A DOUBLE SURPRISE.
"_Arrêtez!_" The sentinel's challenge from the gates of Fort Brondel
rang out sharply in the near-dawn.
Through the blinding smother of great, soft-falling snowflakes he had
heard rather than seen the advance of a dog train toiling up the rising
ground upon which the post was situated. It came, he thought, as a
Nor'west train would come, making no unnecessary clamor, but without any
precautions for secrecy. The storm-laden air choked the first cry of the
watchman, preventing it from reaching the clogged ears of the
approaching party. Again his hail was lifted up.
"_Holá! Arrêtez!_" he commanded, the strident tone cutting the snow.
Instantly the leading team pulled up. The others lined behind it.
Brondel's sentinel could discern five bulky sledges, each accompanied by
a driver and a guard with rifle on shoulder. Their faces and garments
plastered thickly by moist flakes, the men looked like tall, white
stumps suddenly moved out of the forest and set before the stockades.
Identities were impossibly vague in the storm and in the gray dark which
preceded the morning.
"_Qui vive?_" asked the keeper of the post gate doubtfully.
"The Niskitowaney fur train," answered the muffled voice of one of the
halfbreeds who drove.
"The password?"
"Marseillaise!"
The gate bars rattled with release; a gap yawned in the stockade.
"_Entrez_," came the permission.
Walking with the leading sledge, Maskwa whirled as he passed the
sentinel and felled him with a quick blow of the rifle butt. Quickly he
removed the unconscious man's weapons and threw him on the sled.
"Strong Father, the thing is easy, as I told you," the Ojibway muttered
to the first snow-coated giant guard, who was in reality Bruce Dunvegan.
"Too easy," was Bruce's answer. "Listen! There is no stir about the
buildings, no sound. That puzzles me, Maskwa."
"Men sleep soundest just before the light breaks," explained the fort
runner in a tone of satisfaction.
"Perhaps." Dunvegan's tone was doubtful.
As they stood in the palisade entrance, listening keenly for any cry
which would mean their discovery, the pulses of the Hudson's Bay men
surged faster and faster. The cold chill of the storm-beaten atmosphere
changed suddenly to an electric glow. The fever of waiting strain
flushed their bodies. They began to breathe hard and shift weapons from
left hands to armpits and back again.
But no clamor beat out of the post structures; a ghostly blur they lay,
walled round with gigantic drifts. The only vibration which
communicated itself to the ear was the velvet brushing of falling snow
against the high stockades.
Faces turned in the direction whence they had come, the ten figures with
the dog teams remained poised in perfect silence, anxious, eager,
expectant. Then, quite near, the wilderness voice they awaited spoke out
abruptly.
"Yir-r-r-ee-ee!" echoed the weird, panicky screech of a lynx.
Maskwa curved his hands about his mouth and replied with the horned
owl's full-throated whoop.
"Kee-yoo-oo-oo-oo!" he quavered in a quick, ever-diminishing tremolo.
At the pre-arranged signal the rest of the Oxford House force moved
swiftly up and passed through Brondel's guardless gate. Two Indians had
been left with the bound prisoners and the Nor'west sledge teams in the
fringe of the timber.
"Are you ready, men?" Dunvegan asked.
"Aye, aye, sir," cried Connear quaintly. "This is what we have all been
waiting for."
To the chief trader it was an incredible thing that they reached the
buildings in the center of the yard without any alarm being raised. The
_giddés_ whined. Instantly a howling response arose from the quarters
where the fort dogs were kept. Gripping their arms tightly, the invaders
waited for the uproar that should follow the huskies' wailing and for
the man-to-man struggle which must succeed the awakening of the post.
No uproar came! The expected onslaught failed to materialize!
Even Maskwa became mystified. "Strong Father," he whispered, "this is
beyond my wisdom."
"And mine," admitted Dunvegan, worried as well as puzzled by the utter
lack of the expected developments.
"Can the post be deserted? Have they had warning and fled?"
"No! In case of warning the stockades would have been lined with
fighters. There is something extraordinarily wrong about the place. A
sentinel isn't set in a deserted fort, you know. And yet, why is there
no sign of life? Maskwa, it's uncanny!"
Although totally unfamiliar with the ground and the plan of Fort
Brondel, Dunvegan decided to investigate without delay. He pressed open
the door of the dark building in front of him, the latch offering no
resistance.
