THE MASTER MIND
After the visit of MacNair, Chloe noticed a marked diminution in the
anxiety of Lapierre to resume his interrupted journey. True, he drove
the Indians mercilessly from daylight till dark in the erection of the
buildings, but his air of tense expectancy was gone, and he ceased to
dart short, quick glances into the North, and to scan the upper reach
of the river.
The Indians, too, had changed. They toiled more stolidly now with
apathetic ears for Lapierre's urging, where before they had worked in
feverish haste, with their eyes upon the edges of the clearing. It was
obviously patent that the canoemen shared Lapierre's fear and hatred of
MacNair.
In the late afternoon of the twelfth day after the rolling of the first
log into place, Chloe accompanied Lapierre upon a tour of inspection of
the completed buildings. The man had done his work well. The
school-house and the barracks with the dining-room and kitchen were
comfortably and solidly built; entirely sufficient for present needs
and requirements. But the girl wondered at the trading-post and its
appendant store-house they were fully twice the size she would have
considered necessary, and constructed as to withstand a siege.
Lapierre had built a fort.
"Excellent buildings; and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, Miss
Elliston," smiled the quarter-breed, as with a wave of his hand he
indicated the interior of the trading-room.
"But, they are so big!" exclaimed the girl, as her glance swept the
spacious fur lofts, and the ample areas for the storing of supplies.
She was concerned only with the size of the buildings. But her wonder
would have increased could she have seen the rows of loopholes that
pierced the thick walls--loopholes crammed with moss against the cold,
and with their openings concealed by cleverly fitted pieces of bark.
Lapierre's smile deepened.
"Remember, you told me you intend to sell to all alike, while your
goods last. I know what that will mean. It will mean that you will
find yourself called upon to furnish the supplies for the inhabitants
of several thousand square miles of territory. Indians will travel far
to obtain a bargain. They look only at the price--never at the quality
of the goods. That fact enables us free-traders to live. We sell
cheaper than the H.B.C.; but, frankly, our goods are cheaper. The
bargains are much more apparent than real. But, if I understand your
position, you intend to sell goods that are up to H.B.C. standard at
actual cost?"
Chloe nodded: "Certainly."
"Very well, then you will find that these buildings which look so large
and commodious to you now, must be crowded to the ceiling with your
goods, while the walls of your fur lofts will fairly bulge with their
weight of riches. Fur is the 'cash' of the North, and the trader must
make ample provision for its storage. There are no banks in the
wilderness; and the fur lofts are the vaults of the traders."
"But, I don't want to deal in fur!" objected the girl. "I--since you
have told me of the terrible cruelty of the trappers, I _hate fur_! I
want nothing to do with it. In fact, I shall do everything in my power
to discountenance and discourage the trapping." Lapierre cleared his
throat sharply--coughed--cleared it again. Discourage trapping--north
of sixty! Had he heard aright? He swallowed hard, mumbled an apology
anent the inhalation of a gnat, and answered in all seriousness.
"A worthy object, Miss Elliston--a very worthy object; but one that
will require time to consummate. At present the taking of fur is the
business of the North. I may say, the only business of thousands of
savages whose very existence depends upon their skill with the traps.
Fur is their one source of livelihood. Therefore, you must accept the
condition as it exists. Think, if you refused to accept fur in
exchange for your goods, what it would mean--the certain and absolute
failure of your school from the moment of its inception. The Indians
could not grasp your point of view. You would be shunned for one
demented. Your goods would rot upon your shelves; for the simple
reason that the natives would have no means of buying them. No, Miss
Elliston, you must take their fur until such time as you succeed in
devising some other means by which these people may earn their living."
"You are right," agreed Chloe. "Of course, I must deal in fur--for the
present. Reform is the result of years of labour. I must be patient.
I was thinking only of the cruelty of it."
"They have never been taught," said Lapierre with a touch of sadness in
his tone. "And, while we are on the subject, allow me to advise you to
retain LeFroy as your chief trader. He is an excellent man, is Louis
LeFroy, and has had no little experience."
