South from Hudson Bay: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

“Oh, yes. Wait a moment.” Walter had remembered his gun and birds. He ran to where they lay, and, returning, thrust the two fat geese into Johan’s hands. “Take them,” he cried. “They are good eating and we have more.”

Walter did not accompany the cart train to Fort Daer. He and the Brabant boys made speed to the cabin, where, by the light of a candle of buffalo tallow, he read his letters. There were two, one from Mr. Perier, the other from Elise. Mr. Perier’s was brief. The trip had been a very hard one, but he and the children had come through safely. Matthieu had given him Walter’s note, and he appreciated the boy’s thought for their comfort. It seemed best, however, for them to remain at Fort Douglas. He was suffering with a bad cold and was scarcely able to travel farther. One of the DeMeurons had shown them great kindness. He had offered to share his cabin with them and had assured them that by hunting and fishing he could provide food for all.

“I am disappointed,” Mr. Perier wrote, “that I cannot open a shop. All my chemical and medical supplies were lost when our boat was wrecked. I saved only a few packages of herb seeds that I was carrying in my pockets. I intend in the spring to plant an herb garden. Through Matthieu I hope to obtain a place in the buffalo wool factory for the winter. Do not think that you must come back here to be with us. It would not be wise. If you have found food and shelter, remain where you are till spring. Then you can return and we will begin cultivating our land. You need not be concerned for us, for we have fallen among friends. Our nearest neighbor will be Marianne Scheidecker who is to be married to-morrow to one of the ex-soldiers. Several of them have found wives among our Swiss girls. I would not want a daughter of mine to marry in such haste. I am glad Elise is still a little girl.”

Elise’s letter, dated November 4th, the day of arrival at Fort Douglas, told more of the journey. The second division had traveled slowly, and with many delays. On September the twentieth another boat from Fort York, carrying the Rev. John West, the English clergyman of the Selkirk Colony, had overtaken the Swiss. The first of October the weather had turned very cold, and some nights the travelers had nearly frozen, especially when everything was so wet or frost covered that the fires would not burn. In a storm on Lake Winnipeg, the boat the Periers were in was wrecked.

“No one was drowned,” wrote Elise, “but we were all soaked, and we lost most of our food and blankets and other things. The men had to cut down trees and split them into boards to mend our boat, and that took a long time. It rained and snowed, and the nights were terribly cold. M. West gave Max and me one of his blankets. We had plenty of wood for fires, but very little food left, only some barley that we boiled. The weather was so stormy the men could not catch fish, but they shot a few birds. We ate a big owl and a raven that M. West shot. It was a week before we could go on. Then Samuel Scheidecker was taken sick and died, and we stopped at an island to bury him. I feel so sorry for the Scheideckers. By the time we came to the mouth of the Red River we were starving, but there were Indians there, and the chief, Peguis, gave us dried fish.”

Elise went on to say that her father had a bad cough and needed a warm place to stay. So Sergeant Kolbach had kindly taken them in. “This house is only one room with a loft above that has a floor of loose boards and a ladder instead of a stairway. But there is a fireplace, and it is warm and dry. M. Kolbach sleeps in the loft and lets us have the room. It is rather dirty, but I have cleaned it up a little and will do more to-morrow. We shall be comfortable here and kind Mr. West wants Max and me to go to his school and learn English. We miss you very much, Walter, but Father says you must not come back here till spring. We are going to be all right now. It is so good to be warm and dry and have enough to eat, and in the spring we can be together again.”

Walter read this letter aloud to Louis and his mother. “The poor child!” Mrs. Brabant exclaimed again and again. At the close Louis said earnestly, “That is a brave little girl, your little sister.”

Walter was disappointed that his friends were not coming to Pembina, but relieved to know that they were safe and comfortable. He was quite ready to go back to Fort Douglas and share any hardships they might have to undergo, but Mr. Perier had forbidden him to do so. Apprentices in those days seldom thought of disobeying their masters. Moreover Walter felt that his return to Fort Douglas would probably do more harm than good. There was no employment for him, no way to earn a living, and very likely the Governor would not let him stay. Louis was strongly against his going back.

