The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

“They are dancing,” thought Hugh. “What fools to make such an exhibition here where a boat may pass at any moment! Ohrante is certainly insane or very sure he is invincible. It is time we finished our work.”

He missed Blaise from his side, and crept down to the remaining canoe, supposing his younger brother had gone that way. Blaise was not there. Hugh waited several minutes, listening to the grunts and cries, which, low voiced at first, were growing louder and faster as the dancers warmed to their work. Suddenly one of them uttered a yell, which was followed by quite a different sound, an animal’s bellow of rage or pain. Hugh was both alarmed and curious. What was going on up there, and what had become of Blaise?

The elder brother crept back across the pebbles, pushed his way cautiously among the alders, and crawled up a short, steep slope topped by more bushes and trees, through which the firelight flickered. The noises of the dance, broken by louder cries and angry bellows, continued. Crouching low in the shadow, Hugh peeped through at the strangest scene he had ever looked upon.

In the open space a big fire blazed, casting its reddish-yellow glare over the picture. Between the fire and the boy, the dancing figures of the Indians passed back and forth, crouching, stamping, gesticulating, to the rhythm of their hoarse cries and the clicking of their weapons and rattles. All were naked to the waist and some entirely so. Their faces and bodies were streaked and daubed with black and white, yellow and red. Near by, in dignified immobility, stood the self-styled Chief of Minong, his tall feather upright in his head band, his face and breast fantastically painted in black and vermilion. His bronze body was stripped to the waist, displaying to advantage the breadth of his shoulders and the great muscles of his long arms. A little shudder passed down Hugh’s spine as his eyes rested upon that huge, towering form and the set, cruel face. Yet it was neither the war dance nor Ohrante that held his surprised gaze longest.

A little to one side of the fire, the tall birch rose straight and high above its fellows. To its white stem was tied, not a human victim this time, but the dark form of an animal, a moose. As the beast tossed its head about in frenzy, Hugh could see that its antlers, still covered with the fuzzy velvet, had no broad palms and bore but two points on either side. It was a crotch horn or two year old. Every few moments one or another of the dancers would utter a yell or war whoop, dart towards the captive animal, strike it a swift blow with knife, spear or firebrand, then leap nimbly out of the way of its tossing antlers and flying forefeet. A favorite sport seemed to be to strike the beast upon the sensitive end of the nose with a burning pole. The moose was wild with rage and pain, plunging madly about, swaying the birch almost to breaking. The bonds were strong and the tree failed to snap, yet the boy wondered how long it would be before something gave and freed the frenzied beast. He thought the young moose did not realize his own strength, but when he should find it out, Hugh did not want to be in the way.

The watcher was just about to retreat to the beach, when the dancing suddenly stopped. Drops of rain were beginning to fall, but the shower was not the reason for the cessation of the dancing. Ohrante had raised his arm in an impressive gesture. The dancers lowered their weapons and rattles and drew back to the other side of the fire. Majestically Ohrante stalked forward and confronted the plunging moose. Lightning flashed, thunder pealed, there came a sharp dash of rain, the fire hissing and spitting like a live thing as the drops struck it. But Ohrante did not intend to be deprived of his cruel sport by a mere thunder shower. He held in his right hand a long pole with a knife lashed to the end. Standing just out of reach of the enraged beast’s antlers and forefeet, he lunged directly at its throat.

There came a dazzling flash, a flare of light, a stunning crash that seemed to shatter Hugh’s ear-drums. Even as the flash blinded his eyes, they received a momentary impression of a great black object hurtling at and over the giant Indian, as he toppled backward into the fire. The next instant a huge bulk crashed through the bushes almost on top of the boy. A tremendous splash followed.

XXXVI

HOW BLAISE MISSED HIS REVENGE

The rain came down in torrents. Thunder pealed and crashed, and Hugh, a roaring in his head, his whole body shaking convulsively, lay on his face among the bushes. A hand seized his shoulder and instantly he came to himself. He started up and reached for the knife he had borrowed from Baptiste, then knew it was his half-brother who was speaking.

“Quick,” Blaise whispered. “Follow me close.”

