# The long traverse

   A Northwest trader seeks a way out
The Long
Traverse
by
Samuel Alexander White
Author of “The Call of the Crimson Star,” “The Void Spaces,” etc.
OVER the conference of the Hudson's Bay Company's post agents of Norway House District, gathered in evening session this tenth of July at Norway House, situated at the entrance of Great Playgreen Lake, the northern arm of Lake Winnipeg, presided Charles Burnham, the energetic and despotic governor of the Ancient and Honorable Company.
The Northwest Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Company had settled their differences and merged their fortunes in 1821. By the terms of the merger the Northwest Fur Company lost its identity in the Hudson's Bay Company and from the new Montreal headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, Governor Burnham had come on the long canoe trail to Norway House. Up the Ottawa River through Lake Nipissing and the French River, through Lake Huron, the Sault and Lake Superior; on through Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods and the Winnipeg River to debouch at last into Lake Winnipeg itself; thence northward along the lake shore through terrific storms and winds that always harried the three-hundred-mile stretch of waters, his famed Iroquois crew had carried him in a great six-fathom canoe decked with banners and carpeted with robes of fur in all the barbaric splendor of Northern overlords.
His was a momentous coming, for he would either take a bride away from Norway House in the person of the factor's daughter or depart as a governor scorned, leaving many evil consequences behind him. Momentous, not for Burnham alone but for many more of Norway House, for Jacob Travis himself, for Clara, for the Free Trader Steene, hiding like a hare in the forest, who stood in the governor's way.
It was the annual gathering of the Hudson's Bay Company's officers. Norway House was the capital of that vast area of Northland that bordered on the shores.of Lake Winnipeg. At the wilderness metropolis the affairs of the outlying districts were supervised, the fur harvests gathered, the trade expansions planned, and from all the scattered posts by lake and stream men thoroughly versed in the business of the wild delivered reports and gave sage council to the presiding head.
Opposite the governor sat Henderson, chief brigade leader of all the Hudson's Bay Company brigades, fresh out of the York Factory district that bordered on the shores of James Bay; and on round the council table were ranged the factors of the far-flung Norway House district posts; Barrett from Split Lake, Sherman from Nelson River, McTaggart from Beren's River, Corbeau from Grand Rapid.
Jacob Travis, chief district factor and agent of Norway House itself, sat at the governor's right, his ponderous frame leaning forward in the council chair, his elbows on the table and his brown, sinewy hands clasping his gray beard as he played the part of listener to Burnham's pungent words.
Upon his granite features, roughly chiseled by the grim sculpturing North, the light fell in a shining flood, turning his bronzed skin to a golden shade, changing the keen gray of his wide-set eyes to the blazing shimmer of topaz. He hung intently on Burnham's speech, and it was evident from the contraction of his great forehead, ordinarily smooth as a polished boulder, and from the compression of his mouth that it was not merely an issue of trade but a vital personal matter that was being debated.
For Jacob Travis knew, as did every other agent in the room, that on his daughter's acceptance or rejection of the governor, on the capture or escape of Nelson Steene, hung his future with the great company.
“I ask you plainly, Travis,” the governor cornered him. “Are you shielding from me this man Steene who had been hunted out of the district and bottled up in Great Playgreen Lake by Henderson's post runners?”
“By the painted star of the company I swear I am not,” declared Jacob Travis vehemently.
“You do not know his whereabouts this very night?”
“I do not.”
“But I'm certain that his daughter does,” interjected Henderson, whose post runners were scouring Great Playgreen Lake to find their bottled man even while the session was in progress. “I have as much faith in Jacob's word as I have in my own. I do not doubt him. But it is not enough that he takes an oath across this table. Have him call Clara and let her swear to the same thing.”
Travis was on his feet like a flash.
“Governor Burnham, I object,” he almost shouted. “It is not fitting that a woman should be sworn before this council. I felt is an affair of hers—and I can not deny that it is—it is an affair of the heart and not the business of the Hudson's Bay Company.”
“Yet if by her personal leanings she complicates the company's affairs, her sentiments immediately become their business,” argued Burnham. “Jacob, you'll have to call her.”
“And what if I do?” cried Travis, flinging both arms wide in a gesture of helplessness. “She will not tell this council anything she knows. You have spoken plainly, governor, and I in my turn will speak as plainly. I will not force her to speak against her will.”
“Nevertheless she will not swear to anything false,” decided Burnham. “Henderson has information that she can not evade, and we can narrow things down till we get Steene. Go on and call her.”
