# With the Winter Mail

"In canoe or on snow-shoes no better man has served the Company. But you're stiffening up and growing too old to take the winter mail to Fort Hope. It's the toughest trail in the north country, and next year a younger man will go, for the mail must get through on time." These were the words that for four days had tortured the pride of the old Company servant, repeating and repeating themselves through every white mile of the shifting, drift-barred trail.
WITH THE WINTER MAIL
By George T. Marsh
FOR three days the Fort Hope Christmas mail had fought its way through the blizzard that beat down from the Kapiskau barrens upon the frozen Albany. For three days old Pierre, breaking trail through the drifting snow to give footing to his panting dog-team, or swinging his goad of plaited caribou hide from behind the sled while his nephew, Esau, took the lead, had plunged head down into the gale. Stinging like the lash of myriad whips, the pitiless northwester had seamed the frost-blackened faces of the men with cracks, cutting the noses of the laboring huskies until they whined with pain. At times, when the fury of the snow-swirls which enveloped them in a blur of white had sucked their very breath, the men threw themselves gasping beside the ice-coated dogs whose red lips and tongues, to which clung the frozen froth of their hot mouths, alone marked them as living things. Still, hour after hour, they had hurled themselves headlong into the storm. And ever as they had conquered each hard-won mile of the frozen river, the parting words of the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Albany lived again in the ears of the old half-breed words which had etched themselves into his memory as he left the post, asleep under the stars in the gray dusk of the December morning, to take the long Fort Hope trail.
Whenever, at daylight, the boy had urged that they remain in camp, deep in the shelter of the spruce, until the storm blew itself out, the sting of those last words of the factor had spurred him on as a rowel drives a spent steed. Always his reply had been a hoarse "Marche!" as he struck the lead-dog with an unwonted fierceness that Esau could not comprehend. But old Pierre had not deigned to voice the thoughts that consumed him, and the boy, Indian-like, did not question. So, forcing the huskies to the limit of their endurance and encouraging the lad, who already showed signs of the physical strain of the battle with wind and snow, the old Cree had pushed on and on.
"In canoe or on snow-shoes no better man has served the Company. But you're stiffening up and growing too old to take the winter mail to Fort Hope. It's the toughest trail in the north country, and next year a younger man will go, for the mail must get through on time."
These were the words that for four days had tortured the pride of the old Company servant, repeating and repeating themselves through every white mile of the shifting, drift-barred trail. He recalled, too, how the factor had rested his hand kindly on his shoulder and gripped his fingers at parting as if to lighten the blow—the blow that had been the death-knell of his manhood.
And so at last, he mused, the end had come—the end foretold of late years by recurring twinges of "mal raquette," and stiffened back on portage and river. He had hoped that he had concealed it from the younger men, but now even the factor knew. Fiercely the pride of the French blood of his father and the stoicism of the Cree had fought for mastery within him through the miles of white silence on the first day out. But in vain he battled with the demons that mocked. The sentence that he knew some day must come to all men had come now to him. So this was his last long trail. At length, age had struck him down as the timber-wolves in winter strike down an old caribou deserted by the herd. A few years of light river work and easy trips with the dogs, and then a seat at the fire with the squaws and old men, remained to him, Pierre Grassette, who, among the swift dog-runners of all the wide North, had met none, half-breed, red man, or white, who could take the trail from him in the days of his youth.
This which he had dreaded above all things; this ignominy which in the last few years he had prayed he might be spared; this rusting out at a post—would be his lot. He had longed to die on the trail, in harness. But his dearest wish was to be denied him, this death of a man, which had overtaken so many of his comrades.
Years before, one still in the flush of early manhood had drowned with the crew of a Company's boat in the great gorge of the Abitibi. Another, strong as a young moose, had been frozen with his dogs on the Nepigon trail; a third, stabbed in a brawl at Henley House; but he, the last of them, would rot with garrulous squaws and toothless old men at Fort Albany, a pensioner of the Company.
