is Indian, of course, but without doubt a superior sort of Indian. For
one thing she was clean and neatly dressed. She is very good-looking too,
her voice is sweet, her manner quiet, and she certainly treated me
kindly. She loves Blaise dearly, and,—I think—she really loved my
father.”
Once more Monsieur Dubois nodded, a light of pleasure in his dark eyes.
“I asked,” he said abruptly, “because, you see, she is my daughter.”
“Your daughter? But she is an Indian!”
“Only half Indian, but no wonder you are surprised. I will explain.”
Monsieur Dubois then told the wondering boy how, about thirty-eight years
before, when he was still a young man, he had taken to the woods. It was
in the period between the conquest of Canada by the English and the
outbreak of the American Revolution, long before the formation of the
Northwest Fur Company, when the fur traders in the Upper Lakes region
were practically all French Canadians and free lances, each doing
business for himself. In due time, René Dubois, like most of the others,
had married an Indian girl. A daughter was born to them, a pretty baby
who had found a very warm spot in the heart of her adventurous father.
Before she was two years old, however, he lost her. He had left his wife
and child at an Indian village near the south shore of Lake Superior,
while he went on one of his trading trips. On his return he found the
place deserted, the signs plain that it had been raided by some
unfriendly band. There was no law in the Indian country, and in that
period, shortly after the so-called French and Indian War, when the
Algonquin Indians had sided with the French and the Iroquoian with the
English, conditions were more than usually unstable. For years Dubois
tried to trace his wife and daughter or learn their fate, but never
succeeded.
“And now,” he concluded, his voice again trembling with feeling, “you
bring me proof that my daughter still lives, that she was the wife of my
friend, and that in his son and hers I have a grandson and an heir.”
Monsieur Dubois took up the gold coin and handed it to Hugh. One face had
been filed smooth and on it, cut with some crude tool, were the outlines
of a coat-of-arms. “I did that myself,” Dubois explained. “It is the arms
of my family. When the child was born, I made that and hung it about her
neck on a sinew cord.”
“And Blaise’s mother still had it?” exclaimed Hugh.
“No, she had lost it, but your father recovered it. Read the letter
yourself.” He handed Hugh the bark sheets.
It was an amazing letter. Jean Beaupré merely mentioned how he had found
the Indian girl a captive among the Sioux, had bought her, taken her away
and married her. No doubt he had told all this to Dubois before. Beaupré
had not had the slightest suspicion that his wife was other than she
believed herself to be, a full-blooded Ojibwa. She had been brought up by
an Ojibwa couple, but in a Sioux raid her supposed father and mother had
been killed and she had been captured. Nearly two years before the
writing of the letter, Beaupré had happened to receive a gold coin for
some service rendered an official of the Northwest Company. His wife had
examined the coin with interest, and had said that she herself had once
had one nearly like it, the same on one side, she said, but different on
the other. She had always worn it on a cord around her neck, but when she
was captured, a Sioux squaw had taken it from her. At first Beaupré
thought that the thing she had possessed had been one of the little
medals sometimes given by a priest to a baptized child, but she had
insisted that one side of her medal had been like the coin. Then he
remembered that his old comrade Dubois had told of the coin, bearing his
coat-of-arms, worn by his baby daughter. Jean Beaupré said nothing of his
suspicions to his wife, but he resolved to find out, if he could, whether
she was really the daughter of René Dubois. On this quest, he twice
visited the Sioux country west of the Mississippi. The autumn before the
opening of this story, he learned of the whereabouts of the very band
that had held his wife a captive. After sending, by an Indian messenger,
a letter to Hugh at the Sault, asking the boy to wait there until his
father joined him in the spring, Beaupré left at once for the interior.
He was fortunate enough to find the Sioux band and the chief from whom he
had bought the captive more than fifteen years before. The chief,
judiciously bribed and threatened, had sought for the medal and had found
it in the possession of a young girl who said her mother had given it to
her. When Beaupré questioned the old squaw, she admitted that she had
taken the coin from the neck of an Ojibwa captive years before. How the
Ojibwa couple who had brought the girl up had come by her, Beaupré was
unable to find out, but he had no doubt that she was really the daughter
of René Dubois. He resolved to send the proof of his wife’s parentage to
Montreal by his elder son, if Hugh had really come to the Sault and had
waited there. If Hugh was not there, the elder Beaupré would go to the
city himself. It was plain that he had not received either of the letters
Hugh had sent after him, nor had Hugh ever got the one his father had
written him. Fearing that if any accident should happen to him, the coin
and the story might never reach his old comrade, Beaupré had written down
the tale and prepared the packet. Even in his dying condition he
remembered it and told Blaise to go get it. Evidently, when he discovered
he was in danger of falling into Ohrante’s hands, he had feared to keep
the packet with him, so had hidden it with the furs. If he escaped the
giant, he could return for both furs and packet, but if the coin came
into Ohrante’s possession it would be lost forever. The letter, however,
said nothing of all that. It had undoubtedly been written before Beaupré
set out on his home journey.
