Without alarm or hint of lurking enemy, men and beasts made their way slowly up the steep river bank and through the woods to the prairie. The carts, shafts out, had been arranged in a circle, and within this defensive barricade camp had been pitched. Families fortunate enough to have tents had set them up. Others had devised shelters by stretching a buffalo skin, a blanket, or a square of canvas over the box and one wheel of a cart. The ponies, hobbled around the fore legs or staked out with long rawhide ropes, were left to feed on the short, dry prairie grass, and to take care of themselves, but the few precious oxen and cows were carefully watched and guarded against straying.

With the fuel brought from the woods fires were kindled within the circle. Kettles were swung on tripods of sticks or on stakes driven into the hard ground and slanted over the blaze. Pemmican and tea had been supplied to the Swiss. The older settlers had, in addition, a little barley meal for porridge and a few potatoes which they roasted in the ashes. Louis and Walter eked out their scanty supper with a handful of hazelnuts that had escaped the notice of the squirrels in the woods. The autumn was too far advanced for berries of any kind.

After the meal, Walter made the acquaintance of the MacKay family, Neil’s burly, red-bearded father, his mother, his two sisters, and next younger brother. The eldest brother, who was married, had gone to Pembina nearly a month earlier. Mrs. MacKay, a tall, thin woman with a rather stern face, spoke little French, but with true Highland hospitality she made Walter and Louis welcome to the family fire. Wrapped in a blanket and knitting a stocking, she sat on a three-legged stool close to the blaze. At her right was her older daughter patching, by firelight, the sleeve of a blue cloth capote. On the other side, the father was mending a piece of harness, cutting the ends of the rawhide straps into fine strips and braiding them as if he were splicing a rope. Neil too was busy cleaning and oiling his gun, and his younger brother, a sandy-haired lad of ten, was whittling a wooden arrow. The two little children had been put to bed in a snug nest of blankets and robes underneath the cart. The sight of this family gathering around the fire gave Walter a feeling of homesickness and loneliness that brought a lump to his throat. The feeling deepened as he and his companion strolled from cart to cart and fire to fire. Everyone in the camp but Louis and himself had his own family circle, and Louis was on the way to home and mother.

It was the Lajimonières who gave the two boys the warmest welcome and made the Swiss lad forget his homesickness. They were old friends of the Brabant family, and Louis called Madame Lajimonière “marraine.” She had acted as his godmother when Père Provencher baptized him. Indeed she was godmother to so many of the Canadian children at St. Boniface and Pembina that the younger members of the two settlements seldom called her by any other name. There was no Indian blood in Marie Lajimonière, and she had lived in the valley of the Red River longer than any other white woman. Several years before the first band of Selkirk settlers had reached the forks of the Assiniboine and the Red, she had come with her husband to the Red River country from Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence. When, in 1818, the Roman Catholic missionaries, Father Provencher and Father Dumoulin, had arrived in the Selkirk Colony, Madame Lajimonière had received them with warmth and enthusiasm. She was a devout member of their church, and she gladly stood sponsor for the Canadian and bois brulé children brought to the priests for baptism. Louis had a warm affection for his marraine, and Walter took an immediate liking to her and her family.

One of the Lajimonière children was a girl of about Elise Perier’s age, a slender, black-haired, red-cheeked girl named Reine. When Reine, somewhat shyly, questioned the Swiss boy about his long journey from Fort York, he told her of Elise and Max and Mr. Perier, and how anxious he was about their welfare.

“Oh, we will all help to make them comfortable and happy when they come to Pembina,” Reine eagerly assured him. “It will be delightful to have a new girl, just my age, who speaks French. The Scotch girls are so hard to talk to, when you don’t know their language or they yours. I shall like your sister I know, and I hope she will like me.”

