Gentlemen of the North

Front matter

HUGH PENDEXTER

"I seized her hand and waited a second to make sure I was right"

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Chapter 1

GENTLEMEN OF THE NORTH

CHAPTER I

THE ICE GOES OUT

A BROWN river rolling up from the south between banks of oak and willow and bois blanc, surrounded by the wet, steaming woods of April and flanked on the west by plains which climb higher and higher until they find the Rockies. A brown river bearing the trunks of mighty trees; a silent, sullen flood carpeted with dead buffaloes. This is the most persistent of all my pictures of the Red River of the North.

It is long since I have gazed upon it. Yet there is scarcely a day my thoughts do not travel back to some phase of it; to the time when the rivalry was at its height between the North West Company and our opponents, the X. Y. Company.

Sir Alexander MacKenzie's vehicle in fighting our arrogant Simon McTavish for the fur trade—and the indomitable Hudson's Bay Company, which was to swallow us all. Of all my recollections of cruel hardships and wild freedom, that view of the river in early April, 1804, left the deepest impress on me. This, partly because it was a symbol of the country's desolation and loneliness and savage hostility to us Northmen, partly because that April day proved to be the threshold to remarkable experiences, wherein I was to suffer much and find the great happiness.

When the spell is on me, which is often, the civilized horizon of the Northwest films over and again I behold the brown expanse of freshet waters hurrying with their gruesome toil to mingle with the Assiniboin at the Forks. No other river linked us Northmen so closely with the Sioux country in the South, that source of perpetual menace. The danger that might come down the river at any minute kept alive my interest in it and stimulated my imagination as I watched its muddy tide, choked with innumerable shaggy victims, sweeping by the Pembina River post of the N. W. Company. It was a bridge between the known perils of the Pembina country and the barbarity of the Adder People.

It was tingling to young blood to know a fate worse than death might be descending the river at any time. Let the Sioux war-parties range ever so wide of our domain, and yet, night and day, we felt their presence, we few Northmen and our Chippewas.

The slamming of a door to one of the men's huts outside the stockade at night became the discharge of a Sioux gun; a frightened mob would come hammering at the gate and frantically demanding admittance, old Tabashaw, the chief and thorough scoundrel, in the lead. A buffalo bull with a broken leg had been wounded by a Sioux; for days the hunters would hug the fort. Or the buffaloes stampeded, or large flocks of swans rose in alarm from the river above us; it was break open the gun cases and serve out powder and ball. The wind from the south brought smoke; only a Sioux fire could have made it. An old woman dreamed a Sioux warrior stuck his head in her hut and counted the men there; the children and women are hurried inside the stockade. Horsemen riding and raising a cloud of snow can only be Sioux warriors on a winter path. Even Flat Mouth, chief of the Pillager band of Chippewas, young like myself, a very brave man and much travelled, has galloped to the fort after mistaking red deer in August for enemy horsemen.

Thus it went from day to night and then repeated. Always omens and signs to remind us of those ferocious people who gave no quarter and who would never forget it was the Chippewa Nation that prevented their holding a clear title to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Summer and winter, with the new leaf and with the yellow, tobacco was passing between the Chippewas, Crees, and Assiniboins for war against the Sioux. Never while I was in the country did the Northern Indians accomplish anything lasting. A sudden foray, a few scalps danced; that was about all.

Undoubtedly a subconscious fear of the Sioux was also responsible for the picture of the brown river in April. Some imaginative quality of reasoning, perhaps, interpreted the herds of drowned buffaloes as a symbol of the Sioux's power and remorselessness. When Nature has an opportunity for unlimited slaughter, she turns Sioux and kills on a tremendous scale.

Three seasons I heard the ice give and go out with the noise of many guns, wrenching earth and trees from the banks like some aquatic behemoth with claws many fathoms wide. The first time was at the Park River post above the Pembina; once from our outpost at the mouth of Reed River, ten miles below the Pembina. But never was I filled with such longing to follow the ice through the Forks and down the trail of lake and river to Superior as on that mild April day of 1804. It wasn't homesickness, for I was completing my third season as company clerk and had no ties back East to draw me. It was "Black" Chabot, bourgeois, or postmaster, who was serving in place of Mr. Alexander Henry, the man I came out with, who was now up the Saskatchewan on important business for the gentlemen of the North.