It was the decree of superior authority. Travis grimly obeyed it. He struck a bell that stood on the table at his right hand, the bell that summoned Drumming Grouse, the bowsman of his canoe, his messenger and man servant about the post. Immediately the door of the council room opened and Drumming Grouse the Cree bowsman stepped in.
A picturesque figure, tall, lithe-muscled, he framed himself in the doorway, the light striking vividly upon the brilliant colors of his costume, the dyed fillet on his head, the tricolored sash, the gorgeous beads and embroidery of his moccasins and leggings.
He posed thus, staring straight at Travis, his smoky face as impassive as a carving, his dark eyes surveying the council-room scene unemotionally as he awaited his factor's command.
“Drumming Grouse, where is my daughter?
“Factor, she is down the shore where the brigades are camped.”
“Go and tell her she is wanted at the council,” directed Travis. “Fetch her here at once.”
THE Cree bowsman wheeled without a word and stalked out of the doorway and across the broad veranda that extended in front of the house. Down the veranda steps he sprang and held on along the shore. It was ten o'clock at night, but over Great Playgreen Lake the Summer aurora was playing with the radiance of day.
It revealed the lake waters sparkling in barbaric glory, etched the pine-clad islands with magic needles of flame and silhouetted sharply the long lines of canoes drawn up on the landing-shore. Drumming Grouse could identify them all as he strode forward, the Grand Rapid, Nelson River, Split Lake and Beren's River brigades and, standing out huge and impressive beside the others, the governor's six-fathom craft.
Near each posed its crew, the Grand Rapid, Nelson River, Split Lake and Beren's River men, and by the governor's, his famed crew of Iroquois whose skill and endurance with the paddle made wonder tales for the scores of camp-fires winking round the rocks.
Black as the silhouettes of their craft Drumming Grouse's unemotional eyes beheld the crews, showing clearly against the sheen of water and sky, moving and~gesturing like gigantic animated shadows a blazing pageant of brawn in the tapestry of the northern night.
Over and above them he discerned the girl he sought. Queen of the pageant she might the have been, her fair hair glowing like a golden crown under the play of the aurora, her form wreathed in a dress of soft Summer material that shone white as an ermine robe. Drumming Grouse knew she was watching out over Great Playgreen, and he knew she watched in suspense for the return of Henderson's post runners. Silently he climbed the rock upon which she stood and came to her side.
Clara Travis did not start. Hers were the gifts of the North-born and she could sense a presence even though she heard no sound. Subconsciously she was aware that the tall lithe figure looming suddenly beside her in the night was that of the old familiar of hers and her father's, and she did not turn her head but continued to gaze fixedly out over the jeweled waters.
Drumming Grouse's eyes followed hers and encountered a dark blotch rising and falling in the waves off toward Kettle Island. To the uninitiated it might have been a floating log or a flock of wild fowl, but the girl's trained eyes had marked it as something else, and she pointed with her finger for the Cree bowsman to verify her judgment.
“A canoe, Drumming Grouse?” she questioned.
Drumming Grouse stared, scrutinizing the blotch not for its vague outline but for its peculiar motion up and down.
“Ae, a paddled craft,” he decided, “but we can not stay to see whose it is. Your father sent me to find you and fetch you to him.”
“My father? Where is he?” asked Clara.
“He is still in council,” the Cree told her.
“And what is the summons about, Drumming Grouse?” she demanded, trying to read his surface-lighted eyes as they climbed down to the lower shore-line.
The bowsman stalked in silence for a little way. He was not supposed. to know the matters debated in council at Norway House, yet in his subtle way he did know. He pointed back over the waters of Great Playgreen where the girl had been keeping vigil, where his own eyes along with hers had marked an incoming canoe which he knew to be one of Henderson's craft
“It is about your Free Trader they are hunting over Great Playgreen,” he intimated.
The girl gave a low exclamation.
“And what do they wish of me?” she asked apprehensively.
“How would a bowsman know that?” Drumming Grouse evaded.
They were at the veranda steps, when a babel of Indian dialects broke out behind them on the shore where the brigades were encamped, jangling Iroquois, lisping Ojibway, hissing Cree, and with one accord the two shot glances over their shoulders as they ascended the steps. They could glimpse the canoemen gathering at the water-line as if to meet an incoming craft, and Clara Travis realized that the canoe she had marked out in the lake must be beaching.
She gazed keenly to catch its outline as Drumming Grouse opened the door of the council room, but the crowd was too great for that. They walled the craft in. It was impossible to identify it at the moment, and the next moment Drumming Grouse led her into the council room.
Instantly the men about the council table were upon their feet, Governor Burnham bowing and greeting her with his old-world grace, the others giving her the brief unconventional salute of the North. And the marvel of it was that there was something deferential, almost apologetic, in the manners of the assembled officials.
