Brothers of Peril: A Story of old Newfoundland

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

By the merest chance Black Feather and his companion happened upon the place where the baronet had first broken through the melting crust. With but little effort they found where he had rested and taken up his journey again. Farther on, the faintness of the trail put an edge to their determination to find the unfortunate gentleman. It was a challenge to their woodcraft, and they accepted it eagerly. But within two hours of finding the marks, they lost them again. They ranged wide; and at last Black Feather discovered a footprint in a little pad of snow beside a stunted spruce. In several places the branches of the tree showed where the snow had been broken away, as if by a man's hand. It was enough to keep them to the quest.

Not in the next day, but in the early morning after that, the two Beothics happened upon a sheltered valley and a snow-cleared space, with a fire-stone in the middle of it, where a lodge had lately stood. As for signs of blood, there were none. Snow had been deftly spread and trampled over it. All around the so evident site of a human habitation the hard crust gleamed unbroken, save for a little path that ran down to a hole in the ice of the stream. After considering the place, and shaking their heads, the two ate the last of the food they had in their pouches and turned their feet back to the fort. They passed within a few paces of a dense thicket, in the heart of which the baronet's body lay uncovered. But how were they to know it, when even the prowling foxes had not yet found it out!

For several days the search was continued by the settlers and their allies, but all in vain. It was not even suspected that the deserted camping-place which Black Feather and Kakatoc had seen had so lately been warmed by the feet of Pierre d'Antons and the blood of the lost baronet. For a few days longer the business of the settlement lagged, and the place wore an air of mourning, despite the ever-brightening and mellowing season. Then the axes struck up their chant again, and the little duties of the common day erased the forebodings of Eternity from the minds of the pioneers. Only Mistress Beatrix could see nothing of the reawakening of life and hope for the sorrow in her heart and the mist across her eyes. She had loved her father deeply and faithfully, with a love that had been strengthened by his misfortunes. She had felt toward him the combined affections of daughter and sister and friend. She had made allowances for the weaknesses of his later years that equalled the ever charitable devotion of a parent for a best-loved child. She had not been, and was not now, blind to the passion of gaming that had forced him to exile and an unknown death; but she had forgiven it long ago. As to the alleged murder that had made such an evil odour in London, she believed—and rightly—that hot blood and overmuch wine had been to blame, and that her father's sword had been drawn after the victim's.

Bernard Kingswell did all in his power to comfort the bereaved girl. He urged her to spend much of her time out-of-doors. He told his plans for their future, and to cheer her he built them even more hopefully than he felt; for he realized that many difficulties were yet to be overcome before Bristol was safely reached. With Ouenwa, the two often went on long tramps through the woods. Their evenings were always spent together. Sometimes he read aloud to her, and sometimes they played at chess. One evening she got her violin, and played as wonderfully as she had on that other occasion; but instead of leaving him afterward without a word, as she had done, she laid the fiddle aside and nestled into his arms. He held her tenderly, patting the bright hair against his shoulder, and murmuring broken assurances of his love and sympathy. She wept quietly for a little while; but when she kissed him at the door, her face and eyes shone with something of their old light.

By mid-April knobs of rock and moss pierced through the shrinking snow in the open places; but in the woods the drifts continued to withstand the wasting breath of the spring winds. Gray Goose River was no longer a broad path of spotless white. Its surface was mottled with patches of sodden gray; and an attentive listener on the bank might hear a myriad of tiny voices, some sibilant and some tinkling and liquid, in and under the enfeebled ice. Up and down the valley, between the knolls and wooded hills, the little streams were already snarling and roaring, and here and there flashing brown shoulders to the sunlight. Through all the wilderness ran a tingling whisper; and twilight, midnight, and dawn were stirred by the falling cries of wild-fowl on the wing. A faint, alluring fragrance was in the air—the scent of millions of swelling buds and crimson willow-stems.

About that time three warriors of the following of the dead Panounia arrived at the fort, with prayers for peace on their lips and gifts in their hands. They were received by Kingswell, William Trigget, and Ouenwa from the fort, and Black Feather and two of his chiefs from the camp. A lengthy business was gone through with, and much strong Virginian tobacco was burned. Documents were written in English and in the picture-writing of the natives, and read aloud, by Ouenwa, in both languages. Then they were solemnly signed by all present, and peace was restored to the great tribe of the North, and protection, trade, and lands were granted for all time to the inhabitants of Fort Beatrix and their descendants. The three visitors went back to their people with rolls of red cloth and packets of glass beads, pot-metal knives, and other useless trinkets on their shoulders.

Shortly after their departure from the fort, a storm of rain blew up from the sou'east. All day the great drops thumped on the roofs of the cabins, on the skies of the lodges, and spattered on the sodden snow. The firs and spruces gleamed clean and black under the drenching showers. A veil of smoke-gray mist lay above the farther woods and along the black tangles of alders and gray fringes of willows. All night the warm rain continued to fall and drift. When morning lifted along the pearly east, a cry rang from the camp to the fort that the ice in the river was moving. The settlers hastened to the flat before the stockade. Beatrix was with them.

"See how the torn edge of ice overtops the bank," said Kingswell, pointing eagerly. "And there is an open space. Ah, it has closed again! How slowly it grinds along!"

"It will run faster before night," replied the girl, and Ouenwa, who was versed in the ways of his northern rivers, nodded silently.