Chapter VIII The Shop in the Wilderness
As soon as Gaspé had despatched his messenger he turned to Wilfred, observing, in tones of grateful satisfaction, “I am so glad we know in time.”
“Is that your grandfather?” asked Wilfred.
Gaspé nodded. “Come and look at him.”
The two boys were soon watching earnestly through the grating, their faces almost touching. Gaspé’s arm was over Wilfred’s shoulder, as they drew closer and closer to each other.
Gaspé’s grandfather took the slip of paper from his man, glanced at it, and crushed it in his hand. The chief was hastily heaping a mass of buffalo robes and skins and bags of pemmican upon one of the horses, a gift for the white man, horse and all. This was to show his big heart.
“Do you hear what he is saying?” whispered Gaspé, who understood the Indians much better than Wilfred did. “Listen!”
“Are there any Crees here? Crees have no manners. Crees are like dogs, always ready to bite if you turn your head away; but the Blackfeet have large hearts, and love hospitality.”
“After all, those men in the reeds may only be on the watch for fear of a surprise from the Crees,” continued Gaspé.
“Will there be a fight?” asked Wilfred breathlessly.
“No, I think not,” answered Gaspé. “The Crees have lived amongst us whites so long they have given up the war-path. But,” he added confidentially, “I have locked our old Indian in the kitchen, for if they caught sight of him they might say we were friends of the Crees, and set on us.”
One door in the white-painted house was standing open. It led into a large and almost empty room. Just inside it a number of articles were piled on the floor—a gun, blankets, scarlet cloth, and a brightly-painted canister of tea. Louison came back to fetch them, for a return present, with which the chief seemed highly delighted.
“We see but little of you white men,” he said; “and our young men do not always know how to behave. But if you would come amongst us more, we chiefs would restrain them.”
“He would have hard work,” laughed Wilfred, little thinking how soon his words were to be verified. The Blackfeet standing round their chief, with their piles of skins, were so obviously getting excited, and impatient to begin the real trading, the chief must have felt even he could not hold them back much longer. But he was earnest in his exhortation to them not to give way to violence or rough behaviour.
Gaspé’s grandfather was silently noting every face, without appearing to do so; and mindful of the warning he had received, he led the way to his gate, which he invited them to enter, observing, “My places are but small, friends. All shall come in by turns, but only a few at a time.”
Gaspé drew back the bar and threw the gate wide. In walked the stately chief, with one or two of his followers who had taken part in the speech-making. The excited crowd at the back of them pushed their way in, as if they feared the gate might be shut in their faces.
Gaspé remonstrated, assuring them there was no hurry, all should have their turn.
The chief waved them back, and the last of the group contented themselves with standing in the gateway itself, to prevent it being shut against them.
Gaspé gave up the vain attempt to close it, and resumed his post.
“I am here on the watch,” he whispered to Wilfred; “but you are cold and hungry. Go with grandfather into the shop.”
“I would rather stay with you,” answered Wilfred. “I am getting used to being hungry.”
Gaspé answered this by pushing into his hand a big hunch of bread and butter, which he had brought with him from his hurried breakfast.
Meanwhile Gaspé’s grandfather had entered the house, taking with him the Blackfoot chief. He invited the others to enter and seat themselves on the floor of the empty room into which Wilfred had already had a peep. He unlocked an inner door, opening into a passage, which divided the great waiting-room from the small shop beyond. This had been carefully prepared for the reception of their wild customers. Only a few of his goods were left upon the shelves, which were arranged with much ingenuity, and seemed to display a great variety of wares, all of them attractive in Indian eyes. The bright-coloured cloths, cut in short lengths, were folded in fantastic heaps; the blankets were hung in graceful festoons. Beads scattered lightly on trays glittered behind the counter, on which the empty scales were lightly swaying up and down, like miniature swinging-boats.
A high lattice protected the front of the counter. Gaspé’s grandfather established himself behind it. Louison took his place as door-keeper. The chief and two of his particular friends were the first to be admitted. Louison locked the door to keep out the others. It was the only way to preserve order. The wild, fierce strangers from the snow-covered plain and the darksome forest drew at once to the stove—a great iron box in the middle of the shop, with its huge black funnel rising through the ceiling. Warmth without smoke was a luxury unknown in the wigwam.
The Indians walked slowly round the shop, examining and considering the contents of the shelves, until their choice was made.
One of the three walked up to the counter and handed his pile of skins to the trader, Mr. De Brunier, through a little door in the lattice, pointing to some bright scarlet cloth and a couple of blankets. The chief was examining the guns. All three wanted shot, and the others inquired earnestly for the Indians’ special delight, “tea and suga’.” But when they saw the canister opened, and the tea poured into the scale, there was a grunt of dissatisfaction all round.
“What for?” demanded the chief. “Why put tea one side that swing and little bit of iron the other? Who wants little bit of iron? We don’t know what that medicine is.”
The Indians call everything medicine that seems to them learned and wise.
Mr. De Brunier tried to explain the use of his scales, and took up his steelyard to see if it would find more favour.