At Louis’ urging, Jean Baptiste Lajimonière told Walter of the greatest adventure of his adventurous life. In the winter of 1815 and ’16 he had gone alone from Red River to Montreal. He carried letters to Lord Selkirk, – who had come over from England, – telling how the Northwesters had driven away his colonists. All alone, the plucky voyageur faced the perils and hardships of the long wilderness journey. He came through safely, to give the letters into Lord Selkirk’s own hands and relate to his own ears the story of the settlers’ troubles. Lajimonière told his tale well, and the boy forgot his own perplexities as he listened. Not until the story was finished did Walter realize how late the hour was, long past time to seek his blanket. Madame Lajimonière and the children had already disappeared under their buffalo skin shelter, Louis had stolen quietly away, and the whole camp was wrapped in silence.

Walter thanked the guide, said good night, and hurried back to his own camping place. The horses and cattle had been brought within the circle and picketed or tied to cart wheels. The settlers were taking no chance of Indian horse thieves making away with their beasts. Everyone in the camp, except the guards stationed outside the barricade, was sleeping, and the fires were burning low. The night was dark, without moon or stars. How lonely and insignificant was this little circle of carts, with the prairie stretching around it and the vast arch of the sky overhead! The flickering light of the fires, only partly revealing picketed beasts, clumsy carts, and rude shelters, seemed merely to intensify the darkness, the vastness, the loneliness beyond.

Not a wild animal, except a few gophers, had been seen all day; the cart train was too noisy. But now the wind that swept the prairie brought a chorus of voices, the high-pitched barking of the small prairie wolves, and the long-drawn howling of the big, gray timber ones. The dogs answered, until their masters, waking, belabored them into silence. The camps along the rivers and the shores of Lake Winnipeg had seemed remote enough from civilization, but not one had impressed the mountain-bred lad with such an overwhelming sense of loneliness as did this circle of carts on the prairie.

He found Louis already asleep, and crawled in beside him. There he lay, listening to the wolves and, when their howlings ceased for a time, to the faint and far-away cries of a flock of migrating birds passing high overhead. Then he drifted away into sleep.

The approach of dawn was beginning to gray the blackness in the east when every dog in the camp suddenly began to growl. The horses grew restive, neighing and moving about. Startled wide awake, Walter, thrilling at the thought of a Sioux attack, asked his comrade what the matter was. Louis did not know. He had thrown aside his blanket and was crawling out from under the cart. As Walter followed, he heard the guide calling to the watchers beyond the barricade. The guards replied that all was quiet on the prairie. They could see nothing wrong, discern no moving form.

For a few minutes everyone in the camp was awake, anxious, excited, but nothing happened, no war whoop came out of the darkness. The dogs ceased growling, the ponies neighing, and soon all was silence again. What had caused the alarm, whether prowling wild beast or skulking man, or the mere restlessness of some sleepless dog or nervous horse, no one could tell.

The camp was astir before the sun was up, and the first task was to water the horses and cattle. Louis remained behind to get breakfast while Walter rode the pony to the river.

The late start from Fort Douglas made getting to Pembina that day impossible. After plodding along the prairie track and crossing several small streams, the cart train passed a cold and stormy night in the open beyond the wooded bank of a muddy creek that Louis called Rivière aux Marais. Pembina was reached next day in a driving storm of rain, sleet and snow.

The Pembina River took its name from anepeminan, the Ojibwa term for the shrub we call highbush cranberry. The junction of the Pembina with the Red was an old trading place. The Northwest men had established themselves there before the close of the eighteenth century, and in the early years of the nineteenth all three rival companies, the Northwest, the Hudson Bay, and the New Northwest or X. Y. Company, as it was called by the old Northwesters, maintained posts a short distance from one another. Those old posts were gone, – burned or torn down, – long before the time of this story. The two forts then standing had been built at a later date. Fort Daer, the Selkirk Colony post, dated from the autumn of 1812, when the first of the colonists, under the leadership of Miles McDonnell, had come to the Pembina to winter. It stood on the south bank of that river near where it empties into the Red. Just opposite, across the Pembina, was a former Northwest fort, which had become, since the uniting of the companies, a Hudson Bay trading post.