The rain was lessening, the thunder peals were not so deafening. From the beach below came the sound of voices. With bitterness, Hugh realized that he and Blaise had delayed too long. The Indians had reached the one canoe and had discovered that the other was missing.

“They are going to get away. We must do something to stop Ohrante at least.”

“Ohrante is stopped, I think,” Blaise replied quietly. “I go to see.” And he wriggled through the dripping bushes.

Hugh followed close on his younger brother’s heels. Out from the shelter of the trees into the open space the two crawled. Where the fire had blazed there was now only smoke. A flash of lightning illuminated the spot. It seemed utterly deserted except for one motionless form. Without hesitation the brothers crept across the open, no longer single file, but side by side. The thing they had caught sight of when the lightning flashed, lay outstretched and partly hidden by the cloud of smoke from the quenched fire. As they drew near, there was another bright flash. There lay the giant figure of Ohrante the Mohawk, his head among the blackened embers, his broad chest battered to a shapeless mass by the sharp fore hooves of the frenzied moose. Hugh was glad that the flash of light lasted but an instant. The merciful darkness blotted out the horrible sight. He turned away sickened.

The report of a musket, another and another, shouts and yells and splashings, came from the channel between island and mainland.

“The men from the Grand Portage,” cried Hugh. “They have come just in time. Not all of Ohrante’s rascals will escape.”

He ran down the open lane, Blaise after him. The flashes and reports, the shouts and cries, proved that a battle was on. The black shapes of canoes filled with men were distinguishable on the water. A pale flash of the now distant lightning revealed to the lads one craft close in shore. It contained but one man.

“Keneu,” Hugh called.

The Indian had seen the boys. He swerved the canoe towards the line of low bushes at the foot of the gap, and Hugh and Blaise ran out into the water to step aboard. The yells and musket shots had ceased. The fight seemed to be over. But another canoe was coming in towards the island beach. Did that boat hold friends or enemies?

“Holá, Hugh Beaupré,” a familiar voice called. “Where are you?”

“Here, Baptiste, all right, both of us,” Hugh shouted in reply.

“Thank the good God,” Baptiste ejaculated fervently.

The canoe came on and made a landing on the beach. Hugh, Blaise and Keneu beached their craft near by.

“Did you catch those fellows?” Hugh asked eagerly.

“We sunk their canoe and some are drowned. Others may have reached shore. The rest of our men have gone over there to search. But where is Ohrante? We have seen nothing of him. Is he still on this isle?”

“Yes, he is here,” Hugh replied, a little shudder convulsing his body. “But Ohrante is no longer to be feared.”

“He is dead? Who killed him? One of you?” Baptiste glanced quickly from one lad to the other.

“No, the victim he was torturing killed him.”

“Another victim? What became of him? Did he escape?”

“He escaped. By now he is probably in safety.”

“Good! Then we have – ”

A shout from the top of the island interrupted Baptiste. The other men from the canoe, who had scattered to search for any of Ohrante’s band who might be in hiding, had discovered the body. The boys and Baptiste went up to join them, and Hugh described what he had seen and how the Chief of Minong had come to his death.

“A frightful fate truly, but he brought it upon himself by torturing the beast,” the Frenchman exclaimed. “But how was it they had a captive moose? Surely they did not bring it across from the Isle Royale?”

“No.” It was Blaise who spoke. “Keneu says the men from the mainland brought the moose. Keneu saw the beast tied to a tree at their camp. It was a two year old and seemed tame. He thought it had been raised in captivity. They brought it to kill for a feast. Hugh and I saw it swim across behind their canoe.”

“Ohrante had no human captive to torture.” Hugh shuddered again, realizing that he himself had been the intended victim. “He had no man to practice his cruelty upon, so he used the animal. What a fiend the fellow was!”

Not one of Ohrante’s band was found on the island. The sudden fall of their chief had so appalled them that they had fled, every man of them, to the beach and had crowded into the one remaining canoe. The explanation of Ohrante’s fate was clear. The lightning had struck the top of the tall birch. The young moose, already wild with pain and fright, was driven to utter frenzy by the crash and shock. It had burst its bonds and plunged straight at its nearest tormentor, knocking him into the fire, stamping upon his body with its sharp hooves, and then dashing for the lake and freedom. A terrible revenge the crotch horn had taken.

