CHAPTER I
UP FOR JUDGMENT
“And you accuse me of that?”
Donald McTavish glared down into the heavy, ugly face of his
superior—a face that concealed behind its mask of dignity emotions
as potent and lasting as the northland that bred them.
“I accuse you of nothing.” Fitzpatrick pawed his white beard. “I
only know that a great quantity of valuable furs, trapped in your
district, have not been turned in to me here at the factory. It is
to explain this discrepancy that I have called you down by dogs in
the dead of winter. Where are those furs?” He looked up out of the
great chair in which he was sitting, and regarded his inferior with
cold insolence. For half an hour now, the interview had been in
progress, half an hour of shame and dismay for McTavish, and the
same amount of satisfaction for the factor.
“I tell you I have no idea where they are,” returned the post
captain. “So far as I know, the usual number of pelts have been
traded for at the fort. If any have disappeared, it is a matter of
the white trappers and the Indians, not my affair.”
“Yes,” agreed the other suavely; “but who is in charge of Fort
Dickey?”
“I am.”
“Then, how can you say it is not your affair when the Company is
losing twenty thousand pounds a year from your district?”
The young man ground his teeth helplessly, torn between the desire
to throttle ugly old Fitzpatrick where he sat, or to turn on his
heel, and walk out without another word. He did neither. Either
would have been disastrous, as he well knew. He had not come up
three years with the spring brigade from the Dickey and Lake
Bolsover without knowing the autocratic, almost royal, rule of old
Angus. Fitzpatrick, factor at Fort Severn for these two decades.
So, now, he choked back his wrath, and walked quietly up and down,
pondering what to do. The room was square, low, and heavily raftered.
Donald had to duck his head for one particular beam at each passage
back and forth. Beneath his feet were great bearskins in profusion;
a moose's head decorated one end of the place. The furniture was
heavy and home-made.
At last, he turned upon the factor.
“Look here!” he said simply. “What have you got against me? You
know as well as I do that there isn't another man in your whole
district you would call in from a winter post to accuse in this
way. What have I done? How have I failed in my duty? Have I taken
advantage of my position as the chief commissioner's son?”
Fitzpatrick pawed his beard again, and shot a sharp, inquisitive
glance at the young captain. That mention of his father's position
was slightly untoward. In turn, he pondered a minute.
“Up to this time,” he said at last, “you have done your work well.
You know the business pretty thoroughly, and your Indians seem to
be contented. I have nothing against you—”
“No,” burst out McTavish, “you have nothing against me. That's just
it. Virtues with you are always negative; never have I heard you
grant a positive quality in all the time I have known you. And,
to be frank, I think that you have something against me. But what
it is I cannot find out.” He paused eloquently before the white-haired
figure that seemed as immovable as a block of granite.
“This is hardly the time for personalities, McTavish,” said the
other, harshly. “What I want to know is, what steps will you take
to restore the furs that have disappeared from your district?”
“How do you know they have disappeared from my district?” Donald
blazed forth.
“I know everything in this country,” replied Fitzpatrick, dryly.
“Then, am I under the surveillance of your spying Indians?”
“Enough!” roared the factor, at last roused from his calm. “I am
not here to be questioned. Answer me! What are you going to do?”
McTavish dropped his clenched hands with a gesture of hopeless
weariness.
“I'll swallow your insulting innuendoes, and try to dig up some
evidence to support your accusation,” he said, quietly. “If I get
track of any leakage, I'll do my best to stop it. If not, you shall
learn as soon as possible.”
“The leakage exists,” rejoined the factor, doggedly. “Plug the
hole, or—” He paused suggestively.
“Or what?” cried the younger man, whirling upon him furiously.
“Plug the hole—that's all.”
Shaking with the fury that possessed him, McTavish turned away from
his chief, and walked to a window, lest he should lose all control
of himself. But a thought came to him that restored the proud
angle of his head, and crushed his anger into nothingness.
What McTavish yet had been the fool of a narrow-minded, disgruntled
superior, and showed it by losing his temper? None. The name of
McTavish rang down the hall of the Hudson Bay Company's history
like a bugle. Three generations of them had served this fearful
master—he was the third. His father, now chief commissioner, had
served an apprenticeship of twenty years in the wilds, beginning
as a mere lad. He himself, when barely fifteen, had felt the call
in his blood, and gone out on the trail with Peter Rainy, a devoted
Indian of his father's. Peter was still with him, but now as
body-servant, and not as instructor in woodcraft.