It's not boasting to say I felt no physical fear of Chabot, although he was an overgrown hulk of a man with an immense black beard. His savage ways left nothing for our Chippewas to teach him. But I did not fear him, for I could kill him as a last resort. It was the daily grind of having to associate with the brute that got on my nerves. The best of friends wear on each other at times when cooped up for a long winter in close quarters; at his best Chabot was intolerable. For two months I had kept my hand on my skinning-knife whenever he approached me.

I hoped he would keep his beastly temper in check and never lay hands on me; for, did he do that, the Pembina would need a new master or a new clerk. The danger lay in his growing love for alcohol, thinly mixed with water—"high wine" the trade called it. When in drink, which was his normal condition, he was very variable in his moods, ranging from the caressing to the ferocious and always foul-mouthed. If he ever attacked me, I was determined not to cower like a sheep and be murdered, as I've known Chippewa squaws to die when their husbands were in a drunken fury. And, did one resist him, it must be to the limit; kill or be broken.

The post was well situated at the mouth of the Pembina, and opposite Peter Grant's old fort on the east bank of the Red, now in ruins, the first North West Company post established on the river. Below us grew large bois blanc, or whitewood, which we used for floorings. Between us and the western plains were the big oaks we had drawn on in constructing the buildings. From the Pembina to the Park the country was level and open, the only timber being along the banks of the Red. The Pembina site was discouraging enough when Mr. Henry and I looked it over. It was heaped high with fallen trees and the underbrush was so rank one couldn't see a dozen feet in any direction.

We soon remedied that, however. But the fairest spot on earth would become detestable if it had to contain Chabot and his drunken humours. He may have done big things for the N. W. when he was on the Assiniboin. Give the devil his due; he must have accomplished much to be appointed master at Pembina. It must have been that he traded his high wine instead of giving so much of it to himself. He had held himself in during the fall, but the winter had broken down all self-restraint. So I was keen to return East and ask for another position. I had committed myself to furthering the interests of Simon McTavish, of McTavish, Frobisher & Company.

The breath of the fur company had filled my lungs, and, although well educated for those days, I had no dreams of ever doing anything except to trade for buffalo robes and beaver. I had nursed ambitions. I desired to become a notable Northman. So the wild fowl, filling the sky, were no more eager to make their Northern homes than was I to make the Grand Portage and hasten on to Montreal and obtain a transfer.

Now that the time was near for starting the skin canoes down the river it did not seem I could compose my soul in patience to await the great day. Strangely enough this approach of freedom suddenly caused me to fear that I and not Black Chabot might precipitate a tragedy. As I gazed on the woful waste of hides swirling by the post, I repeatedly vowed I would watch myself every minute and keep away from Chabot as much as possible. I even planned to leave ahead of him and the brigade, on the excuse it would be well for me to visit our station on the Scratching, where the X. Y. opposition also was established.

"Red" Dearness was the new master there, having arrived late in the winter with Madame, his woman. He was a surly sort, I heard, something of a recluse. Fragments of gossip about his woman had her full-blood and quarter. It would never do for me to suggest the trip. Black Chabot must think it was his own idea and something of a hardship for me. I fancied I was intelligent enough to bring this about.

I thought of several different methods for planting the notion in his thick head as I idly watched the Indian women drag buffaloes to the bank. They were lifting the back fat and removing the tongues, leaving the rest to rot except for one or two which they cut up for their own use. We white men would not eat drowned buffalo, but the Chippewas were fond of it. The meat did appear to be all right, fresh and firm. Of course the women could secure only one or two out of each hundred huge bodies floating by. There were literally herds of the big brutes. Above and below our post every river was contributing its ghastly cargo. Thousands and thousands perished each season in crossing the ice. And this terrific waste had been going on for hundreds and probably thousands of years. In addition to the carcasses floating downstream there were countless bodies lodged along the banks of the many rivers. Soon there would arise an awful stench, for there were not enough scavengers to cheat the hot sun.

On the plains as far as the eye could reach were living and dead buffalo. Bald eagles and crows and wolves were battening on the fallen. Our dogs chased those afoot that wandered near the fort. Many a scabby old bull carried a crow on his back and displayed a furious temper under the implacable and continuous pecking. The beasts were a sad sight to look at now, lean and showing huge patches where their winter coats had fallen out.

Back in February one of the hunters said he had found a calf frozen to death and declared it was a positive sign of an early spring. At that time we were finishing two hundred cords in our four chimneys and were sceptical of such prophecies. Still, the season did break early, although for the life of me I never could understand why abnormally cold weather in February should forecast an early breaking up of the ice. For that matter the strong timber Indians have many signs and omens which come to nothing.

