LAW OF THE NORTH
_Originally published under the title of_
EMPERY
_A Story of Love and Battle in Rupert's Land_
BY SAMUEL ALEXANDER WHITE
AUTHOR OF THE WILDCATTERS, THE STAMPEDERS, ETC.
FRONTISPIECE IN COLORS BY
THORNTON D. SKIDMORE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
All rights reserved
[Illustration: THE PRIEST NOTED THE WEAPON'S MUZZLE THRUSTING DEEPER
INTO THE POWDER]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BREED OF THE NORTH 9
II. THE LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS 20
III. AN ULTIMATUM 33
IV. OMENS OF THE LAW 47
V. DESIRÉE 66
VI. IN THE BLOOD 80
VII. LIEGES OF THE WILD 86
VIII. THE NOR'WESTER'S FLESH 100
IX. WHO RULES HIMSELF 115
X. THE CAUSE INVINCIBLE 127
XI. TIDINGS OF WAR 137
XII. "YOU MAY COME IN A BLIZZARD!" 147
XIII. A VOW THAT HELD 157
XIV. THE IRON TRAIL 168
XV. MASKWA'S FIND 181
XVI. THE FIRST BLOW 193
XVII. THE HEART OF THE SAVAGE 207
XVIII. A DOUBLE SURPRISE 219
XIX. NOT IN THE BONDS OF GOD 240
XX. THE LONG LEAGUER 250
XXI. BLACK FERGUSON'S WILE 274
XXII. FAWN AND PANTHER 295
XXIII. CONQUEST 315
LAW OF THE NORTH
CHAPTER I
THE BREED OF THE NORTH
Before Basil Dreaulond, the Hudson's Bay Company's courier, had won half
the mile-long Nisgowan portage, the familiar noise of men toiling in
pack-harness reached his ears. He stopped automatically and trained his
hearing in mechanical analysis of the sound. This power had grown within
him with every successive year of his wilderness life, and at once he
was aware that a party of considerable size was packing across the
boulder-strewn strip of woodland separating Kinistina Creek from Lac Du
Longe.
The knowledge gave a wonderful quickness to the courier's rigid,
listening figure. Swinging the canoe from his bulky shoulders, he hid it
swiftly in the tamarack thicket which skirted the blazed passage. The
tump-line was as suddenly slipped from his sweating forehead, and the
pack-sack vanished likewise. Then Dreaulond himself disappeared with a
spring into the green growth like a grouse seeking tangled cover. From
the place of concealment sounded a metallic clink as he made ready his
weapons against the chance of discovery.
The voyageur was doubtful whether the advancing men were from any of the
Hudson's Bay forts. They might well belong to some of the Northwest Fur
Company's posts. If this were the case, Basil knew it would not be
conducive to his own safety or, what was more important, to the welfare
of the dispatches he carried to encounter single-handed a body of
Nor'westers. He made for his convenience a peep-hole among the pungent
boughs and scrutinized the axe-hewn path where one had to stagger
knee-deep among flinty rock fragments, spear-like stumps, and a chaotic
jumble of logs.
Stooping to their burdens of canoes, dunnage, and arms, they came,
thick-set giants with the knotted muscle, the clear vision, and the
healthy skin that the strenuous northland life bestows. While they
approached slowly, footing arduously, almost painfully, every step of
the trying way and guarding against slips which meant fractures or
six-month bruises, Dreaulond caught mingling gleams of color about their
attire. As these bright glints took on definition and were resolved into
sashes and leggings of red and blue, the hiding courier made out the
dress of his own Company's men. The cover, now no longer necessary, was
brushed aside for a better view. In the lead he recognized the square
shoulders and mighty breadth of Bruce Dunvegan from Oxford House, a man
of superior education and chief trader to Malcolm Macleod, the Factor.
When Dunvegan with his hardy brigade of voyageurs came abreast the
courier's shelter, Dreaulond was seized with a sudden spirit of humor,
and launched a long-drawn, far-carrying cry.
"_Vive le Nor'westaire!_" he bellowed.
As automatons, actuated by a single controlling spring, the men dropped
whatever they bore and leaped to shelter behind perpendicular rocks,
huge logs, or bullet-proof stumps, only the ends of their rifles showing
grim and suggestive in silent menace. The discipline of defense which
fell upon them naturally without preconcerted thought, without volition,
was pleasing to a man who loved his Company's interests as did
Dreaulond. His eyes sparkled with satisfaction, although he was minded
to keep up the artifice a little longer.
"La Roche! _Pour_ La Roche!" he shouted, using the watchword of the
Nor'westers, the customary warning of dire and imminent trouble for
Hudson's Bay followers. While Basil raised the enemy's alarm, he rolled
quickly behind a jutting boulder, thereby protecting himself from any
serious consequences that might follow his daring joke.
Dunvegan's acute ear distinguished the rustling movement. A vivid tongue
of flame leaped out of the shade from his rifle's muzzle, and the
missile, twanging sharply through the branches, smote Dreaulond's
shielding granite with a wicked thud. Following their leader's cue, the
men let loose a volley which filled the forest with uproar. Twigs
whitened instantly to the bullet-scars. Chipped rocks split with a pop
and scuffled through the underbrush. Dreaulond chuckled dryly.