Donald thought of these things as he looked out of the chunky,
square window into the snow-muffled courtyard. So engrossed was he
that he failed to hear the door of the room open, and the light
footfalls of Tee-ka-mee, Fitzpatrick's bowman and body-servant.
The Indian, sensing some unpleasantness in the air, went directly
to the factor, and handed him a message, explaining that Pierre
Cardepie, one of McTavish's companions at the Dickey River post,
had sent it by Indian runner.
Through the window the post-captain saw opposite him a corner made
by two walls meeting at right angles. Even in summer, they were
stout, heavy walls; but, now, with twenty feet of snow muffling
and locking them in an unshakable grip, they were monstrous. Above
the walls, a bastion of squared logs, looped-holed for four- and
six-pounders, rose. There was another one at the opposite corner
of the square, and together they commanded all approaches.
Angus Fitzpatrick opened the message Tee-ka-mee handed to him, and
read it. His only sign of emotion was the lifting of an eyebrow.
Then, he waved the Indian out.
“McTavish!” he called sharply, and the younger man turned wearily
from the window to face his superior.
“I suppose you know that half-breed, Charley Seguis, in your
district? He comes up with the brigade every spring, I believe.”
“Yes, I know him. He is a skilful trapper and a half-breed of
remarkable intelligence.”
“Huh! That's the trouble; he's got too much intelligence to make him
safe as a half-breed. What do you know about him? Is he a bad one?”
“Quite the contrary, so far as I have observed.”
“Well, he's been bad this time. Read that.” Fitzpatrick handed
Cardepie's scrawl to McTavish, and watched keenly as the latter
read:
SIR:
Yesterday Charley Seguis murder Cree Johnny. No reason I can
find. I send this by runner so Mr. McTavish get it before he
starts back.
CARDEPIE.
“That's most remarkable, sir,” said Donald, genuinely puzzled. “I
never would have suspected Charley of that. He has brains enough
to know the consequences of murder. I can't understand it.”
“Neither can Cardepie, evidently. He says he knows no reason for
the deed.” Fitzpatrick heaved himself up, and leaned forward
interestedly. “You know,” he went on, “that this thing cannot go
unpunished. Charley Seguis must be captured, and brought to the
fort here.”
“Will the mounted police get here before—?” began McTavish.
“The mounted police be hanged! There are only seven hundred of
them, and they have to cover a country as big as Siberia. You don't
suppose I'm going to wait for them, do you? Nominally, they're the
law here, but literally I and the men under me are. Retribution in
this case must be swift and sure, as it always has been from Fort
Severn.” Fitzpatrick paused to breathe.
“Then, you mean that I must go out and get him,” Donald interpreted,
calmly.
“You spare me the trouble of saying it,” replied the other. “When
can you start?”
“In three hours.”
Fitzpatrick glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Too late now,” he said. “Better wait until to-morrow. The feed
and the night's rest will do you good. Whatever happens, you've
got to be faster than that half-breed.” He paused a minute. “If
you go at dawn, I probably won't see you again. In that case, let
me remind you, McTavish, of the matter of which we were speaking
before this murder came up. I—”
“You don't need to remind me. I remember it perfectly.” Donald
moved toward the door.
Fitzpatrick leaned still farther forward in his great chair, his
eyes glinting, his lips curved in a snarl.
“And don't forget,” he rasped at the other's back, “that I want
that half-breed, dead or alive—and that he's a mighty fast man
with a gun!”
The young man vouchsafed no reply, but passed out of the door that
Tee-ka-mee opened from the other side. For fully a minute after
the door had closed, Fitzpatrick continued to lean forward, the
snarl on his lips, the evil light in his eyes. Then he fell back
heavily, with a harsh, mirthless cackle.
“If he only knew—if he only knew!” he muttered to himself. “He
must know soon, or there won't be half the pleasure in it for me.”
Then, thirst being upon him, he clanged the bell for Tee-ka-mee,
and that faithful servitor, divining the order, brought the aged
factor wherewithal to warm himself.
