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I
THE BIRCH BARK LETTER

On the river bank a boy sat watching the slender birch canoes bobbing about in the swift current. The fresh wind reddened his cheeks and the roaring of the rapids filled his ears. Eagerly his eyes followed the movements of the canoes daringly poised in the stream just below the tossing, foaming, white water. It was the first day of the spring fishing, and more exciting sport than this Indian white-fishing Hugh Beaupré had never seen. Three canoes were engaged in the fascinating game, two Indians in each. One knelt in the stern with his paddle. The other stood erect in the bow, a slender pole fully ten feet long in his hands, balancing with extraordinary skill as the frail craft pitched about in the racing current.

The standing Indian in the nearest canoe was a fine figure of a young man, in close-fitting buckskin leggings, his slender, muscular, bronze body stripped to the waist. Above his black head, bent a little as he gazed intently down into the clear water, gulls wheeled and screamed in anger at the invasion of their fishing ground. Suddenly the fisherman pointed, with a swift movement of his left hand, to the spot where his keen eyes had caught the gleam of a fin. Instantly his companion responded to the signal. With a quick dig and twist of the paddle blade, he shot the canoe forward at an angle. Down went the scoop net on the end of the long pole and up in one movement. A dexterous flirt of the net, and the fish, its wet, silvery sides gleaming in the sun, landed in the bottom of the boat.

The lad on the bank had been holding his breath. Now his tense watchfulness relaxed, and he glanced farther up-stream at the white water boiling over and around the black rocks. A gleam of bright red among the bushes along the shore caught his eye. The tip of a scarlet cap, then a head, appeared above the budding alders, as a man came, with swift, swinging strides, along the shore path.

“Holá, Hugh Beaupré,” he cried, when he was close enough to be heard above the tumult of the rapids. “M’sieu Cadotte, he want you.”

The lad scrambled to his feet. “Monsieur Cadotte sent you for me?” he asked in surprise. “What does he want with me, Baptiste?”

“A messenger from the New Fort has come, but a few moments ago,” Baptiste replied, this time in French.

Hugh, half French himself, understood that language well, though he spoke it less fluently than English.

“From the Kaministikwia? He has brought news of my father?”

“That M’sieu did not tell me, but yes, I think it may be so, since M’sieu sends for you.”

Hugh had scarcely waited for an answer. Before Baptiste had finished his speech, the boy was running along the river path. The French Canadian strode after, the tassel of his cap bobbing, the ends of his scarlet sash streaming in the brisk breeze.

Hastening past the small cabins that faced the St. Mary’s River, Hugh turned towards a larger building, like the others of rough, unbarked logs. Here he knew he should find Monsieur Cadotte, fur trader and agent for the Northwest Fur Company. Finding the door open, the lad entered without ceremony.

Monsieur Cadotte was alone, going through for a second time the reports and letters the half-breed messenger had brought from the Company’s headquarters on the River Kaministikwia at the farther end of Lake Superior. The trader looked up as the boy entered.

“A letter for you, Hugh.” He lifted a packet from the rude table.

“From my father?” came the eager question.

“That I do not know, but no doubt it will give you news of him.”

A strange looking letter Cadotte handed the lad, a thin packet of birch bark tied about with rough cedar cord. On the outer wrapping the name “Hugh Beaupré” was written in a brownish fluid. Hugh cut the cord and removed the wrapper. His first glance at the thin squares of white, papery bark showed him that the writing was not his father’s. The letter was in French, in the same muddy brown ink as the address. The handwriting was good, better than the elder Beaupré’s, and the spelling not so bad as Hugh’s own when he attempted to write French. He had little difficulty in making out the meaning.

“My brother,” the letter began, “our father, before he died, bade me write to you at the Sault de Ste. Marie. In March he left the Lake of Red Cedars with one comrade and two dog sleds laden with furs. At the Fond du Lac he put sail to a bateau, and with the furs he started for the Grand Portage. But wind and rain came and the white fog. He knew not where he was and the waves bore him on the rocks. He escaped drowning and came at last to the Grand Portage and Wauswaugoning. But he was sore hurt in the head and the side, and before the setting of the sun his spirit had left his body. While he could yet speak he told me of you, my half-brother, and bade me write to you. He bade me tell you of the furs and of a packet of value hid in a safe place near the wreck of the bateau. He told me that the furs are for you and me. He said you and I must get them and take them to the New Northwest Company at the Kaministikwia. The packet you must bear to a man in Montreal. Our father bade us keep silence and go quickly. He had enemies, as well I know. So, my brother, I bid you come as swiftly as you can to the Kaministikwia, where I will await you.