The town-bred would have found nothing but grim severity in the panorama. But I knew the ash-leaf maples were running and that the women were making sugar, and I felt the wind mild and mellow as it blew up from the south, promising a clear passage home even if it brought the reek of smoke which might mean the Sioux. The summer birds and frogs unqualifiedly insisted it was springtime and high time for one to desire to go somewhere.

In and outside the stockade the hunters were preparing their traps for the spring hunt. Already the raccoons were beginning to leave their hollow trees during the daytime, and quite a few were being taken. That morning one of the Indians had brought in several wolf pups, tame and playful as kittens. He intended raising them for sled dogs. An important event was the arrival of two men with the winter express from Portage La Prairie, bringing orders to Chabot and bearing other matters which must be taken without delay to Grand Portage.

How I longed to carry the express! With the season so early I knew I could make Sault Ste. Marie before June. Unfortunately Chabot was the master and after reading his orders he had stuffed them in his leather coat and lavishly treated the messengers to rum before sending them on their way. They were half drunk when they left and he continued drinking alone.

Short Arms came in howling over the death of a child, and he must have a keg of liquor to drive away his sorrow and some red cloth and vermilion to cover the body. Chabot had no excuse for getting the express drunk and thereby delaying the business of the gentlemen of the North, but of course it was necessary to give the rum to the Indian. With the English, as with the French before them and as it would be with the Americans in the South, liquor was the backbone of the fur trade.

It made it beastly disagreeable at times for anyone inclined to be fastidious, but only high wine would bring in furs and skins for a surety. Even in Montreal, the heart of the Northern fur trade, I have heard people complain about the universal practice of trading rum for pelts. Substitute something else for rum and see how many packs of beaver go down the St. Lawrence.

I do not suppose that that particular morning differed greatly from those that preceded it, yet it sticks in my memory like a burr to a bull because it was the beginning of a wonderful experience for me, the coming of something which was to affect my whole life and bring contentment out of a welter of great dangers. The details, even the trivial things, stand very clear-cut. All things counted, it had been a busy morning. Old Tabashaw was drunk early and bawling some new medicine songs in an attempt to cure a young woman whose jealous husband had shot an arrow through her body. Those not employed in making their traps fit were playing their game of platter and pestering me for liquor.

Before pausing to watch the river I had overseen the making of the last of the pemmican, ninety pounds to a bag, fifty of beef and the rest in grease. I also had supervised the repairing and the gumming of the canoes. These had rested all winter under thick covering of hay, their frames loosened, and they needed careful attention. I had pursued and caught Little Crane and made him give up pelts due us for debt. He was taking his hunt to the X. Y. post, angry because I had refused him an extra ration of rum.

When I halted him and insisted on his squaring his debt, the scoundrel tried to knife me, but a clout over the head with my strong club quickly brought him to his senses, or, rather, knocked him senseless. My duty to my employers demanded I prevent the Crane from cheating us out of the debt and enriching "Red" Dearness, of the opposition.

I had small stomach for what immediately followed. Some women came in from the Pembina Mountains, bringing a pack of prime beaver which they were taking to the X. Y. post on the Scratching to pay their men's debt. We had a hut in the mountains and a small assortment of goods to catch the Cree and Assiniboin as well as the Chippewa trade. Had there been any chance of honourably trading for the pack, our men would have done so. But the furs were already owed to the opposition. When Chabot learned of the women's presence and their intention of carrying their pack down-river, he raged and cursed the hill men for fools for ever letting the beaver get by them. Then he demanded the women give the furs to him and when they refused he fought them. They fought like wildcats, but he got the trade.

Such work was bound to make bad business for us, for the devil had been to pay ever since the X. Y. and the H. B. opposition came to the Red. During my three seasons there I had seen the Chippewas, Crees, and Assiniboins spoiled. Each season they grew worse. If a man killed a few skins, we treated him as if he were a big chief. Almost all of them had scarlet coats. It was bad enough when we had to cater to old Tabashaw, the drunken nuisance, but when we had to coddle every hunter who made an ordinary hunt it was not only tedious but dangerous. If I punished a man for stealing supplies, he would go down to the Scratching to be petted up by Dearness. And we made much of those who came to us after being corrected at the X. Y. Of course, such conditions couldn't continually grow worse without our dead bodies being thrown into the Red to vary the monotony of drowned buffalo. And, having created such an evil situation, it was madness for Black Chabot to take skins from the native women by brute force.