With only themselves in grim conclave it was quite easy for Burnham to send forth a command that Clara be summoned, but with Clara here in the flesh it was quite another matter to make her the subject of an examination. For hers was the beauty that sways the grimmest of men; hers the magnetic personality that shakes the soundest judgment.
Over the company she faced lay the constraint of the feminine presence imposed on men accustomed only to contact with men, and where Governor Burnham himself would not have felt the constraint in an English drawing-room he felt it here, thousands of miles from civilization, in the council room of Norway House.
Like the other men he found himself staring at the wonder of the smooth flushed girlish face among the faces of wrinkled bronze, at the miracle of her soft, youthful eyes among the steely eyes of the wilderness-hardened post keepers. Burnham stared and could not begin framing the questions for which he had summoned her, and, sensing his momentary perturbation, Clara looked inquiringly from him to her father.
“What is it, father?” she murmured.
“It is about this man Steene they are hounding over Great Playgreen,” her father explained in a hard, mechanical voice. “I have just told the governor that I have had no communication with Steene and that I do not know where he might be hidden, yet he and Henderson think Steene has had communication with the other member of my family. In short, Clara, they want to know of you——”
Travis stopped short, wheeling from his place at a knocking that threatened to hammer in the council-room door. From the outside sounded a crash and a tattoo as if a man had thrown himself bodily against it in his haste and, hardly able to restrain himself from tearing it open in his impatience, was pounding with both fists.
DRUMMING GROUSE, the keeper of the door, who had closed it from the inside behind Clara Travis and waited to conduct her out again, stood by the jamb like a stone image hearing nothing till Jacob Travis, listening calculatingly, raised a hand to him.
“Open, Drumming Grouse,” he ordered.
At once the Cree bowsman swung the door back, and in burst a short broad man, swarthy-skinned, black-haired, in the costume of a voyageur.
“It's my head post runner, Henri Dalmas,” cried out Henderson, jumping to his feet. “What news, Henri? Have you found Steene?”
“Scuffling in his moccasins, Dalmas was advancing at a dog-trot up the room, his volatile features trembling expressively to the tune of the words that poured from his black-mustached lips, his sparkling agate eyes talking as fast as his French-Canadian tongue, his gnarled hands, wet from the beaching of his canoe, gesturing more eloquently than either eyes or tongue.
“Ba gar, Pm ain't haunt dat Great Playgreen Lake for nothing,” he answered Henderson. “I'm found heem at last, hidin' lak de rabbit in de night.”
“Found him? Where?” roared Burnham in savage delight.
“On Mossy Point, de Playgreen side over dere,” informed Dalmas. “Ain't more dan two an' wan half mile, mebbe t'ree mile over.”
“On the Point, eh? Waiting to break for the Winnipeg side?” growled Henderson with the bay of a bloodhound that takes the scent.
“Ba oui, for sure. I'm sneak on hees camp.”
“How many canoes has he?” asked Burnham.
“Tree small craft,” the head post runner enlightened. “Dey're too small canoes to face Lake Winnipeg wit' de wind dat's blowin' dere tonight. He be waitin' for de wind to go down ba mornin'.”
“For that and one other thing,” observed Burnham, his triumphant eyes holding Clara's. “But go on, Henri. How many men in those canoes?”
“Seven men, Ojibway paddlers—eight wit' heemself.”
“You're sure he didn't sight you when you found his camp?”
“Mon Dieu, no. Henri Dalmas in de forest growth is lak de snake in de long green grass. He be dere in hees bivouac, all unconscious dat we be found heem. All you got to do is go an' surround heem.”
“Then hurry up, governor, and let me handle the thing,” urged Henderson. “There's just a chance of him shifting his position before morning.”
“Ba gar, I be provide for dat,” chuckled Dalmas. “Dere's wan beaver dam below hees camp. I be leave wan man hidden in dat dam an' wan in de canoe offshore on de Playgreen side. Eef he be move ba land or water he'll be trailed.”
“Good,” lauded Burnham. “Henri, there'll be a reward for you for this night's work. Now you can get off, Henderson, as fast as you like. Reenforce the brigade of canoes that is guarding the entrance of on Playgreen Lake and move on Steene with all the rest of the canoes. Bring the Free Trader here to me. I'll send him south on the Long Traverse without arms or food.”
A determined gleam filled Clara Travis eyes as she watched the rush of Henderson, Dalmas, Barrett, Sherman, McTaggart Corbeau from the room and she was left with Burnham and her father.
“There is no need for me to stay now, then, is there, father?” she ventured.
“No, no need, Clara,” he told her bruskly.
