Lords of the North | Page 9

among them? I
should know their ways!"
"But my dear fellow!" responded the elder trader, "so do I know their
ways. If she isn't in the Chateau and isn't in the woods and isn't in the
garden, can't you see, the Indian encampment is the only possible
explanation?"
The lines on his face deepened. Fire flashed from his gleaming eyes,
and if ever I have seen murder written on the countenance of man, it
was on Hamilton's.
"What tribe were they, anyway?" I asked, trying to speak indifferently,
for every question was knife-play on a wound.

"Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other, Iroquois canoemen,
French half-breeds intermarried with Sioux squaws! They're all
connected with the North-West Company's crews. The Nor'-Westers
leave here for Fort William when the ice breaks up. This riff-raff will
follow in their own dug-outs!"
"Know any of them?" persisted my uncle.
"No, I don't think I--Let me see! By Jove! Yes, Gillespie!" he shouted,
"Le Grand Diable was among them!"
"What about Diable?" I asked, pinning him down to the subject, for his
mind was lost in angry memories.
"What about him? He's my one enemy among the Indians," he
answered in tones thick and ominously low. "I thrashed him within an
inch of his life at Isle à la Crosse. Being a Nor'-Wester, he thought it
fine game to pillage the kit of a Hudson's Bay; so he stole a
silver-mounted fowling-piece which my grandfather had at Culloden.
By Jove, Gillespie! The Nor'-Westers have a deal of blood to answer
for, stirring up those Indians against traders; and if they've brought this
on me----"
"Did you get it back?" I interrupted, referring to the fowling-piece,
neither my uncle, nor I, offering any defense for the Nor'-Westers. I
knew there were two sides to this complaint from a Hudson's Bay man.
"No! That's why I nearly finished him; but the more I clubbed, the
more he jabbered impertinence, 'Cooloo! cooloo! qu' importe! It doesn't
matter!' By Jove! I made it matter!"
"Is that all about Diable, Eric?" continued my uncle.
He ran his fingers distractedly back through his long, black hair, rose,
and, coming over to me, laid a trembling hand on each shoulder.
"Gillespie!" he muttered through hard-set teeth. "It isn't all. I didn't
think at the time, but the morning after the row with that red devil I

found a dagger stuck on the outside of my hut-door. The point was
through a fresh sprouted leaflet. A withered twig hung over the blade."
"Man! Are you mad?" cried Jack MacKenzie. "He must be the very
devil himself. You weren't married then--He couldn't mean----"
"I thought it was an Indian threat," interjected Hamilton, "that if I had
downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant to have
his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know I left
the country that fall."
"You were wrong, Eric!" I blurted out impetuously, the terrible
significance of that threat dawning upon me. "That wasn't the meaning
at all."
Then I stopped; for Hamilton was like a palsied man, and no one asked
what those tokens of a leaflet pierced by a dagger and an old branch
hanging to the knife might mean.
Mr. Jack MacKenzie was the first to pull himself together.
"Come," he shouted. "Gather up your wits! To the camping ground!"
and he threw open the door.
Thereupon, we three flung through the club-room to the astonishment
of the gossips, who had been waiting outside for developments in the
quarrel with Colonel Adderly. At the outer porch, Hamilton laid a hand
on Mr. MacKenzie's shoulder.
"Don't come," he begged hurriedly. "There's a storm blowing. It's rough
weather, and a rough road, full of drifts! Make my peace with the man I
struck."
Then Eric and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy
night. A moment later, our horses were dashing over iced cobble-stones
with the clatter of pistol-shots.
"It will snow," said I, feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness

against my face; but to this remark Hamilton was heedless.
"It will snow, Eric," I repeated. "The wind's veered north. We must get
out to the camp before all traces are covered. How far by the Beauport
road?"
"Five miles," said he, and I knew by the sudden scream and plunge of
his horse that spurs were dug into raw sides. We turned down that steep,
break-neck, tortuous street leading from Upper Town to the valley of
the St. Charles. The wet thaw of mid-day had frozen and the road was
slippery as a toboggan slide. We reined our horses in tightly, to prevent
a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from side to side
managed to reach the foot of the hill without a