Walter was not wholly at ease about his friends. “I wonder,” he pondered, “if that DeMeuron really will provide for them. What will happen if he doesn’t keep his promise?”

“If there is not food for them they will be sent on here to Pembina later.”

“Could they make the trip when the snow is deep and the weather very cold?”

“Oh, yes. By dog sled the journey is easier and, if the trail is good, quicker than by cart. Dogs can travel where ponies can not. Write to your friends and tell them if all is not well to send word to you here, and you and I will go get them. Ask someone at Fort Daer to send your letter the first time anyone goes to Fort Douglas. Every week or so someone comes and goes between the two forts. What is the name of that DeMeuron they live with?”

Walter glanced at Mr. Perier’s letter. “Kolbach, Sergeant Kolbach. Louis,” he exclaimed, “that was the name of the man with Murray!”

“Kolbach, yes, that was surely his name.”

“I wonder if he can be the same man who spoke to me when we landed at Fort Douglas. He had a red face and a sandy beard. I don’t like it, Louis, their living with that fellow!”

“No,” the Canadian boy agreed thoughtfully. “We must go to Père Dumoulin and ask him about that Kolbach. He may be a wild fellow, and yet be good to your friends. Oh, yes, that is quite possible.”

The two boys went to see the priest the next morning. They found him at the mission in the little room that served him as bedroom, living-room and study.

“Père Dumoulin,” Louis asked, “was the man who brought you that letter from Fort Douglas Sergeant Kolbach?”

“Sergeant Kolbach? Oh no,” came the prompt reply. “It was Fritz Kolbach, the sergeant’s brother.”

Walter felt relieved. “What kind of a man is Sergeant Kolbach?” he inquired.

“Why do you ask?” The priest looked at the boy keenly.

Walter explained, and Father Dumoulin listened with interest.

“Sergeant Kolbach,” he said thoughtfully, “is a very different person from his younger brother. The sergeant is a man of influence among the DeMeurons. I do not know him well, but I should think him a somewhat domineering man, used to authority and fond of exercising it, but he is quieter, more self-controlled, more steady going than most of the DeMeurons. He has usually exercised his influence over his fellows in the interest of law and order. I know no reason why you should fear that he will not treat your friends well, since he has chosen to take them into his house.”

“His brother lives with him?” asked Louis.

“I do not think so. Every DeMeuron has his own land, and the Kolbachs are too unlike to live together peaceably.”

Reassured by Father Dumoulin’s information, Walter did not think of disobeying Mr. Perier’s instructions. At Fort Daer the lad obtained a few sheets of paper, and, borrowing quill pen and ink from a good-natured apprentice clerk, he wrote a letter to Mr. Perier and another to Elise, addressing them in Sergeant Kolbach’s care. The clerk promised to send them at the first opportunity.

XVII

CHRISTMAS AT PEMBINA

There was no reason now why Walter should hesitate to be away from the settlement, yet the proposed buffalo hunt was postponed again. The animals were far from Pembina that autumn. For miles to the south and west, the prairie had been swept by fires started by careless Indians or half-breeds who had allowed their camp fires to spread. In that blackened desolation there was no feed for buffalo. The boys had expected to go beyond the burned country in search of the herds, but, before they were ready to start, a heavy fall of snow made horseback travel impossible. Storm winds swept the prairie, and Louis shook his head at the prospect.

“This will drive the beasts yet farther away,” he said. “They will go where the snow is not so deep and where there are trees for shelter. We could travel with dog sleds of course, but we might search for long to find buffalo, and to hunt them on foot is much more difficult than on horseback. But perhaps this snow will not last.”

With the coming of deep snow Walter was given his first lessons in snowshoeing and dog driving. Learning to walk with the clumsy rackets was not easy, he found. He got more than one tumble before he mastered the art. Driving a dog sled looked simple enough, when Louis hitched up his dogs and took his little sisters for a ride. The three animals differed considerably in size, appearance and breed, but worked well together. Hitched tandem, they were off with a dash, the little bells on their harness jingling merrily. They followed a trail already broken by other sleds, and Louis ran alongside shouting and flourishing his whip. After a turn on the prairie, they were back again.

“Come, you shall have a ride now,” Louis said to Walter, as the little girls, – cheeks red and black eyes sparkling, – unrolled themselves from the fur robes.

