François at The Landing
As Mooswa tramped down the wide roadbed of frozen river, François, up at The Landing, was doing very much as the Bull Moose had feared.
He had weathered the blizzard, lying huddled up with his dogs in the shelter of a cut-bank, not daring to stir even for food till the fury of the icy blast had passed. He had even come to The Landing with a full resolve to go back immediately after he had secured his outfit; alas! for the carrying out of it, he was but an easily influenced Half-breed. At The Landing were several of his own kind down from Little Slave Lake with the first kill of Winter fur. With these the possession of money or goods always meant an opportunity for gambling.
François had a “debt credit” at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store equal to the value of his needs; any Trapper who has kept his slate clean in the Company’s accounts can usually get credit for a small outfit.
When the Half-breed had completed his purchase, the Factor tossed him a large plug of smoking tobacco, which was the usual terminal act of a deal in goods in any of the Company’s posts.
François filled his pipe, sat down by the hot box-stove with its roaring fire of dry Poplar-wood, and smoked, and spat, and dilated upon the severity of the blizzard, and regaled the other occupants of the Trading Post with stories of Wolverine’s depredations. Suddenly he ceased speaking, held the pipe in his hand hesitatingly, and straightened his head up in a listening attitude. The deep, sonorous, monotonous “tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum” of a gambling outfit’s drum-music came sleepily to his acute listening ear. It was like a blast from the huntsman’s horn to a fox-hound; it tingled in his blood, and sent a longing creeping through his veins.
“There goes that Nichie outfit from Slave Lake again,” cried the Factor, angrily. “They’ve gambled for three nights; if the police were here I’d have a stop put to it.”
François tried to close his ears to the coaxing, throbbing, skin-covered tambourine the gambling party’s music-maker was hammering that still, frosty night; but his hearing only became acuter, for it centred more and more on the thing he was trying to keep from his mind. Even the “Huh, huh!—huh, huh!—huh, huh!—huh, huh!” of the half-dozen Indians who sat about a blazing camp-fire, and rocked their bodies and swayed their arms in rhythmic time, came to him with malevolent fascination.
“I t’ink me I go sleep,” François said, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and putting it in his bead-worked deerskin fire-bag.
“You’d better pull out sharp in the morning,” commanded the Factor; “young McGregor will be running short of grub before you get back.”
“I roun’ up ever’ t’ing to-night,” returned François, “an’ hit de trail firs’ t’ing in de mornin’, soor. I make me de S’ack in t’ree day.”
Outside, the “Tum-tum” called to him; the “Huh, huh!” pleaded with him like the voice of a siren. He would go and sit by their fire just for a little, the Breed reasoned—not play! for more than once he had been stripped to his very shirt when luck set against him. True, other times he had accumulated furs, and dogs, and guns, even the caribou-skin coats, and Cow-boy hats—fine valuable hats worth ten dollars a piece,—when fortune smiled and he had guessed unerringly in which hand his opponent-player had hidden the cartridge shell, or whatever other token they used.
“Huh-huh! François! Huh, Boy—Welcome!” went round the circle of squatting figures when the Half-breed stood amongst them. The musician stopped beating his instrument; solemnly each player and onlooker held out a hand and gave François one sharp jerk of greeting. Two rows of men sat facing each other, a big blanket over their knees; room was made for the new arrival.
“S’pose I not gamble to-night me,” said François, hesitatingly.
They laughed in astonishment—doubtingly.
“S’pose you ’fraid you lose, Man-who-saves-his-money,” cried a Saltaux Indian, disdainfully.
Now a Breed or an Indian must not be accused of being afraid of anything; if he be, and submit to it, he is undone for all time. Half their bravery is due to this same moral cowardice. François hesitated, and the others, ignoring him, drew the blanket over their knees; the player secreted the tokens, and drawing forth his hands crossed his arms, always waving them in rhythmic time to the tum-tum. Then the Man-who-guesses in the opposite party indicated with his fingers where he thought the tokens were hidden.
It wasn’t in human blood to stand out against this thing—not generations of gambler blood, and François cried, half fiercely: “Make room, Brothers! We’ll see who’s afraid.”
That was the beginning. In the end, which came toward daylight, François had neither grub-stake, nor rifle, nor train-dogs. Time after time he took in exchange for some asset a little bundle of Red-willow counter sticks; time after time the little sticks, some long and some short, dwindled until they were all gone. The evil fate that had been his down at the trapping stuck to him in gambling.
Broken, and half numbed by loss of sleep and a sense of impending disaster, brought on by his despoiled condition, François crawled off to a friend’s tepee, laid down like a train-dog, and fell asleep.