CONQUEST
A prayer on his lips, Brochet scrambled down the ladder. A curse on his, Black Ferguson tumbled after. In the impetus of his descent the Nor'wester hit the trapdoor over the ladder. It slammed shut, and the place below was plunged in darkness except for the faint gleam which fell from above through the other square. The candlelight came down like a golden spray of phosphorescent liquid, bathing and making visible a meager space in the middle of the lower floor. It was only the square of light in the ceiling enlarged a few diameters, and the rest of the vast room where boxes, barrels, and bales were piled in rows on the floor and upon shelves on the walls remained black as pitch.
But Ferguson had no chance to go up and bring down the candle without which he had so thoughtlessly descended. His quarry was too close to escape.
"Do you find her, Father?" he called to the priest whom he could dimly see searching where the weak light shone.
"No! Nor hear her!" Brochet's voice was bitterly harsh. "If she struck these boxes, you have murdered her!"
"Aye; and if she struck the fur-bales, she is as lively as ever! Since you don't see her there, she didn't strike the boxes. She's in this cursed dark somewhere. What's more, she'll be out of it in a minute. Watch the door, Father. I'll stand by the fur-chute. It's down; and it's devilishly handy for her to slide into the water!"
Quickly he crossed the space of light and groped for the mouth of the chute. He reached it. The cool, dank river air rising through it puffed in his heated face.
"Wait a moment, Father. Wait till I strike a match!"
"In the name of Heaven, don't!" cried Brochet from the door where he was secretly trying to loose the bar. "The kegs broke when they fell. The powder's all over the floor."
Black Ferguson chuckled like a fiend. "Faint-hearted, Father? Take a lesson from the girl. Powder or no powder, we must have light!"
The sulphur match crackled on the wall. Ferguson shielded the sputtering blue flame with his hands, but even while he shielded it, the match was struck from his fingers, and he was locked in a pair of powerful arms.
"Let go, priest!" he commanded laughingly. "Where in the devil did you get such muscles?" He imagined Brochet had gripped him.
But his laugh and his voice died in the strain. He could only choke out a curse and bend to his sudden mad struggle for freedom.
Over by the door Father Brochet heard the sounds of conflict, the hard breathing, heavy trampling, smashing of boxes and barrels, crashing of overturned goods. He thought it was Desirée striving against the Nor'wester. He rushed to her aid, but the strong whirl of men's fighting bodies hurled him into a corner. Almost under his feet Desirée gave a frightened cry, and, stooping, the priest groped for her.
He gathered her in his arms. "Are you hurt, daughter? Are you hurt?"
"No, no," she assured him. "I landed on the fur-bales, and they were soft. But, God of Heaven, what is happening?"
"It must be Dunvegan—and Ferguson. And one will kill the other!"
In the dark they crouched back from the stamping feet. Not a thing was visible. They might have been in some medieval dungeon or charnel vault where monsters of old were writhing in death-grapples. Desirée was trembling all over. She clung to Brochet, her eyes straining for an unrewarded glimpse of the furious antagonists. If she could only see! That was what wracked her. The fear that invisible horror engenders shattered her supersensitive nerves. On the verge of hysteria she listened, praying for the end.
Then huge as giants in the spray of light she saw two men stagger into the central space of the floor. She saw one man's body bend as willow in the other's arms, heard it crack like a broken branch. Sweeter than any sound she had ever heard, Dunvegan's voice rang clearly.
"A candle, Brochet! For Heaven's sake, a candle! It is either his neck or his back. Pray God, his neck!"
The priest's cassock flapped up the ladder and flapped down again. Fearfully he walked with the taper and held it tight; for destruction was all around them, and the trampled powder lay on the floor like meal.
"Careful, Brochet!" warned the chief trader. "This way—this way. Ah! it's his back."
Horrible to view, with his spine doubled back like the broken blade of a jackknife, Black Ferguson was crumpled over a barrel. He looked as if he could never move or speak again, and, placing the candle carefully on a box, Father Brochet knelt hastily beside him.
"Help me, my son," he begged Dunvegan. "Raise him up. Surely he will let me shrive him."
Shrive him! They reckoned without the Nor'wester's steel spirit. He squirmed in their hands. As he saw Dunvegan's face bent over him he snarled like a trapped wolf and uttered a demon-howl.
"La Roche!" he screamed loud enough to ring from ground to blockhouse tower. "La Roche! To me, comrades! To me——"
The chief trader's palm stopped his mouth, but the mischief was done. There arose a roar of trapper shouts and Cree gutturals. The yard thundered with running feet. Brochet rushed to bar the door. Dunvegan grasped Desirée's arm and sprang to the fur-chute.
"Quick!" he ordered. "Put your feet over the rim. Now sit down. Basil has the canoe at the other end!"