Hugh’s plan had been to sink one canoe and steal the other, leaving the Chief of Minong and his followers marooned on the little island. He had hoped that the loss of the boats would not be discovered before morning. Then the besieging party could demand the surrender of Ohrante, promising his followers, if necessary, that they should go free if they would deliver up their chief. Even if they refused, there seemed no chance for Ohrante to get away. Before he could build canoes, the attacking party could easily raise a force sufficient to rush the island. If members of the band should attempt to swim the channel or cross it on a raft, they would be at the mercy of the besiegers. Sooner or later the giant and his men would be compelled to yield.

In accordance with this plan, the boys had set out to make away with Ohrante’s canoes. When ample time to carry out the manœuvre had passed, and they did not return, Baptiste had grown anxious. The sounds of the war dance and the bellows of the captive moose, carrying across the water, had increased his alarm. The men from the Grand Portage arriving just before the storm broke, Baptiste signalled them and they held themselves in readiness to go to the rescue of the lads. The watchers saw the lightning strike the island. They heard the tumult as the frightened Indians, believing some supernatural power had intervened to destroy their chief, fled to the beach. At once Baptiste’s men, regardless of the storm, started for the island. A flash of lightning showed them a canoe crossing to the mainland. Attack followed and the canoe was sunk or overturned. One boat of the attacking party put into shore to cut off the flight of any of the band who might succeed in reaching land. The other turned to the island.

When the whole force came together at dawn, they had taken two prisoners and had found the dead bodies of two other Indians besides Ohrante. The Mohawk had brought but three men with him and four others had joined him at the island. Three were therefore unaccounted for. They might have been drowned or they might have escaped. The important thing was that Ohrante was dead and his band broken up.

The headlong flight of the great chief’s followers was explained by one of the prisoners. The Indians had believed the giant Iroquois invincible. He had the reputation, as Monga had said, of being a medicine man or magician of great powers. He claimed to have had, in early youth, a dream in which it was revealed to him that no human hand would ever strike him down. The dream explained the boldness and rashness of his behavior. It also threw light on his fear of powers not human. Suddenly he was felled, not by human hand indeed, but by the dreadful thunder bird and the hooves of a beast which surely must be a spirit in disguise. The invincible was vanquished and his followers were panic stricken. The three men Ohrante had brought from Minong led the flight. They had seen and heard the threatening manifestations of Nanibozho, Kepoochikan and their attendant manitos on that island. Two of the band, the captive said, had been left on Minong to guard the camp. Of them neither Hugh nor Blaise ever heard again. Whether the Indians remained on the island or whether after a time they returned to the mainland and learned of Ohrante’s death, the lads never knew.

With the fate of the giant Mohawk all the attacking party were well satisfied except Blaise. He was so glum and silent that Hugh could not understand what had come over the lad. After their return to the Grand Portage, Blaise opened his heart.

“I wished to kill our father’s enemy with my own hands,” he confessed to Hugh. “It was the duty of you or me to avenge him, and I wished for the honor. You saw not in the darkness that I took my musket with me. When we crept in the water below that open place, I carried the musket on my back not to wet it. And then when I knelt among the trees and he stood there with his arms folded, I had him in good range. But, my brother, I could not shoot. It was not that I feared for myself or you. No, I felt no fear. I could not shoot him unarmed and with no chance to fight for his life. I am a fool, a coward, a disgrace to the Ojibwa nation.”

“No, no, you are nothing of the kind,” Hugh cried indignantly. “There is no braver lad anywhere. You are no coward, you are a white man, Blaise, and an honorable one. That is why you couldn’t shoot Ohrante in the back from ambush. I know there are white men who do such things and feel no shame. But would father have done it, do you think? Would he?”

A little anxiously, Hugh waited for the answer. He had known his father so little, and Jean Beaupré had lived long among savages. The reply came at last, slowly and thoughtfully.

“No,” said the younger son, “no, our father would never have shot a man in the back.”

