AN ULTIMATUM
The Cree bucks came slowly up the point, forming a sort of respectful
retinue to Running Wolf, his son, Three Feathers, and others of the head
men whose dignity of tribal status allowed them to stalk in front.
Slovenly squaws and dirty, round-eyed children now appeared from the
dark interiors of wigwams which before had shown no sign of life. These
began to cluck their derision and to indulge in shrieking laughs of
ridicule to the visible discomfiture of the hunters. Half-tamed curs as
fierce looking as their wolf ancestors grew bold enough with the advent
of the masters to issue from various hiding-places and organize a
snapping charge upon Dunvegan. They rushed in a body, howling wickedly
and baring vicious, chisel-like fangs, but the chief trader plucked a
stick from a tepee fire and belabored their hard heads till they
retreated faster than they had charged.
Wild uproar spread through the camp. The dogs' battle snarls were
changed to lugubrious wailings of defeat. Old women rated the mongrels,
ordering them back to their places. The braves shouted injunctions of
silence upon the squaws, while the children added to the climax by
scuttling and shrieking out of sheer contagion.
Running Wolf obtained quiet at last by a violence of gesture that
threatened to tear his arms from their sockets. With the quiet came his
reprimand to his people, delivered in deep-throated Cree, and their
instant assumption of meekness vouched for the acid quality of his
phrases. Then he approached Dunvegan, with Three Feathers at his heels.
"_Bo' jou'_, Running Wolf; _bo' jou'_, Three Feathers," greeted the
chief trader.
"_Bo' jou'_, Strong Father," returned the Cree chieftain with grave
politeness.
Three Feathers did not speak, but contented himself with nodding
sullenly. He was not a favorite with Dunvegan. Several times the two had
clashed in the process of trade, for Running Wolf's son was a spoiled
child of the wilderness grown up to ignorant and stubborn maturity. He
represented the ambitious type of Indian, the dissentient, the inciter,
the yeast of superstitious unrest fated to be the curse of his race.
"Your hunting has been unrewarded," sympathized the chief trader,
speaking to Running Wolf. He used the Cree dialect which he had acquired
in his years of dealing with the natives.
"_Ae_," replied Running Wolf. "We did not find the caribou. Nor did we
see the trail of any other game."
"How was that?" asked Dunvegan. "Your braves are wise in the ways of the
caribou, the moose, and all of the wild creatures. How is it their
cunning brought them nothing?"
"I do not know," the chief responded simply, "but the spirits were not
kind to us. Perhaps the north wind told the caribou of our coming."
"It was not so," spoke Three Feathers maliciously. "It was instead the
bad magic of the white traders. The spirits also were kind, for they
gave us no game and turned us from our hunting that our squaws might not
be stolen." He talked brazenly, having shrewdly guessed in his feverish
brain that Dunvegan's errand concerned the woman his father wished to
take as a squaw.
"Who steals our women?" cried Running Wolf, turning on his son with an
expression of vague alarm.
"Ask the Strong Father there," Three Feathers directed, forcing the
issue upon Dunvegan.
"Yes, ask the Strong Father," interposed Flora Macleod, speaking also in
Cree. "Inquire whence he has journeyed. Question him as to why he has
come." She was quick to seize any advantage which might arise for her
from the injuring of Running Wolf's pride.
The chief looked searchingly at the trader and at the trader's brigade,
as if to read their intent.
"Strong Father," he declared, "the lodges of my people are open to you.
My heart is right toward you in spite of the high words of my son and
the White Squaw. They would have me think you walk against my wigwams to
do me harm. Tell them whence you have voyaged. Perhaps even now you are
come from the Stern Father by the Holy Lake!"
"That is so," admitted Dunvegan. "I come from Oxford House and from the
Factor, him you call the Stern Father. He has sent me here to do his
bidding."
"_Ae_," snarled Three Feathers, interrupting impetuously. "He comes to
take back the White Squaw. I see it in his eyes. He is a traitor and a
foe!"
Dunvegan seized the brave's arm with a vicious pinch.
"You young hothead," he cried angrily, "you go too far. Keep behind with
the women till you get some wisdom!"
His back-twist of the arm sent Three Feathers hurtling in among a group
of squaws about a tepee door, where he sprawled ingloriously with his
heels in the air.
The downfall of the haughty son set the Indian women roaring afresh with
laughter, but the braves muttered ominously. Among them Three Feathers
was a power growing nearer the usurping point which would shatter the
father's sane control of the tribe.
Running Wolf himself gazed upon the incident quite unaffected. He
watched his son rise from his ludicrous position, the hawk-like face
marred by hideous wrath and the beady eyes glittering with revengeful
lights. He observed Three Feathers slink out of sight in the crowd of
young bucks. And he nodded sagely.
"So," he commented, "they learn wisdom and come to be head men. But why
have you come, Strong Father, with so many canoes? Do you build a new
post? Or do you fight the French Hearts?" The French Hearts was his name
for the Nor'westers.
"Neither," answered Dunvegan. "The Factor sent me many moons ago to
find his daughter and to bring her back to the Fort."
"Ah-hah!" exclaimed Running Wolf. "Then it is even as Three Feathers,
the hasty one, said! His guesses are greater than my wisdom."
"Listen," urged the chief trader, putting a hand on the Cree's arm. "The
Factor did not know where the girl was. All he knew was that she
harkened to the wooing of Black Ferguson, our enemy. She made trysts
with him in spite of our vigilance, and finally escaped to his forts and
married him. Married him and bore a son to him in the face of Macleod's
black wrath! You know the Stern Father, Running Wolf. You know how such
a thing would gripe. How he would writhe under the scorn of his foe and
under the northland's mocking laughter! You know?"
