear his weight. He had always been so. It was not likely that he would change now, particularly when there was so much at stake.

And yet, what had he, Donald himself, done? Nothing! If this accusation were true, it only reflected on his father and his father's past. The son winced at that, for he and the commissioner had always been the best of companions. He could not believe that the fine, tall, distinguished gentleman of his boyhood tottered thus on the brink of ruin. If so, that father's ideals, his training, his life, had been one long hypocrisy.

Personally speaking, this sin on the part of his father seemed utterly impossible to Donald. Theoretically speaking, it was probable enough, for men in the wilds were still men, with the call of nature strong in them, and it was the usual thing for young fellows in distant, lonely posts to marry the daughters of chieftains. In fact, there was not a post in all the Hudson Bay's territory of which he had ever heard but what had a similar romance in its records. And, while in Donald's generation the practise had fallen off greatly, yet in those before, it had been considered nothing out of the ordinary.

Pondering thus, at last the realization came that, although his father had done these things, yet it was he, the son, who must pay for them. Old Fitzpatrick would never dare beard the commissioner in his high lair; if that had been his aim, he would have done it long since. Why, then, had the factor withheld his bolt until now?

Because McTavish loved Jean? Possibly. That, at least, had brought the matter to a head. But there was something else, deeper, and this affair with the girl had given opportunity to strike.

Donald thought back. Now that he had a tangible motive in view, his mind shook off its paralysis and worked more easily; he was more his former self. He remembered that, when Fitzpatrick had first gone to Fort Severn, the elder McTavish had soon followed as factor at York. The former was the senior as regarded age, but the latter was the bigger man in every way. Consequently, when promotion came, McTavish had been elevated over the head of Fitzpatrick. As was natural with any man in Fitzpatrick's position, there must have been heart-burning and jealousy.

How much more so, if that man were narrow, choleric, and filled with a blind sense of loyalty and service? Donald had no doubt now that the old factor had hidden the gall of disappointment all these years, letting it poison his vitals until he was venom to the very marrow against the clan of McTavish. His sense of duty and reverence for office had forbade his acting against the new commissioner, personally. But, when the commissioner's son came out into the calling of his ancestors, no barriers opposed the wreaking of his long-delayed vengeance. For more than three years, Donald had been in the present district. He was convinced that during all this time Fitzpatrick had been rooting among the archives of his father's past in an endeavor to unearth something he might use. The search had been unsuccessful until late in the summer, when one of his spying Indians had produced Maria and her claim from the far-off Kaniapiskau section in Ungava.

Since then, the machinery had worked smoothly under Fitzpatrick's direction, and now the stroke had fallen. But though his own suffering must be the more intense, Donald knew that the blow had been aimed to glance from him full into the face of his father. For the elder McTavish had no higher dream in this world than that his only son should rise to honor and distinction in the traditional family profession.

“If I am chief commissioner,” he reasoned, “there is every opportunity for my son to become governor, achieve a baronetcy, and found an English line.” This was the dream of his life, and he had intimated as much to Donald on their last meeting, two years before.

It was the foundation of this dream that Fitzpatrick was now prepared to sweep away. Already, the flood of rumor and ill repute was tearing at the base of it. For a time, Donald forgot his own misery in the realization of what it would all mean to his father. More clearly, now, he saw the careful plans, the perfect details, the inevitable conclusion.

“If only murder weren't against the law!” he muttered, twisting his fingers together until they cracked.

And, then, there came to him the one possible solution to the whole difficulty. He could sweep everything away by his own sacrifice. Now, in fifteen minutes, he could still these evil voices by going back to Fitzpatrick and accepting the old man's conditions, never to communicate with Jean again and to be transferred to the far West.

Never to communicate with Jean again! Never to touch her hand or her hair! Never to hear her voice! To go on thus for a week, for a month, for endless weeks and months and years – forever! heaven! He could not do it! Had he no rights? Was he to be the helpless manikin worked by every string of evil circumstance and voice of ill?

Yet, what other way was there? He could not wantonly haul the figure of his father down from its pedestal of blameless life. And his mother and sister! Theirs would indeed be a frightful position. No, there was no other way out.

What explanation of his desertion would ever be vouchsafed to Jean, he did not know. He would try to communicate with her before he went. It would be hard on her, this separation, particularly if reasons could not be given. She would never understand. She would go through life blaming him, perhaps, in the depths of her heart… As for himself, his own future was the thing that concerned him least. He would start again, he supposed, and work up once more. Nothing mattered much, now.

Resolved to have another immediate interview with Fitzpatrick, Donald got slowly to his feet, and began to retrace his steps to the camp. He had not gone a dozen yards when a sharp voice called out, “Halt!”

