The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys

“I was on the shore when the Otter arrived. I thought when I saw you, you must be my brother, though you have little the look of our father, neither the hair nor the eyes.”

“I have been told that I resemble my mother’s people.” Hugh’s manner was still cool and stiff.

Without comment upon the reply, Blaise went on in his low, musical voice with its slightly singsong drawl. “I wished not to speak to you there among the others. I waited until I saw you take this trail. Then, after a little while, I followed.”

“Do you mean you have been following me around ever since I came ashore?” Hugh exclaimed in English.

“Not following.” The swift smile so like, yet unlike, that of Jean Beaupré, crossed the boy’s face again. “Not following, but,” – he dropped into French-“I watched. It was not difficult, since you thought not that anyone watched. We will go on now a little farther. Then we will talk together, my brother.”

Passing Hugh, Blaise took the lead, going along the forest trail with a lithe swiftness that spurred the older lad to his fastest walking pace. After perhaps half a mile, they came to the top of a low knoll where an opening had been made by the fall of a big spruce. Blaise seated himself on the prostrate trunk, and Hugh dropped down beside him, more eager than he cared to betray to hear his Indian brother’s story.

A strange tale the younger lad had to tell. Jean Beaupré had spent the previous winter trading and trapping in the country south of the Lake of the Woods, now included in the state of Minnesota. Blaise and his mother had remained at Wauswaugoning Bay, north of the Grand Portage. Just at dusk of a night late in March, Beaupré staggered into their camp, his face ghastly, his clothes blood stained, mind and body in the last stages of exhaustion. At the lodge entrance he fell fainting. It was some time before his squaw and his son succeeded in bringing him back to consciousness. In spite of his weakness he was determined to tell his story. Mustering all his failing strength, he commenced.

Before the snow had begun to melt under the spring sun, he had started, he told them, with one Indian companion and two dog sleds loaded with pelts, for Lake Superior. Travelling along the frozen streams and lakes, he reached the trading post at the Fond du Lac on the St. Louis River. While he was there, a spell of unusually warm early spring weather cleared the river mouth. The winter had been mild, with little ice in that part of the lake. At Fond du Lac Beaupré obtained a bateau, as the Canadians called their wooden boats, and rigged it with mast and sail. He and his companion put their furs aboard, and started up the northwest shore of Lake Superior.

Thus far he succeeded in telling his story clearly enough, then, worn out with the effort, he lapsed into unconsciousness. Twice he rallied and tried to go on, but his speech was vague and disconnected. As well as he could, Blaise pieced together the fragments of the story. Somewhere between the Fond du Lac and the Grand Portage the bateau had been wrecked in a storm. When he reached this part of his tale, Jean Beaupré became much agitated. He gasped out again and again that he had hidden the furs and the “packet” in a safe cache, and that Blaise and his other son Hugh must go get them. He called the furs his sons’ inheritance, for he was clearly aware that he could not live. The pelts were a very good season’s catch, and the boys must take them to the New Northwest Company’s post at the Kaministikwia. But it was the packet about which he seemed most anxious. Hugh must carry the packet to Montreal to Monsieur Dubois. Blaise asked where his brother was to be found, and received instructions to go or send to the Sault. Before the lad learned definitely where to look for the furs and the packet, Jean Beaupré lapsed once more into unconsciousness. He rallied only long enough for the ministrations of a priest, who happened to be at the Grand Portage on a missionary journey.

Though Hugh had scarcely known his father, he was much moved at the story of his death. He felt a curious mixture of sympathy for and jealousy of his Indian half-brother, when he saw, in spite of the latter’s controlled and quiet manner, how strongly he felt his loss. Hugh respected the depth of the boy’s sorrow, yet he could not but feel as if he, the elder son, had been unrightfully defrauded. The half-breed lad had known their common father so much better than he, the wholly white son. For some minutes after Blaise ceased speaking, Hugh sat silent, oppressed by conflicting thoughts and feelings. Then his mind turned to the present, practical aspect of the situation.

“It will not be an easy search,” he remarked. “Have you no clue to the spot where the furs are hidden?”

“None, except that it is a short way only from the place where the wrecked boat lies.”