Time and again, as he urged on young Esau and the dogs, had his thoughts traversed the forty years as man and boy that he had served so faithfully the masters he had never seen, who dwelt far toward the rising sun across the Big Water. Instinctively he had quickened his pace as he remembered how once, on a bet, he had brought the winter mail from Moose to Rupert House, up the east coast, ninety miles as the goose flies, in twenty hours, finishing fresher than his dogs and dancing that night at the Christmas carousal. Not without reason had the Crees of the James Bay country called him "The Man Who Does Not Sleep." Once his fame as a voyageur had travelled from Whale River, in lonely Ungawa, down to Norway House, far in the Ojibway country. Into the dark eyes of the old Cree there had flashed momentarily the fire of his lost youth, as he tossed his head with pride at the memories of his prowess in days long dead. Then the words of the factor had banished his dream. "Next year a younger man will go, for the mails must get through on time."
Never had Esau seen such a pace set on snow-shoes as Pierre had made that first clear day out of Albany. Inured to the winter trails though he was. it had taxed his youthful strength to follow the seemingly tireless stride of the old courier. When the night closed in upon them, they had turned the weary huskies to the shore, and with their shoes scooped out a camping-place in the deep snow of the spruce timber, where they pitched their shed-tent as a wind-break and boiled their tea and pemican. As Pierre threw the rations of frozen whitefish to the hungry dogs, he had accosted the tired lad with a strange glitter in his deep-set eyes:
"Next long snow I tink young man not feed de dog at dees place on first sleep from Albanee!" Then he had added almost fiercely: "What you tink?"
"Nama, no," the lad had quickly answered in Cree, and then asked: "Why you travel so quick? You run lak de Windigo was on your track." But the spirit-broken Pierre had turned away that the boy might not know his grief.
The next morning, at daybreak, they had crawled out of their robes of rabbit-skin to plunge into the driving northwester which had swept down, over night, from the wild wastes of Keewatin into the valley of the Albany. But the veteran who bore the scars of forty years of battling with the fury of the subarctic winter did not wait in camp for the storm to blow itself out. It was his last trip to Fort Hope and the mail should go through. The next long snow one of the young men might crack his whip over the Christmas mail-team, but he would need the heart and sinews of a king caribou to match the records that Pierre Grassette—known among the Fort Hope Ojibways as "Flying Feet"—had left for the long Albany trail. So, obsessed with but one thought, for three days he had forced the whining and reluctant huskies into the drive of the gale.
On the afternoon of the third day the storm ceased. Through new drifts and over ice beaten bare by the hammering of the wind, the old Spartan ran like a white wraith in his snow-crusted capote. In the rear Esau, flicking the ear of a lagging husky with his long whip, or calling to the lead-dog, already dreamed of the good cheer that awaited them three hundred miles away at Fort Hope. In fancy he tasted the boiled salt goose and the juicy caribou steak of their Christmas dinner, and a smile lit his swarthy features as he pictured himself swinging the dusky Ojibway girls at the New Year's revelry. Suddenly the yelp of the lead-dog and the stopping of the sled roused him. Looking up he saw the huskies nosing the prostrate figure of his companion.
As Esau bent over him Pierre attempted to rise, but fell back, choking, upon the snow. The terrified boy knelt, turned back the fur-lined hood of the capote and gazed into the blood-shot eyes of his companion, who struggled painfully for breath. Supporting him in his arms, Esau held the old man, whose lean frame shook with a paroxysm of coughing. The attack ceased but on the quivering lips of the stricken voyageur it left a deep crimson stain. Then Esau understood. Tenderly he lifted the limp body, placed it on the sled, and drove to the shore, where in the thick spruce he found a hollow sheltered from the wind. There, clearing a camp-ground with his snow-shoes, he pitched their shed-tent, and close in front, so that the heat would reflect into it, built a fire. Soon revived by hot tea, Pierre whispered wearily:
"It ees better dees way dan at Albanee."
"How you feel now?" asked the lad anxiously.
