THE RED TERROR
Nineteen years before these same rumors had come up from the south, and
the Red Terror had followed. The horror of it still remained with the
forest people; for a thousand unmarked graves, shunned like a
pestilence, and scattered from the lower waters of James Bay to the
lake country of the Athabasca, gave evidence of the toll it demanded.
From DuBrochet, on Reindeer Lake, authentic word first came to Lac Bain
early in the winter. Henderson was factor there, and he passed up the
warning that had come to him from Nelson House and the country to the
southeast.
"There's smallpox on the Nelson," his messenger informed Williams, "and
it has struck the Crees on Wollaston Lake. God only knows what it is
doing to the bay Indians, but we hear that it is wiping out the
Chippewayans between the Albany and the Churchill." He left the same
day with his winded dogs. "I'm off for the Révillon people to the west,
with the compliments of our company," he explained.
Three days later, word came from Churchill that all of the company's
servants and her majesty's subjects west of the bay should prepare
themselves for the coming of the Red Terror. Williams' thick face went
as white as the paper he held, as he read the words of the Churchill
factor.
"It means dig graves," he said. "That's the only preparation we can
make!"
He read the paper aloud to the men at Lac Bain, and every available man
was detailed to spread the warning throughout the post's territory.
There was a quick harnessing of dogs, and on each sledge that went out
was a roll of red cotton cloth. Williams' face was still white as he
passed these rolls out from the company's store. They were ominous of
death, lurid signals of pestilence and horror, and the touch of them
sent shuddering chills through the men who were about to scatter them
among the forest people.
Jan went over the Churchill trail, and then swung southward along the
Hasabala, where the country was crisscrossed with trap-lines of the
half-breeds and the French. First, he struck the cabin of Croisset and
his wife, and left part of his cloth. Then he turned westward, while
Croisset harnessed his dogs and hurried with a quarter of the roll to
the south. Between the Hasabala and Klokol Lake, Jan found three other
cabins, and at each he left a bit of the red cotton. Forty miles to the
south, somewhere on the Porcupine, were the lines of Henry Langlois,
the post's greatest fox-hunter. On the morning of the third day, Jan
set off in search of Langlois; and late in the afternoon of the same
day he came upon a well-beaten snow-shoe trail. On this he camped until
morning. When dawn came he began following it.
He passed half a dozen of Langlois' trap-houses. In none of them was
there bait. In three the traps were sprung. In the seventh he found the
remains of a red fox that had been eaten until there was little but the
bones left. Two houses beyond there was an ermine in a trap, with its
head eaten off. With growing perplexity, Jan examined the snow-shoe
trails in the snow. The most recent of them were days old. He urged on
his dogs, stopping no more at the trap-houses, until, with a shrieking
command, he brought them to a halt at the edge of a clearing cut in the
forest. A dozen rods ahead of him was the trapper's cabin. Over it,
hanging limply to a sapling pole, was the red signal of horror.
With a terrified cry to the dogs, Jan ran back, and the team turned
about and followed him in a tangled mass. Then he stopped. There was no
smoke rising from the clay chimney on the little cabin. Its one window
was white with frost. Again and again he shouted, but no sign of life
responded to his cries. He fired his rifle twice, and waited with his
mittened hand over his mouth and nostrils. There was no reply. Then,
abandoning hope, he turned back into the north, and gave his dogs no
rest until he had reached Lac Bain.
His team came in half dead. Both Cummins and Williams rushed out to
meet him as he drove up before the company's store.
"The red flag is over Langlois' cabin!" he cried. "I fired my rifle and
shouted. There is no life! Langlois is dead!"
"Great God!" groaned Williams.
His red face changed to a sickly pallor, and he stood with his thick
hands clenched, while Cummins took charge of the dogs and Jan went into
the store for something to eat.
Mukee and Per-ee returned to the post the next day. Young Williams
followed close after them, filled with terror. He had found the plague
among the Crees of the Waterfound.