Curious to try this new mode of travel, Walter seated himself on the robes. “Marche donc,” cried Louis, and the team was away, the toboggan slipping smoothly over the well-packed trail. Running alongside or standing behind Walter on the sled, Louis urged his dogs to their best speed. When, after a first spurt, they slowed to a steadier pace, he suggested that Walter try driving.

“Stay where you are. You don’t need to get up. There must be weight to hold the tabagane down.” Handing Walter the whip, Louis stepped off the sled.

Louis seemed to manage the team easily, and Walter had no doubt of his own ability to drive. He shouted to the dogs in imitation of his friend, and, waving the long whip high in air, flicked the leader’s back with the lash.

The dogs must have noticed the difference in the voice. They must have sensed the awkwardness and inexperience of the new driver. Without warning, the leader, – a woolly haired, bushy tailed beast with fox-like head and sharp pointed ears, – swerved from the trail into untracked snow. In vain Walter tried to get him back on the track. The dogs were out for a frolic and they had it. They bounded and floundered through the soft spots and raced across hard packed stretches. The prairie, Walter discovered, was by no means so smooth as it looked. The wind had swept the snow into waves and billows. The toboggan mounted the windward side of a snow wave, balanced on the crest, and bumped down abruptly. Shouts and commands were of no avail. Walter could but cling to the swaying, jouncing, skidding sled, and let the dogs go where they would.

Suddenly the beasts concluded they had had about enough of the sport. It was time for the grand climax. With a quick turn, they swung about towards home. The toboggan turned too, clear over, and Walter went sprawling. When he picked himself up, the provoking animals were sitting quietly in the snow, more or less tangled up in their traces, tongues hanging out, laughing at him. Louis, shouting hilariously, came running up on his snowshoes to right the toboggan.

For a moment Walter was angry. “You knew what would happen,” he cried accusingly. “What did you do to make them act that way?”

“No, no,” laughed Louis. “I did nothing. Askimé knew you had never driven before, and so he played you a trick. He is a wise dog, Askimé, but he deserves a beating.”

The leader of the team was a hardy, swift, intelligent beast, almost pure Eskimo, as his name indicated. The other dogs were of more mixed breed. Both had sharp muzzles and thick, straight hair, brown with white spots on one, dark wolf-gray on the other. Louis was proud of the husky, whom he had raised from puppyhood. Nevertheless he picked up his whip and started towards Askimé.

Walter, his flash of anger past, intervened. “No, don’t thrash him. He was just having a little fun. He has taken the conceit out of me, but I’ll get even with him yet. I’ll learn to drive those dogs and make them behave.”

Louis was still grinning. “Truly you will learn,” he hastened to say, “and – well – perhaps,” his grin broadened, “I might have told you more before you tried this first time. Next time it will go better.”

It did go better next time, and before the winter was over, Walter could handle the dogs satisfactorily, though they never obeyed him as well as their real master.

The snow remained, and the buffalo did not return to the neighborhood of Pembina. Winter had set in in earnest, but Walter was used to cold winters and the Brabant cabin was snug and comfortable. Even the bitter winds that swept the prairie could not find an entrance between the well chinked logs.

The Swiss lad cherished the hope of spending Christmas with the Periers. He planned to go to the Selkirk settlement with a dog train that expected to leave Fort Daer December twenty-first or twenty-second, but he was disappointed. A hard snowstorm, a genuine blizzard, with a high wind out of the north, prevented the sleds from getting away, and he was forced to remain in Pembina.

On Christmas morning he went with the Brabant family to Father Dumoulin’s mission. There was no Protestant church in Pembina, he liked and respected Father Dumoulin, and he did not want to hurt Mrs. Brabant and Louis by refusing to go with them. The boy was surprised to see how crowded the mission chapel was with the Canadians and bois brulés, men, women, and children. Very reverently and devoutly the rough, half savage hunters and voyageurs joined in the service and listened to the priest’s words.

The rest of the day the simple, light-hearted people of Pembina celebrated in a very different fashion, feasting, dancing, gaming, and drinking. Gambling and fondness for liquor were the besetting sins of the half-breeds as well as of the Indians, though Father Dumoulin was trying hard to teach them to restrain these passions.

