CHAPTER XXIII
THE BROTHERS
One by one, exhausted, but joyful, the trappers of the Free-Traders'
Brotherhood straggled into their long-sought camp. Nearly all had
small packs on their backs, as though the provisions secured had
been distributed around evenly. In the lead, as usual, was Charley
Seguis. At the end of the procession came two or three wounded
trappers, supported by their comrades.
One of the first to greet the arrivals was Donald McTavish. His
wonder at the skill and stamina that carried the men through that
awful storm expressed itself in eagerness to assist in relieving
men of their packs. The gaunt, half-starved five that had been left
at Sturgeon Lake pounced upon the food, and, without more ado,
started to brew pails of tea, and to thaw out meat. In the midst
of his work, Donald suddenly found himself side by side with Bill
Thompson, the voyageur who had arrived the night before. At a
moment when they were unobserved, the old man spoke into the young
man's ear.
“I want to see you alone at the earliest opportunity,” he said.
Donald looked at his companion in amazement, and saw something in
the other's face that drew instant assent.
The story of Seguis's party was soon told. The men had been traveling
hardly an hour when the storm overtook them. From an eminence, they
had seen the pursuit of the Hudson Bay men, and, though they had
run at top speed, the packs of provisions had retarded them to such
an extent that their pursuers were gaining steadily. When the storm
broke, however, these very provisions saved their lives, for the
Hudson Bay men, being without means of shelter or sustenance, had
given up the chase, rather than lose their lives in a pursuit of
which the favorable outcome was so problematical. Seguis, striking
into the usual trail to the camp, had overtaken his men that night,
while they were still struggling on, and had ordered a halt.
Confident of their safety, they had camped, and then resumed their
march at daybreak, finding their bearings, and keeping them, by
the skill known to woodcraft.
It was now noon, and there was still no abatement in the storm.
After a good meal, Donald sought out Bill Thompson, while the other
men huddled in their tents, and recounted the experiences of the
hazardous march.
“Didn't I hear somebody call you McTavish?” asked the old trapper,
suddenly dropping the garrulousness that had characterized him so
far, and looking at the young man out of keen gray eyes.
“Yes.” Donald's perplexity at this strange interview increased.
“Son of the commissioner, are you?”
“Yes, I am. Why?”
“I used to know your father, many years ago; but things went
differently for us after a while, and I lost track of him. I haven't
seen him in twenty years. Fine man, he is, though.”
“You're a Hudson Bay man, then?” Donald inquired.
“Oh, my, yes! Been one all my life, and my boys are trapping for
the Company now, down on the English River district. That's where
I came from.”
“Well, you hadn't better stay here any longer than you can help,
or you'll never get away. These fellows are free-traders, you know.”
“I gathered as much from that loose-mouthed jay, Baptiste. The
reason I spoke to you is that I want to find out where I can lay
hold of Angus Fitzpatrick, the Fort Severn factor. Had a little
trouble in my section, and I thought I'd just shift up here for a
while. I've lost most of the season now, and I've got to get busy.”
Donald outlined briefly the position of the factor and the reason
that took him away from the fort at this time of the year. Then an
idea, full-clothed, leaped into his mind.
“You've seen that pile of furs over there, haven't you?” he asked,
indicating the rich haul of the free-traders.
“Yes.”
“Well, I want you to investigate them on the sly, and learn about
how many there are. I'm the captain of a post on the Dickey River,
and I engage you now as my messenger and representative. Give up
your idea of trapping for this winter. I've plenty for you to do.
No one knows anything about you here, and I think you can get away
without being stopped.
“Drive like the devil to the Hudson Bay camp twenty miles up the
lake, and tell old Fitzpatrick the best inventory of furs you can
secure before you leave. Then, tell him to quit worrying about
these free-traders here. Tell him there is a huge train of trading
supplies from a French company within thirty miles of this camp
somewhere, and say that, if he wants to put an end to this business
to capture that train before it arrives.
“These men will starve here in a little while, if they don't lay
in a lot of grub, for what they stole the other day can't last very
long. Now, if the Frenchies get through with their trains first,
Fitzpatrick will have a devil of a time beating these men. They
are determined and brainy, at least the leader is, and they have
a catch of unusually fine furs—a remarkable catch. Tell him, if
he wants to break the back of this trouble, to stop that French
train. Last of all, ask him to have ten men with provisions go to
the big pine at Muskeg Point, and wait there till I come. It may
be several days but I'll come somehow. Tell him, whatever he does,
to do this.