“Where the boat lay when father left it,” commented Hugh thoughtfully. “It may have drifted far from there by now.”

“That is possible. I could not learn from him where the wreck happened, though I asked several times. The boat was driven on the rocks. That is all I know.”

“And his companion? Was he drowned?”

Blaise shook his head. “I know not. Our father said nothing of Black Thunder, but I think he must be dead, or our father would not have come alone.”

“How shall we set about the search?”

“We will go down along the shore,” Blaise replied, taking the lead as if by right, although he was the younger by two or three years. “We will look first for the wrecked bateau. When we have found that, we will make search for the cache of furs.”

Hugh’s thoughts turned to another part of his half-brother’s tale. “Tell me, Blaise,” he said suddenly, “what was it caused my father’s death, starvation, exhaustion, hardship? Or was he hurt when the boat was wrecked? You spoke of his blood-stained clothes.”

“It was not starvation and not cold,” the half-breed boy replied gravely. “He was hurt, sore hurt.” The lad cast a swift glance about him, at the still and silent woods shadowy with approaching night. Then he leaned towards Hugh and spoke so low the latter could scarcely catch the words. “Our father was sore hurt, but not in the wreck. How he ever lived to reach us I know not. The wound was in his side.”

“But how came he by a wound?” Hugh whispered, unconsciously imitating the other’s cautious manner.

Blaise shook his black head solemnly. “I know not how, but not in the storm or the wreck. The wound was a knife wound.”

“What?” cried Hugh, forgetting caution in his surprise. “Had he enemies who attacked him? Did someone murder him?”

Again Blaise shook his head. “It might have been in fair fight. Our father was ever quick with word and deed. The bull moose himself is not braver. Yet I think the blow was not a fair one. I think it was struck from behind. The knife entered here.” Blaise placed his hand on a spot a little to the left of the back-bone.

“A blow from behind it must have been. Could it have been his companion who struck him?”

“Black Thunder? No, for then Black Thunder would have carried away the furs. Our father would not have told us to go get them.”

“True,” Hugh replied, but after a moment of thought he added, “Yet the fellow may have attacked him, and father, though mortally wounded, may have slain him.”

A quick, fierce gleam shone in the younger boy’s bright eyes. “If he who struck was not killed by our father’s hand,” he said in a low, tense voice, “you and I are left to avenge our father.” It was plain that Christian schooling in Quebec had not rooted out from Little Caribou’s nature the savage’s craving for revenge. To tell the truth, at the thought of that cowardly blow, Hugh’s own feelings were nearly as fierce as those of his half-Indian brother.

VI

DOWN THE NORTHWEST SHORE

Hugh slept on board the Otter that night and helped with the unloading next day. His duties over, he was free to go where he would. To Baptiste’s queries, he replied that he had seen his half-brother and had arranged to accompany him to the Grand Portage. Later he would come again to the Kaministikwia or return to the Sault by the southerly route. Having satisfied the simple fellow’s curiosity, Hugh went with him to visit the New Fort.

Baptiste had a great admiration for the Fort. Proudly he called Hugh’s attention to the strong wooden walls, flanked with bastions. He obtained permission to take his friend through the principal building and display to him the big dining hall. There, later in the year, at the time of the annual meeting, partners, agents and clerks would banquet together and discuss matters of the highest import to the fur trade. He also showed Hugh the living quarters of the permanent employees of the post, the powder house, the jail, the kilns and forges. When the Fort should be completed, with all its storehouses and workshops, it would be almost a village within walls. Outside the stockade was a shipyard and a tract of land cleared for a garden. Hugh, who had lived in the city of Montreal, was less impressed with the log structures, many of them still unfinished, than was the voyageur who had spent most of his days in the wilds. Nevertheless the lad wondered at the size and ambitiousness of this undertaking and accomplishment in the wilderness. Far removed from the civilization of eastern Canada, the trading post was forced to be a little city in itself, dependent upon the real cities for nothing it could possibly make or obtain from the surrounding country.

To tell the truth, however, Hugh found more of real interest and novelty without the walls than within. There, Baptiste took him through the camps of Indians, voyageurs and woodsmen or coureurs de bois, where bark lodges and tents and upturned canoes served as dwellings. In one of the wigwams Blaise was living, awaiting the time when he and his elder brother should start on their adventurous journey.

