CHAPTER I
THE BREED OF THE NORTH
Before Basil Dreaulond, the Hudson's Bay Company's courier, had won half the mile-long Nisgowan portage, the familiar noise of men toiling in pack-harness reached his ears. He stopped automatically and trained his hearing in mechanical analysis of the sound. This power had grown within him with every successive year of his wilderness life, and at once he was aware that a party of considerable size was packing across the boulder-strewn strip of woodland separating Kinistina Creek from Lac Du Longe.
The knowledge gave a wonderful quickness to the courier's rigid, listening figure. Swinging the canoe from his bulky shoulders, he hid it swiftly in the tamarack thicket which skirted the blazed passage. The tump-line was as suddenly slipped from his sweating forehead, and the pack-sack vanished likewise. Then Dreaulond himself disappeared with a spring into the green growth like a grouse seeking tangled cover. From the place of concealment sounded a metallic clink as he made ready his weapons against the chance of discovery.
The voyageur was doubtful whether the advancing men were from any of the Hudson's Bay forts. They might well belong to some of the Northwest Fur Company's posts. If this were the case, Basil knew it would not be conducive to his own safety or, what was more important, to the welfare of the dispatches he carried to encounter single-handed a body of Nor'westers. He made for his convenience a peep-hole among the pungent boughs and scrutinized the axe-hewn path where one had to stagger knee-deep among flinty rock fragments, spear-like stumps, and a chaotic jumble of logs.
Stooping to their burdens of canoes, dunnage, and arms, they came, thick-set giants with the knotted muscle, the clear vision, and the healthy skin that the strenuous northland life bestows. While they approached slowly, footing arduously, almost painfully, every step of the trying way and guarding against slips which meant fractures or six-month bruises, Dreaulond caught mingling gleams of color about their attire. As these bright glints took on definition and were resolved into sashes and leggings of red and blue, the hiding courier made out the dress of his own Company's men. The cover, now no longer necessary, was brushed aside for a better view. In the lead he recognized the square shoulders and mighty breadth of Bruce Dunvegan from Oxford House, a man of superior education and chief trader to Malcolm Macleod, the Factor.
When Dunvegan with his hardy brigade of voyageurs came abreast the courier's shelter, Dreaulond was seized with a sudden spirit of humor, and launched a long-drawn, far-carrying cry.
"Vive le Nor'westaire!" he bellowed.
As automatons, actuated by a single controlling spring, the men dropped whatever they bore and leaped to shelter behind perpendicular rocks, huge logs, or bullet-proof stumps, only the ends of their rifles showing grim and suggestive in silent menace. The discipline of defense which fell upon them naturally without preconcerted thought, without volition, was pleasing to a man who loved his Company's interests as did Dreaulond. His eyes sparkled with satisfaction, although he was minded to keep up the artifice a little longer.
"La Roche! Pour La Roche!" he shouted, using the watchword of the Nor'westers, the customary warning of dire and imminent trouble for Hudson's Bay followers. While Basil raised the enemy's alarm, he rolled quickly behind a jutting boulder, thereby protecting himself from any serious consequences that might follow his daring joke.