Here the hunter uttered a savage oath, to which Conscience made no
reply, for Conscience never speaks back or engages in disputation.
We need not attempt further to analyse the workings of sophistry in the
brain of a murderer. Suffice it to say that when the man had finished
his supper he had completely, though not satisfactorily, justified
himself in his own eyes. There was, he felt, a disagreeable
undercurrent of uneasiness; but this might have been the result of fear
as to how the Canadian half-breeds and friends of the slain man would
regard the matter in the event of its being found out.
There was reason for anxiety on this head, for poor Perrin was a great
favourite among his comrades, while Cloudbrow was very much the reverse.
Having finished the supper which he had purchased at such a terrible
price, the young man gathered his things together, packed the provisions
on his back, put on his snow-shoes and left the scene of the murder.
Although a dark night, there was sufficient moon-light to enable him to
pick his steps, but he had not advanced more than two miles when he came
upon the track of a party that had preceded him. This rendered the
walking more easy, and as he plodded along he reflected that the wolves
would soon find Perrin's body, and, by tearing it to pieces render
recognition of the victim impossible.
Suddenly it occurred to him that if any of the scattered band of hunters
should come on the camp before the wolves had time to do their work, the
print of his snow-shoes might tell a tale--for snowshoes were of various
shapes and sizes, and most of his companions in the Settlement might be
pretty well acquainted with the shape of his. The danger of such a
_contretemps_ was not great, but, to make quite sure that it should not
occur, he turned round and walked straight back on his track to the camp
he had just left--thus obliterating, or, rather, confusing the track, so
as to render recognition improbable. As he walked over it a third time,
in resuming his march to the Settlement, all danger on this ground, he
considered, was effectually counteracted. Of course, when he reached
the tracks of the party before mentioned, all trace of his own track was
necessarily lost among these.
That "murder will out" is supposed to be an unquestionable truism. We
nevertheless question it very much; for, while the thousands of cases of
murder that have been discovered are obvious, the vast number, it may
be, that have never been found out are not obvious, however probable.
The case we are now describing seemed likely to belong to the class
which remains a mystery till altogether forgotten. Nevertheless Nemesis
was on the wing.
While Duncan McKay junior was thus pushing his way over the plains in
the direction of Red River Settlement, two poor half-breed women were
toiling slowly over the same plains behind him, bound for the same haven
of hoped-for and much-needed rest and refreshment. The poor creatures
had been recently made widows. The husband of one, Louis Blanc, had
been killed by Indians during this hunt; that of the other, Antoine
Pierre, had met his death by being thrown from his horse when running
the buffalo. Both women were in better condition than many of the other
hunters' wives, for they had started on the homeward journey with a
better supply of meat, which had not yet been exhausted.
It happened that Marie Blanc and Annette Pierre came upon McKay's camp
soon after he left it the second time. Here they prepared to spend the
night, but, on discovering marks of fresh blood about, they made a
search, and soon came on the unburied corpse of the murdered man, lying
behind a bush. They recognised it at once, for Perrin had been
well-known, as well as much liked, in the Settlement.
Neither of the women was demonstrative. They did not express much
feeling, though they were undoubtedly shocked; but they dug a hole in
the snow with their snow-shoes, and buried the body of the hunter
therein--having first carefully examined the wound in his breast, and
removed the poor man's coat, which exhibited a burnt hole in front, as
well as a hole in the back, for the bullet had gone quite through him.
Then they returned to the camp, and made a careful examination of it;
but nothing was found there which could throw light on the subject of
who was the murderer. Whether a comrade or an Indian had done the deed
there was nothing to show; but that a murder had been committed they
could not doubt, for it was physically almost impossible that a man
could have shot himself in the chest, either by accident or intention,
with one of the long-barrelled trading guns in use among the
buffalo-hunters.
Another point, justifying the supposition of foul play, was the
significant fact that Perrin's gun, with his name rudely carved on the
stock, still lay in the camp _undischarged_.
"See--here is something," said one woman to the other in the Cree
tongue, as they were about to quit the camp.
She held up a knife which she had found half buried near the fire.
"It is not a common scalping-knife," said the other woman. "It is the
knife of a settler."
The weapon in question was one of the large sheath-knives which many of
the recently arrived settlers had brought with them from their native
land. Most of these differed a little in size and form from each other,
but all of them were very different from the ordinary scalping-knives
supplied by the fur-traders to the half-breeds and Indians.
"I see no name on it--no mark," said the woman who found it, after a
critical inspection. Her companion examined it with equal care and
similar result.
The two women had at first intended to encamp at this spot, but now they
determined to push forward to the Settlement as fast as their exhausted
condition permitted, carrying the knife, with the coat and gun of the
murdered man, along with them.