With deep emotion Hugh deciphered the fine, faint writing on the bark
sheets. He was glad from the bottom of his heart that he and Blaise had
been able to recover the packet and deliver it to the man to whom it
meant so much. If Hugh had had any dreams of some strange fortune coming
to himself through the packet, he forgot them when Monsieur Dubois began
to speak again.
“I shall go to the Kaministikwia at once, if I can find means of reaching
there this autumn. At least I shall go as far as I can and finish the
journey in the spring. Wherever my daughter and my grandson are, I will
seek them out. I have no other heirs and Blaise, my grandson, shall take
the place of a son. I will bring them back to Montreal, or, if that does
not seem best, I will remain in the upper country with them. Whether my
grandson chooses to live his life in civilization or in the wilderness, I
can provide him with the means to make that life both successful and
useful.”
The elder brother’s heart was glowing with happiness. He knew that his
own mother’s people would help him to a start in life, and now his
younger brother, his half-breed,—no, quarter-breed—brother Blaise would
have a chance too. Hugh had no doubt that Blaise Beaupré would make the
most of his opportunities.
It only remains to say that when René Dubois saw the mother of Blaise,
her resemblance to himself and to her own mother thoroughly convinced him
that there had been no mistake. He more than fulfilled to both his
daughter and his grandson the promises Hugh had heard him make.
THE END
MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE BOOKS FOR BOYS
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SOUTH FROM HUDSON BAY, by E. C. Brill
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THE SECRET CACHE, by E. C. Brill
The father of two boys, a fur hunter, has been seriously injured
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THE ISLAND OF YELLOW SANDS, by E. C. Brill
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LOST CITY OF THE AZTECS, by J. A. Lath
Four chums find a secret code stuck inside the binding of an old
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CHAMPION SPORTS STORIES
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1. CRACKER STANTON _Or The Making of a Batsman_
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2. GRIDIRON GRIT _Or The Making of a Fullback_
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3. THE FIGHTING FIVE _Or the Kidnapping of Clarkville’s Basketball Team_
Clarkville School’s basketball team is kidnapped during the game
for the State Scholastic Championship. The team’s subsequent
adventures under the leadership of Captain Charlie Minor as he
brings them back to the State College Gymnasium where the two
last quarters of the Championship game are played next evening,
climaxes twenty-four pulsating hours of adventure and basketball
in the FIGHTING FIVE...
SORAK JUNGLE SERIES
By HARVEY D. RICHARDS
_The name Sorak means War Cry in the Malay country. He grows up among the
most primitive of the Malay aborigines, and learns to combat all the
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acknowledged the chief warrior in all his section of the jungle._
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1. SORAK OF THE MALAY JUNGLE _or How Two Young Americans Face Death and
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Two boys, Dick and Jack Preston are shipwrecked off the Malay
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get back to civilization make an absorbing story.
2. SORAK AND THE CLOUDED TIGER _or How the Terrible Ruler of the North Is
Hunted and Destroyed_
A huge clouded tiger, almost human, leads a pack of red dholes
into Sorak’s country, and it takes all of Sorak’s ingenuity, and
the aid of his friends to exterminate the pack.
3. SORAK AND THE SULTAN’S ANKUS _or How a Perilous Journey Leads to a
Kingdom of Giants_
Sorak and his friends are trapped by a herd of elephants, and
finally run away with by the leader to an unknown valley where a
remnant of Cro-Magnan race still exists. Their exciting
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4. SORAK AND THE TREE-MEN _or the Rescue of the Prisoner Queen_
Captured by a band of Malay slavers, Sorak and his friends are
wrecked on an island off the coast of Burma in the Mergui
Archipelago. Their escape from the island with the Prisoner Queen
after a successful revolution brings the fourth book of this
series to an exciting and unusual conclusion.
TOP NOTCH DETECTIVE STORIES
By WILLIAM HALL
_Each story complete in itself_
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1. SLOW VENGEANCE _or the Mystery of Pete Shine_
A young newspaper man, whose brother is on the police force,
becomes strangely involved in the mysterious killing of an
Italian bootblack. Suspicion points to a well-known politician
but he proves that it was impossible for him to have done the
deed. Then the reporter, who for a time turns detective, gets a
clue revolving about a startling, ancient method of combat. He
follows this up, watches a masked duelist and, with the help of a
girl, catches the murderer who justifies his deed on the plea of
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reporter got out of a tight corner.
2. GREEN FIRE _or Mystery of the Indian Diamond_
A golf caddy who has a leaning toward amateur detective work,
together with his younger cousin, are accidentally mixed up in
the strange loss, or theft, of a valuable diamond, known as Green
Fire. It was once the eye of an East Indian idol. To clear his
young cousin of suspicion, the older boy undertakes to solve the
mystery which deepens when one man disappears and another is
found murdered on the golf course. But, by a series of clever
moves on the part of the young sleuth, the crime is solved and
the diamond found in a most unusual hiding place. A rapidly
moving, exciting tale. You will like it.