"UP DERE," HE SAID, POINTING WITH A SHAKING FINGER
"Ver' bad," was the faint answer. "My wind—ees broke." The old man was seized with a repetition of the attack, while his lean hands convulsively clutched his chest. Again the hot tea relieved him, and he continued:
"I camp here—wid de wolf. You go—on—to Hope." As he spoke, from a distant ridge the lonely howl of a timber-wolf broke the silence. The boy started as if the cry were an omen of evil, but Pierre had but one thought. "De mail—she mus' go tru," he whispered painfully.
The boy did not protest. An Indian never does at orders he does not intend to obey. There had been a rupture of blood-vessels in the lungs, a not uncommon occurrence in the North among the red runners of the Company. If it proved to be a bad hemorrhage, Pierre would die; if not, he would be able later to travel back to Albany on the sled. There was nothing to do but wait. So he fed the dogs and made soup of the pemican for the sick man.
In the morning Pierre was better. Stimulated by the hot tea and soup, he asked the boy to prop him up in his blankets, where he could trace a map of the Albany trail on the snow.
"Up dere," he said, pointing with a lean, shaking finger at his tracings, "de Ghost Riviere meet de Albanee. One sleep up de Ghost you fin' petit lac. On dees lac de Cree hunt fur. Go an' bring two man. De mail she go tru for sure."
An attack of coughing checked him; in a moment he continued: "De old man at Albanee, he feel ver' bad de mail she not go tru."
Exhausted by the effort, Pierre lay back in his blankets.
"How you keep de fire?" objected the boy. "You seek. You freeze wid no fire wen I go, and den de wolf he get you."
But the sick man was not to be denied. So Esau cut a great pile of birch logs each of which would burn for hours, and heaped them in front of the tent, that they might be pushed easily on the fire. Harnessing the dogs, he lashed his blankets and provisions to the sled and, gripping the old man's hand, said: "I not lak to leave you alone seek. But I bring de Cree back by next sun, or I sleep in de muskeg wid de wolf."
The lad hastened to the waiting dogs, waved his whip at the prostrate figure muffled in rabbit-skins by the fire, and shouted:
"Bo-jo! Bo-jo! Pierre! I come back before two sleeps wid de Cree." But as he swung down to the river trail behind the dog-team, the boy shook his head sadly, for in his heart he felt that he had said good-by to Pierre Grassette forever.
All that day the doomed man lay by the fire with his grief. After forty years of faithful, unquestioning service, he had failed the great Company. The factor was right; he was too old for the long trails. His place was with the squaws. But the one thought that never left him, which kept him company through the long hours as he lay alone among the silent, snow-enveloped spruces under the bitter sky, was that the mail should go through by Christmas day. There was yet time if Esau should find the Crees who wintered on the head waters of the Ghost. To his own condition the old Stoic gave little thought. He had seen men travel on snow-shoes before until blood-vessels in the overtaxed lungs were ruptured. He might get well—there was not so much pain and he coughed less—or he might die there on the shores of the Albany, and in April, when the snow melted, the ravens would finish what the wolves and foxes had left of Pierre Grassette, voyageur of the great Company. Well, a man must die sometime, he mused, and how better than on the trail, as he had lived?
Before Esau left, Pierre had wrung from the boy the promise that, if he returned with the Crees to find him dead, he would bury him in the snow on the shore, and push on to Fort Hope with the mails. This was his one consolation.
Again, as the early dusk descended upon the valley of the great river and the first cold stars glittered above the camp in the spruce, the mournful cry of the gray wolf waked the solitude. But the figure prostrate by the fire gave no sign. Later, when the crescent moon dipped behind the far Keewatin hills, dark shapes glided stealthily to and fro in the shadows of the timber, while from out the gloom near the silent camp here and there twin balls of fire gleamed, to disappear and then to gleam again, until a shift in the wind or the crackling of the burning logs left the blackness of the enfolding forest unbroken. But the fear that kept the long watches beneath the frozen stars with Pierre Grassette was not a fear of the skulking cowards that patrolled the dusk-filled places of the night.