Some of the Scotch settlers and all of the Swiss except Walter were to be lodged at Fort Daer until they could build cabins of their own. Louis had asked Walter to be his guest. The cart he was driving, which was not his own, was loaded with the household goods of some of the settlers, and had to be taken to Fort Daer. After leaving the fort, the two boys, carrying their scanty belongings in packs, made their way to Louis’ home. The little village of log cabins was not actually on the Pembina, but near the bank of the Red a mile or more from the junction point. The arrival at Fort Daer of a cart train from down river was an important event, but the abominable weather curbed curiosity, and the boys saw few people as they made their way against the storm to the Brabant cabin.

Louis’ mother, hoping that he might have come with the party from Fort Douglas, was on the lookout for him. Before he could reach the door, it flew open. Followed by the younger children and three shaggy-haired sled dogs, Mrs. Brabant ran out into the sleet and snow. Very heartily Louis hugged and kissed her. When he presented his companion, she welcomed Walter warmly. The children greeted him shyly. The dogs, inclined at first to resent his presence, concluded, after a curt command and a kick or two from the moccasined toe of Louis’ younger brother, to accept the newcomer as one of the family.

To the Swiss lad, weary, soaked, and chilled through, the rude but snug cabin with a fire blazing in the rough stone fireplace, promised a comfort that seemed almost heavenly. He had not spent a night or even eaten a meal inside a building for many weeks. The warmth was so grateful, the smell from the steaming kettle that hung above the blaze so appetizing, that for a few minutes he could do nothing but stand before the fire, speechless, half dazed by the sudden transition from the wet and the bitter cold.

He was roused by Mrs. Brabant who offered him dry moccasins and one of the shirts she had been making for Louis during his absence. Walter had a dry shirt in his pack, but he accepted the moccasins gratefully. His shoes were not only soaked, but so worn from the long journey that they scarcely held together. The cabin, one of the best in the settlement, boasted two rooms, and Louis’ mother and sisters retired to the other one while the boys changed their clothes. As soon as they were warm and partly dry, supper was served.

The household sat on stools and floor in front of the fire, each with his cup and wooden platter. From the bubbling pot standing on the hearth Madame Brabant ladled out generous portions. The rich and savory stew was made up of buffalo meat, wild goose, potatoes, carrots, onions, and other ingredients that Walter did not recognize but enjoyed nevertheless. It was the best meal he had tasted in months, and he ate until he could hold no more.

The hunters had returned only a few days before from the great fall buffalo chase, and there was abundance of meat in the settlement. It was during the autumn hunt two years before that Louis’ father had been accidentally killed, and the Brabant family had not accompanied the hunters since that time, but Mrs. Brabant’s brother had brought her a supply of fresh and dried meat and pemmican. The goose thirteen-year-old Raoul had shot, and the potatoes and other vegetables were from the Brabant garden. The grasshopper hordes had missed Pembina. Mrs. Brabant expressed sympathy for the poor Selkirk colonists who had lost all their crops. She listened with lively interest to the boys’ account of the trip from Fort York, and asked the Swiss lad many questions about his own people.

Walter was so grateful for shelter, warmth, food, and the kindly welcome he was receiving that he could not have been critical of the Brabant family whatever they had been. As it happened, he liked them all heartily. He was to discover, within the next few days, that this household was considerably superior to most of those in Pembina. The interior of the cabin was neat and clean, differing markedly in this respect from many of the bois brulé dwellings. Her straight black hair, smoothly arranged in braids hanging over her shoulders, her dark skin, and high cheek-bones betrayed the Ojibwa in Louis’ mother, but in every other way, especially in her ready smile, lively speech, and alert movements, she seemed wholly French. She wore deerskin leggings with moccasins, but her dark blue calico dress, belted with a strip of bright beadwork, was fresh and clean. Her little daughters were dressed in the same fashion, except that Marie, the elder, who was about ten years old, wore skirt and tunic of soft, fringed doeskin, instead of calico. The dark eyes of both little girls sparkled when Louis, unknotting a small bundle wrapped in a red handkerchief, handed each one a length of bright-colored ribbon, one red, the other orange, to tie in their long black braids. For his mother he brought a silk handkerchief, a gilt locket, and a packet of good tea, the kind, he had been told, the Chief Factor at Fort York drank. Raoul was made happy with a shiny new knife.

