“What can he do to me? I have a right to be here.”
“Perhaps, but when the Governor is angry, he does not think of the rights of others. You would have to go anyway, tied in a cart as a prisoner, or he would shut you up in the fort, or send you out of the Colony.”
“Where could he send me except to Pembina?” Walter questioned, still unconvinced.
“To Norway House,—to be taken to Fort York in the spring and sent back to Europe in a ship,” was the startling reply. “Oh, yes, as Governor of the Colony, he could do all that.”
“But surely he wouldn’t do it, for such a little thing?”
“Governor ‘Sauterelle’ does not think it a little thing when he is disobeyed. He is not gentle to one who opposes his will. No, no, Walter, you must not think of it. At Pembina you will be far enough away to do as you please, but not here. Come, you shall stay at my home, and we will find a place for your friends and make all ready for them. It won’t be long until they join you.”
Reluctantly Walter yielded to the Canadian boy’s advice. He did not want to yield, but, if what Louis said of the Governor was true, the risk of disobedience was too great. He himself had seen enough already of Alexander McDonnell to realize that he was not the kind of man to be lenient with anyone who disobeyed his orders. So the Swiss boy set about getting his own scanty belongings ready for the journey. He had taken for granted that the party would travel by boat, but he had returned to the camp on the river bank to find his companions’ baggage being loaded into carts.
Clumsy looking things were those carts,—a box body and two great wheels at least five feet tall, with strong spokes, thick hubs, and wooden rims three inches wide and without metal tires. Between the shafts, which were straight, heavy beams, a small, shaggy, sinewy pony, harnessed with rawhide straps, stood with lowered head and tail and an air of dejection or sleepy indifference.
“What queer vehicles,” Walter exclaimed. “Are we to travel overland?”
“Yes, the journey is much shorter that way. By water, following the bends of the river, is almost twice as far. You never saw carts like these before? No, I think that is true. The bois brulés of the Red River invented this sort of cart. It is made all of wood, not a bit of metal anywhere. Every man makes his own cart. All the tools he needs are an axe, a saw, and an auger or an Indian drill. I have a cart at home I made myself, and it is a good one. In this country you must make things for yourself or you have nothing.”