THE TRAP IS SPRUNG
The trading-room at Whale River was crowded with the treaty chiefs and
older men among the Cree hunters chosen by the factor to be present at
the hearing. Behind a huge table made from hewn spruce slabs, sat
Inspector Wallace, Colin Gillies and McCain. In front and to one side
were the swart half-breeds, Gaspard Lelac and his two sons. Facing them
on the opposite side of the table was Jean Marcel, and behind him, his
advisor, Pere Breton, with Julie; for she had insisted on being present,
and the smitten Wallace had readily agreed. The remainder of the room
was occupied by the Crees, expectant, consumed with curiosity, for it
had leaked out that certain matters connected with the tragedy on the
Ghost which, heretofore, had not been divulged, would that afternoon be
given light.
Among the assembled half-breeds and Crees there were two distinct
factions. Those who had readily accepted the story of the Lelacs with
its sinister indictment of Marcel, among whom were the kinsmen of
Antoine Beaulieu; and those, who, knowing Jean Marcel, as well as his
unsavory accusers, had refused to accept the half-breeds' tale, and were
waiting with eagerness to hear Marcel's defense; for as yet, Marcel,
under orders from Gillies, had refused to discuss the case. Outside the
trade-house, chattering groups of young men and Cree women were
gathered, awaiting the outcome of the proceedings.
Rising, Colin Gillies called for silence and addressed the Crees in
their picturesque tongue:
"The long snows have come and gone. Famine and suffering have again
visited the hunters of Whale River. With the return of the rabbit
plague, and the lack of deer, many of those who were here last year at
the spring trade have gone to join their fathers. The Company is sad
that its hunters and their families have suffered. Last autumn, three
hunters went from this post to winter on the Ghost River. This spring
but one returned. He is here now, for the reason that he travelled far
into the great barrens to streams which join the Big Water many, many
sleeps to the northeast, where at last he found the returning deer.
"This spring, when the Ghost was free of ice, Gaspard Lelac and his
sons, wishing to visit their kinsman, Joe Piquet, travelled to the camp
of the three hunters. What they found there they will now tell as they
told it to me when they came to Whale River. After you have learned
their story, Jean Marcel, the man who returned, will relate what
happened on the Ghost under the moons of the long snows.
"The Company has sent to visit Whale River its chief of the East Coast,
Inspector Wallace. He will hear the stories of these men and decide
which of them speaks with a double tongue. It is for you, also, when
they have spoken, to say whether Gaspard Lelac and his sons bring the
truth to Whale River, or Jean Marcel. You know these men. Hear their
talk and judge in your hearts between them. Gaspard Lelac has put the
blood of Antoine Beaulieu and Joe Piquet on the head of Jean Marcel. The
fathers at Ottawa and the Chiefs of the Company at Winnipeg will not
suffer one of their children to go unpunished who takes the life of
another.
"Listen to the speech of these men. Look with your eyes into their faces
and upon what will be shown here, and judge who speaks with a double
tongue and who from an honest heart. Gaspard Lelac will now tell what he
saw and did."
As Gillies finished, a murmur of approval filled the room, followed by a
tense silence.
Lelac, a grizzled French half-breed with small, closely-set eyes, which
shifted here and there as he spoke, then rose and told in the Cree
tongue the story he had retailed daily for the previous month.
Wishing to visit his nephew Piquet, he said, and learn how he had
weathered the hard winter, in May Lelac and his sons had poled up the
Ghost to the camp. There they found an empty cache and part of the
outfits of Beaulieu and Piquet, the latter of which they at once
recognized. Alarmed, they searched the vicinity of the camp, and by
chance, discovered the body of Beaulieu buried under stones on the
shore. There was a knife wound in his chest. They continued the search
in hope of finding Piquet, as his blankets and outfit, evidently unused
for months and eaten by mice, were strong proof of his death, also; but
failed to find the body. Of the fur-packs and rifles of the two men
there was no trace, but a knife, identified later as belonging to
Antoine, they brought back. There were no signs of the third man's
outfit about the camp. If the third man was alive, what were they to
believe? Antoine was dead, and Piquet, also, for his blankets were
there. Someone had killed Antoine and Piquet. There was but one other,
Marcel. So they travelled to Whale River with the news.
The sons of Lelac glibly corroborated the story of their father. When
they had finished, the trade-room buzzed with whispered comment.
At a nod from Wallace, Gillies questioned the older Lelac in Cree for
the benefit of the Indians.
"You say that these blankets here, this knife and cooking kit, and the
clothes and bags, were all that you found at the camp--that there were
no fur and rifles on the cache?"
"These were all we found--nothing else," replied Lelac, his small eyes
wavering before the gaze of the factor.
"You swear that you found nothing but these things," repeated Gillies,
pointing to the articles on the floor in front of the table.
"Nothing."
