VICTORY AND PROMOTION
In the century and a half of its existence Fort Kenogami had never
known opposition. Isolated in that vast territory to the south and west
of Hudson Bay, separated by hundreds of miles of difficult waterways
from railhead or sea, it had been too impregnable a redoubt for free
traders to attack.
Gradually but surely, ever since the days when it relinquished its
monopoly, the Hudson's Bay Company has been forced to admit the
presence of these outlanders. It has fought them and it still fights
them with the fervor of religious fanaticism and the pride and strength
of an ancient feudalism that refuses to die, but to-day the north is
dotted with twin posts and crossed by twin lines of commerce.
In this half century of bitter struggle Kenogami was one of the few
posts that had remained aloof from warfare. Free traders had looked
upon it greedily but none had dared carry the fight to so inaccessible
a spot. The great company began to believe Kenogami impregnable and all
its servants spoke with pride of this stronghold of the olden times.
Donald Norton had never known any other world than Fort Kenogami and
the Hudson's Bay Company. His fourteen years in a wigwam had given
him the impression there was no other, for neither Pe-tah-bo nor
Nee-tah-wee-gan knew of anything beyond the wilderness, and always he
had heard the company referred to by the Indian name for it, a word
meaning "that to which we owe thanks."
As the York boat approached Wabinosh Donald had seen the two buildings
being erected down the shore and instantly there flared in him a fierce
resentment. The Indian boatmen also had seen and understood and were
chattering among themselves.
"Look, free trader!" the guide, standing in the stern, said to Donald,
excitement impairing his scanty stock of English words.
None of the boatmen, Wabinosh hunters, had ever traded with the
opposition. For generations they had known only the Hudson's Bay but
they had heard of these buyers of fur and curiosity gripped them.
"I hear these men pay much more," one said to his seat mate.
"They pay it once," Donald declared savagely. "They fool you. They lead
you on and then they pay you less. Only the great company is fair to
its people."
Policy did not prompt the statement. It was a sincere conviction. At
Kenogami the influence of the Hudson's Bay was completely dominant.
Loyalty and faith pervaded the fort as a spirit of sanctity fills a
church.
"They would let you starve, just so they got the fur," Donald
continued. "They think only of the present, try only to get what they
can. Wait and see."
He said it with all the confidence of zealous youth, and it was not
confidence in himself but in the company. In his mind nothing could
be more glorious than the Hudson's Bay. He had grown to manhood under
the influence of the Layards. Merton retained much of his early
romantic conception of the service and Evelyn was true to her sex in
contributing a blind, passionate allegiance.
The York boat had not landed before Donald was busy with his plans. He
threw himself into the struggle with all the fervor of confident youth
but he had hardly taken the first step when a new element entered the
situation. An hour after his arrival Nee-tah-wee-gan appeared in the
trade shop.
"I have come to watch Wen-dah-ban, my son, try to be a white man," she
announced contemptuously.
Donald was startled. When she entered he had given her only a glance,
believing her to be the wife of a Wabinosh hunter. It was four years
since he had seen her. He had not realized that she might follow him to
the outpost.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"Want? I have told you. I have come to watch my son turn into a white
man."
"You mean you are going to stay?"
"Surely a white man would not turn his old mother into the forest to
starve?"
"But there is Pe-tah-bo. He will take care of you and he needs you."
"You have forgotten what a mother is like. As she grows older it is the
son she loves, not the husband. I want to be with my son, now that he
is turning so white. I want to watch him succeed, watch him rise above
the Indians, watch him tie wings to his canoe and fly among the clouds."
She was not only contemptuous but malicious. There was a diabolical
sneer in each word and in her eyes there was a savagely gloating light.
Donald was mystified. He had seen something of the fierce passion with
which Indian women cling to their half-breed children, fighting blindly
and persistently to hold them in the savage world, to prevent them from
adopting the ways of white men. But in Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions he
sensed something more--a venom and a hatred that failed to accord with
her expressed desires.
"I will live in the house of the manager," Nee-tah-wee-gan broke in
upon his thoughts.
She spoke so confidently Donald started.