Already Blaise had provided himself with a good birch canoe, ribbed with cedar, and a few supplies, hulled corn, strips of smoked venison as hard and dry as wood, a lump of bear fat and a birch basket of maple sugar. He also had a blanket, a gun and ammunition, an iron kettle and a small axe. Hugh had been able to bring nothing with him but a blanket, his hunting knife and an extra shirt, but, as he had worked his passage, he still possessed a small sum of money. Now that he was no longer a member of the crew of the Otter, he had no place to sleep and wondered what he should do. Blaise solved the problem by taking him about a mile up-river to the post of the New Northwest or X Y Company, a much smaller and less pretentious place than the New Fort, and introducing him to the clerk in charge. Blaise had already explained that he and Hugh were going to get the elder Beaupré’s furs and would bring them back to the New Company’s post. So the clerk treated Hugh in a most friendly manner, invited him to share his own house, and even offered to give him credit for the gun, canoe paddle and other things he needed. Hugh, not knowing whether the search for the furs would be successful, preferred to pay cash.

From the X Y clerk the lad learned that his father, always proud and fiery of temper, had, the summer before, taken offence at one of the Old Company’s clerks. The outcome of the quarrel had been that Beaupré had entered into a secret agreement with the New Company, promising to bring his pelts to them. The clerk warned both boys not to let any of the Old Company’s men get wind of their undertaking. The rivalry between the two organizations was fierce and ruthless. Both went on the principle that “all is fair in love or war,” and the relations between them were very nearly those of war. If the Old Company learned of the hidden furs, they would either send men to seek the cache or would try to force the boys to bring the pelts to the New Fort. The X Y clerk even hinted that Jean Beaupré had probably been the victim of some of the Old Company’s men who had discovered that he was carrying his furs to the rival post. Hugh, during his winter at the Sault, had heard many tales of the wild deeds of the fur traders and had listened to the most bitter talk against the X Y or New Northwest company. Accordingly he was inclined to believe there might be some foundation for the agent’s suspicions. Blaise, however, took no heed of the man’s hints. When Hugh mentioned his belief that his father had been murdered because of his change of allegiance, the younger boy shrugged his shoulders, a habit caught from his French parent.

“That may be,” he replied, “but it is not in that direction I shall look for the murderer.” And that was the only comment he would make.

To avoid curiosity and to keep their departure secret if possible, the boys decided not to go down the north branch of the Kaministikwia past the New Fort, but upstream to the dividing point, then descend the lower or southern channel. Early the third morning after Hugh’s arrival, they set out from the New Northwest post. Up the river against the current they paddled between wooded shores veiled by the white, frosty mist. Without meeting another craft or seeing a lodge or tent or even the smoke of a fire, they passed the spot where the middle channel branched off, went on to the southern one, down that, aided by the current now, and out upon the fog-shrouded waters of the great bay. Hugh could not have found his way among islands and around points and reefs, but his half-brother had come this route less than two weeks before. With the retentive memory and excellent sense of direction of the Indian, he steered unhesitatingly around and among the dim shapes. When the sun, breaking through the fog, showed him the shore line clearly, he gave a little grunt of satisfaction. He had kept his course and was just where he had believed himself to be.

This feat of finding his way in the fog gave the elder brother some respect for the younger. Before the day was over, that respect had considerably increased. As the older boy was also the heavier, he had taken his place in the stern, kneeling on his folded blanket. Wielding a paddle was not a new exercise to Hugh. He thought that Blaise set too easy a pace, and, anxious to prove that he was no green hand, he quickened his own stroke. Blaise took the hint and timed his paddling to his brother’s. Hugh was sturdy, well knit and proud of his muscular strength. For a couple of hours he kept up the pace he had set. Then his stroke grew slower and he put less force into it. After a time Blaise suggested a few minutes’ rest. With the stern blade idle and the bow one dipped only now and then to keep the course, they floated for ten or fifteen minutes.

Refreshed by this brief respite and ashamed of tiring so soon, Hugh resumed work with a more vigorous stroke, but it was Blaise who set the pace now. In a clear, boyish voice, which gave evidence in only an occasional note of beginning to break and roughen, he started an old French song, learned from his father, and kept time with his paddle.