"_Ae_," answered Running Wolf. "I know."
"Then you understand. 'Go out,' he said to me. 'I will not brook it. Go
out. I have never been bent by man or devil. Go out! Raze forts! Burn!
Kill! But bring back her and her boy.' And that I will do, Running Wolf.
I obey his orders. The White Squaw, as you call her, returns with me."
A shade of anger crossed the Cree's copper-colored face. He drew back a
step, his shoulders raised in haughty pride.
"Thus at a late day, Strong Father," he said, "you have turned enemy to
me and to my people!"
"Not so," Dunvegan contradicted. "I am still your friend, as you have
had cause to know. But I have my orders. I must do the Stern Father's
bidding. Running Wolf, you say to your young men: 'Go forth and do such
a thing.' It is done as you command. You have power and wisdom to rule,
and the braves, recognizing your authority and holding the tribe's
interests at heart, will do your mission if they die in the doing. Is it
not so with your people, my friend?"
"_Ae_," replied the chief with warmth. "It is so, for I have many
trusted ones."
"Then"--Dunvegan was quick to follow up his advantage--"it is even so
with me. I do my duty to my Company and to my Factor, whom you rightly
call the Stern Father. Do you understand, Running Wolf?"
"I understand," responded the Cree. "I see that you come in no
bitterness, and the White Squaw shall go as you say."
Flora Macleod was quick to voice her disapproval of his words.
"Have you no spirit?" she cried wrathfully. "Do you give in when there
is a tribe at your back? Running Wolf, you haven't the courage of a
rabbit. Your son were fitter to rule these wigwams than such an old fool
of a father! A pretty mind to guide a people!"
"I give in to save my children trouble and strife," returned Running
Wolf gravely. "I know Strong Father well. He would fight for as little
as a blanket stolen from his Company, although his heart is friendly.
You shall go, White Squaw, but I go also. I go to take counsel with the
Stern Father, to ask that you abide in my lodge."
The tone of his last statement told Dunvegan that on this point he was
adamant. Flora Macleod flounced back to her child, the wrath of her soul
choking at her lips.
"Make ready," urged the chief trader. "We start at once."
He waited by the chief's tepee while the two set about what slight
preparations were needed for departure and watched the clean-limbed
bucks idling down to the Katchewan's bank. Three Feathers, brooding in
his spiteful anger, loitered with them, on edge to create a disturbance.
Dunvegan saw that the Indians were massing at the landing-point, and he
shouted a command to his men to keep them away.
Pete Connear, an American and an ex-sailor who had drifted north by the
Red River route and entered the Company's service, did as directed, but
the braves gave ground sullenly. Three Feathers himself became
vociferous.
"Dogs and sons of dogs," he anathematized them, "you have hearts of
water to steal about, capturing women."
"Shut up," advised Connear dryly.
"Salt Rat," Three Feathers sent back, stamping in impotent rage, "there
is no place for you here in the forest. Get away to your Big Waters."
He emphasized his language with a swift-thrown palmful of slimy sand,
which struck the ex-sailor squarely in the eyes. Connear roared like a
bull and leaped ashore from his birch-bark craft.
"You bloomin' copper-hide," he bellowed in blind wrath, "I'll man-handle
you for that."
Three Feathers was swift, but in anger Pete Connear was swifter. Almost
before the young chief realized it the sailor was upon him. The Cree's
wrists were pinned behind his back in the grip of Pete's left hand; he
was whirled over the sailor's knee and given as sound a spanking as ever
a recalcitrant child received.
Connear's palm was hard with years of searing brine; and Three Feathers
was blessed with no stoicism. He howled pitifully, while the Hudson's
Bay men shouted in uproarious mirth.
But the young bucks of the crowd failed to see the humor of the
situation. They gathered together with much muttering and gesturing.
Dunvegan, shaking with laughter at the plight of Three Feathers, caught
the signs of impending trouble and came running forward as Connear
completed his enemy's chastisement.
"There!" exclaimed the bespattered Pete. "I've slippered your hide, and
now I'll roll you in the scuppers just for sailor's luck!" He shot Three
Feathers from his knee and sent him rolling down the bank into the
river, from which the young man pulled himself out as bedraggled as a
fur-soaked beaver.
The Cree bucks charged on the instant at the lone sailorman, but
Dunvegan's arm waved as he ran, and like magic his men were out of their
canoes and lined up on the river margin with guns at full cock. Connear
danced a sailor's hornpipe in the center and hooted in delightful
anticipation of a fight.
The crisis seemed inevitable. A trade-gun barked in the rear. The
braves, with murder in their untamed hearts, shook out their weapons
ready to throw their weight against Dunvegan's line, but a deep-throated
Cree voice held them on the verge of their madness.
"Stop!" called the vibrant voice of Running Wolf, "or I blast you with
the evil spirit."
As one man the crowd turned and looked at the speaker.
The old chief stood behind them with Flora and her child. He was arrayed
in the robes of a medicine-maker, for Running Wolf was a man of magic as
well as a leader among his people. He carried the full equipment of a
head medicine-man of his tribe.
The effect of his appearance on the malcontents was instantaneous. Arms
which had raised weapons dropped to the owner's sides. A great awe grew
in the eyes of the braves. Running Wolf raised his medicine-wand,
sweeping it in a half circle.
"Go back to your lodges!" he ordered.
The Crees obeyed. There arose no murmur, no protest.
Dunvegan knew Running Wolf could not have done this thing by his powers
of chieftainship. He marveled how in their wild bosoms the fear of the
unknown overshadowed their defiance of the power of personality.
Assuredly it was strong medicine.