“We are willing to risk that,” Ronald answered promptly. “We’re not fearing a little danger and hardship, if there is chance of reaching the island with the sands of gold.”
“It is not that we fear to go,” put in Jean, “but how can we find an opportunity? We cannot ask for leave from the fleet, for then we must tell our purpose, and that would never do.”
“No,” Ronald agreed, “we must be keeping our plans secret, so we may be the first to land. Then the gold will be ours by right of discovery. ’Tis not likely we could obtain leave anyway, if we asked for it, whatever our purpose, and——”
He was interrupted by the Indian, who made a gesture of silence. Glancing about, the boys saw several men in the scarlet caps and sashes of canoemen, approaching along the shore. Nangotook rose from the log.
“To-morrow, after the sun has gone to rest, I will speak to my brothers again,” he said in a low voice. “Let them be at this spot.” Without waiting for a reply, he slipped swiftly and silently away among the trees.
Before the canoemen drew near enough to speak to them, the boys were making their way towards the post. They kept back from the shore, in the dusk of the woods, that they might not have to encounter the newcomers, who appeared to be strangers to them.
Jean Havard and Ronald Kennedy had come to the Grande Portage, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, as canoemen in the service of the Northwest Fur Company. Ronald’s uncle was a partner in the Company, and the boy had been ambitious to follow the life of the fur-trader. Both he and Jean had found the long trip from the Sault interesting and well worth while, in spite of its hardships and strenuous toil. They were outdoor lads, with a plentiful share of the hardihood and adventurous spirit of the outdoor men of their time. Since reaching the Portage, however, they had begun to question whether they really wished to make fur-trading their life-work. Ronald, especially, an honest, straightforward Scot with a strong sense of fair play, had been sickened and roused to indignation by many of the tales told by men from the north and west who had come to the Portage with their loads of furs. It seemed to the boy that most of the traders cared for nothing but gain and were far from honest in their methods. They boasted of giving liquor to the Indians, stealing their wits away, and obtaining their furs, the earnings of a whole winter’s work and hardship, for next to nothing. To the boys this seemed a miserable, heartless way of doing business. Both were eager for the life of the explorer. They longed to push through the wilderness and see strange lands, but the regular work of the fur-trader, carried on as it was by most of these men, had lost its attractiveness.
Ronald, as well as Jean, was poor and had his own way to make. He knew that his uncle had planned to get him into the Northwest Company’s permanent service. From a practical point of view the opportunity would be a good one. He would have a chance to advance. He might even become some day a member of the Company, and make a fortune. But he hated the idea of being compelled to use the methods which seemed a matter of course to most of the “northmen”. He had been vigorously expressing his disgust with the whole sordid business, when Nangotook had interrupted him. The Indian had made it plain that he had been listening to the boy’s remarks and had approved of them.
The Ojibwa’s extraordinary proposition had put the rights and wrongs of the fur trade quite out of the two lads’ heads for the time being. They were fired with a desire to go in quest of the wonderful island. It might be a mere myth indeed, but they were willing to believe that it was not. Nangotook’s grandfather had seen it, and Jean declared that he had never known Nangotook to lie. In those days, even in the last decade of the eighteenth century, very little was known about the islands of Lake Superior. The great central expanse of the lake was unexplored. Who could tell what wonders it might contain?