TIDINGS OF WAR
As an auspicious omen on Kamattawa Indian summer came down with its fragrant sigh and its transient flash of yellow radiance. Then the winds fell strangely mute. Some unseen magic permeated the calm. Earth and air lay breathless with the prophecy of change.
A little cold caress on his tanned cheek, a tang on his lips, a familiar tingle in his sinews foretold the prophecy's fulfillment to Baptiste Verenne when he sauntered in one night from his trail-blazing. He inspected the sullen sky a moment and shook his head as he strode through the gates to the blockhouse.
"Wintaire!" he announced briefly to Dunvegan. "She be comin' vite on de nord wind, M'sieu'."
The chief trader tilted his browned face skyward and clutched the air tentatively to get the feel of the weather.
"Not far off! Not far off, Baptiste," he calculated. "It may close in any night, and we'll see a white world when we wake of a morning."
Verenne's arm slanted, pointing over the palisades.
"See dat?" he cried.
A circling wind, the first of many days, eddied the leaves lying against the stockade, piled them in a wreath thirty feet high in the air with gentle motion peculiarly distinctive to a close observer, then ruthlessly disintegrated the whole.
"An dat?" Baptiste added.
A whizzing phalanx of wild geese blurred the distant horizon, bored like a rocket from sky to sky, and pierced the invisible distance.
"W'en dey fly dat way," averred Baptiste, "de wintaire right on dere tails! She be come toute suite, M'sieu'."
And it did! A greasy wrack of clouds masked the sunset. The north wind blew out of the Arctic circle with a humming like vibrating wires. The wraith of desolation went eerily shrieking round and round. Then out of inky space the snow came down, driving fiercely on a forty-mile gale to smother the gauntness of the rugged forest in a swirl of white. For thirty-six hours the frozen flakes pelted the stout stockades. The snow lay in foamy levels in the timber, ten feet deep in the hollows, and wind-packed to tremendous hardness on the ice-bound lakes and rivers.
The days became less strenuous now in Fort Kamattawa. The nights grew long. The Hudson's Bay men attended to their winter needs and equipments, while the post Indians fashioned snowshoes with native quickness and skill.
There came a brief, cold, sleety rain which settled the drifts and the subsequent hard frosts formed a crust that made excellent tripping on the raquettes. The first tripper over the trail was Basil Dreaulond carrying Company dispatches on his way to Nelson House. He lurched in one night in the midst of a whistling storm with his dog team and a halfbreed assistant. The world outside the Fort was a shrieking maelstrom of snow and cutting blasts. Inside the men sat close together about the roaring fireplace.
So blinding was the tempest that Kamattawa's sentinel in the blockhouse tower could see nothing from his frosted windows and did not mark the courier's approach till Basil and the breed were hammering upon the closed gates with their rifle-butts. Eugene Demorel slid back the shutter in the watchtower and leaned out, his gun trained on the entrance.
"De password," he bellowed. "Who comes dere?"
"Diable tak' de password," roared Basil who was half frozen. "I'm Dreaulond. Open dis gate queeck!"
On the inferno of the elements his words puffed up like faint echoes, but Eugene Demorel knew the courier's tone. The stockade opened for a second, a raging snowgap in the draught. Basil stumbled into the log store.
"Holá, camarade," they greeted joyously. "How do you like the weather?"
"Mauvais," groaned Dreaulond, leaning toward the flames. "Saprie, but she be cold!"
Dunvegan took the papers Macleod had sent to him and read them. They concerned ordinary matters of fort routine and gave him no news of the home post.
"How is everything at Oxford House, Basil?" he inquired with ill-concealed eagerness.
"Everyt'ing be quiet," returned the courier. "De Nor'westaires don' move mooch."
His eyes, however, held a hint of private information, and the chief trader did not miss the glance.
"Come to the trading room when you get warmed, Dreaulond," he requested. "I'd like to see you."
"Oui," assented Basil. "W'en I get dis cold out ma bones."
Dunvegan disappeared. The Hudson's Bay men volleyed their questions at Dreaulond. They were ravenous for word of their kind from whom the busy months had cut them off. Between questions he slowly revolved before the fireplace, warming his chest, scorching his back, sucking the heat into his chilled marrow.