Thy half-brother,

Blaise Beaupré or Attekonse, Little Caribou.”

Hugh read the strange letter to the end, then turned back to the first bark sheet to read again. He had reached the last page a second time when Cadotte’s voice aroused him from his absorption.

“It is bad news?” the trader asked.

“Yes,” Hugh answered, raising his eyes from the letter. “My father is dead.”

“Bad news in truth.” Cadotte’s voice was vibrant with sympathy. “It was not, I hope, la petite vérole?” His despatches had informed him that the dreaded smallpox had broken out among the Indian villages west of Superior.

“No, he was wrecked.” Hugh hesitated, then continued, “On his spring trip down his boat went on the rocks, and he was so sorely hurt that he lived but a short time.”

“A sad accident truly. Believe me, I feel for you, my boy. If there is anything I can do – ” Cadotte broke off, then added, “You will wish to return to your relatives. We must arrange to send you to Michilimackinac on the schooner. From there you can readily find a way of return to Montreal.”

Hugh was at a loss for a reply. He had not the slightest intention of returning to Montreal so soon. He must obey his half-brother’s summons and go to recover the furs and the packet that made up the lads’ joint inheritance. Kind though Cadotte had been, Hugh dared not tell him all. “He bade us keep silence,” Little Caribou had written, and one word in the letter disclosed to Hugh a good reason for silence.

Jean Beaupré had been a free trader and trapper, doing business with the Indians on his own account, not in the direct service of any company. Hugh knew, however, that his father had been in the habit of buying his supplies from and selling his pelts to the Old Northwest Company. Very likely he had been under some contract to do so. Yet in these last instructions to his sons, he bade them take the furs to the New Northwest Company, a secession from and rival to the old organization. He must have had some disagreement, an actual quarrel perhaps, with the Old Company. The rivalry between the fur companies was hot and bitter. Hugh was very sure that if Monsieur Cadotte learned of the hidden pelts, he would inform his superiors. Then, in all probability, the Old Northwest Company’s men would reach the cache first. Certainly, if he even suspected that the pelts were destined for the New Company, Cadotte would do nothing to further and everything to hinder Hugh’s project. The boy was in a difficult position. He had to make up his mind quickly. Cadotte was eying him sharply and curiously.

“I cannot return to Montreal just yet, Monsieur Cadotte,” Hugh said at last. “This letter is from my half-brother.” He paused in embarrassment.

Cadotte nodded and waited for the boy to go on. The trader knew that Jean Beaupré had an Indian wife, and supposed that Hugh had known it also. Part Indian himself, Cadotte could never have understood the lad’s amazement and consternation at learning now, for the first time, of his half-brother.

“My father,” Hugh went on, “bade Blaise, my half-brother, tell me to – come to the Kaministikwia and meet Blaise there. He wished me to – to make my brother’s acquaintance and – and receive from him – something my father left me,” he concluded lamely.

Cadotte was regarding Hugh keenly. The boy’s embarrassed manner was enough to make him suspect that Hugh was not telling the truth. Cadotte shrugged his shoulders. “It may be difficult to send you in that direction. If you were an experienced canoeman, but you are not and – ”

“But I must go,” Hugh broke in. “My father bade me, and you wouldn’t have me disobey his last command. Can’t I go in the Otter? I still have some of the money my aunt gave me. If I am not sailor enough to work my way, I can pay for my passage.”

“Eh bien, we will see what can be done,” Cadotte replied more kindly. Perhaps the lad’s earnestness and distress had convinced him that Hugh had some more urgent reason than a mere boyish desire for adventure, for making the trip. “I will see if matters can be arranged.”

II
THE SLOOP “OTTER”

His mind awhirl with conflicting thoughts and feelings, Hugh Beaupré left Cadotte. The preceding autumn Hugh had come from Montreal to the Sault de Ste. Marie. Very reluctantly his aunt had let him go to be with his father in the western wilderness for a year or two of that rough, adventurous life. Hugh’s Scotch mother had died when he was less than a year old, nearly sixteen years before the opening of this story. His French father, a restless man of venturesome spirit, had left the child with the mother’s sister, and had taken to the woods, the then untamed wilderness of the upper Great Lakes and the country beyond. In fifteen years he had been to Montreal to see his son but three times. During each brief stay, his stories of the west had been eagerly listened to by the growing boy. On his father’s last visit to civilization, Hugh had begged to be allowed to go back to Lake Superior with him. The elder Beaupré, thinking the lad too young, had put him off. He had consented, however, to his son’s joining him at the Sault de Ste. Marie a year from the following autumn, when Hugh would be sixteen.

