Chapter IX New Friends
“We shall always be friends,” said Gaspé, looking into Wilfred’s face, as they stood side by side against the chimney in the loft, emptying the biscuit-canister between them.
Wilfred answered with a sunny smile. The sounds below suddenly changed their character. The general stampede to the gate was beginning.
The boys flew to the window. It was a double one, very small and thickly frozen. They could not see the least thing through its glittering panes.
They could scarcely believe their ears, but the sudden silence which succeeded convinced Gaspé their rough visitors had beaten a hasty retreat.
“Anyhow we will wait a bit, and make sure before we go down,” they decided.
But De Brunier’s first care was for his grandson, and he was missing.
“Gaspard!” he shouted, and his call was echoed by Louison and Chirag.
“Here, grandfather; I am here, I am coming,” answered the boy, gently raising the trap-door and peeping down at the dismantled storeroom. A great bag of goose-feathers, which had been hoarded by some thrifty squaw, had been torn open, and the down was flying in every direction.
There was a groan from Mr. De Brunier. All his most valuable stores had vanished.
“Not quite so bad as that, grandfather,” cried Gaspé brightly.
The trader stepped up on to the remains of the barricade the boys had erected, and popped his head through the open trap-door.
“Well done, Gaspard!” he exclaimed.
“This other boy helped me,” was the instantaneous reply.
The other boy came out from the midst of the blanket heap, feeling more dead than alive, and expecting every moment some one would say to him, “Now go,” and he had nowhere to go.
Mr. De Brunier looked at him in amazement. A solitary boy in these lone wastes! Had he dropped from the skies?
“Come down, my little lad, and tell me who you are,” he said kindly; but without waiting for a reply he walked on through the broken door to survey the devastation beyond.
“I have grown gray in the service of the Company, and never had a more provoking disaster,” he lamented, as he began to count the tumbled heap of valuable furs blocking his pathway.
Louison, looking pale and feeling dizzy from his recent knock over, was collecting the bags of pemmican. Chirag, released from his imprisonment, was opening window shutters and replenishing the burnt-out fires. Gaspé dropped down from the roof, without waiting to replace the steps, and went to his grandfather’s assistance, leaving Wilfred to have a good sleep in the blanket heap.
The poor boy was so worn out he slept heavily. When he roused himself at last, the October day was drawing to its close, and Gaspé was laughing beside him.
“Have not you had sleep enough?” he asked. “Would not dinner be an improvement?”
Wilfred wakened from his dreams of Acland’s Hut. Aunt Miriam and Pe-na-Koam had got strangely jumbled together; but up he jumped to grasp his new friend’s warm, young hand, and wondered what had happened. He felt as if he had been tossing like a ball from one strange scene to another. When he found himself sitting on a real chair, and not on the hard ground, the transition was so great it seemed like another dream.
The room was low, no carpet on the floor, only a few chairs ranged round the stove in the centre; but a real dinner, hot and smoking, was spread on the unpainted deal table.
Mr. De Brunier, with one arm thrown over the back of his chair, was smoking, to recall his lost serenity. An account-book lay beside his unfinished dinner. Sometimes his eye wandered over its long rows of figures, and then for a while he seemed absorbed in mental calculation.
He glanced at Wilfred’s thin hands and pinched cheeks.
“Let the boy eat,” he said to Gaspé.
As the roast goose vanished from Wilfred’s plate the smile returned to his lips and the mirth to his heart. He outdid the hungry hunter of proverbial fame. The pause came at last; he could not quite keep on eating all night, Indian fashion. He really declined the sixth helping Gaspé was pressing upon him.
“No, thanks; I have had a Benjamin’s portion—five times as much as you have had—and I am dreadfully obliged to you,” said Wilfred, with a bow to Mr. De Brunier; “but there is Yula, that is my dog. May he have these bones?”
“He has had something more than bones already; Chirag fed him when he fed my puppies,” put in Gaspé.
“Puppies,” repeated Mr. De Brunier. “Dogs, I say.”