"You can't do that!" he protested. "The 'big trader' and Mr. Layard
forbid it. The company forbids it."
"Then my son has not grown so great? He is not yet his own master?"
"You can put up your wigwam outside the clearing," Donald said,
ignoring her taunt.
"And my son will sit in comfort and eat flour and pork while his
mother starves in the forest? It is the seventh year and there will be
no rabbits."
"You won't starve. I will give you part of my rations."
He knew it meant that he must subsist largely on fish through the
winter. Nee-tah-wee-gan protested and denounced but without success.
Donald understood that neither Mactavish or Layard would countenance
an Indian woman living in the dwelling house, even though she were his
mother, and in the end the old woman erected her shelter a half mile
away.
Each day she came to the post and remained for an hour or two. She
never spoke to other Indians. She did not seem to know they were there.
And she seldom talked with Donald. Only, each time they were alone, she
would look up at him as he hurried about his work and exclaim with a
sneering, contemptuous hiss, "_Keen nish-e-na-be!_"
He heard it every day without fail, sometime between dawn and dark,
"You are an Indian!" He never answered, never showed resentment. He
schooled himself to control his features and his eyes, and yet each
time it was like the touch of a red hot iron on raw flesh.
Only the struggle with the Keewatin Company saved him from a winter of
torture. Before he had gone to bed that first night he had learned much
of the opposition's plans and understood what he must do. He spent two
hours with Joe Snowbird, the half-breed caretaker and assistant.
"What will we do?" Joe wailed in high-pitched Ojibwa. "He is a big man.
He talks loudly and makes the hunters think he is even bigger. He has
trade goods we never saw before--things the women like."
Joe had spent his entire life at Wabinosh, had grown soft in a
monotonous, stagnant existence. Since infancy he had believed
implicitly in the might of the Hudson's Bay. Now he quailed at the
flash of a few cheap articles of barter.
For a moment Donald resented the man's dismay and then he laughed
exultantly. Joe was of Indian blood but no vision, no hope, no fasting
dream, led him on. There was no faith that the white blood could be
predominant. But he, Donald, _felt_ white and he had the vision, the
hope and the faith that he could become all white.
In that instant he saw the test and the proof. He was not afraid. He
was confident, aglow with eagerness for the struggle. He _felt_ white.
He _was_ white. He was proving it.
"Gaudy trinkets won't fill an empty stomach," he declared jubilantly,
in the flowery speech of the Ojibwa. "Big talk doesn't mean strength or
big prices for fur. A lynx growls and spits and shows its claws and its
paper skull cracks from the tap of an ax handle."
"But this man is not a lynx," Joe persisted. "He says the Hudson's Bay
is becoming old and weak and will not live much longer. He says he has
come to stay, to pay more for fur, to give more trade goods, to make
all the hunters happy."
It was heresy, an insult, but Donald only laughed happily. A little
while before Nee-tah-wee-gan had hissed, "_Keen nish-e-na-be!_" and the
words had stung. Now the contrast between his attitude and Joe's wiped
out all thought of her insistent phrase. He was proving that she was
wrong.
"It is too late to send word to Kenogami and have Layard come," Joe
wailed. "When he get here in the winter this free trader have all the
fur. What can we do?"
"Stop that talk!" Donald commanded sternly. "If I hear you saying such
things again, even to me, I'll send you off into the bush to hunt for
the rest of the winter. Understand that? If a hunter says anything to
you, tell him this free trader is a boaster, a liar and a thief. Tell
all the hunters there will be no free trader here when the snow is
gone."
"But what can we do, we two, against him?" Joe insisted. "Mr. Layard
should know."
Donald laughed again, scornfully. In his new confidence and strength
the mere fact that opposition had come exalted him. He was alone, cut
off by approaching winter, responsible for the prestige and welfare
of the great company in this tiny, lonely redoubt. He was, in fact,
for that moment and for that spot, the Hudson's Bay itself and he was
thrilled with a romantic conception of his place in fur land's eternal
strife.
"What can we do?" he repeated. "We can't do anything if you feel that
way. But I don't. I'm going to drive this fellow out."