“Je n’ai pas trouvé personneQue le rossignol chantant la belle rose,La belle rose du rosier blanc!”

Roughly translated:

“Never yet have I found anyoneBut the nightingale, to sing of the lovely rose,The lovely rose of the white rose tree!”

At first Hugh, though his voice broke and quavered, attempted to join in, but singing took breath and strength. He soon fell silent, content to dip and raise his blade in time to the younger lad’s tune. An easy enough pace it seemed, but the half-breed boy kept it up hour after hour, with only brief periods of rest.

Hugh began to feel the strain sorely. His arms and back ached, his breath came wearily, and the lower part of his body was cramped and numb from his kneeling position. He had eaten breakfast at dawn and, as the sun climbed the sky and started down again, he began to wonder when and where his Indian brother intended to stop for the noon meal. Did Blaise purpose to travel all day without food, Hugh wondered. He opened his lips to ask, then, through pride, closed them again. Blaise, just fourteen, was nearly three years younger than Hugh. What Blaise could endure, the elder lad felt he must endure also. He did not intend to admit hunger or weariness, so long as his companion appeared untouched by either. With empty stomach and aching muscles, the white boy plied his paddle steadily and doggedly in time to the voyageur songs and the droning, monotonous Indian chants, the constantly repeated syllables of which had no meaning for him.

It was the weather that came to Hugh’s rescue at last. After the lifting of the chill, frosty, morning fog, the day was bright. The waters of Thunder Bay were smooth at first, then rippled by a light north breeze. As the day wore on, the breeze came up to a brisk blow. Partly protected by the islands and points of the irregular shore, the two lads kept on their way. The wind increased. It roughened every stretch of open water to waves that broke foaming on the beaches or dashed in spray against the gray-brown rocks. Paddling became more and more difficult. Blaise ceased his songs. As they rounded a low point edged with gravel and sand, and saw before them a stretch of green-blue water swept by the full force of the wind into white-tipped waves, the half-breed boy told Hugh to steer for the beach. A few moments later he gave his elder brother a quick order to cease paddling.

Realizing that Blaise wished to take the canoe in alone, Hugh, breathing a sigh of relief, laid down his paddle. The muscles of his back and shoulders were strained, it seemed to him, almost to the breaking point, and he felt that, in spite of his pride, he must soon have asked for rest. Without disturbing the balance of the wobbly craft, he tried to rub his cramped leg muscles. He feared that in trying to rise and step out, he might overturn the boat, to the mirth and disgust of his Indian brother.

With a few strong and skillful strokes, Blaise shot the canoe into the shallow water off the point. When the bow struck the sand, with a sharp command to Hugh, he rose and stepped out. As quickly as he could, Hugh got to his feet, and managed to step over the opposite side without stumbling or upsetting the canoe. Raising the light bark craft, the two carried it up the shelving shore, to the bushes that edged the woods, well beyond the reach of the waves.

The canoe carefully deposited in a safe spot, Hugh turned to Blaise. “Shall we be delayed long, do you think?” he asked.

Blaise gave his French shrug. “It may be that the wind will go down with the sun.”

“Then, if we are to stay here so long, a little food wouldn’t come amiss.”

The younger boy nodded and began to unlash the packages which, to distribute the weight evenly, were securely tied to two poles lying along the bottom of the canoe. Hugh sought dry wood, kindled it with sparks from his flint and steel, and soon had a small fire on the pebbles. From a tripod of sticks the iron kettle was swung over the blaze, and when the water boiled, Blaise put in corn, a little of the dried venison, which he had pounded to a powder on a flat stone, and a portion of fat. He had made no mention of hunger, but when the stew was ready, Hugh noticed that he ate heartily. Meanwhile the elder boy, tired and sore muscled, watched for some sign of weariness in his companion. If Blaise was weary he had too much Indian pride to admit the fact to his new-found white brother.