“Not yet, grandfather,” remonstrated the happy Gaspé. “You said they would not be really dogs, ready for work, until they were a year old, and it wants a full week.”
“Please, sir,” interrupted Wilfred abruptly, “can you tell me how I can get home?”
“Where is your home?” asked Mr. De Brunier.
“With my uncle, at Acland’s Hut,” answered Wilfred promptly.
“Acland’s Hut,” repeated Mr. De Brunier, looking across at Gaspé for elucidation. They did not know such a place existed.
“It is miles away from here,” added Wilfred sorrowfully. “I went out hunting—”
“You—a small boy like you—to go hunting alone!” exclaimed Mr. De Brunier.
“Please, sir, I mean I rode on a pony by the cart which was to bring back the game,” explained poor Wilfred, growing very rueful, as all hope of getting home again seemed to recede further and further from him. “The pony threw me,” he added, “and when I came to myself the men were gone.”
“Have you no father?” whispered Gaspé.
“My father died a year ago, and I was left at school at Garry,” Wilfred went on.
“Fort Garry!” exclaimed Mr. De Brunier, brightening. “If this had happened a few weeks earlier, I could easily have sent you back to Garry in one of the Company’s boats. They are always rowing up and down the river during the busy summer months, but they have just stopped for the winter With this Blackfoot camp so near us, I dare not unbar my gate again to-night, so make yourself contented. In the morning we will see what can be done.”
“Nothing!” thought Wilfred, as he gathered the goose-bones together for Yula’s benefit. “If you do not know where Acland’s Hut is, and I cannot tell you, night or morning what difference can it make?”
He studied the table-cloth, thinking hard. “Bowkett and Diomé had talked of going to a hunters’ camp. Where was that?”
“Ask Louison,” said Mr. De Brunier, in reply to his inquiry.
Gaspé ran out to put the question.
Louison was a hunter’s son. He had wintered in the camp himself when he was a boy. The hunters gathered there in November. Parties would soon be calling at the fort, to sell their skins by the way. Wilfred could go on with one of them, no doubt, and then Bowkett could take him home.
Wilfred’s heart grew lighter. It was a roundabout-road, but he felt as if getting back to Bowkett was next to getting home.
“How glad your uncle will be to see you!” cried Gaspé radiantly, picturing the bright home-coming in the warmth of his own sympathy.
“Oh, don’t!” said Wilfred; “please, don’t. It won’t be like that; not a bit. Nobody wants me. Aunt wanted my little sister, not me. You don’t understand; I am such a bother to her.”
Gaspé was silenced, but his hand clasped Wilfred’s a little closer. All the chivalrous feelings of the knightly De Bruniers were rousing in his breast for the strange boy who had brought them the timely warning. For some of the best and noblest blood of old France was flowing in his veins. A De Brunier had come out with the early French settlers, the first explorers, the first voyageurs along the mighty Canadian rivers. A De Brunier had fought against Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, in the front ranks of that gallant band who faithfully upheld their nation’s honour, loyal to the last to the shameless France, which despised, neglected, and abandoned them—men whose high sense of duty never swerved in the hour of trial, when they were given over into the hands of their enemy. Who cared what happened in that far-off corner of the world? It was not worth troubling about. So the France of that day reasoned when she flung them from her.
It was of those dark hours Gaspé loved to make his grandfather talk, and he was thinking that nothing would divert Wilfred from his troubled thoughts like one of grandfather’s stories. The night drew on. The snow was falling thicker and denser than before. Mr. De Brunier turned his chair to the stove, afraid to go to bed with the Blackfoot camp within half-a-mile of his wooden walls.
“They might,” he said, “have a fancy to give us a midnight scare, to see what more they could get.”
The boys begged hard to remain. The fire, shut in its iron box, was burning at its best, emitting a dull red glow, even through its prison walls. Gaspé refilled his grandfather’s pipe.
“Wilfred,” he remarked gently, “has a home that is no home, and he thinks we cannot understand the ups and downs of life, or what it is to be pushed to the wall.”