Donald plunged into the struggle with dash and boldness. The fire of
youth, the force of a great ambition, the loyalty and zeal that had
grown out of his idolatrous conception of the Hudson's Bay--all these
drove him to a savage onslaught that in the end had its effect. Before
the winter ended William Bawlf, manager of the Keewatin Company's
new enterprise, abandoned the fight. He locked up his buildings and
disappeared. When Layard arrived for his late winter inspection the
struggle had ended.
Even before he learned what had happened, Layard saw the change in
Donald. There was a confident expression in his eyes and he carried his
head differently.
"What's happened?" he demanded before he got out of his cariole. "Been
having a twenty-first birthday?"
"I believe that's it," Donald answered with a smile as he shook hands.
"How are Mrs. Layard and Janet?"
"Fine. Both sent their love to you. But what's doing down the shore?
Neighbors?"
"We did have neighbors."
The mere presence of a free trader in his territory had been so
startling Layard did not get the significance of Donald's answer. He
sprang out of the cariole and stared at the new buildings. No smoke
came from the chimney of the house. A recent snow had banked up the
door of the little trade shop.
"Licked 'em, by gad!" Merton cried. "Before the first winter was over!
Boy! Boy! Wait until I tell old Duncan about this." He threw his arms
about Donald and hugged him.
"Licked 'em!" he repeated jubilantly. "Licked 'em the first season! I
knew you had it in you."
* * * * *
The next summer Donald again made the long journey to Fort Bruce.
Merton was confident now that Mactavish would recognize the young man's
ability and give him a post of his own.
"How about this free trader at Wabinosh?" the district manager growled
the moment they entered his office. "Why wasn't I told about it?"
"How did you know he was there?" Layard countered. "I didn't know it
myself until he had gone."
"Never mind that. It's my business to know. When did he start work?"
"Early in September," Donald answered. "He had two buildings nearly
done when I got to Wabinosh."
"Why didn't you send word to Layard?"
"There wasn't time for him to reach the post before the hunters would
be outfitted and gone."
"What did you do?"
"Bawlf had a large part of his trading outfit cached a hundred miles
south. I hired all the hunters at increased wages and set them to
fishing. When Bawlf wanted to bring in his cache he couldn't get anyone
to work for him."
"By what right did you raise wages?"
"It was better to spend a few dollars that way than lose several
thousand dollars' worth of fur later."
"But why didn't you put them at work on something away from the post?"
Mactavish persisted. "Then this free trader couldn't influence them."
"But I wanted the fish."
"Why?"
"It was the seventh year. I knew rabbits would be scarce and there
would be starving times before spring!"
"Huh! Then what?"
"In January the hunters began bringing their families to the post.
There was nothing to eat in the bush, no rabbits. I fed the women and
children on the fish I had put up in the fall, outfitted the men with
flour and pork and sent them back to hunt."
"Dug into your year's reserve supply, eh? Don't you know that is
against my express orders?"
"Yes," Donald answered, "but I knew that before spring we would be able
to buy a trading outfit at our own price."
"Huh!" Mactavish growled. "I want you to understand, young man, that
regulations are to be obeyed."
Donald's anger had been rising. He knew he had handled the situation
successfully and he expected some consideration. Instead he was being
hectored, barked at, cross-questioned like a criminal.
"I understand that I was there to get the fur!" he retorted. "I got it.
The Keewatin Company didn't."
Old Duncan glared at him but the glare suddenly became a smile.
"You'll do, lad," he said.
He whirled upon Layard and demanded:
"How old is this boy?"
"Twenty-one."
"Twenty-one years old, eh? There are post managers in this district who
have been in the service longer than that and I've yet to hear them
say what he did. Did you hear it, Merton? 'I was there _to get the fur
and I got it_.' That's all a fur trader ever needs to know. It's the
whole creed of the game. It's fur land's ten commandments, thirty-nine
articles and catechism packed into one sentence. I'd like to brand it
on the chest of every apprentice clerk with a red hot iron."
The old Scotchman turned back to Donald.