Agile as a fawn, and without a word to Burnham, she was across the room and out on the veranda at Drumming Grouse's side. The Cree bowsman had held open the door for the outrush of men, and he closed it behind the girl.
“Ah, but you must be swift now, Drumming Grouse,” she appealed impetuously. “You must reach my Free Trader on Mossy Point before they come with their canoes. You must cross over the Point and run by the land trail.”
“Ae, I go,” nodded Drumming Grouse. “The bonds of the Hudson's Bay Company are strong, but between you and me there are bonds yet stronger. Godfather I have been to you since you were the size of a papoose, and you I serve before all else. What is your plan?”
“He must come here to Norway House,” she whispered, amazed at her own daring. “His canoes are too small to face Lake Winnipeg. We must have a large canoe, and there is only one—the governor's.”
“Ae,” breathed the Cree again, his dark eyes glowing with a vivid flame, “and he will take it. I go.”
“Come down on Mossy Point opposite here,” Clara gave him the final directions. “I shall send you a signal to. cross when all is clear. Remember, Drumming Grouse, when you hear the whistle of the snipe. And don't forget Henri Dalmas' post runner in the beaver dam.”
“Do not fear,” muttered Drumming Grouse. “He will not hear me come. The drumming grouse does not always drum.”
“He was off as he spoke, Stealing behind the post on the opposite side from which Henderson was hurriedly launching the brigades of canoes, creeping down to the shore-line where his own craft lay bottom up beside a clump of evergreens.
Silently he slipped it into the water and, still screened by the post, drove the craft rapidly across toward the long point of land that made of Great Playgreen a piece of landlocked water. Mossy Point thrust almost to the mainland with only a narrow entrance round its tip to the vast expanse of Lake Winnipeg.
DRUMMING GROUSE sprang ashore the moment he reached it. Out of the water and into the bushes went the canoe and the Cree was off like a deer, darting a down the dark runways where only the night before he had guided Clara to the Free Trader's camp. Steene's hiding place was on the spruce ridge just above the beaver meadow in the center of the Point, and over the dam Drumming Grouse crept as silently as a shadow.
At the farther end he could mark Henri Dalmas' post runner, half buried in the rubbish of the dam, only his head showing like the upthrust of a tree stump. His watching eyes on the ridge above him, the post runner was not aware of the stealing shadow till the Cree bowsman suddenly towered over him. Then he leaped from his burrow, but Drumming Grouse's lithe strength bore him down.
The Cree's hands were about his neck, choking back the warning he attempted to shout for the benefit of the watcher in the canoe offshore, and together they rolled in the rubbish of the beaver dam till the crackling of the sticks' reached the camp on the ridge above. While he struggled Drumming Grouse could hear some one running softly in the moss of the slope, and abruptly a rifle barrel poked over the end of the dam into his face.
“Who's here?” demanded an incisive voice he recognized as Nelson Steene's. “Stand out or I'll shoot.”
Drumming Grouse arose. He had forced a wad of buckskin as a gag into the post runner's mouth and knotted buckskin thongs about his wrists and ankles.
“It is Drumming Grouse and a spy of Henderson's,” he announced coolly.
“They found me, then?”
“Ae, there is another spy in a canoe out yonder, and all the rest are flocking to take you. The factor's daughter sent me. Come. At Norway House there is the great canoe of the governor with which to escape.”
They were climbing the ridge as Drumming Grouse explained, and from its top they caught the dark loom of canoe brigades driving over from Norway House.
“Be quick,” the Cree urged. “When they round the point we can get off without being seen.”
“You're right, Drumming Grouse,” nodded Steene, gaging the distance of the brigades. “We must break camp like lightning.”
Steene swept aside the branches where in a mossy space lighted by no camp-fire, illuminated only by the dull glow of seven Ojibway pipes, his canoemen lay with their dunnage. Luckily there was only the canopy of the green trees overhead and no canvas to pull down, and the seven pipes were pocketed and the seven Ojibways sprang into action at Steene's command.
“Take your dunnage,” he directed tersely. “Shoulder the canoes and follow us.”
He was down the ridge again the moment he words were out of his mouth, the foremost of his Ojibways close on him with the packs, the rearmost bobbing under the canoes.
“Be careful of the hulls,” he cautioned them. “Don't spike them. Reaching Norway House depends on sound bottoms.”
The Ojibway canoemen heeded his caution. With marvelous celerity they bored through the green growth, yet with a care that saved the precious birch-barks from puncture, to emerge finally at the water's edge.
“Listen,” requested Drumming Grouse.
Out of the night came the whistle of the snipe.