Gaspé had touched the right spring. The veteran trader smiled. “Not know, my lad, what it is to be pushed to the wall, when I have been a servant for fifty years in the very house where my grandfather was master, before the golden lilies on our snow-white banner were torn down to make room for your Union Jack! Why am I telling you this to-night? Just to show you, when all seems lost in the present, there is the future beyond, and no one can tell what that may hold. The pearl lies hidden under the stormiest waters. Do you know old Cumberland House? A De Brunier built it, the first trading-fort in the Saskatchewan. It was lost to us when the cold-hearted Bourbon flung us like a bone to the English mastiff. Our homes were ours no longer. Our lives were in our hands, but our honour no one but ourselves could throw away. What did we do? What could we do? What all can do—our duty to the last. We braved our trouble; and when all seemed lost, help came. Who was it felt for us? The men who had torn from us our colours and entered our gates by force. Under the British flag our homes were given back, our rights assured. Our Canadian Quebec remains unaltered, a transplant from the old France of the Bourbons. In the long years that have followed the harvest has been reaped on both sides. Now, my boy, don’t break your heart with thinking, If there had been anybody to care for me, I should not have been left senseless in a snow-covered wilderness; but rouse your manhood and face your trouble, for in God’s providence it may be more than made up to you. Here you can stay until some opportunity occurs to send you to this hunters’ camp. You are sure it will be your best way to get home again?”
“Yes,” answered Wilfred decidedly. “I shall find Bowkett there, and I am sure he will take me back to Acland’s Hut. But please, sir, I did not mean aunt and uncle were unkind; but I had been there such a little while, and somehow I was always wrong; and then I know I teased.”
The cloud was gathering over him again.
“If—” he sighed.
“Don’t dwell on the ifs, my boy; talk of what has been. That will teach you best what may be,” inter posed Mr. De Brunier.
Gaspé saw the look of pain in Wilfred’s eyes, although he did not say again, “Please don’t talk about it,” for he was afraid Mr. De Brunier would not call that facing his trouble.
Gaspé came to the rescue. “But, grandfather, you have not told us what the harvest was that Canada reaped,” he put in.
“Cannot you see it for yourself, Gaspard?” said Mr. De Brunier. “When French and English, conquered and conqueror, settled down side by side, it was their respect for each other, their careful consideration for each other’s rights and wrongs, that taught their children and their children’s children the great lesson how to live and let live. No other nation in the world has learned as we have done. It is this that makes our Canada a land of refuge for the down-trodden slave. And we, the French in Canada, what have we reaped?” he went on, shaking the ashes from his pipe, and looking at the two boys before him, French and English; but the old lines were fading, and uniting in the broader name of Canadian. “Yes,” he repeated, “what did we find at the bottom of our bitter cup? Peace, security, and freedom, whilst the streets of Paris ran red with Frenchmen’s blood. The last De Brunier in France was dragged from his ancestral home to the steps of the guillotine by Frenchmen’s hands, and the old chateau in Brittany is left a moss-grown ruin. When my father saw the hereditary foe of his country walk into Cumberland House to turn him out, they met with a bonjour [good day]; and when they parted this was the final word: ‘You are a young man, Monsieur De Brunier, but your knowledge of the country and your influence with the Indians can render us valuable assistance. If at any time you choose to take office in your old locale, you will find that faithful service will be handsomely requited.’ We kept our honour and laid down our pride. Content. Your British Queen has no more loyal subjects in all her vast dominions than her old French Canadians.”
There was a mist before Wilfred’s eyes, and his voice was low and husky. He only whispered, “I shall not forget, I never can forget to-night.”
The small hours of the morning were numbered before Gaspé opened the door of his little sleeping room, which Wilfred was to share. It was not much bigger than a closet. The bed seemed to fill it.
There was just room for Gaspé’s chest of clothes and an array of pegs. But to Wilfred it seemed a palace, in its cozy warmth. It made him think of Pe-na-Koam. He hoped she was as comfortable in the Blackfoot camp.