All this and a dozen other tag ends of trouble were swimming through my mind as I watched the women drag the buffaloes ashore and tried to perfect my scheme for being sent on ahead to the Scratching.

When a great hubbub inside the stockade attracted my attention I took it for granted another jealous buck had knifed his wife or bitten off her nose, but a glance showed me Chabot's huge form and black whiskers, and the air seemed to be filled with wolf pups. The owner of the pups looked bad about the eyes but contented himself with grunting as he gathered his pets in a corner. Chabot, from sheer brutality, had halted on entering the gate to kick the little creatures out of his path. Now he swaggered up to me, looking very nasty. I dropped my hand over my knife and braced my feet.

His first words, bawled out so the whole post could hear, were—

"Found out yet who cut that hole through the back of the storehouse?"

This stock question was the barometer of his drams. Nearly three months before some Indian had cut a hole through the logs of the storehouse and by means of a gun-screw on the end of a stick had attempted to fish out some of our trade goods. Fortunately the screw had broken off at the first trial and had dropped inside, and we had lost nothing. When at the fighting peak of his drinking Chabot always brought this matter up, treating it as if it were a fresh crime and peculiarly within my province to solve. There was scarcely anything outside of personal abuse which he could have said that would have irritated as did this query.

In my exasperation I answered—

"I'll get a wabeno drum and go into a trance and maybe find out all about it."

Instantly I was sorry to have said it, for I remembered my fears of a flare-up at the last minute and my firm resolve to avoid it. And now I had invited a tragedy by my sarcasm.

"Franklin, that ain't the way to talk to me," he murmured. "As clerk you're supposed to keep track of the goods."

Once more my good intentions flew away and I angrily rejoined:

"I can't keep track of anything stolen unless I steal it myself. Please remember that nothing was taken."

"I do remember," he snorted. "This post would go to 2 if I didn't do most of the remembering. Why didn't you look for tracks?"

This was a fair sample of his drunken unreasonableness when he was primed to pick a quarrel. Now I was determined to hold myself in check and politely observed—

"Pardon me, but the dogs had raced back and forth through the snow and destroyed all signs before you and I could look the ground over."

"You've always got a good reason for not doing things," he murmured.

Once he lowered his voice it was time to look out for trouble. Twice within a minute he had spoken gently. I stepped back, pretending to be watching the sturgeon jumping in the river, but in reality to get elbow room as I toyed with the haft of my knife.

"When you going to finish that pemmican?" he softly asked.

"It's all finished," I said, gripping the knife-handle.

"Well, for God's sake, try to find something to do besides sight-seeing," he bellowed. The danger was past for the time and my hand dropped to my side. In his bull of Bashan voice he continued, "One of the men is just down from up-river with twenty beaver, six still in the meat, and you ought to be on hand to trade them. Give him a quart of that West Indies rum that's spoiled. The fools think it's French brandy. Tell him it's a present for getting skins while those other skunks do nothing but loaf. Shows what they can do if they want to. He's only been gone two days."

His idea of teaching the idlers the profits of industry caused me to smile as best I could do to keep a straight face, for the loafers were all drunk. He caught the smile, although I swallowed it fast enough, and added—

"After you've traded the skins I want to see you in my room." Low tone again, the danger signal.

I believe we had reached a point where something radical must happen. I could no longer gain anything by trying to avoid him, to dodge his vicious moods. The man who found the wolf pups and several others were watching us and listening. They furnished me my cue and, jerking my head toward them, I warned:

"You're spoiling your own trade when you talk this way to me. They're ready for mischief. The X. Y. has spoiled them."

My reference to the opposition caused him to forget me. With a howl of rage he began cursing "Red" Dearness and his woman. He had never seen the latter, yet he included her in his volley of invectives. He had met "Red" Dearness once at the mouth of Reed River and came within an inch of locking canoes and having it out to the death.

"I kicked White Partridge nearly to death after he stole my horse and went over there. When Dearness heard about it he made a chief out of the skunk. As soon as I can get the Indians off for the summer hunt and the brigade under way I'm going to have a settlement with that red hound."

"That will mean the two posts will fight it out with the Indians waiting to kill off the survivors. Then the H. B. will have a clear field. Dearness is new down here, but from what I hear you don't want to start blazing a trail toward him unless you're willing to finish it. I don't see as he has done any worse than you have. He'll probably have something to say about your taking the skins from the women."