Delayed by bad weather, the boy had arrived at the meeting place late, only to find that his father had not been seen at the Sault since his brief stop on his return from Montreal the year before. The disappointed lad tried to wait patiently, but the elder Beaupré did not come or send any message. At last, word arrived that he had left the Grand Portage, at the other end of Lake Superior, some weeks before, not to come to the Sault but to go in the opposite direction to his winter trading ground west of the lake. There was no chance for Hugh to follow, even had he known just where his father intended to winter. By another trader going west and by a Northwest Company messenger, the boy sent letters, hoping that in some manner they might reach Jean Beaupré. All winter Hugh had remained at the Sault waiting for some reply, but none of any sort had come until the arrival of the strange packet he was now carrying in his hand. This message from his younger brother seemed to prove that his father must have received at least one of Hugh’s letters. Otherwise he would not have known that his elder son was at the Sault. But there was no explanation of Jean Beaupré’s failure to meet the boy there.

Hugh was grieved to learn of his parent’s death, but he could not feel the deep sorrow that would have overwhelmed him at the loss of an intimately known and well loved father. Jean Beaupré was almost a stranger to his older son. Hugh remembered seeing him but the three times and receiving but one letter from him. Indeed he was little more than a casual acquaintance whose tales of adventure had kindled a boy’s imagination. It was scarcely possible that Hugh’s grief could be deep, and, for the time being, it was overshadowed by other feelings. He had been suddenly plunged, it seemed, into a strange and unexpected adventure, which filled his mind to the exclusion of all else.

He must find some way to reach the Kaministikwia River, there to join his newly discovered Indian brother in a search for the wrecked bateau and its cargo of pelts. Of that half-brother Hugh had never heard before. He could not but feel a sense of resentment that there should be such a person. The boy had been brought up to believe that his father had loved his bonny Scotch wife devotedly, and that it was his inconsolable grief at her death that had driven him to the wilderness. It seemed, however, that he must have consoled himself rather quickly with an Indian squaw. Surely the lad who had written the letter must be well grown, not many years younger than Hugh himself.

As he walked slowly along the river bank, Hugh turned the bark packet over and over in his hand, and wondered about the half-breed boy who was to be his comrade in adventure. Attekonse had not spent his whole life in the woods, that was evident. Somewhere he had received an education, had learned to write French readily and in a good hand. Perhaps his father had taught him, thought Hugh, but quickly dismissed that suggestion. He doubted if the restless Jean Beaupré would have had the patience, even if he had had the knowledge and ability to teach his young son to write French so well.

Uncertain what he ought to do next, the puzzled boy wandered along, glancing now and then at the canoes engaged in the white-fishing below the rapids. That daring sport had lost its interest for him. At the outskirts of an Indian village, where he was obliged to beat off with a stick a pack of snarling, wolf-like dogs, he turned and went back the way he had come, still pondering over the birch bark letter.

Presently he caught sight once more of Baptiste’s scarlet cap. No message from Cadotte had brought the simple fellow this time, merely his own curiosity. Hugh was quite willing to answer Baptiste’s questions so far as he could without betraying too much. Seated in a sheltered, sunny spot on an outcrop of rock at the river’s edge, he told of his father’s death. Then, suddenly, he resolved to ask the good-natured Canadian’s help.

“Baptiste, I am in a difficulty. My half-brother who wrote this,” – Hugh touched the bark packet – “bids me join him at the Kaministikwia. It was my father’s last command that I should go there and meet this Blaise or Little Caribou, as he calls himself. We are to divide the things father left for us.”

“There is an inheritance then?” questioned Baptiste, interested at once.

“Nothing that amounts to much, I fancy,” the lad replied with an assumption of carelessness; “some personal belongings, a few pelts perhaps. For some reason he wished Blaise and me to meet and divide them. It is a long journey for such a matter.”

“Ah, but a dying father’s command!” cried Baptiste. “You must not disobey that. To disregard the wishes of the dead is a grievous sin, and would surely bring you misfortune.”

“True, but what can I do, Baptiste? Monsieur Cadotte doesn’t feel greatly inclined to help me. He wishes me to return to Montreal. How then am I to find an opportunity to go to the Kaministikwia?”

Baptiste took a long, thoughtful pull at his pipe, then removed it from his mouth. “There is the sloop Otter,” he suggested.

“Would Captain Bennett take me, do you think?”

“I myself go as one of the crew. To-morrow early I go to Point aux Pins. Come with me and we shall see.”

“Gladly,” exclaimed Hugh. “When does she sail?”

“Soon, I think. There were repairs to the hull, where she ran on the rocks, but they are finished. Then there is new rigging and the painting. It will not be long until she is ready.”