McTavish swung around, and found himself looking into the muzzle of a rifle that projected from behind a tree-trunk.

But he had no sooner turned than a joyful cry rang out, and a man appeared running toward him. A moment later, he recognized Peter Rainy. Glad beyond words to see a friendly face, Donald put his arms about the faithful old Indian, and clung to him desperately, as a frightened child clings to its mother.

“Master, master, what is it?” cried Peter, amazed and frightened.

But the young man did not reply for a while. Then, he sat down with his comrade of many trails.

“Tell me what happened to you, first, and then I'll give you the queerest half-hour you ever had,” he said.

And Rainy told his story: The night Maria struck down Donald, she did as much for Peter, but with a different purpose. No sooner had he been rendered helpless than he had been bound to one of the sledges. Then, both dog-trains had been harnessed, and a midnight march begun. Where they had gone, for days Rainy did not know, and his companions did not enlighten him. At last, one morning when it was snowing heavily, the Indians did a characteristic thing. They tied him securely to a tree with ropes, the ends of which were in the campfire. A little powder was sprinkled here and there to aid the flames that slowly crawled toward the captive. Beside him they put a rifle and some ammunition, along with a small pack of provisions; but they took both dog-trains. The idea was that, when the ropes had been eaten away by fire the falling snow would have covered the tracks of the flying pair, so that Rainy could not pursue them.

What with the fear of bob-cats and panthers, the Indian had passed a harrowing half-day, and, as soon as loosed, he started straight for Sturgeon Lake. The reason Maria had traveled around with him so long, Peter explained, was that they wanted to be sure of McTavish's death before the old trapper should be released, and could start in search of his master.

When the narrative of danger and duplicity was finished, Donald took hold of Peter's arm.

“How long were you with my father?” he asked.

“From the time he came to York factory until he was married in Montreal. I stayed a year with him there, but found I was dying of homesickness for the woods, and had to get back to them. But I went up when you were born, and saw him and you regularly every year after that, until he was ready to send you into the woods in the summer-time.”

“But before he came to York factory? Do you know anything of his life then?

“Only hearsay. Stones of his brave deeds and big hunting on the Labrador and westward! He had a sense of game that comes very rarely; he moved with the animals instinctively, so that the best pelts were always his. And he had luck. One year, he brought in three of the six silver-fox skins taken that winter in the whole of Canada. He was a wonderful hunter.”

“But, Peter, did you ever hear anything about his relations with the Indians?” Donald demanded. “Was he ever fond of a chiefs daughter? Did he ever mar – ?” One look at the old Indian's face stopped the question, for, caught unaware, the rising of this skeleton shook Rainy to the depths.

“No, master, no, n-o, n-n – ”

“Peter, don't lie to me! You've never done it yet. I'm in too much trouble to be lied to. I know the truth now, despite your denials, so you might as well admit it. Didn't my father marry old Maria at one time?

“Yes,” said Peter simply. “But how did you know it?”

Then, Donald told his story in full, closing with his determination to go to the factor and accept the conditions imposed.

But, at that, Peter Rainy protested violently.

“No,” he cried, “never! Put no trust in that old wolf, Fitzpatrick. Once he has got you under his heel, he'll grind and grind, until there's not as much as powder left. What good for you to go away West, eh? He'll let you get started well, and then along will come queer rumors and unexplained things about you. At last, something will drive you away, and you'll start again. Once more, you'll be driven out, and so it will go. Do I not know? Have I not seen it work?

“But I can't resist him, and have my whole family dragged through the mud, can I?” Donald remonstrated, in despair.

“Yes, this man Fitzpatrick is bound to drag it through the mud anyway. He hasn't waited all these years for his revenge to let it slide through his hands that easily, has he, do you suppose? His whole happiness in life now rests on your disgrace and that of your family. It will come, whatever you may do, and it's much better to fight to the last wolf than put your trust in a man like the factor.”

So, they talked for more than an hour, Peter Rainy heartening his young master in this desperate plight. The old Indian declared that a woman as malicious as Maria must have her vulnerable spot, that she might be bribed; in fact, that a hundred ways of removing the obstruction might be come at. Presently, Donald caught a little of his companion's fire, and began to warm to the project.

“Peter,” he cried finally, “I'll do it on one condition, and that condition may be the death of you.”

“What is it?”

“That you start to-night for Winnipeg, and bring my father North. Upon him really rests the burden of blame and of proof; if he wants to save himself and the rest of us, he must come out here and do it.”

“Wisely spoken, my son. The thought was in my mind. When I arrive in Winnipeg, your father will know I have crossed the wastes for only one thing – and he will come.”