Instead of increasing his rage this frank speech set him to chuckling heavily. He was remembering his coup against the X. Y.

"The Arrer's woman tried to cut my throat," he guffawed. "He'd sell her to me for a nine-gallon keg."

"If he does, she'll cut your throat in earnest," I warned. "But to get back to me; when the Indians see I am treated with disrespect, they'll decide you can be treated the same way."

"Pooh! I'll break the back of the first dirty buck that looks at me squint-eyed," he bellowed.

"Hurt one and you hurt every Chippewa in the Northwest. Next fall we'll find they've been passing tobacco to wipe us out."

This statement jolted him and he stared at me steadily for half a minute and began plucking at his long beard. He was half drunk and wanted to deride my warning. However, there was a streak of fear in his make-up. He tried to laugh and carried it off poorly, for in the midst of a guffaw he happened to catch the scowling gaze of the wolf-hunter and grew very sober.

"Never mind about the beaver pelts. I'll go down and trade them," he mumbled. "Old Tabashaw has been telling the men he has a new medicine and can make rum and iron arrers."

"He's bad," I gravely agreed. "The year I was at the Park post we gave him a New Year's treat of rum, flour and sugar, and he paid us by trying to bribe our hunter to leave us, so we would have to pay more for our meat. We were giving the hunter sixty skins, cloth for his wife and all his ammunition too. Trouble with him is our giving his men too many red coats. When he alone had a red coat and a red feather for his hair, he felt he was chief. Now all his men feel as big as he does. He knows his power over the tribe is slipping and he wants to get it back He's making ready for the Grand Medicine ceremony. After that's over and they begin making the wabeno, he'll spring some new tricks. That's why he plays his new drum so much. Black Robe told his woman yesterday that the chief can kill any man, red or white, by just wishing him to die."

"The poisoners!" grunted Chabot, winding up with a little shiver. "He's at it now, the murderer!"

He referred to the monotonous thudding of the new drum, accompanying the chief's yowling voice in more wabeno songs. The chief had pretended to extract a piece of metal from the wounded woman's side and had collected a big kettle and two blankets from the husband. Now he was seeking another piece of metal in her neck, for which he would be generously paid.

The fact that the arrow had left no foreign substance in the wound did not impair the husband's credulity. The more fragments of iron the old rascal would pretend to draw from the poor body the greater his reputation as a medicine man. His voice rose above the noise made by the dogs, the women and the children. Chabot had heard him throughout the morning without paying any heed. Indian howling and drumming and fighting was a background we were used to, just as we were used to the song of the river and never heard it unless we stopped and deliberately listened.

Now, because of my words, the chief's song had a new significance. In it Chabot was finding a threat against his life. Although I was glad to have diverted his attention from me, I began to regret having mentioned poison. It would never do for him to show he was afraid. We were but a handful of white men possessing treasure the natives yearned for—rum. We were surrounded by one of the largest tribes on the continent, a people numerous and brave enough to drive the Sioux south. We held our place at the top of the heap only by holding our heads high and forcing the impression that we belonged there.

I had often travelled alone to the Pembina Mountains and all through the Reed and Red Lake Rivers districts and up the Red far beyond Grandes Fourches, in seeking Indian families to kill skins for us. But with the exception of eccentric attacks by drunken men I had never been in actual danger. There had been many times, however, when my scalp would have dried in smoke over a tent-pole had I shown the white feather. There was only one Indian along the whole river in whom I put any trust. It was a whimsical truth that this exception should be Flat Mouth, a chief of the greatest band of robbers in the whole Chippewa Nation. So it was with lively concern that I watched the changing expression in Chabot's eyes and feared that his face under the heavy beard was developing lines of weakness.

"The only thing to do is to be firm with them," I remarked.

"Yes, yes. Of course. We must be firm," he muttered, trying to frown at the wolf-hunter. Then with a shrug of his powerful shoulders he said, "We'll be getting out pretty soon. Very soon."

"Not for a month at the quickest," I reminded.

"As soon as I can settle their accounts and hire the summer men, the brigade starts," he sullenly replied.

"But the X. Y. and the H. B. canoes won't start till sometime in May," I protested.

"They can start when they please," he growled. "The brigade from this post pulls out when I give the word. I shall have the packs made up very soon."