On the following day there floated through the twilight to the eager ears of the sick man the faint tinkle of bells. Painfully he raised himself, where he lay, to a sitting position to hear more distinctly. Again on the biting air drifted the welcome sound.
"De Cree!" he exclaimed. "Esau fin' de Cree! De mail go tru for sure!"
Nearer came the bells; now they were turning in from the river. He tried to shout the salutation of the Crees, Quey! Quey! but his voice broke in a hoarse whisper. He wondered why they were so silent. It was not that way that men came into camp. Then the tired dogs appeared, followed by a lone figure. It was Esau.
"De Cree? de Cree?" whimpered the sick man piteously, as the boy with bowed head stood before him in silence. Hut Pierre knew well that the mission had been in vain.
"I follow de petit riviere till de husky can travel no more," said the boy. "Dere is no lac. I follow it clear into de muskeg."
The old man groaned in desperation.
"By Gar! Have I not camp on dat lac? It ees dere, it ees dere, one sleep toward de risin' sun from de Albanee. You have turn to de nor' up de petit creek. Dat is were you lose de trail, for de Ghost cum tru by de islan'."
"I not see islan' for deep snow on de ice." protested the heart-broken lad. "De snow is dreft ver' high. But I shoot two deer, and de stew will mak you strong. How you feel now?"
"Wen you have sleep, you go back for de Cree," commanded Pierre, ignoring the question.
That night Esau and the huskies feasted on caribou steak, and the strong broth strengthened the old man, who had eaten little since the boy left him.
At daybreak Esau, after cutting a huge pile of firewood, again set out for the camps of the Crees. Then followed days and nights of hope and fear for the one who waited. Throughout the evening of the second day Pierre lay with ears straining to catch the tinkle of bells or the voices of the drivers. Once a faint, far call from the direction of the mouth of the Ghost brought him with bounding pulses to his elbows, only to fall back in his blankets when his trained ears recognized the hunting-cry of the snowy owl. Another day dragged by, and, with the coming of the dusk, crept the shadow of despair into the heart of the old man, for he knew that if Esau had found the Cree camps he would have returned on the second night. Either the lad had met with an accident or the Indians were not wintering on the head waters of the Ghost. They had camped there the winter before, but this was the year of the rabbit plague and they might have gone to another country, for lynxes and foxes range far at such a time. But if Esau had lost his way or had fallen and broken a leg? Even in such a case there was a chance that the boy might get back on the sled. The dogs were not wild huskies; he, Pierre, had trained them; and yet—who knew?
He recalled the winter, years ago, when the boy's father had perished with his dog-team in the Elkwan country in just such a storm as they had met on the Albany. In fevered fancy he beheld the dusky face, furrowed with lines of sorrow, and the reproachful eyes, of the lad's widowed mother back at the post. He had promised her to take care of the boy, and now he had sent him to a lingering death by freezing or starvation, in the barrens.
"It ees better," he sighed, "dat Pierre Grassette return not to Albanee."
The sun lifted above the low Ontario hills on the morning of the fourth day of Esau's absence to glisten on white-shrouded spruce and balsam surrounding a shed-tent, half buried in the deep snow, in which lay a sick man waiting for the death from freezing which the night would bring. The wood which Esau had cut would last but the day, and Pierre had not the strength to swing an axe, or to gather more. Once he managed to drag himself to the nearest trees and lop off a few branches, but he paid for the exertion with a protracted fit of coughing which so weakened him that he lay motionless for hours. As the night neared, he pushed the last logs on the fire and boiled his tea and pemican; then, whispering a short prayer to the Master whom the Oblat Fathers at Albany had taught him to reverence, he rolled himself in his blankets, and lay down by the fire to await the coming of the white death—the most merciful of the many that haunt the tepees of the children of the snows.
Swiftly the advancing gloom cloaked the camp in the spruce. Soon the freezing sky was ablaze with myriad stars. At intervals the icy shell of the great river boomed like a cannon-shot as it split under the contraction of the increasing cold. To the north, over the brooding bay, the first glow of the aurora pulsed and waned, then the ribboned lights, loosed from the horizon, writhed and coiled like snakes across the heavens. But the muffled figure in the tent by the dying fire lay motionless. For him the winter trails were ended. No more the river roads of summer would beckon his canoe.