He looped the rope around the girl's waist and swiftly lowered her like a bale through the wooden spout. Hands below suddenly eased his burden. The rope jerked twice, Dreaulond's signal that the descent was made, and Dunvegan pulled the hemp up again with feverish haste. The coils writhed and twisted on the floor behind him; the sweat of his climb and exertion ran rivulets on bare arms and forehead.
"You next, Brochet!" he panted.
But there was sacrifice in the priest's eye. Men with torches were all about the building. In a moment or two they would break in.
"Brochet! You next!"
"No, no, my son. Good-bye, and go. There is no time for both."
"You next, I said," roared Dunvegan. He leaped and seized the priest bodily.
"Leave me, son!" Brochet tried to throw off the rope. "Your place is with Desirée. They will not harm me."
Dunvegan whipped the cable over the priest's head and took a turn under his armpits. "Harm you! They would rend you bone from bone. Black Ferguson knows you now for an imposter. Into the chute you go!"
The building shook under the assault of the trappers and Crees. The rafters rang with Ferguson's shouts as he urged the men on. Axe-blades bit through the barred door.
The chief trader put forth his strength to steady Brochet's descent. He was much heavier than Desirée, and the brunt of the drag came just when he occupied the mouth of the chute before the rope could be eased over the pulley. As the priest's head was disappearing, he cast up his eyes and Dunvegan saw spring into them an intense horror.
"Look!" he shrieked. "Look!" and vanished down the pipe.
The chief trader threw a backward glance across his shoulder as hand over hand he paid out the rope, and the sight he glimpsed turned icy cold the hot sweat on his limbs. Black Ferguson, cripple as he was, had possessed himself of the candle and was dragging his broken body along the floor toward a heap of the trampled powder. Paralysis gripped the Nor'wester's legs so that they trailed helplessly, but by means of his tremendous strength of shoulders and arms he was wriggling his way, clutching, pulling, heaving as one in death-throes. He had the candle in his mouth, and he seemed to Dunvegan like some great, evil, fiery-tongued, crawling monster.
Outside the building all was pandemonium. Inside dwelt awful suspense. It was a moment to drive Dunvegan mad. The rope was not long enough to allow him to back up and kick the candle out of Ferguson's mouth. If he let go he would undoubtedly drown Brochet and capsize the two in the canoe. He hung on grimly, measuring the Nor'wester's progress by glancing back repeatedly, striving to pay out the cable faster than the dragon-like thing could crawl.
Foot by foot he fed the rope. As it sagged loose, Black Ferguson had gained his goal. His hand snatched the candle from his teeth and reached out to lay wick to the granules.
When he saw the Nor'wester's arm go out, Dunvegan dived headforemost down the chute. Like an otter he slid, and cried a warning as he shot down. Barely in time did Basil catch it. A backward sweep of his paddle, and a whizzing body splashed at his bow.
And simultaneous with the splash the cliffs rocked and thundered. Like a volcano the hill vomited red fire through the pitchy night. In a blotch of flame La Roche flew heavenward. A rain of wreckage fell upon the water all around the chief trader.
"Mon Dieu, camarade, dive!" shouted Dreaulond, backing water.
He dove and came up again in the center of the river. There the courier whirled the stern of the canoe into his grasp, and, unhurt, Dunvegan raised himself over it. The last barrier between them gone, Desirée crouched in his dripping arms.
Yet only an instant might heart beat against heart! Dunvegan thrust his legs under the stern thwart and caught up a paddle.
"Drive, Basil," he urged. "Drive hard! I don't think there's a living soul left, but we can't take any chances."
In dashed the blades, but hardly had they dipped a dozen strokes when a string of lights starred the river round the first bend.
Dreaulond swore softly. "Nor'westers, ba gosh! Some been away!"
"Hug the shore," Dunvegan whispered. "We may slip past them without their seeing us in this fog."
Paddling in silence, they worked their craft close against the rocky wall of the farther shore. Prey to mingled hope and fear, the four crouched low in the gunwales. The lights were still coming in file, and in a moment the hiding ones could see a fleet of canoes with torches in the bows. Swiftly the birch-barks skimmed the bloody streaks the torches cast on the black water. They changed their course slightly, and the leading one forged along within a few yards of Dunvegan's craft.
Discovery seemed certain. The chief trader whispered to Basil and felt for his weapons in the canoe bottom. Voices of the oncoming men struck sharp and clear through the moist air.
"It seemed like an earthquake!" someone was saying.
Instantly Dunvegan knew the voice—the Factor's! He dropped his weapons.
"Earthquake it sure was," a voice replied. "And the fort was on top of it. Your men have saved you the trouble of a siege, Macleod. They sure got to the powder!"