"Hol' on dere, M'sieu's," he advised. "Kip dat good powdaire."
"Who speaks?" shouted Dunvegan, the chief trader.
"Basil Dreaulond," came the laughing answer. "He wan fren', _aussi_."
Dunvegan knew the voyageur's voice, and he and his band quitted their
cover.
"Come out, Basil," he ordered. "What trick are you playing now?"
The courier's face, a clean-cut mask of brown cunning, grinned at them
from the fringing tamarack.
"You be waste dose balls," he laughed. "Who you t'ink eet was? Black
Ferguson, of de Nor'westaires, mebbe?"
"You rascal," reproved Dunvegan, "your jokes will some day get you a
roasting over the wrong fire."
"_Non!_ I tak' de good care of maself. Black Ferguson an' hees men dey
don' catch me wit' ma eyes shut."
He stepped forth from his hiding place, a swart, sinewy son of the
North, spawn of the wilderness, fit to face hazard and court risk in a
land where danger rode round with the sun.
A single glance of the courier's shrewd eyes took in every member of the
group before him. One face was strange. Between tall Maskwa, the Ojibway
fort runner and the most trusted Indian in the service, and Wahbiscaw,
the Cree bowsman, stood the alien. Just the fraction of a minute Basil
puzzled over him, then flashed his friendly grin at all his old friends.
"_Bo' jou', bo' jou'_," he greeted, in the northland fashion.
"_Bo jou'_, Dreaulond," they returned. "Good journey?"
"_Oui_," responded the courier. "I have no troubl' wit' de
Nor'westaires. Dey too mooch busy get ready for de wintaire trade,
mebbe."
"You've come over from Nelson House, have you?" questioned Bruce
Dunvegan.
"_Vraiment_," Basil answered, tapping the dispatch packet at his belt.
"W'at you doin'?"
"Three things," the chief trader enumerated; "drafting a clerk from
Norway House, selecting a site for a new post to hold Fort La Roche in
check, and spying upon it and the other Northwesters' forts in hopes of
locating Macleod's daughter. We haven't succeeded in placing her yet."
At which information Dreaulond's twinkling eyes assumed an expression of
deepest gravity.
"Ba gosh, dat's fonny t'ing," he commented. "You hunt an' not find. I
find wit'out huntin'. I see dat girl in de Cree camp on de Katchawan."
"What?" Dunvegan cried in great surprise. "She is in Running Wolf's
camp? What foolery is that? Is Black Ferguson with her there?"
"_Non_, she be alone," the courier declared. "W'at she doin' I don'
know. W'en I try learn dat, she lak wan speetfire, yes! She have de
mission education an' talk lak _diable_. She goin' have de Crees t'row
me out de camp. I kip quiet den! You goin' see her?"
"At once!" exclaimed the chief trader, who, seemingly impelled by a
sudden feverish unrest, gave swift, tart orders to his men to take up
their burdens. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"Dat for tell de Factor," Basil chided. "I no spik de idl' word lak wan
old _femme_. How I know you be huntin' de girl?"
"That's true," admitted Dunvegan. "You couldn't know our errand. I am
somewhat over-anxious, Basil, being in a hurry to finish this hunt and
return to Oxford House."
"I believe dat," confided Dreaulond, with meaning in his smile. "_Mais_,
who dis new clerk?"
The chief trader turned to his voyageurs, now shouldering their loads
and passing off in single file.
"Glyndon," he called, "come over. This is Basil Dreaulond, the Company's
finest courier. You may have heard of him at Norway."
"Indeed, yes," Glyndon confirmed, losing his slight, well-formed hand in
Basil's huge paw. "I heard him named with honor and with admiration."
"Ha! dat easy t'ing to say!" exclaimed Dreaulond. "You be Engleesh? You
not for ver' long out?"
"I arrived from England on the last ship," Glyndon responded. "They told
me there wouldn't be another for a year." He laughed ingenuously, as if
at something strangely outside his own experience.
"The vessel comes but once in twelve months," explained Dunvegan, "to
bring supplies and carry back the furs to market. We get our yearly mail
with the supplies."
"It seems very odd," the clerk ventured. "This is a tremendous country,
and I have everything to learn about it. Perhaps Dreaulond will teach me
the elementals!"
"At Oxford House he may," remarked the restive chief trader. "You can
renew the acquaintance there. Just now we have something more important
to do."
"At Oxford House, then," Glyndon concluded as he followed the rest of
the brigade.
Dreaulond brought forth his canoe and pack-sack from the thicket. Before
loading up he gazed shrewdly after the slender figure of the English
clerk. He had not missed the lines of the aristocratic face; the large,
hazel, womanish eyes; the cheek-marks of dissipation that even a
lately-acquired tan failed to conceal.
"Dey send heem out?" Basil asked, pointing his arm in a direction
designed to extend across the Atlantic.
"Yes," answered Dunvegan, "his folks sent him here. He drank at home,
and they want the Company to make a man of him. New environment! The
primeval law of adaptation!"
Dreaulond adjusted the tump-line and placed the canoe upon his
shoulders.
"_Au revoir!_" he called.
"_Au revoir_," echoed the chief trader.
Basil bobbed on over the rough portage, pondering on Glyndon as he went.
"Hees eyes too soft," was his conclusion. "Mooch too soft for dis beeg
_Nord_!"