Suddenly out of the hush there broke a faint, far call. The man by the dying fire stirred as though in a dream and again lay motionless. Once more through the soundless spaces of the night drifted the cry. The sleeper moaned as if in pain. Then clear upon the bitter air rang men's voices. Quickly the form was alert with life. Trembling with excitement, the half-frozen man cast off his blankets and rose swiftly to his feet.
"Esau fin' de Cree!" he cried. "De mail go tru! De mail go tru for sure!"
In his joy at the sound of the voices of the approaching men, he started to meet them, but, as the first jingling dog-team appeared, led by Esau and a Cree, the trembling legs of the sick man gave way beneath him, and with a feeble "Quey! Quey!" of welcome he sank to the snow at their feet.
Sinewy arms carried the limp form to the smouldering fire, where vigorous rubbing gradually restored the circulation to the stiffened limbs. Then through the sleeping forest sang the axes of the Crees, biting deep into two huge birches, and soon where, but a short space before, a man lay freezing by a dying fire, kettles of tea and caribou haunch bubbled and steamed in the roaring flames that licked the great logs. By such slight tenure are held the lives of the dwellers in the North.
When they had eaten, Esau told his story to Pierre, who lay swathed in blankets by the fire.
"Wen I leave you," said the lad, cutting with his hunting-knife a pipeful of Company niggerhead and lighting it with an ember, "I keep dees tam to de beeg riviere at de islan' and sleep at de Cree camp on de petit lac. But I fin' de chil' and squaws alone. De men hunt deer in de muskeg country. Two boy I send to fin' dem and say I wait one sleep and den go back to de Albanee. But de squaw tell me de men not go if I do not wait. Widout dem I not lak to cum, and I have fear to wait wid you seek at de Albanee. I have hard job what to do, eh, Pierre?"
"You did well to wait," whispered the sick man.
"Yes," continued the boy; "two sleep I wait for dem. De nex' sun I hitch de dog to take de back trail, wen de Cree cum in wid sled heavy wid meat. But dey not leave camp until I promeese de Companee fill dere tepee wid tea and flour so de squaw and chil' grow fat and laugh tru de long snow. For dees dey come."
"E-nh, yes!" broke in the older Cree in his native tongue; "for this flour and tea we go with you to that fort above the great white-waters toward the setting sun."
"It was good ting we camp here dees sleep, Pierre, for you freeze soon widout fire," added Esau.
"Ves, it was good for sure," sighed the sick man, "for now de mail she go tru."
Already he had forgotten the doubt and agony of the last two days while he awaited Esau's return.
"Next sun we, start for Hope," he said, as the men freshened the fire with great logs, and lay down in their robes on the bed of spruce boughs between the wind-break and the heat.
On the following day the rising sun overtook two dog-teams hurrying westward on the Fort Hope trail. Miles behind them still smouldered the camp-fire in the spruce. Ahead of the teams swung a tall Cree, breaking trail, while at the gee-pole of each sled a caribou-skin-clad driver with long dog-whip urged on the huskies. But lashed to the second sled lay the blanketed form of one whose voyaging days over white winter trails and wind-whipped lakes of summer were forever ended.
On up the great ice-bound river hurried the belated winter mail. Travelling from starlight to starlight—for the December days were passing—men and dogs, half-breed, Cree, and husky, held to a heart-breaking pace, that the rising sun of Christmas day might find them at the journey's end.
Day after day they knew no respite from the toil of trace and trail. Now, with snow-shoes for shovels, breaking through great drifts left by the heels of the blizzard, now speeding over wind-packed snow or glare ice, they travelled into the sunset. And each day when the shadows of the northern night crept out over the white river from the timbered shores and the killing pace began to lag, the weak voice of the benumbed sick man on the sled would urge them on into the twilight. The Crees' protests that their dogs were raw with harness-sores and that they themselves needed rest were of no avail with one in whose ears still echoed the words of the factor at Albany. So leg-weary men and dogs slaved on under the stars. But at last, in camp, the torture of "mal raquette" in the stiffened legs of Esau and the Crees ceased, when the drugged sleep of exhaustion claimed them, while Pierre of the broken heart lay with his grief far into the silent night.