The pulses of the four leaped gladly. Now in the nebulous torch-glare they could make out the faces and figures in the foremost craft. There in the bow was Wahbiscaw, and behind him Malcolm Macleod. Amidships Dunvegan saw Granger, the sandy-haired deputy he had met on Lake Lemeau and again at Kabeke Bluffs. Aft was his swarthy, black-bearded companion, Garfield. In his place as steersman squatted wise old Maskwa.
The keen-visaged Granger was casting piercing looks on all sides as they plunged on. He timed his paddle strokes with an oft-repeated phrase.
"They got to the powder; they sure did!"
And Garfield's white teeth split his black beard. "Yes, and where in thunder are they now?"
"Here," laughed Dunvegan, and from the gloom drove alongside them. "Here. Keep down those guns!"
Granger, ever quick to defend, lowered his arms. "By the hinges of hell!" he exclaimed. "You sneaked? You got to it and sneaked? Oh, what a jolt! Oh, Lord, what a jolt!"
All around the other canoes glided up. The chief trader looked on the faces of the Oxford House and Brondel men. The haggard, strained look in their eyes told of paddling night and day from Fort Brondel. And they had nearly made it! Dunvegan thanked God they hadn't.
As for the Hudson's Bay forces, they stared at the four in the canoe as at people escaped from the Pit. But the Factor stirred them from immobility.
"Ashore!" he ordered. "Ashore! Search the hill!"
"I'm afraid there's nothing to be found," observed Dunvegan, "except perhaps a few wretches to be put out of their misery. I guess there were tons of powder."
"How'd it happen?" Macleod demanded, as side by side their two canoes nosed in to shore through the channel where the watergate was blown to atoms.
"Ask Brochet. He was there from the first. He can tell you more than I."
So between Macleod and Granger, as they climbed the twisting path cut through rock to the landing by the watergate, the priest walked, outlining what had taken place. Behind them, with Dunvegan and Garfield, toiled Desirée. She would not be left alone below. Maskwa and Wahbiscaw had gone ahead with the rest of the Hudson's Bay men.
As they reached the top, Brochet finished his brief account of the affair in the fur-house.
The Factor took it in silence. Not so Granger!
"The game old devil!" he cried. "He sure kept his nerve to the last. But he has made himself thunderin' hard to identify. Eh, Macleod? I guess you can't swear to his identity now!"
"You should have arrested him as soon as you placed him at La Roche," the Factor answered. "And found me afterwards."
"Don't talk nonsense! We'd look fine playing a single-handed game like that, wouldn't we? It had to be worked a different way. You both had assumed names. We didn't know which was which. So we had to nail our plan in the middle and let it swing at both ends. You see how it swung? If we had to take you, the Northwest Company would fight for us. If we had to take Ferguson, the Hudson's Bay Company sure was at our backs! Good Lord—what's here? A quarry?"
A quarry indeed it looked, a huge, black cave amid the rocks, the heart of the granite headland blown out by a titanic blast. They stood on the edge of the slope, gazing at the torches of the Hudson's Bay men as they swarmed like gnomes in the bowels of the pit. They clustered and spread and crawled here and there, round the sides of the chasm, up over its lips, where ghostly as bale-fires little heaps of wreckage smoldered and flamed.
Then the reluctant lights came back one by one, and the tale of the bearers ran the same.
"Nothing!"
"Not a body!"
"Not a limb!"
Like a funeral bell Brochet's voice broke the grim silence. "Gone? All gone? And unshriven! God rest their souls." He knelt on the rocks.
While he muttered a prayer, Maskwa strode out of the dark. He had no torch, but he held something in his hands. Startled, the others craned and peered. A dozen torches flashed over the Ojibway, and in his arms the crimson light played upon a crumpled form.
"He breathes, Strong Father!"
Dunvegan sprang to one side of the burden, Granger to his other. As they placed the mangled figure on the ground the head came by chance upon the priest's knees.
"Ferguson!" Brochet whispered, awed. For though limbs and body were crushed and torn, the face remained unmarred.
"Aye, and a job for you," murmured Dunvegan.
But Granger had leaped at the name, dragging Macleod by the arm.
"Look!" he urged. "Look! Will you swear to him?"
The red glare bathed the white face. The Factor's eyes focused on the features and grew full of terrible light and would not come away.
"It's—it's—Funster," he choked.
Dunvegan saw his right hand clench and clutch the air. He held an imaginary weapon. The old scar was ripped from his heart. He was the primeval man, red with rage, thirsting for revenge, and baited blind because vengeance had been torn from his grasp.
And as if under the electric prick of his tense words the Nor'wester stirred. He muttered once and opened his eyelids. Straight up into Macleod's awful face he stared, and his eyes suddenly gleamed with recognition.
"My son—my boy?" demanded the Factor hoarsely.
The Nor'wester's lips strove a little and parted.
"Gaspard!" he groaned with his last breath.