"Come," he ordered. "If any man is clumsy enough to make a noise let him
stay outside!"
Within the silent room, Dunvegan drew a candle-end and a match from his
inner pocket and struck a light. The faint beams showed that he was in
the store of the Northwest Fur Company's post. Shelves held neat arrays
of goods; orderly piles of bales and boxes were ranged about the walls;
but no person could be seen.
As many men as the store was capable of accommodating crowded after
Dunvegan. In their shoepacks they walked soft-footed as panthers.
"These French Hearts must sleep as the dead," murmured Maskwa.
"Yes, or else they hide somewhere to pistol the half of us at a stroke,"
the chief trader returned.
He lighted a fresh candle taken from a shelf. Its larger glimmer
projected giant shadows of the men upon the farther end of the store.
The huge silhouettes loomed up with a mysterious vagueness suggestive of
the advent of the real human figures. Dunvegan's followers passed their
own surmises to each other in low, husky whispers, remarking on such a
chance as their leader had recognized.
"If they are hiding in order to get to close quarters," observed
Connear, "they'll be sorry in the end. For we can hit in a clinch as
well as they can. Eh, Terence Burke?"
"Yes, me enemy," muttered the vigorous-minded Irishman, whom no strange
situation could abash, "an' if it's thim same Donnybrook Fair tricks
they're after, they'll find me rifle butt makes a mighty foine
black-thorn."
Baptiste Verenne spoke to Black Fox, the Salteaux Indian, in a soft
aside.
"Black Fox, you be son of beeg medicine-mans," he whispered. "Mebbe you
be tell us w'at dis mean. Spik de wise word an' say w'y de Nor'westaires
don' joomp out for keel us queeck."
But the Salteaux shook his head.
"The French Hearts are fools and snakes," he replied. "Their ways are
dark as the ways of evil spirits. Therefore they cannot be read."
"Dat mooch I be know, me," confided Baptiste.
Numerous whispers were making a very audible rustle. Bruce Dunvegan held
up his hand for silence. He began to examine what lay beyond the other
two of the three doors in the store.
Throwing open the one on the right, his candle gleam flashed across a
large, empty floor. According to the custom of new forts built purely
for aggressive purposes, Dunvegan judged that store, blockhouse, and
trading-room adjoined or were connected by passages. This section, he
presumed, was the blockhouse.
A hasty survey proved his conclusion correct. The light played around
the rough walls, revealing weapons, trophies of the chase and the
various equipments used in wilderness life throughout the different
seasons. But, like the store, the blockhouse was without occupants of
any kind.
Dunvegan made a quick decision and gave a quicker order.
"Bring lights," was his command. "Let half your number hold the
blockhouse and half occupy the store. It will take an army of
Nor'westers to oust us now."
Immediately the chief trader's directions were carried out. The men
assigned themselves promptly in equal bodies to both buildings.
There remained the trading-room and the factor's quarters to search.
Dunvegan concluded that there was no separate house for the factor of
the post, because a stairway led up through the store ceiling. He
surmised that the residential apartments of the one in command of
Brondel lay above. Gently he opened the door in the left-hand wall of
the store and saw a long, gloomy passageway.
"No light," Bruce commented. "Nothing there either, it seems!"
He closed the door again and set foot on the stairs.
"Guard those entrances well," was his adjuration. "Don't stir unless you
get a signal from me. I'm going up to awaken the lord of Fort Brondel,
whoever he may be, and let him know that he is a prisoner of the
Hudson's Bay Company."
Slowly Dunvegan ascended the stairway and reached the upper floor. He
still had the candle in his hand, its pale flame revealing a sort of
living-room which held a table, a stove, chairs, shelves of books, a
lounge covered with fur robes, a large wooden cupboard, a pair of
leather-padded stools, a writing-desk in the corner. The furnishings
were plain, though comfortable; they seemed such as any hard-working
factor might possess.
Treading softly, the chief trader crossed to the door at the other end
and pushed on it. It remained fast, bolted inside. He put his ear to
the wood. No sound!
Dunvegan stepped back a stride. Rising with a swift movement on the toes
of the left foot, he planted his right sole flatly against the door with
a straight, powerful body jolt. There came the crunching noise of metal
tearing through hard wood, and the barrier swung back trembling on its
hinges.