“It is the signal to cross,” interpreted the Cree. “The way is clear.”
Swiftly the canoes were launched and like fantom crews they glided toward Norway House. The call of the snipe was repeated, issuing from a little cove down-channel from them, and pointing their prows for the cove they drifted in light as leaves upon the landlocked water. Drumming Grouse, first to land, darted away to the post.
In the shadows stood Clara Travis, her arms full of some strange garments, and Steene sprang out and grasped her hands impulsively.
“Why, Clara, what's this?” he whispered, fingering the garments she held.
“The governor's coat and hat,” she told him. “I got them out of Norway House. He's in there with my father now, waiting till they take you.”
“By Heavens, they'll never take me,” declared Steene passionately. “Nor will he ever take you.”
“Ah, but we must hurry,” breathed the girl, thrusting the coat and hat upon him. “Quick, put them on. You must seize the big canoe on the shore, and the disguise will help. I have spoken to Drumming Grouse and he has gone to spirit provisions and equipment enough out of Norway House to fill the craft. You can get them as we go by.”
Steene dropped his own leather cap on the rocks and clapped Burnham's large drooping hat of felt, decked with an osprey feather, upon his head.
Clara Travis looked into his face and with her deft fingers swept out of sight the waves of brown hair that fell over Steene's temples.
“There,” she murmured, pulling the brim forward. “Let the plume fall on the left shoulder—so. No.one could tell the difference. Now, the coat. Draw it close.”
Steene buttoned the coat about him as they made a short détour around the post. Burnham was a big man, but the garment cut tightly into Steene's great chest and shoulders. It lacked length, too, for his tall figure, flapping well above the knees, but he knew the Iroquois canoemen would not notice it in the night. On the beach below lay the governor's huge birch-bark with the famed crew squatting beside it, their eyes staring over Great Playgreen Lake, their tongues jangling in conversation about the chase that was going on out there.
“Lie down now,” Steene directed his own Ojibway canoemen. “When they go to launch for me, make your rush. And you, Clara, be close at hand.”
As if coming down from the post he himself strode boldly forward. The Iroquois turned their heads at the sound of his footsteps and, recognizing the governor's coat and hat, stood erect at salute, awaiting his word. Steene did not take the risk of speaking.
He made a motion of his hand for them to launch the big canoe, and as they stooped to obey his own Ojibways dashed upon them. Short and sharp the battle raged, Ojibways against Iroquois, but the Ojibways had the advantage of surprize. With fists and paddle blades they beat the Iroquois back from the margin so that Steene, slipping through the mêlée with Clara, seized the craft and launched it with his own hands. With an exultant laugh he lifted the girl aboard.
Then the Ojibways sprang in with them, flinging in the provisions and equipment Drumming Grouse had spirited out of Norway House, and with a flash of paddles the governor's craft was driven off the shore. The dazed Iroquois stared after it a second and gave tongue like a pack of wolves. And as if echoing and reechoing their cries other voices clamored on the night. Great Playgreen Lake reverberated with a pandemonium of sound, for the canoe brigades that had converged on Steene's camp had found it empty, and they were scouring the shores of Mossy Point. hailing each other with excited shouting.
Suddenly a fresh clamor broke out on the other side of the spruce ridge.
“They've found the post runner Drumming Grouse tied up at the beaver dam,” interpreted Steene.
“Then they'll all turn back at once to Norway House,” breathed Clara. “We must get through the lake entrance before they can alarm the brigades that guard it.”
“Yes, and Burnham can't help but hear those Iroquois yells. Ha! There he is now in the post door, and your father at his shoulder. They're running down to the shore. Listen, the governor's raging like a madman.”
BY THE light of the fires that some one had fed afresh in the emergency they could see Burnham on the edge of the landing hurling condemnation on his dazed Iroquois, calling for the canoe brigades to come back from Mossy Point. Luckily the brigades guarding the lake entrance were too far away to catch his cries, and if they did hear clamor in the distance they could but attribute it to the ardor of the chase till they received a change of orders from Norway House.
So Burnham raged and bellowed for a craft to head off the Free Trader, but Steene was resolved not to be headed. Faster and faster his Ojibway crew drove the speedy birch-bark forward, bearing straight for the entrance into Lake Winnipeg. Patrolling the entrance glided a dozen small canoes, and as soon as they sighted the big craft they drew together to watch it coming.
They recognized it immediately as Governor Burnham's six-fathom craft. The Ojibway paddlers were not to be told in the night from the Iroquois, and amidships, Clara Travis sitting on the fur robes at his knees, bulked Steene, posing grimly in the governor's coat and hat.