“Be fair,” pursued the chief; “make one side as big as the other. Try bag of pemmican against your blankets and tea, then when the thing stops swinging you take pemmican, we blankets and tea—that fair!”
His companions echoed their chief’s sentiments.
“As you like,” smiled the trader. “We only want to make a fair exchange.”
So the heavy bag of pemmican was put in the place of the weight, and a nice heap of tea was poured upon the blanket to make the balance true. The Indians were delighted.
“Now,” continued Mr. De Brunier, “we must weigh the shot and the gun against your skins, according to your plan.”
But when the red men saw their beautiful marten and otter and fisher skins piling higher and higher, and the heavy bag of shot still refusing to rise, a grave doubt as to the correctness of their own view of the matter arose in the Indians’ minds. The first served took up his scarlet cloth and blanket and went out quickly, whilst the others deliberated.
The trader waited with good-humoured patience and a quiet gleam of amusement in the corner of his eye, when they told him at last to do it his own way, for the steel swing was a great medicine warriors could not understand. It was plain it could only be worked by some great medicine man like himself.
This decision had been reached so slowly, the impatience of the crowd in the waiting-room was at spirit-boil.
The brave who had come back satisfied was exhibiting his blankets and his scarlet cloth, which had to be felt and looked at by all in turn.
“Were there many more inside?” they asked eagerly.
He shook his head.
A belief that the good things would all be gone before the rest of the Indians could get their turn spread among the excited crowd like wild-fire.
Gaspé still held to his watch by the gate, with Wilfred beside him.
There was plenty of laughing and talking among the party of resolute men who kept it open; they seemed full of fun, and were joking each other in the highest spirits. Gaspé’s eyes turned again and again to the frozen reeds, but all was quiet.
Wilfred was earnestly watching for a chance to ask the mirthful Blackfeet if an old squaw, the Far-off-Dawn, had joined their camp. He could not make them understand him, but Gaspé repeated the question.
At that moment one of the fiercest-looking of the younger warriors rushed out of the waiting-room in a state of intense excitement. He beckoned to his companions at the gate, exclaiming, “If we don’t help ourselves there will be nothing left for you and me.”
“We know who will see fair play,” retorted the young chief, who was answering Gaspé.
A whoop rang through the frosty air, and the still stiff reeds seemed suddenly alive with dusky faces. The crush round the inner door in the waiting-room became intense.
“Help me,” whispered Gaspé, seizing Wilfred’s arm and dragging him after him through the sheds to the back of the house. He took out a key and unlocked a side door. There was a second before him, with the keyhole at the reverse hand. It admitted them into a darkened room, for the windows were closely shuttered; but Gaspé knew his ground, and was not at a moment’s loss.
The double doors were locked and bolted in double quick time behind them. Then Gaspé lifted up a heavy iron bar and banged it into its socket. Noise did not matter. The clamour in the waiting-room drowned every other sound.
“They will clear the shop,” he said, “but we must stop them getting into the storeroom. Come along.”
Wilfred was feeling the way. He stumbled over a chair; his hand felt a table. He guessed he was in the family sitting-room. Gaspé put his mouth to the keyhole of an inner door.
“Chirag!” he shouted to their Indian servant, “barricade.”
The noises which succeeded showed that his command was being obeyed in that direction.
Gaspé was already in the storeroom, endeavouring to push a heavy box of nails before the other door leading into the shop. Wilfred was beside him in a moment. He had not much pushing power left in him after his night of wandering.
“Perhaps I can push a pound,” he thought, laying his hands by Gaspé’s.
“Now, steady! both together we shall do it,” they said, and with one hard strain the box was driven along the floor.
“That is something,” cried Gaspé, heaving up a bag of ironmongery to put on the top of it. And he looked round for something else sufficiently ponderous to complete his barricade.
“What is this?” asked Wilfred, tugging at a chest of tools.
Meanwhile a dozen hatchets’ heads were hammering at the door from the waiting-room where Louison was stationed. The crack of the wood giving way beneath their blows inspired Gaspé with redoubled energy. The chest was hoisted upon the box. He surveyed his barricade with satisfaction. But their work was not yet done. He dragged forward a set of steps, and running up to the top, threw open a trap-door in the ceiling. A ray of light streamed down into the room, showing Wilfred, very white and exhausted, leaning against the pile they had erected.
Gaspé sprang to the ground, rushed back into the sitting-room, and began to rummage in the cupboard.
“Here is grandfather’s essence of peppermint and the sugar-basin and lots of biscuits!” he exclaimed. “You are faint, you have had no breakfast yet. I am forgetting. Here.”
Wilfred’s benumbed fingers felt in the sugar for a good-sized lump. Gaspé poured his peppermint drops upon it with a free hand. The warming, reviving dose brought back the colour to Wilfred’s pale lips.
“Feel better?” asked his energetic companion, running up the steps with a roll of cloth on his shoulder, which he deposited safely in the loft above, inviting Wilfred to follow. The place was warm, for the iron chimneys ran through it, like so many black columns. Wilfred was ready to embrace the nearest.