3. HIDDEN DANGER _or The Secret of the Bank Vault_
A young detective, who, in his private capacity, has solved
several mysteries, decides to open an office in another city. He
meets a young bank clerk and they become partners just when the
clerk’s bank is mysteriously bombed and the cashier is reported
missing. It is not until next day that it is discovered that the
bank vault has been entered in some secret manner and a large sum
stolen. The regular detectives declared “spirits” must have
robbed the bank but the two young detectives prove that a clever
gang did it and also kidnapped the aged cashier. Not a dull page
from first to last. A clever story.
NORTHWEST STORIES
By LeROY W. SNELL
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1. THE LEAD DISK
Tom Baley, leaving college goes north into Canada, hoping to join
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adventures and encounters with the Disk Gang he is able to win
the coveted uniform.
2. SHADOW PATROL
Luke Myers is sent into the Caribou Mountains to solve the
mystery of The Shadow, about whom many conflicting stories are
told. There are struggles with the outlaws, and finally a great
running battle down the fog-obscured mountain trails ... at the
end of which the outlaws are captured and the mystery of The
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3. THE WOLF CRY
Donald Pierce is sent to solve the mystery of his father’s
disappearance, into the unmapped barrens where King Stively
weaves his web of wickedness, and rules a territory the size of a
small empire with a ruthlessness and cunning that baffles the
best of the Mounted Police. Behind all is the dread Wolf Cry
which causes brave men to shudder....
4. THE SPELL OF THE NORTH
Sergeant David Stanlaw, stationed at Spirit River, is puzzled by
a local killing, the disappearance of the body, the finding of a
code message, and by the mystery of the “Listening Forest,” which
casts a shadow of dread over the little town of Wiggin’s Creek.
With the help of Jerry Bartlett they capture the leaders of the
gang and solve the mystery of the “Listening Forest.”
5. THE CHALLENGE OF THE YUKON
Robert Wade whose patrol runs from Skagway on Chattam Strait
north into the Yukon country follows in the wake of a stampede to
a new gold strike. With the aid of his friend, Jim MacPhail, Wade
frustrates the outlaws, who try to trap the whole town behind the
“Pass of the Closing Door,” and then races them to and across the
breaking ice floes of the Yukon. A strong adventure story all
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THE BOMBA BOOKS
By ROY ROCKWOOD
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_Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented
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machete. He had only a primitive education, and his daring adventures
will be followed with breathless interest by thousands._
1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY
2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAIN
3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACT
4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLAND
5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITY
6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAIL
7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATH
8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVES
9. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON THE UNDERGROUND RIVER
10. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE LOST EXPLORERS
11. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN A STRANGE LAND
12. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE PYGMIES
13. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE CANNIBALS
14. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE PAINTED HUNTERS
15. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE RIVER DEMONS
16. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AND THE HOSTILE CHIEFTAIN
THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES
By LESTER CHADWICK
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1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS _or The Rivals of Riverside_
2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE _or Pitching for the Blue Banner_
3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE _or Pitching for the College Championship_
4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE _or Making Good as a Professional
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Struggles_
6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS _or Making Good as a Twirler in the
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7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES _or Pitching for the Championship_
8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD _or Pitching on a Grand Tour_
9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING _or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on
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10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE _or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy_
11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM _or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond_
12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE _or The Record that was Worth
While_
13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER _or Putting the Home Town on the Map_
14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD _or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond_
ADVENTURE STORIES FOR BOYS
By JOHN GABRIEL ROWE
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_Every boy who knows the lure of exploring and who loves to rig up huts
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inventions of a group of boys who are shipwrecked and have to make
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1. CRUSOE ISLAND
Dick, Alf and Fred find themselves stranded on an unknown island
with the old seaman Josh, their ship destroyed by fire, their
friends lost.
2. THE ISLAND TREASURE
With much ingenuity these boys fit themselves into the wild life
of the island they are cast upon after a storm.
3. THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT
Their ship and companions perished in tempest at sea, the boys
are adrift in a small open boat when they spy a ship. Such a
strange vessel!—no hand guiding it, no soul on board,—a derelict
4. THE LIGHTSHIP PIRATES
Modern Pirates, with the ferocity of beasts, attack a lightship
crew;—recounting the adventures that befall the survivors of that
crew—and—“RETRIBUTION.”
5. THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN IDOL
Telling of a mutiny, and how two youngsters were unwillingly
involved in one of the weirdest of treasure hunts,—and—“THE
GOLDEN FETISH.”
6. SERGEANT DICK
The Canadian Northwest police has the reputation of always
getting their man, and Sergeant Dick upholds the tradition in a
story of great adventure.
7. THE CARCAJOU (kärcájöu)
A sequel to Sergeant Dick, with the Carcajou proving his worth in
a series of adventures that will hold the interest of any boy.
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Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret Cache, by E. C. [Ethel Claire] Brill