Gaspé was growing sleepy. One arm was round Wilfred’s neck; he roused himself to answer, “Did not you hear what the warrior with the scalps at his belt told me? She came into their camp, and they gave her food as long as she could eat it. She was too old to travel, and they left her asleep by their camp-fires.”
Up sprang Wilfred. “Whatever shall I do? I have brought away her kettle; I thought she had gone to her own people, and left it behind her for me.”
“Do!” repeated Gaspé, laughing. “Why, go to sleep old fellow; what else can we do at four o’clock in the morning? If we don’t make haste about it, we shall have no night at all.”
Gaspé was quick to follow his own advice. But the “no night” was Wilfred’s portion. There was no rest for him for thinking of Pe-na-Koam. How was she to get her breakfast? The Blackfeet might have given her food, but how could she boil a drop of water without her kettle?
At the first movement in the house he slipped out of bed and dressed himself. The fire had burned low in the great stove in the sitting-room, but when he softly opened the door of their closet it struck fairly warm. The noise he had heard was Louison coming in with a great basket of wood to build it up.
“A fire in prison is a dull affair by daylight,” remarked Wilfred. “I think I shall go for a walk—a long walk.”
“Mr. De Brunier will have something to say about that after last night’s blizzard,” returned Louison.
“Then please tell him it is my duty to go, for I am afraid an old Indian woman, who was very kind to me, was out in last night’s snow, and I must go and look for her. Will you just undo that door and let me out?”
“Not quite so fast; I have two minds about that,” answered Louison. “Better wait for Mr. De Brunier. I know I shall be wrong if I let you go off like this.”
“How can you be wrong?” retorted Wilfred. “I came to this place to warn you all there was a party of Blackfeet hidden in the reeds. Well, if I had waited, what good would it have been to you? Now I find the old squaw who made me these gloves was out in last night’s snow, and I must go and look for her, and go directly.”
“But a boy like you will never find her,” laughed Louison.
“I’ll try it,” said Wilfred doggedly.
“Was she a Blackfoot?”
“Yes.”
“Then she is safe enough in camp, depend upon it,” returned Louison.
“No, she was left behind,” persisted Wilfred.
“Then come with me,” said Louison, by no means sorry to have found a friendly reason for approaching the Blackfeet camp. “I have a little bit of scout business in hand, just to find out whether these wild fellows are moving on, or whether they mean waiting about to pay us another visit.”
Chirag was clearing away the snow in the enclosure outside. Wilfred found the kettle and the skin just where he had laid them down, inside the first shed. He called up Yula, and started by Louison’s side. Chirag was waiting to bar the gate behind them.
“Beautiful morning,” said the Canadians, vigorously rubbing their noses to keep them from freezing, and violently clapping their mittened hands together. The snow lay white and level, over hill and marsh, one sparkling sheet of silvery sheen. The edging of ice was broadening along the river, and the roar of the falls came with a thunderous boom through the all-pervading stillness around them.
The snow was already hard, as the two ran briskly forward, with Yula careering and bounding in extravagant delight.
Wilfred looked back to the little fort, with its stout wooden walls, twice the height of a man, hiding the low white house with its roof of bark, hiding everything within but the rough lookout and the tall flag-staff, for
“Ever above the topmost roof the banner of England blew.”
Wilfred was picturing the feelings with which the De Bruniers had worked on beneath it, giving the same faithful service to their foreign masters that they had to the country which had cast them off.
“It is a dirty old rag,” said Louison; “gone all to ribbons in last night’s gale. But it is good enough for a little place like this—we call it Hungry Hall. We don’t keep it open all the year round. Just now, in October, the Indians and the hunters are bringing in the produce of their summer’s hunting. We shall shut up soon, and open later again for the winter trade.”
“A dirty old rag!” repeated Wilfred. “Yes, but I am prouder of it than ever, for it means protection and safety wherever it floats. Boy as I am, I can see that.”
“Can you see something else,” asked Louison—“the crossing poles of the first wigwam? We are at the camp.”