“Why,” he demanded, “did you do that?” He pointed to the miniature lodge.
Blaise looked puzzled. “It is the Ojibwa custom.”
“Father was not an Ojibwa. He was a white man and should have been buried like a white man and a Christian,” Hugh burst out.
Blaise drew himself up with a dignity strange in so young a lad. “He was buried like a Christian,” he replied quietly. “Look.” He pointed to the rude cross set up in front of the opening to the shelter, instead of the pole, with offerings and trophies hung upon it, usually placed beside Ojibwa graves. “The good father absolved him and read the burial service over him,” the lad went on, “and I placed the cross there. Then the friends of my mother covered the spot according to the Ojibwa custom. Our father was an Ojibwa by adoption and it was right they should do that. Now no Ojibwa will ever disturb that spot.”
Hugh’s anger had been cooling. After all, his father had thrown in his lot with the Indians and they had meant to honor him. At least he had received Christian burial, and it was something to know that his grave would not be disturbed. In silence Hugh turned away. He could not quite bring himself to apologize for his hasty words.
The relations between the half-brothers were more than ordinarily cool the rest of that day. Blaise, travelling overland by a trail he knew, went to the Grand Portage Bay in quest of supplies. Even before the formation of the Northwest Company, the bay had been a favorite stopping place, first for the French, and then for the English traders who followed the Pigeon River route to the country west of the lake. An old Indian trail led from the bay to a spot on the river above the falls and rapids that make its lower course unnavigable. Gitchi Onegam Kaministigoya the Indians had called the trail and the bay, “the great carrying place of the river that is hard to navigate.” Early in the history of the fur trade, the white traders began to use that trail, portaging their goods some nine miles from the bay to the river and bringing the bales of furs back over the same route.
Since the Old Northwest Company had removed its headquarters to Thunder Bay and had practically abandoned the Pigeon River route for the Kaministikwia, Grand Portage was not so busy a place, but the Old Company still maintained a post at the partly deserted fort on the north shore of the bay. On the west side the chief post and headquarters of the New Company also remained open for business. Blaise visited both posts, only to find that, as the winter’s supplies were almost exhausted and no one knew when fresh stores would arrive, nothing could be spared.
Anxious to avoid questions, Hugh had not accompanied Blaise. He occupied himself with fishing from the canoe, and caught one lake trout of about three pounds weight. Making a grill of willow twigs resting on stones over the coals, he had the trout ready to broil when Blaise returned. The common way of cooking fish among both the Indians and white men of the woods was to boil them, but Hugh, recently from the civilized world, preferred his broiled, baked or fried.
Blaise, after one mouthful, deigned to approve his elder brother’s cooking. “It is good,” he said. “I have not eaten fish so cooked since I ate it on Fridays in school at Quebec.”
Neither lad had anything more to say during the meal or for some time afterwards. Finally Blaise put his hand in the leather pouch he wore at his belt, drew out something and handed it to Hugh. The latter unwrapped the bit of soft doeskin and found his father’s gold seal ring. He glanced quickly up at Blaise.