The Gun-Brand

by James B. Hendryx

These two Indians knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they had stood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vast wilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They had slept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faced death in a hundred guises, and they loved him as men love their God. They had followed him during the lean years when, contrary to the wishes of his father, the stern-eyed factor at Fort Norman, he had refused the offers of the company and devoted his time, winter and summer, to the exploration of rivers and lakes, rock ridges and mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief.

But, as the canoe forged northward, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack held their peace, and when they arrived at the fort, MacNair growled an order, and sought his cabin beside the wall of the stockade.

A half hour later, when the Indians had gathered in response to the hurried word of Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack, MacNair stepped from his cabin and addressed them in their own language, or rather in the jargon—the compromise language of the North—by means of which the minds of white men and Indians meet on common ground. He warned them against Pierre Lapierre, the kultus breed of whom most of them already knew, and he told them of the girl and her school at the mouth of the Yellow Knife. And then, in no uncertain terms, he commanded them to have nothing whatever to do with the school, nor with Lapierre. Whereupon, Sotenah, a leader among the young men, arose, and after a long and flowery harangue in which he lauded and extolled the wisdom of MacNair and the benefits and advantages that accrued to the Indians by reason of his patronage, vociferously counselled a summary descent upon the fort of the Mesahchee Kloochman.

The proclamation was received with loud acclaim, and it was with no little difficulty that MacNair succeeded in quieting the turbulence and restoring order. After which he rebuked Sotenah severely and laid threat upon the Indians that if so much as a hair of the white kloochman was harmed he would kill, with his own hand, the man who wrought the harm.

As for Pierre Lapierre and his band, they must be crushed and driven out of the land of the lakes and the rivers, but the time was not yet. He, MacNair, would tell them when to strike, and only if Lapierre's Indians were found prowling about the vicinity of Snare Lake were they to be molested.

The Indians dispersed and, slinging a rifle over his shoulder, MacNair swung off alone into the bush.

Bob MacNair knew the North; knew its lakes and its rivers, its forests and its treeless barrens. He knew its hardships, dangers and limitations, and he knew its gentler moods, its compensations, and its possibilities. Also, he knew its people, its savage primitive children who call it home, and its invaders—good and bad, and worse than bad. The men who infest the last frontier, pushing always northward for barter, or for the saving of souls.

He understood Pierre Lapierre, his motives and his methods. But the girl he did not understand, and her presence on the Yellow Knife disturbed him not a little. Had chance thrown her into the clutches of Lapierre? And had the man set about deliberately to use her school as an excuse for the establishment of a trading-post within easy reach of his Indians? MacNair was inclined to believe so—and the matter caused him grave concern. He foresaw trouble ahead, and a trouble that might easily involve the girl who, he felt, was entirely innocent of wrongdoing.

His jaw clamped hard as he swung on and on through the scrub. He had no particular objective, a problem faced him and, where other men would have sat down to work its solution, he walked.

In many things was Bob MacNair different from other men. Just and stern beyond his years, with a sternness that was firmness rather than severity; slow to anger, but once his anger was fairly aroused terrible in meting out his vengeance. Yet, withal, possessed of an understanding and a depth of sympathy, entirely unsuspected by himself, but which enshrined him in the hearts of his Indians, who, in all the world were the men and women who knew him.