As Steene's appropriated craft drew abreast of the patrol his Ojibway paddlers gave a wild yell in unison and raised paddle blades in salute. The guarding canoes returned the salute. Truly the Free Trader must be captured at last, for here was Governor Burnham bound out over Lake Winnipeg with his bride. With a cheer they speeded the pseudo-governor on his way, heading out over the lake in a sea that no craft but his huge six-fathom craft hitherto had weathered, in a wind that no crew but his matchless Iroquois crew hitherto had faced.
“Thank God,” breathed Clara as they shot into Lake Winnipeg and caught the full force of the swell as they headed from Old Norway House Point toward Montreal Point.
“Aye, thank God, and you, and faithful Drumming Grouse,” cried Steene.
He tore off the governor's coat and hat and cast them to the winds that roared overhead and settled himself with a sigh of relief beside Clara.
“It's pretty rough,” he observed, “but we don't need to fight it very long. We'll put a good gap of wild sea between us and Norway House and go ashore till the wind dies down at morning.”
“What's that yonder?” demanded Clara suddenly, pointing back toward the entrance to Great Playgreen Lake. “Another canoe?”
With the passing of the six-fathom craft the patrol had stood on guard again, awaiting the coming of orders from Norway House as they glided backward and forward with slow strokes under the shelter of the headlands, nor were the orders long in coming. The canoe Clara Travis had marked drove up with a gurgle and wash and the petrified patrol gazed on the real Governor Burnham, minus his coat and hat, but condemning them with a vigor that left no doubt of his personality.
“You fools. You dupes,” he rated. “You let him pass in my clothes, eh? And make us dare Lake Winnipeg in small craft to catch him? After him, Sherman, McTaggart, Barrett, Corbeau.”
But the post keepers of the Norway House District shook their heads and lay on their paddle blades.
“What?” roared Burnham. “You defy me? You refuse to obey your governor's orders?”
“We do not go like fools to certain death,” answered Sherman, speaking for all.
“Then you'll pay for your defiance, you cowardly dogs,” the governor stormed.
“A small craft will not live for five minutes in the sea that rolls on Lake Winnipeg tonight,” countered Barrett. “Nobody but a madman would ask us to dare it.”
“A small craft will live if the men have hearts to make it live,” Burnham sneered. “Where's a craft for me? Where are my men and I'll show you. Ha! Here come my Iroquois. Here comes Henderson—a man of my own spirit.”
Their paddles dipping like clockwork, Henderson drove up with his own craft into which he had bundled Burnham's crew from the beach at Norway House.
“What's the matter here?” he demanded. “Is he gone?”
“Gone,” cried the governor, “and not a man will follow. They're afraid of Lake Winnipeg. Draw up beside till I board you. We'll take him ourselves.”
Henderson cried a sharp command to the governor's Iroquois. With a swirl of their blades they shot Henderson's canoe up beside Sherman's craft in which the governor stood, and Burnham leaped over the gunwales.
“Now, Henderson, the gift of a factorship if you catch him,” he promised.
Round them crowded all the other brigades, Barrett's of Split Lake, Sherman's of Nelson River, McTaggart's from Beren's River, Corbeau's from Grand Rapid as well as the patrolling brigade from Norway House, protesting at the attempt.
“It is madness.”
“Nothing but suicide.”
“What gain if you do take him? Neither of you will ever get back.”
These and many more comments made a medley of fierce speeches cast over the grinding gunwales.
“Wait and see,” Burnham bellowed angrily at them. “And get out of my way. Don't carry your insubordination so far as to lay a hand on this craft.”
He warned them off with a paddle blade whistling about his head. His Iroquois with Henderson steering for them in the steersman's place caught their stroke and shot him out of the entrance of Great Playgreen Lake after Steene.
Before him Lake Winnipeg rolled its three hundred miles of stormy waters, and the stormiest stretch of it was that which foamed away to Montreal Point. Across the open, vast whale-backed rollers surged with a dizzy rush and broke with a roar against the rocks.
The surf was white as a South Seas beach, and for a mile offshore the lather gathered in a hissing back-wash that betrayed the tremendous force of the wind.
ONCE outside the shelter of Mossy Point, Burnham could sight his stolen canoe. Already half-way down to Montreal Point, with Steene, Clara and the Ojibway crew aboard, the great craft climbed the wave crests and shot down the tumbling slopes. He watched it poising and plunging, and suddenly he knew by the way it labored in the troughs when it went down that it was in trouble
“They've sprung a leak, Henderson,” he exulted. “Look, see the way it rolls. That weight in her bottom is more than over-splash. I've ridden too many thousand miles in that craft not to know.”