Instantly the wind of suction puffed out the candle. Bruce growled and
smothered a low imprecation. Stepping cautiously to the side of the jamb
beyond the range of any sudden missile which might be sent through the
open doorway, he fumbled in his pockets for a match. He scratched it
hurriedly against the wall, his eyes searching the gloom for a sign of
the sleeper whom he must have awakened. He dabbed the match to the wick,
and gazed more eagerly. But no figure launched from the blackness beyond
the threshold; there arose not even a rustle to show that someone's
slumber had been broken. To the listening Dunvegan there was something
weird in this circumstance. He wondered if he should find the sleeping
chamber as he had found the store and the blockhouse--empty!
His pondering, like his hesitation, occupied only a second. The air of
uncertainty left a tinge of suspense which Bruce hastened to dispel.
Feeling some subtle magnetism, some unaccountable sensation of a
familiar presence, some tremendous unknown climax which his heart
acknowledged blindly, he strode abruptly into the dark apartment, his
one hand holding the light well to the side, the other clasping the
weapon in his belt.
"Another step, you beast, and husband or no husband, I'll kill you!"
Bitter as acid was the woman's voice which hurled the threat. Across the
flickering candle rays Dunvegan's startled glance met a leveled pistol
and beyond that the beautiful, defiant eyes of Desirée Lazard.
The unintelligible cry rising within the man choked in his dry throat.
He gasped and trembled, causing the white light to play over bedstead,
coverlet, and the loose-frocked figure crouching behind. His physical
courage and indomitable will, sufficient to face the fierce Nor'westers
within the very walls of their stronghold, was displaced by a nerveless
weakness that banished self-control.
"One more step," she warned, marking his restless muscular twitching. "I
mean it. As God hears me, I mean it!"
Dunvegan's mind was battling chaotically with amazement at Desirée's
presence, with wonder at her attitude, with a thousand conflicting
emotions, each inspired by some swift-passing thought. Joy, doubt,
jealousy, malice, love, judgment, forgiveness--these all mingled, held
momentary sway, separated one by one and disappeared. Out of this chaos
of human feeling Bruce retained no reigning passion. Wisely he let the
hot mixture of mad ideas spend itself and give way to his usual cool
reserve. Therein rested his salvation.
He still held the candle to one side, and his face was not clear. Even
his figure remained shadowy in the sputtering gleam. That, he knew,
accounted for Desirée's mistaking him for her husband.
Now deliberately and with a steady hand he moved his light to the front
so that its glimmer yellowed his wind-tanned face.
"Bruce!" Her voice was pitched in the unnatural, hysterical scream of a
person struggling with a nightmare.
The sense of the dramatic leaped through the blood of both. Dunvegan
glowed with the hectic pulse of old desire, but his cold reserve was
maintained by a nerve-wrenching effort.
"You do not dream," he ventured in a measured tone. "I am a strict
reality, though an intruding one."
At the sound of his voice Desirée dropped her loaded pistol on the bed.
Her tense body shivered, as if at escape from menace or danger. She
covered her face with her hands. The full bosom worked in a paroxysm of
sobs.
"My God! My God!" she moaned, her words coming like a prayer.
Dunvegan set the candle on a nearby stool and leaned back with folded
arms against the door jamb. Thus could he the better control himself,
for Desirée's weeping tore his fibres. Irrelevantly he noted that she
was not prepared for slumber, but wore a flowing, open-throated day
dress. This fact added to Bruce's mystification.
Presently Desirée glanced up, an expression of fear succeeding the
despair in her face. She rushed swiftly across the chamber to Dunvegan,
her hands extended appealingly.
"Go," she pleaded. "Go before someone hears you! How you learned--how
you got here is nothing. Only go! Do you know what danger you stand in?"
"No," Bruce answered grimly. "I am not aware of any."
Her beauty even in tears burned its image in his tortured soul. To clasp
her tight would have given both physical and mental relief, but his
fingers clenched hard on his flexed biceps; he did not unfold his arms.
"Are you mad?" she cried earnestly, tempestuously. "You enter a
Nor'west fort! You force in the door of the factor's apartment! And
why? How did you find out I was here--and alone?"
"I didn't find out. Till two minutes ago I thought you were in Fort La
Roche."
"La Roche!" she echoed with astonishment. "Why there?"
"According to Black Ferguson's plan as I read it."
Desirée looked searchingly at the chief trader for a half-minute.
