ILL REPORT
Donald found Peter Rainy gossiping with a couple of the Indian
servants in the barracks, and informed his attendant of the intended
departure next morning. Then, he returned to the factor's house,
unexpected and unaccompanied, and was admitted silently by an Indian
woman, into whose hand he slipped a tiny mirror by way of recompense.
"Will you tell Miss Jean that I'm here?" he said, in the soft native
Ojibway of the woman.
She nodded assent, and disappeared, only the sharp creaking of the
stairs under her tread betraying her movements. For some time,
then, Donald sat alone in the low-ceiled parlor. At one end of the
room a roaring fire burned in the rough stone fireplace; there were
a couple of tables along either wall, with mid-Victorian novels
scattered over them; Oriental rugs and great furs smothered the
floor, and there was even a new mahogany davenport in one corner,
which the yearly ship from England had brought the summer before.
While the room of the other interview was palpably that of the
factor, there was something about this one, a certain pervasive
touch of femininity, that marked it as that of the daughters of
the house.
After a few minutes, there sounded a second creaking of the stairs
accompanied by a soft rustling that was not of Indian garments.
Donald rose to his feet expectantly, his finely molded head inclined
in an attitude of listening, and a flickering light in his dark-blue
eyes. There was a moment's pause, and then a girl entered the narrow
doorway.
She was tall, slender, and dressed in gray wool, warmed by touches
of red velvet at waist and throat and cuffs. Her skin was clear
and soft, toned to the rich hues of perfect health by the whipping
winds of the North. Her eyes, too, were blue, but of a lighter
color than were the man's, while her hair, against the firelight,
was a flaming aureole of bronze.
Donald caught a quick breath of admiration, as he took the hand
she held out to him. Each time, it came involuntarily--this breath
of admiration. Last spring, when the _brigade_ had come to the fort
after the winter's trapping; last fall, when he had gone away from
the fort, after a few weeks' hazardous attentions under the malicious
eyes of old Fitzpatrick; and here, again, this winter... And, as
he saw her now, after their long separation, there arose in him a
need as imperative as hunger, and as fierce. Years in the solitudes
had instilled into Donald something of the habits and instincts of
the animals he trapped, and now, as he approached thirty, this
longing that was of both soul and body, laid hold of him with an
unreasoning, compelling grip which could not be ignored.
"They told me you were here," said Jean Fitzpatrick, "and I think
it nice of you to give one of your precious hours for a call on me."
"You know I would give them all if I could," returned McTavish,
simply. "I would sledge the width of Keewatin for half a day
with you."
"Donald, you mustn't say those things; I don't understand them
quite, and, besides, father made himself clear about your privileges
last summer, didn't he?"
McTavish looked at the girl, and told himself that he must remember
her limitations before he lost his patience. For he knew that,
despite her pure Scotch descent, she had never been more than two
days' journey from Fort Severn in all her life. The only men she
had ever known were Indians, half-breeds, French-Canadians, and a
few pure-white fort captains like himself. And of these last,
perhaps three in all her experience had been worthy an hour's chat.
And, as to these three, orders emanating from the secret councils
in Winnipeg had moved them out of her sphere before she had more
than merely met them.
Innocent, but not ignorant (for her eyes could see the life about
her), she was the product of an unnatural environment, the
foster-child of hardship, grim determination, and abrupt destiny.
Donald remembered these things, as, with less patience, he recalled
the fact that old Fitzpatrick was opposed to Jean's marrying until
Laura, the elder sister, had been taken off his hands. This had
been intimated from various sources during the turbulent weeks of
the summer, and Jean was now referring to it again.
Had old Fitzpatrick possessed the eyes of Jean's few admirers, he
would have laid the blame for his predicament on his angular
first-born, where it belonged, and not on the perversity of young
men in general.
"Look here, Jean," said Donald, after grave consideration. "You
are old enough to think for yourself--twenty-four, aren't you?"
The girl nodded assent.