Henderson stared with him, all the while quartering the mighty surges with a careful paddle blade for fear one should catch them bow on.
“By the spirits of the Crees, you're right, governor,” Henderson nodded. They have a lot of water aboard. See how they're bailing. Was there a weak spot in your canoe?”
“It will be where we scraped the Turtle Rock coming in last night,” guessed the Iroquois bowsman, head of the governor's crew. “We sealed it with gum only because there was no birch-bark at hand.”
“I remember now,” observed Burnham. “It was in the seam too. The chances are it will open wide in this swell.”
“Yes, and they will all be at the bottom of Lake Winnipeg before many minutes,” prophesied Henderson.
“I hope they do,” growled Burnham, “all but the girl. Drive hard, men. We're gaining, and we've got to catch them to take her off.
The Iroquois bent their paddle shafts with their mighty strokes. Henderson still cunningly slanted them up the slopes of gigantic waves that towered above them and steered them through the troughs. Fortunately for them his craft was not, strictly speaking, a small craft, although it did not approach the governor's six-fathom canoe in size.
It ran a full twenty-four feet, a freight canoe of the post runners, but it was designed for inland work and lacked the curving bows and high scroll that turned the swell on big lakes. Still it fought wind and wave with marvelous success, for it was as Governor Burnham had said. Small craft could live on Lake Winnipeg even in storm if the crews had the heart to make them live.
Burnham's Iroquois crew had the heart. In their sinewy arms reposed a skill nothing short of magical and a strength that Sherman and the other post keepers of Norway House District had not believed could exist. As long as Henderson, who knew Lake Winnipeg in all its vagaries, steered true, they could do their part.
A good deal of water was coming aboard. It splashed over the bow quarter like the regular flushing of a bucket, but, dipping unceasingly with a copper pail, Burnham himself kept the bottom clear while his crew bored on. Unless they themselves sprang a leak it seemed a certainty now that they would overhaul Steene. The gap between the two canoes was steadily lessening.
Rounding Montreal Point and bearing away for the Spider Islands lying off the mouth of the Little Black River, Steene in the big craft ahead came to the same conclusion. There was no denying that the gap between the canoes was lessening at an alarming rate.
He had moved in luck all night, but misfortune lurked for him on Lake Winnipeg, tarrying where it could do him the most harm. He had noticed the seeping of the water through the seam of the six-fathom craft from the start. It was only a few drops at first.
Through the entrance of Great Playgreen Lake it had not amounted to anything, but when they struck the cross-swells of the bigger lake the wrenching and straining of the craft began to open the seam. The great craft was taking water as fast as he could bail and the flood was ankle-deep amidships where Clara Travis crouched on the fur robes.
“The weight is beating us,” Steene declared. “They're gaining, and we must do something to better this waterlogged condition.”
He took one of the fur robes and folded it like a blanket, placing the fold over the rent in the bottom,
“There, kneel on that Clara, so as to hold it tight,” he requested. “If we can lessen the inrush, maybe I can clear the canoe.”
Quickly Clara kneeled as directed, bearing her whole weight on the folded robe to squeeze it tight against the seam, at the same time holding it with her strong white hands to keep it from shifting with the sway and roll of the craft.
“Now, Nelson,” she breathed, “I think it's tightly packed. I'll try to keep it so.”
At her word Steene fell to bailing with tremendous speed, his flying arms swinging in a circle from canoe gunwale to canoe bottom and back again.
“That's it,” he cried exultantly as he saw the flood slowly draining under his efforts. “Hold on, Clara. I can beat it yet.”
Indeed the temporary expedient of the fur robe was working well. The soaked hair clogged the seam. The tough pelt refused to strain the water through. The baffled surges snarled angrily at the damaged side. Clara Travis could feel the vicious smiting of them under her firm hands, and the elemental thrill of the battle with the forces of nature set her blood leaping.
“We'll win, Nelson,” she declared. “We'll make the Spider Islands, and I'm sure the governor can't. He'll have to turn back with Henderson. Their smaller canoe can't face the waters below Montreal Point. It's rougher there than above.”
“They'll face death itself,” observed Steene. “They're facing it now, and so are we. But it's a thing I've faced many times before, and I hope shall face many times again before it claims me. Hold for your life, Clara. The water's still going down.”
On over the wild inland sea that was blessed with the name of lake the great birch-bark sped, the Ojibways paddling with a skill that seemed to surpass the magical skill of the pursuing Iroquois behind. In their ears howled the demoniacal wind that was born in the barren grounds and roared south to ravage half a continent.