Walter had come to know the rough, wild, but generous and hospitable bois brulés well. He could not decline all their invitations to join in the merrymaking. Moreover he was young, and homesick, and he wanted to share in the festivities. He went with Louis and Neil MacKay to several of the cabins during the afternoon and early evening, where the three ate as much as they could manage of the food pressed upon them. The gaming was carried on principally by the older men, the younger ones preferring to dance. With a little diplomacy, drinking could be avoided without giving offence. Louis and Neil, as well as Walter, had been brought up to be temperate. They did not hesitate to take part in the dancing.

Never had Walter seen such lively, agile jigging as some of the lithe, muscular, swarthy skinned half-breeds were capable of. Men and women were arrayed in their best, and the dark, smoke-blackened cabins were alive with the gay colors of striped shirts and calico dresses, fringed sashes, gaudy shawls, silk and cotton kerchiefs, ribbons, and Indian beadwork.

After dancing until they were weary, the three boys slipped away early, before the fun grew too fast and furious. Walter found it good to be out in the clean, cold air again, away from the heat and smoke and heavy odors of the tightly closed cabins.

The night was a beautiful one, clear and windless. To the north and northeast, from horizon to zenith, wavering, flashing bands and masses of light flooded the sky. Parting with Neil, Louis and Walter trudged through the snow towards the Brabant cabin. Both were absorbed in watching the aurora borealis, the ever changing rays and columns and spreading masses of white, green, and pale pink light, fading out in one spot only to flash up in another, in constant motion and never alike for two moments in succession. But when he turned from the beauty of the night to enter the cabin, there swept over Walter, in a great wave, the homesickness he had been holding at arms’ length all day. He thought of the Christmas of a year ago in Switzerland, and he was heartsick for the mountains and valleys and forests of his native land, – so different from these flat, monotonous prairies, – heartsick for his own people and their speech and ways. What kind of a Christmas had this been for Elise and Max, he wondered. Were they homesick too?

XVIII

MIRAGE OF THE PRAIRIE

Early in the New Year, Louis, Neil and Walter set out for the Pembina Mountains or the Hare Hills, as that ridge of rough land was sometimes called. New Year’s day, ushered in with the firing of muskets, was another occasion for merrymaking and hilarity in the settlement. Indeed the feasting, dancing, and gaiety had scarcely ceased day or night since Christmas. Many a bois brulé family had shared their winter supplies so generously with their guests that they had almost nothing left and would have to resort to hunting and fishing through the ice. Though they might starve before spring, the light-hearted, improvident half-breeds did not grudge what had been consumed in the festivities. They would do the same thing over again at the first opportunity.

The rapid decrease of supplies in the village gave Louis and Neil excuse for a hunting trip, and Walter was ready and eager to go along. At the Pembina Mountains they would be sure to find both game and fur animals, Louis asserted. He had been there the winter before and had found good hunting. On that trip he and his companion had come across an old and empty but snug log cabin that had been built by some hunting or trading party. He proposed to return to the old camp and stay several weeks.

Walter was the more ready to go because, on the last day of the old year, he had received word from the Periers that they were getting along all right. The letter, from Elise, was brought by a half-breed who had come from St. Boniface to be married on New Year’s day to a Pembina girl. Her father’s cough was much better, Elise wrote. He was working at the buffalo wool factory with Matthieu. Max had been disappointed to find that Mr. West’s school was a good two miles from Sergeant Kolbach’s home, too far for the little fellow to go and come in cold weather. “But we are both of us learning some English without going to school,” Elise added.

The cabin was warm, and they had enough to eat, principally pemmican, and fish caught in nets set under the ice in the rivers. “You know I did not like pemmican,” wrote Elise, “but now I am used to it. For Christmas we had a feast, a piece of fresh venison, and a pudding made with some wheat flour M. Kolbach had saved and with a sauce of melted sugar, the sugar the Indians make from the sap of the maple tree. Have you eaten any of that sugar, Walter? It is the best thing I have tasted since we came to this new land. You wrote to me that I must tell you if everything here did not go well. Of course it is not like home in Switzerland. We are not as comfortable or as happy as we were there, and sometimes Max and I are very lonely and homesick. Father does not complain of the hardships and is always planning what we are going to do when spring comes. We keep warm, we are well, and we have enough to eat, though we long for bread with butter, and milk, and cheese. I get the meals and wash and mend our clothes and keep the house clean. M. Kolbach says it is more comfortable than before we came. I can’t really like M. Kolbach, though I know I ought to, it is so good of him to have us here. He is rather harsh to Max sometimes, but not to me, and yet I feel a little afraid of him. Isn’t it strange that we can’t like people by just trying to, no matter how hard we try? But I am very grateful to M. Kolbach for taking care of us.”