Through the desolate cliff country, where the river winds like a huge reptile between towering, timberless shores behind which the sun sets almost at noon; on past the thousand islands where, in summer, the trout and dore lie below a hundred silver cascades; up the great lake that the Ojibways call "The Charmed Water," where the river sturgeon breed; over three hundred miles of subarctic winter trail they toiled, that the factor at Hope might open his mail from Scotland on Christmas day, and a half-breed keep his word.
At last, on Christmas eve, as the cold moon lifted above the silhouetted spruce fringing the hills to the east of the Lake of the Elbow and flooded the white wilderness with light, two trail-worn dog-teams turned into the shore. Soon the blows of axes on frozen birch echoed from the adjacent cliffs and the Fort Hope winter packet from Albany made camp twenty miles from its goal.
When, two days before, they had left the path of the blizzard and found the trail beyond free from drifts, Pierre, at last, knew that they would win. And, with the knowledge that they had conquered in their long battle with the snow and cold, new strength crept into his limbs and joy transformed the dauntless warrior of the wilderness trails.
As Esau helped him from the sled at their last camp tears blinded the deep-set eyes in the lean, wind-blackened face. With an exclamation of delight the old man pushed back the hood of the lad's capote and kissed him on both cheeks.
"De mail, she go tru for sure. De old man at Albanee know de mail ees safe wid de familee Grassette?" he cried, his arms around his nephew's neck.
Then he turned and gripped the hands of the smiling red men who had given so loyally of their best that his honor might remain untarnished.
"De Companee will not forget," he said as he thanked them.
Long before daylight of Christmas morning the eager Pierre roused the sleeping dogs and men. The harnesses were made gay with colored worsted and new bell-straps adjusted, that they might jingle bravely into the post as befitted the dignity of the company's Christmas mail-team. In honor of the event Esau adorned himself with a pair of blue-cloth leggings, gaudy with red-and-yellow embroidery, and wound his slim waist with a many-colored Company sash.
With difficulty they prevailed upon Pierre to resume his place on the sled. Thrilled with his victory the false strength of excitement speeded the blood in his veins. But twenty miles away lay Fort Hope. He begged for his snow-shoes that the people there should not know his shame. Even the lean, harness-raw huskies—shadows of the great dogs that had left Albany and the Ghost—felt the excitement of the drivers and leaped whining into their collars at the signal for the start.
Up the lake trail, packed hard by the teams of Ojibways bound to the post for the Christmas revelry, hurried Esau, followed by the Crees. To the helpless sick man, lashed to the sled like a bag of pemican, never had winter morning seemed so beautiful. The Great Father to whom he had prayed through the dark days behind them had turned, indeed, a listening ear. Crippled and a derelict though he was, forever doomed to sit and dream of days that were done, he yet had been allowed to keep faith with the great Company. He had brought the mail through by the day appointed and it was well. Those unknown masters who lived beyond the Big Water would be pleased that Pierre Grassette had not failed them in his old age—Pierre Grassette who had served them so gallantly in the days of his masterful youth.
But the mind of young Esau, running behind the sled, was busied with the anticipation of the hot bread and steaming goose of the Christmas dinner, and the unbroken slumber that awaited him in the sleep-house at the post. There would be a merry week of feasting and dancing. Every Ojibway family within reach of Fort Hope would come in. Already the boy had forgotten the privations and sufferings of the Albany trail. He had won his spurs in the fiercest blizzard of a generation, over what was known among the old French coureurs as "la longue traverse," the bitterest winter trail from Labrador to the Barren Grounds. He straightened his shoulders with pride, but the instincts of the boy in him soon turned his thoughts to the Christmas dinner and the dusky Ojibway belles at the post.