"Do you think he will stay?" eagerly asked the girl. "I should like to
retain, not only LeFroy but a half-dozen others."
"It shall be as you wish. I shall speak to LeFroy and select also the
pick of the crew. They will be glad of a steady job. The others I
shall take with me. I must gather my fur from its various _caches_ and
freight it to the railway."
"You are going to the railway! To civilization?"
"Yes, but it will take me three weeks to make ready my outfit. And in
this connection I may be of further service to you. I must depart from
here tonight. Instruct LeFroy to make out his list of supplies for the
winter. Give him a free hand and tell him to fill the store-rooms.
The goods you have brought with you are by no means sufficient. Three
weeks from today, if I do not visit you in the meantime, have him meet
me at Fort Resolution, and I shall be glad to make your purchases for
you, at Athabasca Landing and Edmonton."
"You have been very good to me. How can I ever thank you?" cried the
girl, impulsively extending her hand. Lapierre took the hand, bowed
over it, and--was it fancy, or did his lips brush her finger-tips?
Chloe withdrew the hand, laughing in slight confusion. To her surprise
she realized she was not in the least annoyed. "How can I thank you,"
she repeated, "for--for throwing aside your own work to attend to mine?"
"Do not speak of thanking me." Once more the man's eyes seemed to burn
into her soul, "I love you! And one day my work will be your work and
your work will be mine. It is I who am indebted to you for bringing a
touch of heaven into this drab hell of Northern brutishness. For
bringing to me a breath of the bright world I have not known since
Montreal--and the student days, long past. And--ah--more than
that--something I have never known--love. And, it is you who are
bringing a ray of pure light to lighten the darkness of my people."
Chloe was deeply touched. "But I--I thought," she faltered, "when we
were discussing the buildings that day, you spoke as if you did not
really care for the Indians. And--and you made them work so hard----"
"To learn to work would be their salvation!" exclaimed the man. "And I
beg you to forget what I said then. I feared for your safety. When
you refused to allow me to build the stockade, I could think only of
your being at the mercy of Brute MacNair. I tried to frighten you into
allowing me to build it. Even now, if you say the word----"
Chloe interrupted him with a laugh. "No, I am not afraid of
MacNair--really I am not. And you have already neglected your own
affairs too long."
The man assented. "If I am to get my furs to the railway, do my own
trading, and yours, and return before the lake freezes, I must, indeed,
be on my way."
"You will wait while I write some letters? And you will post them for
me?"
Lapierre bowed. "As many as you wish," he said, and together they
walked to the girl's cabin whose quaint, rustic veranda overlooked the
river. The veranda was an addition of Lapierre's, and the cabin had
five rooms, instead of three.
The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, while
Chloe wrote her letters. He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-laden
breeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sun
between half-closed lids. Pierre Lapierre was happy.
"Things are coming my way," he muttered. "With a year's stock in that
warehouse--and LeFroy to handle it--I guess the Indians won't pick up
many bargains--my people!--damn them! How I hate them. And as for
MacNair--lucky Vermilion thought of painting _his_ name on that
booze--I hated to smash it--but it paid. It was the one thing needed
to make me solid with _her_. And I've got time to run in another batch
if I hurry--got to get those rifles into the loft, too. When MacNair
hits, he hits hard."
Chloe appeared at the door with her letters. Lapierre took them, and
again bowed low over her hand. This time the girl was sure his lips
touched her finger-tips. He released the hand and stepped to the
ground.
"Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before I
depart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to me
at Fort Resolution."
"I will remember. Good-bye--_bon voyage_----"
"_Et prompt retour?_" The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed the
question.
"_Et prompt retour--certainement!_" answered the girl as, with a wide
sweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward the
camp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a short
distance above the clearing. As he disappeared in the timber, Chloe
felt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, of
loneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of the
wall of the clearing. She fumed impatiently.
"Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until two
weeks ago, and besides, he's--he's an _Indian_! And yet--he's a
gentleman. He has been very kind to me--very considerate. He is only
a quarter-Indian. Many of the very best families have Indian blood in
their veins--even boast of it. I--I'm a _fool_!" she exclaimed, and
passed quickly into the house.
Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous. The son of a
French factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he was
sent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course;
for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in some
profession for which his education fitted him.
But the blood of the North was in his veins. The call of the North
lured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of his
father, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointed
trader and assigned to a post of his own far to the northward.
While the wilderness captivated and entranced him, the humdrum life of
a trader wearied him. He longed for excitement--action.
During the several years of his service with the great fur company he
assiduously studied conditions, storing up in his mind a fund of
information that later was to stand him in good stead. He studied the
trade, the Indians, the country. He studied the men of the Mounted,
and smugglers, and whiskey-runners, and free-traders. And it was in a
brush with these latter that he overstepped the bounds which, under the
changed conditions, even the agents of the great Company might not go.
Chafing under the loss of trade by reason of an independent post that
had been built upon the shore of his lake some ten miles to the
southward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastily
summoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents.
Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traders
killed, and the other captured and sent upon the _longue traverse_. In
some unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hardships, the man
won through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought to
book.
The Company stood loyally between its trader and the prison bars; but
the old order had changed in the Northland. Young Lapierre's action
was condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with a
payment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turned
free-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., the
Indians, and the country, made largely for success.
The life of the free-trader satisfied his longing for travel and
adventure, which his life as a post-trader had not. But it did not
satisfy his innate craving for excitement. Therefore, he cast about to
enlarge his field of activity. He became a whiskey-runner. His
profits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling in
his _repertoire_, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling upon
the ranges along the international boundary.
At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an
organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over
hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose
crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.
Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization--a born leader of men.
He chose his liegemen shrewdly--outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds,
trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers,
smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves--and these he dominated and
ruled absolutely.
Without exception, these men feared him--his authority over them was
unquestioned. Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning,
and because under his direction they made more money, and made it
easier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing a
lone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully. And such was his
disposition of the men who were the component parts of his system of
criminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could,
even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would have
seriously incriminated the leader.
The men who ran whiskey across the line, _cached_ it. Other men,
unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it to
the scowmen. The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all they
knew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their _cache_,
the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it in
some inaccessible rendezvous or _cached_ it where still others would
come and distribute it among the Indians.
Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader
_knew_. And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with each
of his various undertakings. Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed the
scriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
doeth." He confided in no man. And few, indeed, were the defections
among his retainers. A few had rebelled, as Vermilion had
rebelled--and with like result. The man dismissed from Lapierre's
service entered no other.
Moreover, he invariably contrived to implicate one whom he intended to
use, in some crime of a graver nature than he would be called upon to
commit in the general run of his duties. This crime he would stage in
some fastness where its detection by an officer of the Mounted was
exceedingly unlikely; and most commonly consisted in the murder of an
Indian, whose weighted body would be lowered to the bottom of a
convenient lake or river. Lapierre witnesses would appear and the man
was irrevocably within the toil. Had he chosen, Pierre Lapierre could
have lowered a grappling hook unerringly upon a dozen weighted
skeletons.
Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge of
murder. If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler,
or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was assigned, plans
should miscarry--an arrest be made--this man would take his prison
sentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with a
word could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about his
neck.
The system worked. Now and again plans did miscarry--arrests were made
by the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested upon
evidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute.
But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted his
sentence--for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart was
the fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.
With such consummate skill and finesse _did_ Lapierre plot, however,
and with such Machiavelian cunning and _eclat_ were his plans carried
out, that few failed. And those that did were credited by the
authorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work of
an intricate organization presided over by a master mind.
The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardest
characters upon the frontier. Only Lapierre knew its exact strength,
but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"--if he, by word
or act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice--his life would be
worth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to hell."
A few there were outside the organization who suspected Pierre
Lapierre--but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a few
factors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided their
time. One man _knew_ him for what he was. One, in all the North, as
powerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spies
in Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him. The one man Pierre
Lapierre feared--Bob MacNair. And he, too, bided his time.