XXXVII

THE PACKET IS OPENED

With eager curiosity Hugh Beaupré sat watching Monsieur Dubois unwrap the mysterious packet. The adventurous journey was over. The ex-members of Ohrante’s band, including Monga, had been turned over to the fur companies to be dealt with. The pelts had been safely delivered to the New Northwest Company at the Kaministikwia, Jean Beaupré’s small debt cancelled, and the rest of the price paid divided between the two boys. The furs had proved of fine quality, and Hugh was well satisfied with his share. He had been given a draft on the company’s bankers in Montreal, who had paid him in gold. Blaise had chosen to take his half in winter supplies, and, with Hugh and Baptiste to back him, had won the respect of the company’s clerk as a shrewd bargainer. At the Kaministikwia, the younger boy had found his mother with a party of her people, and Hugh, less reluctant than at the beginning of his journey, had made her acquaintance. Regretfully parting with Blaise, the elder brother had joined the great canoe fleet returning with the furs. He was able to qualify as a canoeman, and he had remained with the fleet during the whole trip to Montreal. Of that interesting but strenuous journey there is no space to tell here.

One of the lad’s first acts after reaching the city had been to seek out Monsieur Dubois. Dubois proved to be a prominent man among the French people of Montreal, and Hugh had found him without difficulty. After explaining how he had come by the packet, the lad had placed it in the Frenchman’s hands. He had learned from this thin, grave, white-haired man that he, René Dubois, had lived in the Indian country for many years. During the first months of Jean Beaupré’s life in the wild Superior region, Dubois, though considerably older, had been the friend and companion of Hugh’s father. When an inheritance had come to him, the elder man had been called back to Montreal, where he had since lived. Beaupré, on his infrequent returns to civilization, had made brief calls on his old comrade, but they had no common business interests and had never corresponded. Monsieur Dubois was, therefore, at a loss to understand why Hugh’s father had been so anxious that this packet should reach him.

He undid the outer wrapping, glanced at his own name on the bark label, cut the cord, broke the seals and removed the doeskin. Several thin white sheets of birch bark covered with fine writing in the faint, muddy, home-made ink, and a small, flat object wrapped in another thin cover of doeskin, were all the packet contained. When his fingers closed on the object within the skin cover, the man’s face paled, then flushed. His hands trembled as he removed the wrapping. For several moments he sat staring at the little disk of yellow metal, turning it over and over in his fingers. Why it should affect Monsieur Dubois so strongly Hugh could not imagine. It was obvious that the white-haired man was trying to control some strong emotion. Without a word to the boy, he laid the disk down, and Hugh could see that it was a gold coin. Taking the bark sheets from the table where he had laid them, Dubois scanned them rapidly, then turned again to the beginning and read them slowly and intently. When he raised his eyes, Hugh was surprised to see that they were glistening with tears. His voice trembled as he spoke.

“You cannot know, Hugh Beaupré, what a great service you have done me. It is impossible that I can ever repay you. You do not understand, you cannot, until I explain. But first I would ask you a question or two, if you will pardon me.”

“Of course,” replied Hugh wonderingly. “I shall be glad to answer anything that I can, Monsieur Dubois.”

“Well then, about that half-brother of yours, what sort of a lad is he?”

“As fine a lad as you will find anywhere, Monsieur,” Hugh answered promptly. “When I first received his letter, I was prejudiced against him, I admit.” He flushed and hesitated.

Dubois nodded understandingly. “But now?” he questioned.

“Now I love him as if he were my whole brother,” Hugh said warmly. “We went through much together, he saved me from a horrible fate, and I learned to know him well. A finer, truer-hearted fellow than Blaise never existed.”

Again Dubois nodded, apparently well satisfied. “And his mother?”

“I was surprised at his mother,” Hugh replied with equal frankness. “She is Indian, of course, but without doubt a superior sort of Indian. For one thing she was clean and neatly dressed. She is very good-looking too, her voice is sweet, her manner quiet, and she certainly treated me kindly. She loves Blaise dearly, and, – I think – she really loved my father.”

Once more Monsieur Dubois nodded, a light of pleasure in his dark eyes. “I asked,” he said abruptly, “because, you see, she is my daughter.”

“Your daughter? But she is an Indian!”

“Only half Indian, but no wonder you are surprised. I will explain.”