"Any news of the Factor's daughter?" Connear asked him.
"Non!" Basil frowned and added: "She's wit' Black Ferguson, I bet on dat. She got de spirit of her père. She'd go to La Roche an' mak' heem geeve her sheltaire."
"And Running Wolf gone over to him, too. We found that out. That whelp Three Feathers made it hot enough for us at Du Loup." Connear spat copiously into the snarling birch logs and grinned at the remembrance of the fight. "How's the English clerk?" he asked after a minute. "Drinkin' any?"
"Dey don' geeve heem any chance," replied Dreaulond. "Dat's de ordaire from hees parents. An' we don't want drunk mans on de post at dis taim of de great dangaire."
In Basil's tone they discovered an unwonted gravity, as if he had knowledge of new developments which he was keeping from them.
"What's up?" asked Pete, always interested in secrets. "If there's anything on foot, let us have it, for it's got to be bloomin' dull here. I miss my grog. I'd give a month's pay for a good glass now."
"I don't know anyt'ing new," the courier returned. "Eef you want to grog, go ovaire to de Nor'westaire. Dey drink her pretty free."
"Yes. Black Ferguson swears by it."
"Dis Black Ferguson wan devil," declared Dreaulond, passing into the trading room. "Now he be run after Desirée Lazard, but she not be look at heem!"
From his desk Dunvegan glanced steadily at the courier.
"No letter, Basil?" He bit his lip on the question.
"Non," replied his friend. "I'm sorry, me."
"Something's wrong," blurted the chief trader. "Tell me what it is. Has the Nor'wester had speech with Desirée?" Dunvegan's voice was strained, his fingers clenched white on the wood of his desk.
"Not dat," Basil explained awkwardly. "De dangaire is in anoder quartaire! Desirée an' dis Edwin Glyndon dey togedder mooch—ver' mooch. All de autumn taim dey canoe, dey walk, dey spik alone. Dat be not ma beezness! Vraiment dat none of ma affair. Mais, I t'ink you want know, mebbe, an' I be tell you w'at I see. Dey togedder all de taim!"
Dreaulond stepped to the door. His actions like his sentences were brief and full of significance. The chief trader's voice followed him, an odd, low tone the courier had never heard him use.
"Thank you, Basil," was his only comment. "Thank you, for that information."
Alone, he strode immediately into the darkness of his sleeping apartment where he walked the floor, brooding gloomily. Dawn heard his footsteps still falling.
Three days after Dreaulond's departure for Nelson House Maskwa, the swiftest fort runner in the service, dashed over the bluffs, springing madly on his long, webbed running shoes. He had out-distanced the trio of breeds following with three dog teams, and he pushed dispatches of importance into Dunvegan's hands.
"Half our number leave to-morrow for Oxford House," the chief trader announced to his retainers as he read. "Men from two of the Nor'west posts, Brondel and Dumarge, have sacked our fur trains from the Shamattawa and the Wokattiwagan. The Factor will go to raze Fort Dumarge. We outfit at Oxford House and move against Fort Brondel."
A cheer hit the rafters. Unprecedented activity followed. The breeds blew in with the exhausted giddés. Recuperation came to these Company dogs with the night's rest, and into the bitter dawn they were haled. The cold struck nippingly at bare fingers that loaded arms and travelling necessities on the sledges, lashed the moosehide covers over the provender, and tied the stubborn babiche knots. Likewise the frost squeezed the hands that harnessed the dogs. The giddés themselves whined and stirred uneasily in the cold. They were eager for the rush that would make their blood run warm.
Those of the Fort who were to stay behind helped in the work. Long practice and consummate skill accomplished starting preparations in the shortest possible time. The dog teams sprang through the gateway at the release, and a shout of farewell thundered.
"Bonheur, camarades!" was the word. "A Dieu! A Dieu!"
"Pour Shamattawa! Pour Wokattiwagan!" rang the responses from the loyal Hudson's Bay men.
"Marche! Marche!" called the breeds to the giddés, and the cavalcade swung over the long trail.