The Wilderness Trail.

by Frank Williams.

CHAPTER I

UP FOR JUDGMENT

"And you accuse me of that?"

Donald McTavish glared down into the heavy, ugly face of his superior--a face that concealed behind its mask of dignity emotions as potent and lasting as the northland that bred them.

"I accuse you of nothing." Fitzpatrick pawed his white beard. "I only know that a great quant.i.ty of valuable furs, trapped in your district, have not been turned in to me here at the factory. It is to explain this discrepancy that I have called you down by dogs in the dead of winter. Where are those furs?" He looked up out of the great chair in which he was sitting, and regarded his inferior with cold insolence. For half an hour now, the interview had been in progress, half an hour of shame and dismay for McTavish, and the same amount of satisfaction for the factor.

"I tell you I have no idea where they are," returned the post captain. "So far as I know, the usual number of pelts have been traded for at the fort. If any have disappeared, it is a matter of the white trappers and the Indians, not my affair."

"Yes," agreed the other suavely; "but who is in charge of Fort d.i.c.key?"

"I am."

"Then, how can you say it is not your affair when the Company is losing twenty thousand pounds a year from your district?"

The young man ground his teeth helplessly, torn between the desire to throttle ugly old Fitzpatrick where he sat, or to turn on his heel, and walk out without another word. He did neither. Either would have been disastrous, as he well knew. He had not come up three years with the spring _brigade_ from the d.i.c.key and Lake Bolsover without knowing the autocratic, almost royal, rule of old Angus. Fitzpatrick, factor at Fort Severn for these two decades.

So, now, he choked back his wrath, and walked quietly up and down, pondering what to do. The room was square, low, and heavily raftered.

Donald had to duck his head for one particular beam at each pa.s.sage back and forth. Beneath his feet were great bearskins in profusion; a moose's head decorated one end of the place. The furniture was heavy and home-made.

At last, he turned upon the factor.

"Look here!" he said simply. "What have you got against me? You know as well as I do that there isn't another man in your whole district you would call in from a winter post to accuse in this way. What have I done? How have I failed in my duty? Have I taken advantage of my position as the chief commissioner's son?"

Fitzpatrick pawed his beard again, and shot a sharp, inquisitive glance at the young captain. That mention of his father's position was slightly untoward. In turn, he pondered a minute.

"Up to this time," he said at last, "you have done your work well.

You know the business pretty thoroughly, and your Indians seem to be contented. I have nothing against you--"

"No," burst out McTavish, "you have nothing against me. That's just it. Virtues with you are always negative; never have I heard you grant a positive quality in all the time I have known you. And, to be frank, I think that you have something against me. But what it is I cannot find out." He paused eloquently before the white-haired figure that seemed as immovable as a block of granite.

"This is hardly the time for personalities, McTavish," said the other, harshly. "What I want to know is, what steps will you take to restore the furs that have disappeared from your district?"

"How do you know they have disappeared from my district?" Donald blazed forth.

"I know everything in this country," replied Fitzpatrick, dryly.

"Then, am I under the surveillance of your spying Indians?"

"Enough!" roared the factor, at last roused from his calm. "I am not here to be questioned. Answer me! What are you going to do?"

McTavish dropped his clenched hands with a gesture of hopeless weariness.

"I'll swallow your insulting innuendoes, and try to dig up some evidence to support your accusation," he said, quietly. "If I get track of any leakage, I'll do my best to stop it. If not, you shall learn as soon as possible."

"The leakage exists," rejoined the factor, doggedly. "Plug the hole, or--" He paused suggestively.

"Or what?" cried the younger man, whirling upon him furiously.

"Plug the hole--that's all."

Shaking with the fury that possessed him, McTavish turned away from his chief, and walked to a window, lest he should lose all control of himself. But a thought came to him that restored the proud angle of his head, and crushed his anger into nothingness.

What McTavish yet had been the fool of a narrow-minded, disgruntled superior, and showed it by losing his temper? None. The name of McTavish rang down the hall of the Hudson Bay Company's history like a bugle. Three generations of them had served this fearful master--he was the third. His father, now chief commissioner, had served an apprenticeship of twenty years in the wilds, beginning as a mere lad. He himself, when barely fifteen, had felt the call in his blood, and gone out on the trail with Peter Rainy, a devoted Indian of his father's. Peter was still with him, but now as body-servant, and not as instructor in woodcraft.

Donald thought of these things as he looked out of the chunky, square window into the snow-m.u.f.fled courtyard. So engrossed was he that he failed to hear the door of the room open, and the light footfalls of Tee-ka-mee, Fitzpatrick's bowman and body-servant.

The Indian, sensing some unpleasantness in the air, went directly to the factor, and handed him a message, explaining that Pierre Cardepie, one of McTavish's companions at the d.i.c.key River post, had sent it by Indian runner.

Through the window the post-captain saw opposite him a corner made by two walls meeting at right angles. Even in summer, they were stout, heavy walls; but, now, with twenty feet of snow m.u.f.fling and locking them in an unshakable grip, they were monstrous. Above the walls, a bastion of squared logs, looped-holed for four- and six-pounders, rose. There was another one at the opposite corner of the square, and together they commanded all approaches.

Angus Fitzpatrick opened the message Tee-ka-mee handed to him, and read it. His only sign of emotion was the lifting of an eyebrow.

Then, he waved the Indian out.

"McTavish!" he called sharply, and the younger man turned wearily from the window to face his superior.

"I suppose you know that half-breed, Charley Seguis, in your district? He comes up with the _brigade_ every spring, I believe."

"Yes, I know him. He is a skilful trapper and a half-breed of remarkable intelligence."

"Huh! That's the trouble; he's got too much intelligence to make him safe as a half-breed. What do you know about him? Is he a bad one?"

"Quite the contrary, so far as I have observed."

"Well, he's been bad this time. Read that." Fitzpatrick handed Cardepie's scrawl to McTavish, and watched keenly as the latter read:

SIR:

Yesterday Charley Seguis murder Cree Johnny. No reason I can find. I send this by runner so Mr. McTavish get it before he starts back.

CARDEPIE.

"That's most remarkable, sir," said Donald, genuinely puzzled. "I never would have suspected Charley of that. He has brains enough to know the consequences of murder. I can't understand it."

"Neither can Cardepie, evidently. He says he knows no reason for the deed." Fitzpatrick heaved himself up, and leaned forward interestedly. "You know," he went on, "that this thing cannot go unpunished. Charley Seguis must be captured, and brought to the fort here."

"Will the mounted police get here before--?" began McTavish.

"The mounted police be hanged! There are only seven hundred of them, and they have to cover a country as big as Siberia. You don't suppose I'm going to wait for them, do you? Nominally, they're the law here, but literally I and the men under me are. Retribution in this case must be swift and sure, as it always has been from Fort Severn." Fitzpatrick paused to breathe.

"Then, you mean that I must go out and get him," Donald interpreted, calmly.

"You spare me the trouble of saying it," replied the other. "When can you start?"