"That's all now, lad," he said kindly. "Come in this afternoon and I'll
have a new contract drawn up for you to sign. And get ready to go out
with the Whitefish Lake brigade. There's a free trader there, the same
company, and I want to see you try your hand at him."
"Whitefish Lake!" Donald repeated. "You mean----"
"I mean you're to be manager at Whitefish Lake post. MacKar has been
there three years and he's losing ground. But run along now. There are
a few things I want to talk over with Merton."
"Look here!" Merton exclaimed when Donald had gone. "You knew last
summer that the Keewatin Company was going to make a try at Wabinosh."
Mactavish grinned and did not answer.
"Well, you tested him out. I told you he had the right stuff in him."
"Yes, he hit the board as well as the loon. But you have to prove
everything. The boy is going to make a great fur man. You couldn't have
handled that situation any better yourself."
Merton laughed, happily, exultantly, and then he suddenly became
serious.
"Evelyn and I will miss him," he said slowly. "He has been like one of
the family for years now. And next summer Janet goes out to school."
"I know how you feel," Mactavish said gently, "and both of you can be
proud of what you've done. But be careful. Remember Kipling's poem,
'Don't throw your heart to a dog to tear.'"
"You don't mean----" Merton began angrily.
"I don't mean Norton is a dog by any means. But don't forget his story,
and his mother."
"That's nonsense. Donald's white clear through. I'd trust him anywhere.
He's the exception."
"I've lived in the north country fifty years and there are no
exceptions. I say it remembering that I'm the father of two sons whose
mother was born and bred in a wigwam. Some day, in some way--but wait
and watch. He'll make a great fur trader, a servant the company can be
proud of, but he's hitched his wagon to too high a star."
"You can believe that if you want to," Merton retorted. "I won't. I
know Donald too well. Don't ever say anything to him that suggests such
a thing. The Keewatin man did."
"Eh? What's this? Norton didn't tell me anything about it."
"Nor did he tell me either. I learned it from the people at Wabinosh.
Bawlf called him a half-breed before a crowd of Indians and Donald
licked him."
"Before the hunters, eh? That explains it. That's what gave him the
prestige. He was thinking all the time. He even turned the off-year for
rabbits into an advantage."
"And he never lost sight of the main thing," Merton added. "Although he
took care of his people, kept them from starving, he never let the men
quit hunting."
Mactavish grinned.
"But you're wrong when you say he fought to impress the hunters,"
Merton insisted. "It was resentment. He says he is white and he intends
to be."
"None of which weighs in the end against the fact that Nee-tah-wee-gan
is his mother. Her father, I remember, was the only factor I have known
who was run out of the service because he was naturally bad--a rotter
all the way through, a mean, ugly man, cruel as an Indian."
"But if you believe so thoroughly in bad blood you must admit there is
something in good," Merton declared. "The boy's father must have had
something that he passed on."
"I have been wondering about his father ever since I saw the lad last
summer," Mactavish said. "There is something about his face that is
familiar though I can't place him. You knew he was born at Fort James?"
"I never heard. You don't think it was Corrigal?"
"The boy doesn't look like him. Besides, John was married and badly
smitten. Wonderful little woman, Mrs. Corrigal. He was a broken man
after the fire. Got a transfer to the Saskatchewan district and has
been out there ever since. A better fur trader never lived."
"But I've heard Corrigal was interested in Nee-tah-wee-gan when she was
in the mission here."
"Oh, that!" Mactavish answered. "John was like all of us get, just
plain home hungry, and Nee-tah-wee-gan was young and pretty. He forgot
her completely as soon as the governess arrived."
"But didn't Nee-tah-wee-gan follow him to Fort James?"
"Yes, as the wife of a half-breed trapper there. But quit worrying
about the boy, Merton. He's going to make a competent servant of the
company. I'm giving him a good start and I'll look after him. Still,
you and Evelyn must not build your hopes too high. I've spent fifty
years in the bush and while white hasn't always been white by any
means, red has always been red."