This part of the letter troubled Walter a little, but, reading it over a second time, he concluded that Elise was merely homesick. Kolbach was very likely a rough sort of man, but he must have a kind heart or he would not do so much for strangers. There was no mention of the younger brother. Probably Elise knew nothing of him. Father Dumoulin thought Fritz Kolbach might not be on very good terms with the Sergeant. Perhaps after the robbery of the Indian, Fritz had not returned to St. Boniface. Undoubtedly the trader at Pembina had sent an account of that affair to Fort Douglas. Kolbach and Murray might not dare to show their faces there.

The day of their start for the Pembina Mountains, Louis and Walter were up before dawn. The morning was still and very cold. After packing their few supplies and belongings on the toboggan, the boys passed a long rawhide rope, or shaganappy, back and forth over the load and through the loops of the leather lashing that ran along the edges of the sled. Before the work was done their fingers were aching. They were glad to go back into the cabin for a breakfast of hot pemmican and tea.

As he went out again, Walter paused on the threshold to stare in amazement. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but the whole world had changed. He seemed to be standing in the center of a vast bowl. On every hand the country appeared to curve upward. And the distance was no longer distant! Groves of bare branched trees, streams, heights of land that he knew to be miles away had moved in around the settlement until they seemed only a few rods distant. To the west the line of hills, – Pembina Mountains, – that he had never glimpsed, even on the clearest day, as more than a faint blue line on the horizon, loomed up a mighty, flat-topped ridge. Once before, in December, Walter had seen the landscape transformed, but it was nothing to compare with this. Louis, familiar from childhood with the mirage of the prairie, declared he had never known such an extraordinary one.

Awed and wondering, the two lads stood gazing about them. Turning to the east, they watched a spreading ray of crimson light mount the sky from the soft, low lying, rose and gold bordered clouds at the horizon. The sun was coming up. As the horizon clouds reddened and the rim of the glowing disk appeared, an exclamation from his companion caused Walter to wheel about.

Louis was pointing at two men and a dog team gliding through the air, – upside down! Every detail was startlingly clear, capotes with hoods pulled up, sashes, buckskin leggings, snowshoes. The driver with the long whip looked very tall. He belabored his dogs cruelly. It seemed to Walter that he ought to hear the man’s shouts and curses, the howls and whines of the abused beasts. He could see their tracks in the snow, and a fringe of trees beyond them, – everything inverted as if he himself were standing on his head to watch men and dogs moving across the prairie. As he watched, the figures grew to gigantic stature, the outlines became indistinct. They vanished altogether. The sun was above the clouds now. The distance grew hazy. Only part of the chain of hills was visible. Louis turned to Walter, excitement in his voice.

“I think those men go to the mountain too,” he said. “Do you know how far away they are?”

Walter shook his head. He felt quite incapable of estimating distance in this fantastic world, where things he knew to be miles away were almost hitting him in the face.

“At least fifteen miles,” declared Louis impressively.

“Impossible. We couldn’t see them so plainly.”

“And yet we have seen them. The mirage is always unbelievable.”

“What is it anyway, Louis? What causes it?”

The Canadian lad shrugged his shoulders. “The Indians say the spirits of the air play tricks to bewilder men and make them wander off the trail to seek things that are not there. Once I asked Father Dumoulin and he said the spirits had nothing to do with it. He called it a false effect of light, but that does not explain it, do you think?”

Again Walter shook his head.

“This I have noticed,” Louis went on. “I have never seen the mirage in winter except at dawn or sunset. In summer I have seen it in the middle of the day when it was very hot and still. But why it comes, winter or summer, I do not know.”