On they travelled through the morning hours until they neared the point of spruce which conceals Fort Hope from the east. There Pierre called a halt.
"It ees not good dat Pierre Grassette ride lak a dead moose into Fort Hope. He will run in lak a man, on de raquette," he said.
In vain Esau objected. Pierre was too weak. He would bring on another hemorrhage by the exertion. It was madness. But the sick man would not be denied. It was his only wish, that he might bring the mail in for the last time as befitted a man and a dog-runner of the Company.
The buildings of the settlement lay but a few hundred yards beyond the point ahead. Perhaps, thought Esau, it would be as well to allow Pierre his own way. He might walk that far, and the boy knew well how deep would be the veteran's shame to be carried helpless into Fort Hope on a sled. So they gave him his snow-shoes.
Supported by Esau's arm, Pierre shuffled slowly up the trail ahead of the impatient dogs which the Crees with difficulty kept from running their master down. Painfully he moved his stiff legs, uncertain from long disuse. Under the exertion and excitement his breath came in hoarse gasps. But as they neared the headland the trained muscles began to answer the iron will that drove them, and he flung off the friendly arm of Esau.
They rounded the point and a chorus of howls from the post huskies announced their coming. The Crees flung themselves upon the yelping dogs of the teams, who strained at their collars to bolt up the trail. At the sound of the tumult, from the trade-store, sleep-house, and tepees of the post rushed white men and Ojibways to greet the overdue Albany mail. Cheers of welcome mingled with the howls of the huskies. At last the Christmas mail—given up as lost in the blizzard—was in from the Big Water. Men, women, and dogs rushed to the shore to greet those already mourned as victims of the long trail. To the eager ears of the excited Esau and Pierre floated the Ojibway welcome: "Bo-jo! Bo-jo!"
Pierre waved his hand, as Esau shouted in answer. "Quey! Quey!" the salutation of the Crees. The heart of the old man pounded in his breast, while the old fire inflamed his blood. The huskies, despite the blows of the Cree drivers, sprang forward upon the heels of the now delirious half-breed. Carried away with the moment, he pushed the boy aside and, waving his hand at McKenzie the factor, whose stalwart figure he recognized in the crowd on the shore, broke into the old swing ahead of the dogs, as he had run into Fort Hope for thirty years.
The fear-stricken Esau begged the madman to remember his condition, but he could have checked a Keewatin northwester as readily as the fevered Pierre Grassette, who labored on, with his blood-shot eyes fixed on the factor, every breath torturing his lungs. Once, as his strength for a moment ebbed, he faltered; then, straightening up, he continued. Close behind a Cree clung to the leader of the mail-team, holding the yelping huskies by sheer strength. As they approached, the people of the post crowded down to the river trail. Only too well they sensed the meaning of the pace of the old voyageur. Often before strong men had been loosed from the death-grip of the sullen winter trails, to creep into Fort Hope spent and broken.
When but a few strides separated him from the outstretched hand of the advancing factor, Pierre suddenly reeled in his tracks. Collecting himself, he again lurched forward, but before Esau could reach him, fell headlong to the trail.
Esau and the factor knelt beside the crumpled figure, shaken by a convulsion of coughing. Tenderly they raised the head of the choking man from the crimsoned snow beneath. A lean hand clutched that of the factor as Esau wiped the blood from the quivering lips. Presently the eyes of the stricken voyageur sought McKenzie's with a look of appeal. The factor bent his head close to the ashen face distorted with suffering. Once, twice, the moving lips tried to convey what the old man struggled to articulate, when an attack of coughing checked him. Then he grew stronger and, raising himself, whispered:
"Tell—old man at Albanee—Pierre bring—mail—tru!" and, with a deep sigh, sank into Esau's arms.
The shaggy leader of his mail-team threw back his great head with a long, mournful howl. And the dauntless spirit of Pierre Grassette, faithful servant of the great Company, even unto death, sped far on the mystic trail to the Valley of Rest.
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 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 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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