"Well, then," he continued, "please don't remind me of what your
father said last summer, if it is in opposition to our wishes and
desires."
"I wouldn't if it was in opposition to them," she retorted, calmly.
He looked at her with startled eyes, a sudden, breathless pain
stabbing him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean, Donald," she replied, looking at him squarely with her
fearless, truthful eyes, "that last summer was a mistake, as far
as I am concerned."
"Jean!" McTavish rose to his feet unsteadily, his face white with
pain. "Jean! What has happened? What have I done? What lies has
anyone been telling you?" He spoke in a sharp voice; yet, even in
the midst of his bewilderment, he could not but admire her
straightforward cutting to the heart of the matter. There was no
coquetry or false gentleness about her. That was the pattern of
his own nature and he loved her the more for it.
She shrugged her shoulders in the way he adored, and smiled wanly.
"There's an Indian proverb that says, 'When the wind dies, there
is no more music in the corn,'" she replied. "There is no more
music in my heart, that is all."
"What made it die?"
"I can't tell you."
"Evil reports about me?" he snarled suddenly, drawing down his dark
brows, and fixing her with piercing eyes that had gone almost black.
"Not evil reports; merely half-baked rumors that, really, had very
little to do with you, after all. Yet, they changed me." She was
still wholly frank.
"Who carried them to you?" he demanded tensely, the muscles of his
firm jaws tightening as his teeth clenched. "Tell me who spread
them, and I'll run him to earth, if he leads me through the heart
of Labrador."
"I don't know," she returned earnestly, rising in her turn. "That's
the trouble with rumors. They're like a summer wind; they go
everywhere unseen, but everyone hears them, and none can say out
of which direction they first came or when they will cease blowing.
I don't know."
Baffled, shocked, embittered, Donald turned passionately upon her.
"You don't know what was in my heart when I came here to-day," he
cried. "You don't know what has been in it ever since the fall when
the _brigade_ went south. I need you. I want you. This winter,
everything has gone against me, but the thought of your sympathy
and affection made those troubles easy to bear. I stand now under
the shadow of such a despicable thievery as the lowest half-breed
rarely commits. They say I cache and dispose of furs for my own
profit--I, in whom honor and loyalty to the Company have been bred
for a hundred years. Tomorrow I start out on the almost hopeless
task of proving myself innocent. And not only that! A half-breed
in my district, Charley Seguis, has murdered an Indian, and I, as
captain of Fort Dickey, must run him to earth, and bring him back
here, if I can get the drop on him first. If I can't--but never
mind that part of it. My honor and even my life are at stake, but
those are little things, if I know you love me. I wanted to go away
to-morrow with the knowledge of your faith in me, and the promise
that, when I came back, we might be married. Oh, Jean, I need you,
I need you, and now--" He broke off abruptly.
The girl had paled beneath her tan. She stood looking at him, her
hands gripped tightly together in front of her, her eyes wide with
wonder and perplexity.
"I can't help it, Donald," she said, in a low voice. "I'm sorry,
truly I am sorry. I--I didn't know these things. And, perhaps,
you'll be shot, you say? No, that must not be. You must come back,
even if things aren't what they were."
"You do care for me!" cried McTavish eagerly, Stepping toward her.
"Yes, yes, I do; but not the way you mean," she stammered, a sudden
instinctive fear of his masculine domination rising in her. "I
can't marry you now, or when you come back, or--ever!"
The fire in the man's eyes died out; his frame relaxed hopelessly,
and he fumbled for his fur cap.
"I'm sorry I spoke, Jean," he said, stretching out his hand.
"Good-by."
Suddenly, the door leading into the rear room opened, and in the
frame stood the heavy figure of Angus Fitzpatrick, his eyes glittering
under the beetling white brows. For a silent moment, he took in
the scene before him.
"Jean," he said harshly, "what does this mean? You know my orders.
Do you disobey me?" The girl flushed painfully.
"Mr. McTavish is going now, father," she said, quietly. "I'm sending
him away."