Louis and Walter were tired enough to take to their blankets early. Mrs. Brabant and the girls slept in a great box bed, made of hand-hewn boards painted bright blue, that stood in the corner of the room where the fireplace was. In the smaller room, which was nothing but a lean-to shed with a dirt floor, was a curious couch for the boys. It was made of strips of rawhide stretched tightly on a frame of poles, and was covered with buffalo robe and blankets. This cot Louis shared with Walter, who found the rawhide straps not nearly so hard as bare ground. Raoul rolled himself in a robe and lay down in front of the fire.

XV
THE OJIBWA HUNTER

Walter was anxious to get a place ready for the Periers, but he found that every one of the fifty or sixty log cabins in Pembina was full to overflowing. Indeed he marveled at the number of men, women, and children of all sizes that could be packed into a one-room cabin. The houses were built of logs chinked with clay and moss, and roofed with bark or grass thatch, and few had more than one room.

A straggling, unkempt place was the settlement, the cabins set down hit or miss, with cart tracks wandering around among them. The tracks and dooryards were deep in mud, which was stiff with frost when the boys started out that morning. As the sun softened the ground, Walter found walking in the sticky stuff something like wading through thick glue, it clung to his moccasins so. Gardens were rare. The surroundings of most of the cabins were very untidy, cluttered with broken-down carts, disorderly piles of firewood, odds, ends, and rubbish of all sorts. Shaggy, unkempt ponies, hobbled or staked out, and wolfish looking sled dogs, running loose, were everywhere.

The people were most of them bois brulés whose hair, skin, and features showed all degrees of mixed blood from almost pure white to nearly pure Indian. They seemed good-natured and very hospitable. The merrymaking in celebration of the return of the hunt was not yet at an end. Everywhere Louis and his companion were urged to share in a feast of buffalo meat, to join in a gambling game or in dancing to the scraping of a fiddle. So pressing were the invitations that declining was difficult.

The neatest, best kept buildings in the village were the mission chapel and presbytery. Father Dumoulin was setting a good example to his flock by cleaning up his garden patch. Looking up from his work, he greeted Louis by name. The priest was a striking looking man, tall and strong of frame, his height emphasized by his long, straight, black cassock. His face was strong too. Walter, though not of Father Dumoulin’s church, felt instantly that here was a man to command the respect of white men, half-breeds, and savages. When the priest learned that the boy was one of the newly arrived immigrants, he asked a number of questions.

Near Fort Daer, in the edge of the woods bordering the river, a cluster of better kept cabins housed some of the more thrifty of the Scotch. In one of the largest and best of the houses, the two lads found the MacKay family settled for the winter. Neil was eager to arrange for an immediate buffalo hunt, but Louis replied that he could not go for a while. There were things he must do for his mother, and Walter did not want to be away when his friends arrived.

From the MacKay cabin the boys went on to Fort Daer. Like all the forts in that part of the world, Daer and Pembina House, the old Northwest post, consisted of log stockades enclosing a few buildings. They stood on opposite sides of the Pembina and the land about each had been cleared of most of its trees and bushes. The Pembina was a good-sized stream, deep, sluggish, and like the Red, colored with the mud it carried. At Fort Daer Walter talked with some of his countrymen, who were feeling somewhat encouraged. They had been well fed, and were grateful for warmth and shelter. Real winter, the bitterly cold winter of this northern country, might come at any moment now to stay.

If Walter was to hunt to help supply himself and the Periers with food, he needed a gun. With Louis he went to the Company store at Pembina House to buy one. He could not pay for it in money, but hoped that he might get it on credit, paying later in buffalo skins and other furs. The Hudson Bay Company frowned on fur hunting as well as on Indian trading by the colonists, but the settlers would be obliged to hunt that winter if they wished to eat. Louis thought that if Walter agreed to turn over to the Company the pelts of the food animals he killed, and not to engage in barter with the Indians, he might arrange for a gun and ammunition.