“Now, Thompson, the factor and I have had a lot of trouble this
winter, and the chances are that we will have a lot more, but I
want you to tell him that Donald McTavish sent you with those
messages, and that I'm faithful to the Company through everything.”
“Well, Mr. McTavish,” said the old man, “I'll have to pull my
freight in this storm, I guess, and in the middle of the night,
too. Possibly, to-morrow morning may be clear, and, if it is, I
doubt if I could explain my destination satisfactorily. I'll move
to-night.”
“And I'll help you,” said Donald.
By midnight, there was still no change in the weather. The young
man crawled from his shelter and sought out Thompson, who, with
his dogs, occupied a tent near the ruins of the old warehouse. A
tiny pack of provisions that had been stolen and saved during the
day Thompson put upon his rickety sledge.
“Did you get a chance to look over those furs? asked McTavish.
“Sure; I spent an hour with 'em, and I don't think my estimate will
be off more than a hundred skins. And, say, they're beauties, too.”
“Remember all I told you to tell Fitzpatrick.”
“Yes. Now, to get down to the lake! This is a northwest wind, and
I'll have to fight it every inch of the way. What's the landmark
by the camp?”
Donald told him, and added:
“Thompson, more depends upon you than you have any idea of. Tell
the factor to hurry, hurry, hurry, if he's going to get that
supply train. Goodby.”
The weather-beaten voyageur gripped the outstretched hand, and
led the dogs over the new snow to the lake. It would be bitter
work, for there were drifts and no crust.
“Look here, McTavish, why don't you make your get-away now?” suddenly
demanded Thompson.
“I'm on a hot trail of another sort here,” was the curt answer;
“and I won't go until I have followed it to the end.”
Thompson asked no more questions, but “mushed” the dogs, and a
minute later was swallowed up in the swirling flakes.
The following day was a busy one in the free-traders' camp. The
storm did not abate until nightfall, and during that time the men
were engaged in digging their habitations clear of the snow that
almost threatened to bury them. In this work, McTavish cheerfully
took a hand, and, by his good-humored banter, won his way to the
hearts of his fellow-toilers. Notwithstanding his industry, the
Hudson Bay man kept his eye open for glimpses of Maria who, as he
expected, was constantly about, now that Charles Seguis had returned.
He was surprised that Seguis had nothing to say to him, and wondered
anew what had been the motive of his sudden liberation. The idea
of connecting Jean and the half-breed never entered his head.
By the following morning the air was clear and prickly with cold,
and the sky seemed as though newly polished when the sun rose. The
days were becoming longer now, and the daylight hours nearly equaled
those of darkness. It was when Donald had given up the idea of
Seguis's desiring to see him that the unexpected happened. The
half-breed approached shortly after noon, and requested his prisoner
to walk a little way into the woods, as he had something to
communicate. Puzzled, but prepared for anything, Donald agreed.
Subconsciously, he felt that this was to be one of the crises of
his life, and he gathered himself to meet it. The same spirit of
aggressiveness and determination that had characterized him since
his liberation possessed him now. He resolved to take command of
the situation if he could; if not, to make his defeat seem a victory.
The first wheels of his machinery of reprisal and revenge had been
set in motion with Thompson's departure, two nights before. Already,
the Hudson Bay men had had thirty-six hours to block the French
approach to the free-traders' camp. Perhaps, it was concerning this
very thing that Charley Seguis wished to speak to him.
For a quarter of an hour they trudged in silence through the forest.
A fallen tree at last projected across their path, and Seguis set
an example by sitting down. Donald followed suit.
“As you can imagine,” began Seguis evenly, “what I have to say to
you is not pleasant. I have a message to deliver.”
“Who from?” Donald, reviewing quickly the persons with whom Seguis
might have come in contact, could think of no one who would send
him a message.
Seguis parried.
“Perhaps, you remember writing a letter that night in the cabin?
“Yes.”
“Well, it was delivered.”
There was an instant's silence, as the significance of this flashed
on Donald.
“H-m, I see,” he remarked quietly, “and you bring the answer?”
“Yes, here it is.” Seguis handed over the letter, upon the back of
which Jean had written.
Donald, with considerable difficulty, read the almost illegible
lines, and, when he came to the signature, laughed aloud.
“This is absurd,” he said calmly, putting the letter in his pocket.
“That is not Miss Fitzpatrick's handwriting.”
“I must ask you to believe she wrote that message,” rejoined Seguis,
coldly.
“Well, I don't believe it, and I won't,” was Donald's equally cool
retort. “It's a hoax, pure and simple.”
“The writing may be a hoax, but the sense is not.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Donald, sharply.
“I mean that what Is contained in that letter goes as it stands.
