CHAPTER XIV
A Hudson’s Bay Fort.—It comes at last.—News from the outside world.—Tame and wild Savages.—Lac Clair.—A treacherous deed.—Harper.
The term “Fort” which so frequently occurs in these pages may perhaps convey an erroneous impression to the reader’s mind. An imposing array of rampart and bastion, a loop-holed wall or formidable fortalice may arise before his mind’s eye as he reads the oft-recurring word. Built generally upon the lower bank of a large river or lake, but sometimes perched upon the loftier outer bank, stands the Hudson’s Bay Fort. A square palisade, ten to twenty feet high, surrounds the buildings; in the prairie region this defence is stout and lofty, but in the wooded country it is frequently dispensed with altogether.
Inside the stockade some half-dozen houses are grouped together in square or oblong form. The house of the Bourgeois and Clerks, the store wherein are kept the blankets, coloured cloths, guns, ammunition, bright handkerchiefs, ribbons, beads, &c., the staple commodities of the Indian trade; another store for furs and peltries, a building from the beams of which hang myriads of skins worth many a gold piece in the marts of far-away London city;—martens and minks, and dark otters, fishers and black foxes, to say nothing of bears and beavers, and a host of less valuable furs. Then came the houses of the men.
Lounging at the gate, or on the shore in front, one sees a half-breed in tasselated cap, or a group of Indians in blanket robes or dirty-white capôtes; everybody is smoking; the pointed poles of a wigwam or two rise on either side of the outer palisades, and over all there is the tapering flag-staff. A horse is in the distant river meadow. Around the great silent hills stand bare, or fringed with jagged pine tops, and some few hundred yards away on either side, a rude cross or wooden railing blown over by the tempest, discoloured by rain or snow-drift, marks the lonely resting-place of the dead.
Wild, desolate and remote are these isolated trading spots, yet it is difficult to describe the feelings with which one beholds them across some ice-bound lake, or silent river as the dog trains wind slowly amidst the snow. Coming in from the wilderness, from the wrack of tempest, and the bitter cold, wearied with long marches, footsore or frozen, one looks upon the wooden house as some palace of rest and contentment.
I doubt if it be possible to know more acute comfort, for its measure is exactly the measure of that other extremity of discomfort which excessive cold and hardship have carried with them. Nor does that feeling of home and contentment lose aught for want of a welcome at the threshold of the lonely resting-place. Nothing is held too good for the wayfarer; the best bed and the best supper are his. He has, perhaps, brought letters or messages from long absent friends, or he comes with news of the outside world; but be he the bearer of such things, or only the chance carrier of his own fortunes, he is still a welcome visitor to the Hudson’s Bay Fort.
Three days passed away in rest, peace, and plenty. It was nearing the time when another start would be necessary, for after all, this Athabascan Fort was scarce a half-way house in my winter journey. The question of departure was not of itself of consequence, but the prospect of leaving for a long sojourn in deeper solitudes, without one word of news from the outside world, without that winter packet to which we had all looked so long, was something more than a mere disappointment.
All this time we had been travelling in advance of the winter packet, and as our track left a smooth road for whatever might succeed us, we reckoned upon being overtaken at some point of the journey by the faster travelling express. Such had not been the case, and now three days had passed since our arrival without a sign of an in-coming dog-train darkening the expanse of the frozen lake.
The morning of the 9th of March, however, brought a change. Far away in the hazy drift and “poudre” which hung low upon the surface of the lake, the figures of two men and one sled of dogs became faintly visible. Was it only Antoine Tarungeau, a solitary “Freeman” from the Quatre Fourche, going like a good Christian to his prayers at the French Mission? Or was it the much-wished-for packet?