The Lemon Tree

‘We have to make ourselves look decent – for when we arrive at the Fort!’

‘You mean we’re nearly there?’ Her filthy face lit up.

‘Be there tomorrow night, God willing.’

‘Thank God!’ Wallace Helena said, and meant it. ‘Would you tell my stepfather?’ she asked, pointing towards the rowers, where Tom had taken an oar and was rowing with a kind of deadly mechanical rhythm, his eyes half-shut; it was heavy work, and he was almost oblivious of what was going on around him.

He nodded, and she turned round and carefully eased herself closer to the tiny moribund bundle which was her mother, to tell her the good news.

As promised, the voyageur made a soup for Leila. While Tom built a fire, the man cut up some pemmican and put it into an iron pot with water and some bits of chopped-up greenery which he had hastily gathered. A tripod was rigged over the fire and the pot hung on it. When he considered it ready, he added a little rum; and Wallace Helena spooned the resultant soup into her barely coherent mother lying by the fire.

There was much scrubbing of faces and hands in the chilly waters of the river; one or two men sharpened their knives and roughly shaved themselves. Then, fortified with rum, they poled the last few miles. Several canoes came out to greet them, and there was a small crowd waiting for them when they landed at the foot of an escarpment.

The crowd was dumbfounded when Wallace Helena stepped ashore, followed by Tom carrying her mother.

The Factor was furious when he heard that he had two women from Chicago resting for the night in his fort; didn’t his boatmen know that settlers were not to be encouraged? Tom Harding had been a big enough nuisance, an American carving out a piece of Hudson’s Bay land to farm. Now he’d brought a white wife – and her daughter. Other women would follow them; there was already a rumour that a missionary’s wife would be arriving in the district one of these days. Settlers would clear the land, ruin the fur trade. What were his men about?

Leila was put to bed in a comfortable cabin by the Indian wife of an acquaintance of Tom’s, and, afterwards, she brought Wallace Helena a bucket of hot water in which to wash herself. Tom was sent for immediately to attend the Factor at the Big House.

Tall and silent, an exhausted, worried Tom was harangued in the man’s office. Both men were aware, however, that it was largely bombast; the British Government had left the renewal of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Charter up in the air, when it had been discussed in 1858; and already Government survey parties were beginning to penetrate the Bay’s kingdom; a few people, some American, had begun to settle.

Despite the hardships of his life, Tom loved his land and dreaded being driven off it by the Company; so, when the Factor had finished what he had to say, Tom politely told him that he missed his dead wife and son, and now sought to rebuild his family. He would be transferring his wife to his cabin in the morning – he carefully did not use the word homestead which would have implied his ownership of a piece of land claimed by the Company as their own.

The Factor had kept Tom standing and had offered him no hospitality, so Tom felt free to turn on his heel and walk out.

Chapter Ten

Word of the arrival of the brigade was brought to Joe while he was bringing the small herd of cattle he and Tom possessed closer in to the homestead. He had heard a rumour of a party of Blackfoot roaming the area, and he assumed that they had penetrated so far into Cree country because buffalo were getting scarce and they were hungry. He had no desire to have his precious beasts eaten by them.

The boy who brought the message was a Metis, the son of a friend of Joe’s working as a cooper in the Fort. While he got his breath after jogging most of the way, he hung on to Joe’s stirrup. Then he burst out, ‘Mr Harding’s with them. Brought a new wife, a white woman, and her daughter. Says to ask your mother to have the place neat and prepare some food. One woman’s sick.’

‘You’re kidding?’ exclaimed Joe, well aware of the Crees’ sense of humour – and this youngster was half-Cree.

The lad was offended. ‘I’m not,’ he responded crossly. ‘I saw them. They’ll be at your place about midday tomorrow.’

Joe sat on his horse and stared down at him. ‘I’ll be damned!’ he muttered.

He roused himself, and drew out a wad of chewing tobacco from his top pocket He took out his knife and cut a generous piece of it which he handed down to the boy, with his thanks. ‘Like to go down to the cabin and have something to eat?’ he asked.

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