I will give you a safe-conduct out of the country, if you'll accept
it. If you won't, I shall restore you to the Hudson Bay officials,
with an apology for having interfered with justice.” Seguis's tone
was level and determined.
McTavish lost color.
“You can't mean that, Seguis,” he said, earnestly.
“I do mean it,” was the inflexible reply.
Donald reflected for a moment. The situation was getting out of
his hands. He must dominate matters at all costs. The plans that
he had set in motion must not stop until they had gone on to their
inevitable, crushing conclusion. It was evident that the half-breed
was equally determined. The battle now lay between them.
“I refuse to go,” he said, resolutely.
“Is that final?” asked Seguis.
“Absolutely!”
“Well, then, to-morrow, you start up the lake to the other camp.”
Seguis rose from his seat, indifferently. “I guess we've nothing
left to discuss,” he added, and began to walk back toward the camp.
“Seguis, wait!” Donald's face was ghastly with the resolve that
had come to him, but he spoke with an even, commanding voice, which
arrested the other. “You must not do that. It would be murder.”
“How so? You have your opportunity to avoid it.”
“Would you murder your own flesh and blood? Tell me, Seguis, would
you do that?” The voice was still even, but the eyes that searched
those of the half-breed were bright with an intense fire.
“What do you mean by 'my own flesh and blood?' Are you going crazy,
McTavish?” demanded the half-breed, feeling, he knew not why, a
mysterious fear move within him.
“Crazy! No, indeed, my good Seguis—only too far from it, I sometimes
think!” was the spoken reply. But over and over to himself, McTavish
was saying: “He doesn't know it! He doesn't know it!”
“Well, what do you mean then?”
“Just what I say; that, if you send me back to the other camp,
you'll be murdering your own flesh and blood. Good God! man, don't
you know who your father was?
“No—she never told me.” Seguis, in a dazed manner, indicated the
camp where Maria still prowled about. “Wh—who was he?”
“The—the same as mine! The man who sits in the commissioner's
chair to-day—”
“Not McTavish, the McTavish?” cried the half-breed, trembling
from head to foot. “No, no, it can't be! Don't say so!”
“But it is, and that's all there is about it,” growled Donald,
grimly. “Why? What difference does it make to you?”
“Then you—you, Captain McTavish, you are my half-brother?”
“Yes.”
“And I was about to kill you, and I have already tried once, and
my mother has tried, and Tom—oh, why haven't I known this before?
Why didn't she tell me?”
For the moment, Seguis seemed utterly lost in the mazes of his own
thoughts and memories. He stood with folded arms, his head hanging
upon his breast, while his lips moved in self-communion. Then came
the reaction, and disbelief, and it was necessary to go over the
ground with him from beginning to end. Concisely and briefly, Donald
outlined the whole march of events that had led up to this inevitable
revelation.
Then, as never before, the Hudson Bay man realized how far-reaching
and potent are the little things of life, and, after all, how far
from free agents we are sometimes. Forty-five years before, perhaps,
his father, alone in the wilds, had yielded to the warm, dusky
beauty of an Indian princess, and now, when, by all the laws of
chance and custom, that germ of evil should have expired, it sprang
into life and propagated a harvest of intrigue and death. And he,
the son, by no fault of his own, was unwillingly but unavoidably
involved in the penalty.
To Seguis the meaning of it all came as a blinding flash. In an
instant, he analyzed his heritage of ambition and knew the desires
of his mother for what they were. He looked back now upon his life
of advancement with discerning eyes, and, suddenly, ahead of him,
not far now since this revelation, he saw a shining goal.
“Then, I am the rightful heir of the commissioner?” he asked, in
an awed voice.
“Yes,” Donald answered, bitterly. “You are everything and, by law,
can have everything; I am no one, and, by the same law, can have
nothing but what affection or pity dictates. But it is not because
of this that I spoke to you,” he went on, proudly. “It was to save
my life at least for a little while, as I have work to do.”
“And so have I—so have I!” muttered Seguis, abstractedly, his eyes
burning bright. “It's all right, McTavish; nothing will come of
this. You can either stay, or I'll fit you out for the trail if
you want to take it,” he added. But it was easy to see that his
mind was not in his words.
Donald uttered no thanks. He had gained his end; he would not be
sent back to the Hudson Bay camp. He looked at his brooding companion,
furtively.
“Let him enjoy his hour of triumph and dreaming,” he thought,
good-humoredly; “it won't last long.” And he started back through
the woods to the camp.
Seguis, apparently wrapped in pleasurable plans, followed slowly
at a distance.