Each day added to the gloom at Lac Bain. For a time Jan could not fully
understand, and he still played his violin and romped joyfully with
Mélisse in the little cabin. He had not lived through the plague of
nineteen years before. Most of the others had, even to Mukee, the
youngest of them all.
Jan did not know that it was this Red Terror that came like a Nemesis
of the gods to cut down the people of the great Northland, until they
were fewer in number than those of the Sahara desert. But he learned
quickly. In February, the Crees along Wollaston Lake were practically
wiped out. Red flags marked the trail of the Nelson. Death leaped from
cabin to cabin in the wilderness to the west. By the middle of the
month, Lac Bain was hemmed in by the plague on all sides but the north.
The post's trap-lines had been shortened; now they were abandoned
entirely, and the great fight began. Williams assembled his men, and
told them how that same battle had been fought nearly two decades
before. For sixty miles about the post every cabin and wigwam that
floated a red flag must be visited--and burned if the occupants were
dead. In learning whether life or death existed in these places lay the
peril for those who undertook the task. It was a dangerous mission. It
meant facing a death from which those who listened to the old factor
shrank with dread; yet, when the call came, they responded to a man.
Cummins and Jan ate their last supper together, with Mélisse sitting
between them and wondering at their silence. When it was over, the two
went outside.
"Mukee wasn't at the store," said Cummins in a thick, strained voice,
halting Jan in the gloom behind the cabin. "Williams thought he was off
to the south with his dogs. But he isn't. I saw him drag himself into
his shack, like a sick dog, an hour before dusk. There'll be a red flag
over Lac Bain in the morning."
Jan stifled the sharp cry on his lips.
"Ah, there's a light!" cried Cummins. "It's a pitch torch burning in
front of his door!"
A shrill, quavering cry came from the direction of Mukee's cabin, and
the two recognized it as the voice of the half-breed's father--a
wordless cry, rising and dying away again and again, like the wailing
of a dog. Sudden lights flashed into the night, as they had flashed
years ago when Cummins staggered forth from his home with word of the
woman's death. He gripped Jan's arm in a sudden spasm of horror.
"The flag is up NOW!" he whispered huskily. "Go back to Mélisse. There
is food in the house for a month, and you can bring the wood in
to-night. Bar the door. Open only the back window for air. Stay
inside--with her--until it is all over. Go!"
"To the red flags, that is where I will go!" cried Jan fiercely,
wrenching his arm free. "It is your place to stay with Mélisse!"
"My place is with the men."
"And mine?" Jan drew himself up rigid.
"One of us must shut himself up with her," pleaded Cummins. "It must be
you." His face gleamed white in the darkness. "You came--that
night--because Mélisse was here. SOMETHING sent you--SOMETHING--don't
you understand? And since then she has never been near to death until
now. You must stay with Mélisse--WITH YOUR VIOLIN!"
"Mélisse herself shall choose," replied Jan. "We will go into the
cabin, and the one to whom she comes first goes among the red flags.
The other shuts himself in the cabin until the plague is gone."
He turned swiftly back to the door. As he opened it, he stepped aside
to let Cummins enter first, and behind the other's broad back he leaped
quickly to one side, his eyes glowing, his white teeth gleaming in a
smile. Unseen by Cummins, he stretched out his arms to Mélisse, who was
playing with the strings of his violin on the table.
He had done this a thousand times, and Mélisse knew what it meant--a
kiss and a joyous toss halfway to the ceiling. She jumped from her
stool and ran to him; but this time, instead of hoisting her above his
head, he hugged her up close to his breast, and buried his face in her
soft hair. His eyes looked over her in triumph to Cummins.
"Up, Jan, up--'way up!" cried Mélisse.
He tossed her until she half turned in midair, kissed her again as he
caught her in his arms, and set her, laughing and happy, on the edge of
the table.
"I am going down among the sick Crees in Cummins' place," said Jan to
Williams, half an hour later. "Now that the plague has come to Lac
Bain, he must stay with Mélisse."