“You read the message right—I know something of Indian character writing,” said the factor. “Doubtless Gray Moose sent it. A Northwest Company’s man in the fort as a spy! It is a thousand pities he got away! But are you certain, Denzil, that he was a white man?”
“I am sure of it,” I replied, “and the fact that the Indians rescued him so promptly—”
“Yes; that proves the existence of some sort of a conspiracy,” the factor interrupted. “But do you know that the spy was Cuthbert Mackenzie?”
“I could not swear to it,” I admitted, “but I am pretty well satisfied in my own mind.”
Some of the men were for sallying out to pursue and capture the Indians, but Griffith Hawke prudently refused to permit this.
“Let well enough alone,” he said. “A large force of savages may be lurking in the forest, and there will be trouble soon enough as it is. I regret the unfortunate accident by which I shot one of the Indians, for it will inflame them all the more against us. It is certain, I fear, that they have been won over by the Northwest people, and that they meditated an early attack on the fort. Thank God, that we got wind of it in time! Come what may, we can hold out against attack and siege! And at the earliest opportunity we must send word to the south and to Fort York.”
There were sober faces and anxious hearts behind the stockade that day, for there could be no longer any doubt that the long-threatened storm—the struggle for supremacy between the rival fur companies—was about to break. Nay, for aught any of us knew, open strife might already be waging in the south, or up on the shores of Hudson Bay; a lonely and isolated post was ours on the Churchill River.
We held a consultation, and decided to omit no precautionary measures. Our store of weapons was overhauled, the howitzers were loaded, the gates and the stockade were strengthened, and men were posted on watch.
The day wore on quietly, and no sign of Indians was reported. I saw nothing of Flora, but I thought of her constantly, and feared she must be in much distress of mind. I confess, to my shame, that it caused me some elation to reflect that the marriage was now likely to be indefinitely postponed, but there I erred, as I was soon to learn.
At about four o’clock of the afternoon, when darkness was coming on, I was smoking a pipe in the men’s quarters. Hearing shouts and a sudden commotion, I ran out in haste, thinking the Indians were approaching; but to my surprise, the sentries were unbarring the gates, and no sooner had they opened them than in came a couple of voyageurs, followed by two teams of dogs and a pair of sledges. The two occupants of the latter, in spite of the muffling of furs, I recognized at once. The one was my old Quebec acquaintance, Mr. Christopher Burley, the London law clerk; the other, to my ill-concealed dismay, was an elderly priest whom I had often seen at Fort York.