Monsieur Dubois then told the wondering boy how, about thirty-eight years before, when he was still a young man, he had taken to the woods. It was in the period between the conquest of Canada by the English and the outbreak of the American Revolution, long before the formation of the Northwest Fur Company, when the fur traders in the Upper Lakes region were practically all French Canadians and free lances, each doing business for himself. In due time, René Dubois, like most of the others, had married an Indian girl. A daughter was born to them, a pretty baby who had found a very warm spot in the heart of her adventurous father. Before she was two years old, however, he lost her. He had left his wife and child at an Indian village near the south shore of Lake Superior, while he went on one of his trading trips. On his return he found the place deserted, the signs plain that it had been raided by some unfriendly band. There was no law in the Indian country, and in that period, shortly after the so-called French and Indian War, when the Algonquin Indians had sided with the French and the Iroquoian with the English, conditions were more than usually unstable. For years Dubois tried to trace his wife and daughter or learn their fate, but never succeeded.

“And now,” he concluded, his voice again trembling with feeling, “you bring me proof that my daughter still lives, that she was the wife of my friend, and that in his son and hers I have a grandson and an heir.” Monsieur Dubois took up the gold coin and handed it to Hugh. One face had been filed smooth and on it, cut with some crude tool, were the outlines of a coat-of-arms. “I did that myself,” Dubois explained. “It is the arms of my family. When the child was born, I made that and hung it about her neck on a sinew cord.”

“And Blaise’s mother still had it?” exclaimed Hugh.

“No, she had lost it, but your father recovered it. Read the letter yourself.” He handed Hugh the bark sheets.

It was an amazing letter. Jean Beaupré merely mentioned how he had found the Indian girl a captive among the Sioux, had bought her, taken her away and married her. No doubt he had told all this to Dubois before. Beaupré had not had the slightest suspicion that his wife was other than she believed herself to be, a full-blooded Ojibwa. She had been brought up by an Ojibwa couple, but in a Sioux raid her supposed father and mother had been killed and she had been captured. Nearly two years before the writing of the letter, Beaupré had happened to receive a gold coin for some service rendered an official of the Northwest Company. His wife had examined the coin with interest, and had said that she herself had once had one nearly like it, the same on one side, she said, but different on the other. She had always worn it on a cord around her neck, but when she was captured, a Sioux squaw had taken it from her. At first Beaupré thought that the thing she had possessed had been one of the little medals sometimes given by a priest to a baptized child, but she had insisted that one side of her medal had been like the coin. Then he remembered that his old comrade Dubois had told of the coin, bearing his coat-of-arms, worn by his baby daughter. Jean Beaupré said nothing of his suspicions to his wife, but he resolved to find out, if he could, whether she was really the daughter of René Dubois. On this quest, he twice visited the Sioux country west of the Mississippi. The autumn before the opening of this story, he learned of the whereabouts of the very band that had held his wife a captive. After sending, by an Indian messenger, a letter to Hugh at the Sault, asking the boy to wait there until his father joined him in the spring, Beaupré left at once for the interior. He was fortunate enough to find the Sioux band and the chief from whom he had bought the captive more than fifteen years before. The chief, judiciously bribed and threatened, had sought for the medal and had found it in the possession of a young girl who said her mother had given it to her. When Beaupré questioned the old squaw, she admitted that she had taken the coin from the neck of an Ojibwa captive years before. How the Ojibwa couple who had brought the girl up had come by her, Beaupré was unable to find out, but he had no doubt that she was really the daughter of René Dubois. He resolved to send the proof of his wife’s parentage to Montreal by his elder son, if Hugh had really come to the Sault and had waited there. If Hugh was not there, the elder Beaupré would go to the city himself. It was plain that he had not received either of the letters Hugh had sent after him, nor had Hugh ever got the one his father had written him. Fearing that if any accident should happen to him, the coin and the story might never reach his old comrade, Beaupré had written down the tale and prepared the packet. Even in his dying condition he remembered it and told Blaise to go get it. Evidently, when he discovered he was in danger of falling into Ohrante’s hands, he had feared to keep the packet with him, so had hidden it with the furs. If he escaped the giant, he could return for both furs and packet, but if the coin came into Ohrante’s possession it would be lost forever. The letter, however, said nothing of all that. It had undoubtedly been written before Beaupré set out on his home journey.