* * * * *
Donald's transfer to Whitefish Lake removed him completely from the
heart-warming intimacy with the Layards but it brought a new and
perhaps stronger influence into his life. The Whitefish Lake manager
for the Keewatin Trading Company was Philip Collinge, an Oxford man,
a younger son who because of a rather harmless wildness and a family
fear thereof had been sent to Canada with a quarterly allowance and a
forlorn hope of success.
Year after year he and Donald fought--bitterly, stubbornly and
implacably, according to that ancient, barbaric, remorseless code of
fur land--and year after year a strong friendship grew between them.
Collinge possessed a brilliant mind and its reaction upon Donald's
was the greatest mental influence that had come into the young man's
life. He responded and expanded, discovered a new, wide world of
thought and interest, and he learned, too, the peculiar, far-reaching,
deeply-rooted effects of that thing called breeding.
For Philip Collinge, though married to an Indian woman and the father
of two black-haired children, though cut off completely from his world
and family and considered by them a failure and a disgrace, retained
an inherent sweetness and a sense of honor which can come only through
generations of effort.
Perhaps it was because of his sons, wild, furtive-eyed youngsters
whose hair and skin and features proclaimed their mixed ancestry so
unmistakably and who remained stolidly dumb despite Philip's patient
efforts to teach them English, that the father turned to Donald when
that young man first appeared at Whitefish Lake.
He called soon after Donald's arrival and found the new Hudson's Bay
manager unpacking a box of books, some of them the gifts of Evelyn
Layard, others from the district library and many purchased with his
own scanty savings.
"We may be hating each other inside a month," Philip drawled as he
introduced himself, "but there's no sense in starting off that way or
in two men turning cat and dog just because they happen to be working
for rival companies."
Donald shook the outstretched hand not only with diffidence but with
suspicion. He mistrusted everything and everyone not connected with the
Hudson's Bay and he had come to Whitefish Lake with no other thought
than to wipe out of existence the post operated by this stranger. Now
he wondered if Collinge were suggesting a truce, a pact to carry on
only a perfunctory warfare.
"This is my first post," he said, and he could not repress a
belligerent tone. "The thing I'm thinking of is holding it."
"Bless my soul, yes! That's what most of us who depend on jobs do.
But even working for the Hudson's Bay needn't rob a man of all human
qualities," and Collinge laughed so genuinely that Donald's resentment
of the last sentence quickly faded.
Collinge talked on, easily and charmingly, but all the time he was
reading Donald quite accurately.
"Only a cub," his thoughts ran, as he spoke of the closing of a mission
at Whitefish Lake two years before and the consequent loneliness of
the rival post managers. "First post and crammed with all the pride and
arrogance of the old company. Half-breed, I've heard, but he doesn't
look it. Handsome chap. Fine, intelligent eyes. I must make him smile
like that again. He'll probably lead me a devil of a chase but--Good
Lord! What a lot of books!"
"I say, old chap!" he exclaimed. "You don't intend to read all those
this winter?"
"I've read most of them, some several times, but I'll probably get
through them again before spring."
Collinge picked up a volume, then another. He turned over others,
glancing at the titles.
"All's fish in your net," he laughed.
"You mean the selection is not right?" Donald demanded quickly.
"You have some good things but a lot of trash."
"Tell me where."
Collinge laughed to hide his pleasure in the eagerness of the request.
"That's a big order. Besides, my idea of trash might not coincide with
yours or with those of many others. But come over. I've a lot of books
and many of them need exercising. I'll be glad to talk to you about
them, and to lend any you wish. Where did you get these?"
Donald told him.
"You see," he concluded, "I didn't learn English until I was nearly
fifteen, and reading after that."
Collinge glanced at him sharply and suppressed a whistle of amazement.
"And you're now about twenty-one. It's a wonder you're not a chronic
dyspeptic after all that stuffing. Lad, I'll have to take you in
charge."
It was thus, through books, that their friendship began, and it grew
despite their Jekyll-Hyde relationship. For six years these two men
lived side by side, battling for pelts, each seeking the other's
commercial ruin, contesting with that fierce, unscrupulous zeal
which is the fur trader's heritage from the days when monopoly and
kingly favoritism sowed the north with treachery and stealth, and
yet retaining and enriching a friendship and a sense of honor which
entered largely into the formation of Donald's character and into the
rehabilitation of Philip's.