The set face of Jean Marcel, which had remained expressionless during
the Lelacs' statement, relaxed in a wide smile which did not escape many
a shrewd pair of Cree eyes.
"Jean Marcel will now relate what passed on the Ghost through the moons
of the long snows."
With the announcement, there was much stirring and shuffling of
moccasins accompanied by suppressed exclamations and muttering, among
the expectant Crees. But when Marcel rose, squared his wide shoulders,
and with head high ran his eyes over the assembled Crees, friendly and
hostile, to rest at length on the Lelacs, his lips curled with an
expression of contempt, while the Indians and breeds relapsed into
silence.
Slowly, and in detail, Jean told in the Cree language how his partners
had gone up-river when he started south on the trail of the dog-thieves;
how he recaptured Fleur, and later reached the Ghost at the
"freeze-up." The tale of his nine-hundred-mile journey to the south
coast drew many an "Ah-hah!" of mingled surprise and admiration from
those who remembered Marcel's voyage of the previous spring through the
spirit-haunted valleys of the Salmon headwaters. With his familiarity
with the Cree mental make-up and his French instinct for dramatic
values, he held them breathless by the narration of this Odyssey of the
north.
Then Marcel described the long weeks when the three men fought
starvation, with the deer and rabbits gone; how he travelled far into
the land of the Windigo in search of beaver; and finally, he came to the
break with his partners. The hard feeling which developed at the camp on
the Ghost, Jean made no attempt to gloss over, but boldly told how the
others had not played fair with the food, and he had left them to fight
out the winter alone. Of the death of Piquet he spoke as one speaks of
the extermination of vermin. An assassin in the night, Piquet had come
to the tent of a sleeping man and the dog alone had saved his life.
They called his dog the "man-killer." Would they have asked less of
their own huskies? he demanded. But if any of them doubted, and he
understood that the Lelacs were among these, that his dog could have
killed Piquet, let them come to the tent in the Mission stockade by
night--and learn for themselves.
"_Nama_, no!" some Indian audibly protested, and for a space the room
was a riot of laughter, for the Crees had seen Fleur, the "man-killer."
But when the narrative of Marcel reached the discovery of the dead
Antoine, stabbed to the heart in the shack on the Ghost, his voice broke
with emotion. When he had found Antoine, killed in his sleep by Piquet,
Marcel said that he had bitterly regretted that he had not taken
Beaulieu with him, leaving Piquet to work out his own fate.
Then Jean described how he had lashed the body of Antoine, sewed in a
tent, on the platform cache, and placed the fur-packs and rifles beside
it, when he left to go into the barrens for deer. Turning, the Frenchman
pointed his finger at the scowling Lelacs, and cried dramatically, "When
you came to the camp this spring, you did not find the body of Antoine
Beaulieu buried on the shore; you found it on the cache sewed in a tent.
If I had killed him would I not have hidden him somewhere in the snow
where the starving lynx and wolverines would have done the rest? No, you
found Antoine on the cache, and beside him were his rifle and fur-pack
with those of Joe Piquet. What did you do with them?"
His evil face distorted with rage, the elder Lelac snarled:
"You lie, you got de fur and rifle hid."
Suppressing the half-breeds, Wallace ordered Marcel to continue.
Jean finished his story with the account of his long journey into the
barrens beyond the Height-of-Land where the streams flowed northeast
instead of west, his meeting with the returning deer, when weak with
starvation, and his return to the Ghost to find that a canoe had
preceded him there.
As he resumed his seat, the eyes of Julie Breton were bright with tears.
The priest leaned and grasped Jean's hand, whispering: "Well done, Jean
Marcel!"
It had been a dramatic narration and the audience, including Inspector
Wallace to whom it was interpreted by Gillies, had been impressed by the
frank and fearless manner of its telling.
Angus McCain and big Jules smiled widely as they caught Marcel's eyes.
Again Gillies rose. "Jules!" he called, and Duroc brought from an
adjoining room a bundle of pelts, placing them on the long table.
Again the room hummed with the whispering of the curious audience. The
surprised Lelacs, now in a panic, talked excitedly, heads together.
"Marcel, examine these pelts and if you notice anything about them,
make a statement," said Gillies, conducting the examination for the
benefit of the Crees, in their native tongue, and translating to
Wallace.
With great care, as his Cree audience craned their necks to watch what
the Frenchman was doing, Jean, first examining each pelt, slowly divided
the bundle of skins into three separate heaps.
"Have you anything to say?"
"Yes, M'sieu. This large pile here, I know nothing about; but this heap
here, were all pelts trapped last winter by Antoine Beaulieu."
A murmur passed through the crowded room. Here surely was something of
interest. Lelac rose and started to look at the pelts when big Jules
pushed him roughly back on the bench.
"You stay where you are, Lelac, or I'll put a guard over you!" rasped
Gillies.
"This pile here," continued Jean, "belonged to Joe Piquet."
"How do you recognize them?" demanded Gillies.