Gaspé caught his arm. “You are too much of a human icicle for that,” he cried. “I’ll bring up the blankets next. Roll yourself up in them and get warm gradually, or you will be worse than ever. You must take care of yourself, for I dare not stop. It is always a bit dangerous when the Indians come up in such numbers to a little station like this. There is nobody but grandfather and me and our two men about the place, and what are four against a hundred? But all know what to do. Chirag watches inside the house, I outside, and Louison keeps the shop door. That is the most dangerous post, because of the crush to get in.”
A crash and a thud in the room below verified his words.
“There! down it goes,” he exclaimed, as a peal of laughter from many voices followed the rush of the crowd from one room to the other.
“They will be in here next,” he added, springing down the steps for another load. Wilfred tried to shake off the strange sensations which oppressed him, and took it from him. Another and another followed quickly, until the boys had removed the greater part of the most valuable of the stores into the roof. The guns and the heavy bags of shot had all been carried up in the early morning, before the gate of the fort was opened.
And now the hammering began at the storeroom door, amid peals of uproarious laughter.
Gaspé tore up the steps with another heavy roll of bright blue cloth.
“We can do no more,” he said, pausing for breath. “Now we will shut ourselves in here.”
“We will have these up first,” returned Wilfred, seizing hold of the top of the steps, and trying to drag them through the trap-door.
“Right!” ejaculated Gaspé. “If we had left them standing in the middle of the storeroom, it would have been inviting the Blackfeet to follow us.”
They let down the trap-door as noiselessly as they could, and drew the heavy bolt at the very moment the door below was broken open and the triumphant crowd rushed wildly in, banging down their bags of pemmican on the floor, and seizing the first thing which came to hand in return.
Louison had been knocked down in the first rush from the waiting-room, and was leaning against the wall, having narrowly escaped being trampled to death. “All right!” he shouted to his master, who had jumped up on his counter to see if his agile servitor had regained his feet. It was wild work, but Mr. De Brunier took it all in good part, flinging his blankets right and left wherever he saw an eager hand outstretched to receive them. He knew that it was far better to give before they had time to take, and so keep up a semblance of trade. Many a beautiful skin and buffalo-robe was tossed across the counter in return. The heterogeneous pile was growing higher and higher beside him, and in the confusion it was hard to tell how much was intended for purchase, how much for pillage.
The chief, the Great Swan, as his people called him, still stood by the scales, determined to see if the great medicine worked fairly for all his people.
Mr. De Brunier called to him by his Indian name: “Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, do you not hear what I am saying? Your young men are too rough. Restrain them. You say you can. How am I to weigh and measure to each his right portion in such a rout?”
“Give them all something and they will be content,” shouted the chief, trying his best to restore order.
Dozens of gaudy cotton handkerchiefs went flying over the black heads, scrambling with each other to get possession of them. Spoonfuls of beads were received with chuckles of delight by the nearest ranks; hut the Indians outside the crowd were growing hot and angry. Turns had been long since disregarded. It was catch as catch can. They broke down the lattice, and helped themselves from the shelves behind the counter. These were soon cleared. A party of strong young fellows, laughing as if it were the best fun in the world, leaped clear over the counter, and began to chop at the storeroom door with their hatchets. With a dexterous hand Mr. De Brunier flung his bright silks in their faces. The dancing skeins were quickly caught up. But the work of demolition went forward. The panels were reduced to matchwood. Three glittering hatchets swung high over the men’s heads, came down upon the still resisting framework, and smashed it. The mirthful crowd dashed in.
The shop was already cleared. Mr. De Brunier would have gone into his storeroom with them if he could, but a dozen guns were pointed in his face. It was mere menace, no one attempted to fire. But the chief thought it was going too far. He backed to the waiting-room. Mr. De Brunier seized his empty tea-canister, and offered it to him as a parting gift, saying in most emphatic tones, “This is not our way of doing business. Some of these men have got too much, and some too little. It is not my fault. I must deal now with the tribe. Let them all lay down on the floor the rest of the skins and bags they have brought, and take away all I have to give in exchange, and you must divide when you get back to your camp, to every man his right share.”
Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu rushed off with his canister under his arm; not into the storeroom, where the dismayed trader hoped his presence might have proved a restraint, but straight through the waiting-room with a mad dash into the court, and through the gate, where he halted to give a thunderous shout of “Crees! Crees!” The magic words brought out his followers pell-mell. A second shout, a wilder alarm, made the tribe rally round their chief, in the full belief the Crees had surprised their camp in their hateful dog-like fashion, taking their bite at the women and children when the warriors’ heads were turned.
But the unmannerly foe was nowhere in sight.
“Over the hill!” shouted their Great Wild Swan, the man of twenty fights.
Meanwhile the gate of the little fort was securely barred against all intruders. The waiting squaws meekly turned their horses’ heads, and followed their deluded lords, picking up the beads and nails which had been dropped in their headlong haste.
“Woe to Maxica,” thought Wilfred, “if he should happen to be returning for his moose!”
The wild war-whoop died away in the distance, only the roar of the cataract broke the stillness of the snow-laden air.
De Brunier walked back into his house, to count up the gain and loss, and see how much reckless mischief that morning’s work had brought him.