"I'll look to that Indian woman," muttered Fitzpatrick. "She had
orders not to admit him." Then, aloud:
"Mr. McTavish, in the future, kindly do not confuse your business
at this factory with your personal desires. I do not wish it."
"Very well," replied the captain impersonally, without looking at
the factor.
His eyes were fixed hungrily upon the face of the girl, searching
for a sign of tender emotion. But there was none. Only confusion,
fear, and surprise struggled for mastery there. Hopelessly, he
bowed stiffly to her, and went out of the door.
Crossing the courtyard by a path that was a veritable canyon of
snow, he gained his quarters in the barracks. There, he found Peter
Rainy, gaunt and with a wrinkled, leathern face, starting to gather
the packs for the early start next morning. Donald filled and lit
his pipe solemnly, and then sat down to ponder.
Something intangible and ill-favored had been streaked across the
clean page of his life. Angus Fitzpatrick's increasing malice toward
him was not the sudden whim of an irascible old man. He knew that,
all other things being equal, the factor was really just, in a
rough and ungracious way. Any other man in the service would have
hesitated long before accusing him, with his father's and
grandfather's records, glorious as they were, and his own
unimpeachable, as far as he knew. Some event or circumstances over
which he had no control had raised itself, and defamed him to these
persons who held his honor and his happiness in their hands. This
much he sensed; else why had the factor taken such half-hidden,
but malicious, joy in sending him forth on these two Herculean
tasks; else, why had the rumor poisoned the mind of Jean against
him, and held her aloof and unapproachable?
That Jean should not love him under the circumstances did not
surprise him, but he groped in vain for an explanation of old
Fitzpatrick's evident hatred. The old factor and the elder McTavish,
now commissioner, had known each other for years, the latter's
incumbency of the York factory having kept them in fairly close
touch. This in itself, thought Donald, should be a matter in his
favor, and not an obstacle, as it appeared to be. Pondering,
searching, he racked his weary brain feverishly until Peter Rainy
unobtrusively announced that dinner was ready. Then, occupied with
other things, he put the matter from his mind.
The sluggish dawn had barely cast its first glow across the
measureless snows when Rainy roused him from heavy sleep. After a
breakfast of boiled fat, meat, tea and hard bread, they gathered
the four dogs together, and with much difficulty got them into
traces. Mistisi, the leader, a bad dog when not working, strained
impatiently in the moose-hide harness. Donald, when the packs had
been strapped securely on, gave a quick final inspection, and then
a word that sent the train moving toward the gate in the wall.
But few men were about, and an indifferent wave of the hand from
these sped the party on its way. Outside the gate, Peter Rainy
took the lead, breaking a path for the dogs with his snowshoes,
while McTavish walked beside the loaded sled. Their course ran
westward up the frozen Dickey River, which now lay adamant beneath
the iron cold and drifting snow. Forty miles they would follow it,
to the fork that led on the north to Beaver Lake, and on the south
to Bolsover. Taking the south branch, they would then struggle
across the wind-swept body of water, and follow the river ten miles
farther, to a headland upon which stood the snow-muffled block-house
of Fort Dickey.
If you draw a straight line north from Ashland, Wisconsin, and
follow it for six hundred and fifty miles, you will find yourself
in the vicinity of Fort Dickey, in the midst of the most appalling
wilderness on the face of the globe. In that journey, you will
have crossed Lake Superior and the great tangle of spruce that
extends for two hundred miles north of it. North of Lake St.
Joseph, which is the head of the great Albany River, whence the
waters drain to Hudson Bay, you will strike north across the
Keewatin barrens: Bald, fruitless rocks, piled as by an indifferent
hand; great stretches of almost impenetrable forest, ravines,
lakes, rivers, and rapids; all these will hinder and baffle your
progress. Add to such conditions snow, ice, and eighty degrees
of frost, and you have the situation that Donald McTavish faced
the day he left Fort Severn.