"All these have Antoine's mark, one little slit behind the right
fore-leg. These with two slits behind the left fore-leg were the pelts
of Piquet. My mark was three slits in front of the left hind leg. When
we started trapping from the same camp, we agreed on these marks."
The air of the trade-room was heavy with suspense.
"You swear to these marks?"
"Yes, M'sieu."
"Francois Maskigan!" The treaty-chief of the South Branch Crees, a man
of middle age, with great authority among the Indians, stepped forward.
"Francois, you have heard what Marcel says of the marks on these skins?"
The chief nodded, "_Enh_, yes."
"Look at them and see if he speaks rightly."
It took the Indian but a few minutes to check the distinguishing marks
on the pelts and examine the large pile which Marcel had said possessed
none.
"Are the marks on these pelts as Marcel says?"
"Yes, they are there, these marks as he says."
The cowed Lelacs, their dark faces now twisted with fear, awaited the
next words of Gillies. Then the irate factor turned on them.
"Gaspard Lelac!" he roared. The face of Lelac paled to a sickly white as
his furtive eyes met the factor's.
"All this fur, here, you and your sons traded in last week; your own
fur, and the pelts of Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, dead men. I have held
them separate from the rest. You are thieves and liars!"
The bomb had exploded. At the words of the factor, the trade-room became
a bedlam of chattering and excited Indians. In the north, to steal the
fur of another is one of the cardinal sins. The supporters of Marcel
loudly exulted in the turn the hearing had taken, while the deluded
adherents of the Lelacs, maddened by the villainy of men who had stolen
from the dead and accused another, loudly cursed the half-breeds.
Nonplussed, paralyzed by the trick of the factor, instigated by the
adroit Marcel, the Lelacs sent murderous looks at Jean who smiled
contemptuously in their faces.
Gillies' deep bass quieted the uproar.
"Jules!" he called the second time. All were on tiptoe to learn what
further surprise the stalwart Jules had in store for them, when he
entered the room with two rifles, which he laid on the table, while the
Lelacs stared in wide-eyed amazement.
"Where did you get these rifles?" asked Gillies.
"In the tepee of Lelac, just now, hidden under blankets."
"Whose rifles were they, Marcel?"
Marcel examined the guns.
"This 30-30 gun belonged to Piquet. This is the rifle of Antoine."
With a cry, a tall half-breed roughly shouldered his way to the front of
the excited Crees.
"You thieves!" he cried, straining to reach the Lelacs with the knife
which he held in his hand. But sinewy arms seized him and the frenzied
uncle of Antoine Beaulieu was pushed, struggling, from the room.
It was the final straw. The mercurial Crees had turned as quickly from
the Lelacs to Marcel as, in the first instance, they had credited the
tale of the half-breeds. Now, with the Lelacs proven liars and thieves,
Jean's explanation of the deaths of his partners, as Gillies foresaw,
had, without corroboration, and on his word as a man, only, been at once
accepted.
Calling for silence Gillies again spoke to the hunters.
"You have heard the words of these men. You have judged who has spoken
with a double tongue; who, with the guns of dead men hidden in a tepee,
have traded their fur and put their blood upon the head of another. Do
you believe Jean Marcel when he says that Piquet killed Antoine Beaulieu
and went out to kill him also, or do you believe the men who stole the
guns and fur of a dead man which belong to his kinsmen?"
"_Enh! Enh!_ Jean Marcel speaks truth!" cried the Crees, and the
chattering mob poured into the post clearing to carry the news to the
curious young men and the women, who waited.
Meanwhile Pere Breton embraced the happy Marcel while the unchecked
tears welled in Julie's eyes. Then Gillies and McCain wrung the
Frenchman's hand until he grimaced. But the big Jules, patiently waiting
his turn, pounced upon Jean with a fierce hug and, in spite of his
protests carrying him like a child in his great arms from the
trade-house, showed the man they had maligned, to the Crees, who now
loudly cheered him.
Turning to Gillies, the Inspector said gravely: "These Lelacs go south
for trial. I'll make an example of their thieving."
But Colin Gillies had no intention of having the half-breeds sent
"outside" for trial, if he could prevent it. It would mean that Jean and
he, himself, with Jules, would have to go as witnesses. He could take
care of the Lelacs in his own way. He had punished men before.
"That would leave us very short-handed here. The famine has reduced the
trade this year a third. If we want to make a showing next season, we
can't spend six months travelling down below for a trial."
"Yes, that would mean your going and we can't afford to injure the
trade; but I ought to make a report on this murder business in famine
years."
"If you get the government into this, it will hurt us, Mr. Wallace. Why
can't we handle this matter as we have handled it for two centuries?"
protested Gillies. "A report will only place the Company in a bad
light--make them think we can't control the Crees."
"Well, perhaps you're right," admitted Wallace. "I'm out to make a
showing on the East Coast and I don't want to handicap you."
So Gillies had his way.