That night Hugh debated in his own mind whether he should tell Cadotte of his proposed visit with Baptiste to Point aux Pins. He decided against mentioning it at present. He did not know what news might have come in Cadotte’s despatches, whether the trader was aware of the elder Beaupré’s change of allegiance. At any rate, thought the lad, it would be better to have his passage in the Otter arranged for, if he could persuade her captain, before saying anything more to anyone.

Early the next morning Baptiste and Hugh embarked above the rapids in Baptiste’s small birch canoe. The distance to Point aux Pins was short, but paddling, even in the more sluggish channels, against the current of the St. Mary’s River in spring flood was strenuous work, as Hugh, wielding the bow blade, soon discovered. Signs of spring were everywhere. The snow was gone, and flocks of small, migrating birds were flitting and twittering among the trees and now and then bursting into snatches of song. The leaves of birches, willows and alders were beginning to unfold, the shores showing a faint mist of pale green, though here and there in the quiet backwaters among rocks and on the north sides of islands, ice still remained.

At Point aux Pins, or Pine Point, was the Northwest Company’s shipyard. In a safe and well sheltered harbor, formed by the long point that ran out into the river, the sailing vessels belonging to the company were built and repaired. The sloop Otter, which had spent the winter there, was now anchored a little way out from shore. The repairs had been completed and a fresh coat of white paint was being applied to her hull. Tents and rude cabins on the sandy ground among scrubby jack pines and willows housed the workers, and near by, waiting for the fish cleanings and other refuse to be thrown out, a flock of gulls, gray-winged, with gleaming white heads and necks, rode the water like a fleet of little boats. As the canoe approached, the birds, with a splashing and beating of wings, rose, whirled about in the air, and alighted again farther out, each, as it struck the water, poising for a moment with black-tipped wings raised and half spread.

On a stretch of sand beyond the shipyard, Baptiste and Hugh landed, stepping out, one on each side, the moment the canoe touched, lifting it from the water and carrying it ashore. Then they sought the master of the sloop.

Captain Bennett was personally superintending the work on his ship. To him Baptiste, who had been previously engaged as one of the small crew, made known Hugh’s wish to sail to the Kaministikwia. The shipmaster turned sharply on the lad, demanding to know his purpose in crossing the lake. Hugh explained as well as he could, without betraying more than he had already told Cadotte and Baptiste.

“Do you know anything of working a ship?” Captain Bennett asked.

“I have sailed a skiff on the St. Lawrence,” was the boy’s reply. “I can learn and I can obey orders.”

“Um,” grunted the Captain. “At least you are a white man. I can use one more man, and I don’t want an Indian. I can put you to work now. If you prove good for anything, I will engage you for the trip over. Here, Duncan,” to a strapping, red-haired Scot, “give these fellows something to do.”

So it came about that Hugh Beaupré, instead of going back at once to the Sault, remained at the Point aux Pins shipyard. He returned in the Otter, when, three days later, she sailed down the St. Mary’s to the dock above the rapids where she was to receive her lading. In the meantime, by an Indian boy, Hugh had sent a message to Cadotte informing him that he, Hugh Beaupré, had been accepted as one of the crew of the Otter for her trip to the Kaministikwia. Cadotte had returned no reply, so Hugh judged that the trader did not intend to put any obstacles in the way of his adventure.

The goods the sloop was to transport had been received the preceding autumn by ship from Michilimackinac too late to be forwarded across Superior. They were to be sent on now by the Otter. A second Northwest Company ship, the Invincible, which had wintered in Thunder Bay, was expected at the Sault in a few weeks. When the great canoe fleet from Montreal should arrive in June, part of the goods brought would be transferred to the Invincible, while the remainder would be taken on in the canoes. Hugh was heartily glad that he was not obliged to wait for the fleet. In all probability there would be no vacant places, and if there were any, he doubted if, with his limited experience as a canoeman, he would be accepted. He felt himself lucky to obtain a passage on the Otter.

The sloop was of only seventy-five tons burden, but the time of loading was a busy one. The cargo was varied: provisions, consisting largely of corn, salt pork and kegs of tried out grease, with some wheat flour, butter, sugar, tea and other luxuries for the clerks at the Kaministikwia; powder and shot; and articles for the Indian trade, blankets, guns, traps, hatchets, knives, kettles, cloth of various kinds, vermilion and other paints, beads, tobacco and liquor, for the fur traders had not yet abandoned the disastrous custom of selling strong drink to the Indians.

During the loading Hugh had an opportunity to say good-bye to Cadotte. The latter’s kindness and interest in the boy’s welfare made him ashamed of his doubts of the trader’s intentions.