The two were explaining Walter’s needs, when an Indian burst suddenly into the room. His buckskin clothing was covered with mud. Blood matted his black hair and stained one dark cheek which was disfigured by a great scar. His eyes glittered, and his manner was wild and excited. The boys thought for a moment that he was going to attack the trader. The Indian, however, had no weapons, – no gun, hatchet, or knife. He began to talk rapidly, angrily. Walter could not understand a word of Ojibwa, but he could see that the Indian’s speech startled both Louis and the trader. The latter replied briefly in the same tongue, then darted out of the door, the Ojibwa after him. Before Walter could voice a question, Louis was gone too. The Swiss boy turned to follow, hesitated, and decided to stay where he was.

In a few moments Louis was back again. “What is it? Are the Sioux coming?” Walter asked anxiously.

“No, unless this affair is the work of spies.”

“What affair? Could you understand what he said?”

“Most of it. He was so wild it was hard to follow him. He has been attacked. He was down at the river loading his canoe. Two men came along. While one was talking to him, the other stole up behind him, knocked him over the head, and ‘put him to sleep.’ When he came to his senses, the goods he had just bought and his gun and knife were gone. There was a hole cut in his canoe. Of course he may be lying. He may have hidden the things and made up the story.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To get a double supply of goods and ammunition. The trader believes him though. He is sending men in search of those two fellows.”

When the trader returned he added further details to the story. The Ojibwa, he said, was an honest, trustworthy hunter, who had been bringing his furs to the Company for several years. He had come alone from Red Lake to get his winter’s supplies and ammunition. Having finished his bargaining, he was loading his boat at the riverside when another canoe, with two men, appeared, coming up stream. One of the men shouted a greeting in Ojibwa, they turned their boat in to shore, jumped out, and engaged him in talk. Entirely unsuspicious of treachery, Scar Face was answering one man’s questions, when the other struck him from behind and knocked him senseless.

“Does he know the fellows?” questioned Louis.

“He never saw them before.”

“Could they be Sioux passing themselves off as Ojibwa?”

“No, one was a white man, he says, and the other, – the man who attacked him, – was in white man’s clothes, but looked like an Indian. He wore his hair in braids, had no beard, and spoke like a Cree. He was a very tall man, strong and broad shouldered.”

“Do you think he is telling the truth?”

“I’m sure he is. Scar Face is a reliable fellow, always pays his debts, and has never tried to deceive us in any way. You saw the blood on his face. He has a bad cut on the side of his head. One of our men is dressing it for him. No, he isn’t lying. His description of the men is good, and he was not in the fort when they were here.”

“They have been here? You know who they are?”

“I think so; beyond doubt. Two fellows answering to the description were here this morning and bought some tobacco. They said they had just come from St. Boniface with a letter for Father Dumoulin. The white man is a DeMeuron, a red-faced fellow with a sandy beard. I don’t know his name. The other one is a bois brulé voyageur called Murray.”

“Not Black Murray?” cried Walter.

“That’s the name he goes by. You know him?”

“Vraiment, we know him,” put in Louis emphatically. “So he did not go up the Assiniboine with the western brigade, but came this way. He must have started before we did, to get here by water so soon. We found his tracks and those of his companion, where they had landed to boil their kettle. They were ahead of us then. He wasted little time at Fort Douglas, le Murrai Noir.”

“Whatever possessed him to attack that Ojibwa?” queried the puzzled trader.

“I think I can guess,” replied Louis slowly, “though I know not for sure. He wanted the Ojibwa’s supplies. He plans, I think, to become a trader. To trade he must have some goods to commence with. This is not the first time he has obtained them dishonestly.” Louis told the story of the missing sack of pemmican and Murray’s bundle of trade articles.

The Hudson Bay man listened intently and nodded thoughtfully. “That must be what the rascal is up to. Well, I have sent men out on horseback, up and down the Red River. The thieves haven’t come by here on the Pembina. They’re not likely to show themselves in the neighborhood of the forts. Perhaps they will be caught, though I doubt it. They have a good start and there is plenty of cover to hide in until the going is safe. It is useless to try to overtake them by canoe.”