And in this period Donald found his fasting dream come true. Ever since
that day when he had looked across the counter and unburdened his heart
to Merton Layard he had continued to _feel_ white, but as the years
rolled swiftly by he began to lose that fierce insistence which had
buoyed him in the beginning. Unconsciously he came to accept his first
desire as an accomplished fact. His wigwam years faded and his origin
became a phantom of the dissolving past.
Everything was conducive to this attitude on Donald's part. He had the
friendship of Philip Collinge--not Collinge the fur trader, whom he
defeated in their endless war for pelts, or the husband of an Indian
woman and the father of two black-haired children, but the other
Collinge, the man of culture and refinement who had come to Canada and
failure but who had slipped out of the bondage of those disastrous
years for Donald's sake.
In the world of fur Donald won the respect and liking of all the
managers in the Fort Bruce district. His record in rebuilding the
fortunes of the Hudson's Bay at Whitefish Lake earned for him the
reputation of being an unusually clever fur trader and gave him the
open admiration of Duncan Mactavish.
"He's going to be a marvel," the old Scotchman once said to Merton
Layard. "Too bad he didn't live fifty years earlier. He'd have been a
chief factor before he was thirty-five. Notice how all the men like
him? The boy's a born leader and fighter."
"Why fifty years earlier?" Layard demanded. "The company needs his kind
now as much as ever."
"Needs him but won't take him."
"But it has taken him."
"Only so far. Merton, you're nearing fifty and belong to the old days.
I'm past seventy but I haven't been blind to the changes that have come
to fur land."
"You mean the way the company feels now about the 'country marriage'?"
"That's only an indication of the changes. In the old days it didn't
matter. We had the north to ourselves. We were four times as far from
England. The men had something to say about the government of the
company. And they were lonely men, men who accepted the fact that
they were cut off from their world. They took Indian women and raised
families. I know. I was one of them--a clannish lot. As soon as our
sons were old enough they came in with us. We helped them along."
"And some of them climbed close to the top," Merton declared. "They
made good fur traders."
"Some of them, yes. But do you think the company forbade the 'country
marriage' on moral grounds? It did not. The product of the 'country
marriage' doesn't jibe with the modern idea of efficiency."
"You can't name a more efficient post manager than Donald."
"I can't," Mactavish admitted readily, "but I'm not the company and I'm
not impersonal. No, Merton, I'm old but I've seen the new day dawning
in the north. With stronger competition the old strong-arm methods
of trading are gone. You fellows kick on the double-entry system of
bookkeeping the company has installed but you don't see what is back of
it."
"The company is making a mistake in becoming so impersonal," Merton
declared.
"The company is going on with its new ideas and ours won't change it,"
Mactavish answered solemnly. "The company banned the 'country marriage'
because it didn't like the results. It was one way of banning the
half-breed from the service. It doesn't believe he can meet the big
test when it comes. That is, the average of them can't, and that's why
I mean Donald should have lived fifty years earlier. He's as modern as
the company can wish but the company will only point to the fact that
he's not a white man.
"I'm sorry. If we'd seen this coming a lot of us older fellows would
have acted differently. But don't worry about Donald. So long as I am
here he will have the best chance I can give him. He's got something
no half-breed ever had and when I get too old to stay I'll try to fix
things so they won't shake him loose. You can be proud of the boy,
Merton. He's won through."
Yet Donald had not won through so completely as the others thought.
There were times when the fading wigwam years returned with startling,
numbing clearness, when doubts assailed him. He was able to beat back
the thought of Nee-tah-wee-gan but he could not escape her in the
flesh. As at Wabinosh, she found him his second year at Whitefish Lake.
Year after year she remained there, subsisting on the rations he
furnished, dwelling in a small cabin he had built for her. She rarely
associated with the hunters' families, or with the employes of the
post and in time they began to shun and fear her for she had become
a fearsome thing, twisted and warped by hate--a bitter, venomous
embodiment of evil that shocked even the savage instincts of the
Ojibwas.