"What do you know?" was her suspicious question, barbed with a slight
resentment of his curt words.
"I know, first, that Black Ferguson was informed by Gaspard Follet of
your favoring Glyndon; second, that the clerk was approached through
Follet, and bribed to join the Nor'west ranks with his wife; third, that
the foregoing was but a design of Black Ferguson's to get you beyond the
stockades of Oxford House and in a place where he could lay hands on
you."
"But he can't," protested Desirée. "I am--you see, I was married."
"Can't!" Dunvegan exploded. The tone of the one word was eloquent
conviction. He added darkly: "It is well that I have come in time."
"Ah! no," she cried, the fear for his safety, momentarily forgotten,
returning. "You must leave instantly. I will lead you down in silence.
Come!"
Her hand was throbbing on his arm, her hot breath beating up against his
cheeks. Bruce freed himself, fighting to keep his feelings in check.
"There is no need," he returned. "I shall not stir from here."
She scanned his face. No madness was visible in it. Bruce laughed.
"I am quite sane," he answered her.
"You are in Fort Brondel," Desirée announced severely. "A Nor'west
fort----"
"Your pardon," Dunvegan interrupted. "A Hudson's Bay fort!"
"Now you are surely mad."
A slight timidity touched her. She drew back.
"Mad enough to have taken this post! I command forty-odd men in the
rooms below."
Incredulity widened Desirée's eyes, but the chief trader's manner was
convincing. She murmured a little in astonishment.
"We--of the post?" she stammered.
"Taken, too! The men become my prisoners--when I find them. You also are
a captive!"
"Thank God!" Desirée cried, flushing to the temples. "Thank God!"
It was Bruce's turn for bewilderment. The ecstatic fervor of the woman's
voice astounded him.
"What talk!" he exclaimed. "Prisoners don't generally rejoice. Yet this
post seems the place of riddles to-night. Oddest of all to me is the
fact that I have met with no opposition--except from yourself!"
He smiled, bowing courteously. Desirée smiled too, wanly and without the
least approach to mirth.
"Come," she suggested. "I will show you why."
Taking the candle, she led the way across the living room, down the
stairs, and through the great store which belonged to the Northwest Fur
Company. Under the wondering gaze of the men they passed and entered the
passage into which Bruce Dunvegan had glanced before. This passageway
extended for many paces. A closed door stopped their progress at the
farther end. Desirée laid her finger tips against it.
"The garrison of Fort Brondel is in there," she murmured.
"The trading room?"
"Yes."
"I had better call my fighters. And you? Wouldn't it be well for you to
go back? There may be violence, and----"
"No necessity whatever," Desirée interrupted cynically. "They will not
strike a blow. I can vouch for that."
An instant she paused, as if summoning her will power to do a hateful
thing. Then she swung the door sharply back and held her light inside.
"Look!" she commanded with bitter irony.
Dunvegan looked. The scene in the huge interior of the trading room
struck him with disgust as well as surprise. Around the long, rough
table over a score of men and halfbreed women lay in drunken stupor. A
liquor barrel crowned the board. At the table's end one man's debauched
face lay on the breast of his halfbreed Bacchante of the revel. Bruce
recognized the features of Glyndon, enpurpled and drink-puffed. The rest
of the revelers had fallen into every imaginable attitude expressive of
uncontrolled muscle and befuddled mind.
The stench of spirits was overpowering. Dunvegan drew Desirée back.
"This is sickening," he cried.
She gazed at Bruce with an intensity that went to the heart of him. The
look awakened glad, magnetic throbs, yet left uneasy forebodings for the
future because her eyes prophesied things which could never be.
"Now you know," she replied, pointing at the table. "I have shown you
why."
And in her words Dunvegan read the answer to more than one riddle.
Someone moved behind them ostentatiously in order to attract attention.
Bruce turned quickly. The tall Ojibway fort runner stood there.
"What is it, Maskwa?"
"Two messengers clamoring at the gates, Strong Father. What is your
will?"
"I will go with you, my brother," the chief trader decided. "It is well
to see who they are, myself." He walked with Desirée back into the
store.
"Bind the drunken Nor'westers in the trading room," he ordered the men.
"Come, Maskwa," he added to the Ojibway.
The fort runner stalked at his back through the snowy yard. Desirée
stood and watched them from the door, while away in the east the light
of dawn grew little by little.