In their eyes flew the savage spray from the wave crests as the high scroll of their bows smote the assaulting surges with resounding smashes. In some mighty rhythm the great craft rocked and swung, now deep in the hollow of a wave trough that left them no glimpse of the sky, now poising on the top of a roller so near to the clouds, so it seemed, that a man could strike the stars with his paddle.
Also, it was rougher between Montreal Point and the Spider Islands. The nearer they drew to the Islands the rougher it became. The shifts of the wind commenced to pile up cross-seas that threatened to swamp even the huge six-fathom craft. Steene had it all but bailed out, but now the wrenching twisted and tore the seam under Clara's hands in spite of all her efforts to hold the fur robe in place.
It was as if the spirits in the cavern deeps of Lake Winnipeg sensed their nearness to safety and combined for one last grand charge that would tear the canoe to pieces. In poured the water, gaining, deepening, undoing all Steene's frantic work, sinking the craft lower in the swell than ever.
“By Heavens, the whole side's gone,” roared Steene to the Ojibways. “Paddle like demons for the islands. Make it now or never.”
MORE from habit than for benefit he could expect he went on bailing swiftly, his eyes holding the smaller canoe behind. While he had cleared the water by his expedient of the fur robe his own craft had gained, but now, terribly waterlogged, he began to lose. The vicious force of the gale smote the heavier on Burnham, Henderson and the Iroquois crew in the smaller craft, but still it lived in the inferno of waters. Sky-high it tossed on the manes of the galloping surges. Sheer over them worked the famed Iroquois crew like fantom paddlers dipping dream blades in the fountain of the aurora that poured from on high. Steene watched their progress in a strange fascination, his hand mechanically dipping the bailer while the water crept up his buckskin leggings to his knees. Nine times while he never expected them to rise he saw them soar to the clouds in his wake. Then the tenth time they failed to appear.
A broken paddle with the steersman's streamer of wool tied to its shaft floated down on him.
“By Jove, they're gone!” Steene cried.
“Henderson's blade,” breathed Clara, forgetting her own danger in that strange fascination that gripped both her and Steene. “It failed him in the end.”
For an instant the cavernous trough seemed to hold the secret of their going, but the next wave crest flung Henderson's canoe bottom up against the stars.
“Aye, it failed him,” nodded Steene. “The craft was flipped clean over. Look out—we're all but swamped ourselves!”
Truly their own six-fathom canoe was down almost to the gunwales.
“Another stroke,” Steene shrilled. “Another stroke, and hold hard when we strike rock.”
With a shout his Ojibways snatched the sinking craft from the grip of the waves with the strength of their blades. With a heave they drove its nose on the slant of the rock shore of the Spider Islands. Grimly they held it there with their straining paddles while Steene seized Clara and sprang ashore with her.
Then the Ojibways leaped themselves with a flying leap and, victors over Governor Burnham's matchless Iroquois, victors over Lake Winnipeg itself, drew the big birch-bark to safety.
Panting with their efforts, braced against the terrific gale on the shore, the Ojibways stood, staring from the long rent in the canoe bottom to the waste of tumbling waters that rolled in at their feet. Not a survivor of the governor's crew rose to their view, not even the remnants of the birch-bark craft that had dared the crossing from Old Norway House Point with them.
They glimpsed only the monstrous surges, irresistible as the ocean itself, rearing and plunging in dizzying succession, booming thunderously on the rocks, shaking the islands under their feet as if Lake Winnipeg in its baffled anger would tear away their haven.
They stared and searched each other's countenance with their dark eyes.
“So,” the bowsman spoke at last, “they are all at the bottom of the lake. It is the governor takes the Long Traverse.”
“Aye,” nodded Steene, “Governor Burnham instead of me. And at dawn there will be another traverse for the factor's daughter and me—the long traverse to the south. Light a fire for her and another to melt pitch to mend the canoe. It must be ready at dawn, for the gale will die out with the sun.”
Swiftly the Ojibways carried their battered canoe up the rocks and gathered wood for a fire. Close to the leaping flames in a nook sheltered from the lusty draft leaned Steene and Clara Travis, drying their soaked clothes in the heat.
Over a smaller blaze the Ojibways melted their resin, fitting over the long rent in the canoe bottom a carefully cut piece of birch-bark and pouring on the blazing pitch.
When it was securely sealed in place they put the craft aside, away from the fire, so that the gum might harden and present an impenetrable surface to the water.
“It is done,” the bowsman reported to the two by the fire. “It will be ready by the dawn.”
“That is good,” commended Steen, dismissing him with a gift of tobacco. “And we shall be ready, too—shall we not, Clara?”
“Yes,” sighed the girl, spreading grateful hands to the fire; “ready for the long traverse.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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