The open lake was now rich blue, flecked with foamy whitecaps, the air so clear that the deep color of the water formed a sharp cut line against the paler tint of the sky at the horizon. The May wind was bitterly cold, so the lads rigged a shelter with the poles of the canoe and a blanket. The ground was so hard the poles could not be driven in. Three or four inches down, it was either frozen or composed of solid rock. The boys were obliged to brace each pole with stones and boulders. The blanket, stretched between the supports, kept off the worst of the wind, and between the screen and the fire, the two rested in comfort. Hugh soon fell asleep, and when he woke he was pleased to find that Blaise had dropped off also. Perhaps the latter was wearier than he had chosen to admit.

The wind did not go down with the sun, and the adventurers made camp for the night. Both blankets would be needed for bedding, so the screen was taken down and the canoe propped up on one side. Then a supply of wood was gathered and balsam branches cut for a bed. After a supper of corn porridge and maple sugar, the two turned in. Blaise went to sleep as soon as he was rolled in his blanket, but Hugh was wakeful. He lay there on his fragrant balsam bed in the shelter of the canoe, watching the flickering light of the camp fire and the stars coming out in the dark sky. Listening to the rushing of the wind in the trees and the waves breaking on the pebbles and thundering on a bit of rock shore near at hand, surrounded on every side by the strange wilderness of woods and waters, the boy could not sleep for a time. He kept thinking of his roving, half-wild father, and of the strange legacy he had left his sons. Twice Hugh rose to replenish the fire, when it began to die down, before he grew drowsy and drifted away into the land of dreams.

VII

AT WAUSWAUGONING

Hugh woke chilled and stiff, to find Blaise rekindling the fire. The morning was clear and the sun coming up across the water. Winds and waves had subsided enough to permit going on with the journey.

Cutting wood limbered Hugh’s sore muscles somewhat, and a hot breakfast cheered him, but the first few minutes of paddling were difficult and painful. With set teeth he persisted, and gradually the worst of the lameness wore off.

Skirting the shore of Lake Superior in a bark canoe requires no small amount of patience. Delays from unfavorable weather must be frequent and unavoidable. On the whole, Hugh and Blaise were lucky during the first part of their trip, and they reached the Pigeon River in good time. Rounding the long point to the south of the river mouth, they paddled to the north end of Wauswaugoning Bay.

Hugh was gaining experience and his paddling muscles were hardening. He would soon be able, he felt, to hold his own easily at any pace his half-brother set. So far Blaise had proved a good travelling companion, somewhat silent and grave to be sure, but dependable, patient and for the most part even tempered. His lack of talkativeness Hugh laid to his Indian blood, his gravity to his sorrow at the loss of the father he had known so much better than Hugh had known him. Blaise, the older boy decided, was, in spite of his Quebec training and many civilized ways, more Indian than French. Only now and then, in certain gestures and quick little ways, in an unexpected gleam of humor or sudden flash of anger, did the lad show his kinship with Jean Beaupré.

Satisfactory comrade though the half-breed boy seemed, Hugh was in no haste to admit Blaise to his friendship. Since first receiving his letter, Hugh had felt doubtful of this Indian brother, inclined to resent his very existence. Their relations from their first meeting had been entirely peaceful but somewhat cool and stiff. As yet, Hugh was obliged to admit to himself, he had no cause for complaint of his half-brother’s behavior, but he felt that the real test of their companionship was to come.

The search for the cache of pelts had not yet begun, but was to begin soon. It was into his wife’s lodge at Wauswaugoning Bay that Jean Beaupré had stumbled dying. Somewhere between Grand Portage Bay, which lies just to the west and south of Wauswaugoning, and the Fond du Lac at the mouth of the St. Louis River, the bateau must have been wrecked and the furs hidden.

The two boys landed on a bit of beach at the north end of the bay, hid the canoe among the alders, and set out on foot. Blaise fully expected to find his mother awaiting him, but the cleared spot among the trees was deserted. Of the camp nothing remained but the standing poles of a lodge, from which the bark covering had been stripped, and refuse and cast-off articles strewn upon the stony ground in the untidy manner in which the Indians and most of the white voyageurs left their camping places. With a little grunt, which might have meant either disappointment or disgust, Blaise looked about him. He noticed two willow wands lying crossed on the ground and pegged down with a crotched stick.

“She has gone that way,” said the boy, indicating the longest section of willow, pointing towards the northeast.