Churchill, as they usually did upon completing their trading duties with the Inuit people in the North. The hunting party nudged the dinghy’s keel into the sand of the far bank and hauled the little boat high up to the grass. Here, Hodges handed David a long, slender musket and explained, “This is a flintlock, Master Thompson. You pour exactly this much gunpowder down the barrel,” he said, tipping a powder horn into the gun’s muzzle, “and then ram a cloth patch, like this one, down to hold the powder in place.”
Hodges helped David pull the long ramrod from under the gun barrel and with it push the patch deep into the barrel. “Now,” said Hodges, as he put a cluster of small lead pellets in David’s hand, “pour a little bird-shot down the barrel and ram down another patch to hold the shot in place.”
David followed the instructions carefully. “Good,” said Hodges. “Now you need to put a small powder charge in the pan on the side of the barrel and pull the hammer back like this. When you pull the trigger, the hammer holding a piece of flint will strike the frizzen. This makes a spark, which will ignite the pan. The pan’s powder will burn through the flash-hole and ignite the main charge in the barrel, which will explode and force the lead pellets out the front end of the barrel.”
David’s eyes were beginning to glaze over when Hodges added, “But don’t pull the trigger just yet unless you want to shoot Mr. Prince in the foot, which you happen to be aiming at.”
David sheepishly pointed the musket away from the captain’s muddy boot. He raised the stock to his shoulder, aligned the sights with the distant horizon, and pulled the trigger. A flash of fire and smoke arose from the pan, and an instant later the gun’s recoil slammed into his shoulder when the charge roared out the barrel, leaving a second cloud of black smoke.
“Good!” shouted Hodges, as David staggered to regain his balance. “Now you know how to shoot. Just repeat the procedure, but next time, hold the musket steady while pointing in the general direction of a grouse. We’ll have lunch in no time.”
Fortunately for David there were plenty of grouse to practise on. By day’s end he had managed to bag two ptarmigan, or grouse as they called them. That was his contribution to the day’s total take of thirty-five birds.
Samuel Hearne, the chief factor at Churchill, was waiting on the river’s bank as the hunters returned. Hearne was just entering middle age, but was more than ready for retirement. His long hair had begun to grey, his shoulders sloped forward, and he stood as if being pulled toward the ground by a force of gravity stronger than that felt by other men.
“Gentlemen,” greeted Hearne. “How went your day?”
“Thirty-five birds in all,” answered Hodges.
The factor nodded. “We’ll need all the game we can store away. Our beef supply from London is not generous this year. How did the apprentice do?”
“Damned fine,” beamed Hodges, “He’s a natural for shooting.”
“Then have him hunt with you, and if he’s good enough with that fowling piece by the time the geese are migrating south, take him to the marshes and stock up on as many geese as you can shoot,” he ordered.
David hardly had time to enjoy the good news when he noticed Samuel Hearne staring at him in the way one might look at a badly behaved dog. David suddenly felt very uncomfortable.
“See me in my quarters tonight at eight, Master Thompson,” said Hearne sharply.
Some days before, the factor had given David a scrawled journal and some rough maps to edit. The untidy manuscript was Hearne’s first attempt at describing his extensive journeys to the Arctic. He wanted his journal to be readable and his maps made ready for publication. But David’s editing made it clear to Hearne, and to others at the trading post, that the boy’s education, his grasp of map-making, and his ability to write was superior to that of the chief factor.
David hunted the next day with Mr. Prince and Hodges, but he was sullen.
“How was your meeting with the factor last night?” asked Mr. Prince as they sat on the crumbling stone ruins of the old fort, resting from the morning’s hunt.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said David, who knew it was not his place to find fault with the factor. He never did disclose what happened between them. Did Hearne berate the new apprentice for daring to criticize the geographic accuracy of the factor’s journals? Had Hearne, known to indulge heavily in liquor and keep a number Chipewyan girls in his residence, shocked young David’s sensibilities? Did the factor, who dismissed Christian beliefs as dogma, threaten the boy’s deeply held religious values? The answers to these questions will never be known, but from that time on David Thompson would harbour a lifelong dislike of Samuel Hearne.
“Old Hearne, he’s a changed man these days and I fear not for the better,” said Mr. Prince, surmising that there had been trouble with the factor the night before. “His defeat two years ago, at these ruins we now sit upon, seemed to unravel him. He’s never been the same since. He had settled into the comforts of the fort after years of hard travel. He made three remarkable expeditions north, as you may know by now from reading his journals. His last foray was all the way to the Arctic Ocean. It was 3500 miles round trip. He covered unexplored territory nearly the size of Russia to look for new sources of fur for the company. He proved there was no Northwest Passage to the Pacific out of Hudson Bay, but the authorities in London wouldn’t believe him and further insulted him with a measly two-hundred-pound bonus for his troubles.
“Then came La Pérouse, the French commander. He put the fort to the torch, burned everything, and looted a fortune in furs. The French plundered nearly eight thousand beaver and four thousand marten skins from the fort.” Prince shook his head as if in disbelief at the loss of precious fur. “Hearne,” he continued, “with only thirty-nine men, had little choice but to surrender everything without a fight. La Pérouse had two ships and four hundred men. Still, we were at war with France then, and some thought Hearne should have fought, and died if necessary, to defend his King, country, and the fort. At least the French were kind to him, and took him and all his men as prisoners to England where they were ransomed. But since being sent back to Churchill last fall, the factor has been forced to live in the shadow of his defeat. These ruins are now a bitter and relentless reminder to him.
“He lost his new wife, Mary Norton, too,” Prince added sombrely. “He truly loved that half-breed girl. She was left behind with the Chipewyan when the HBC men were taken prisoner. Mary was the daughter of Moses Norton, the previous factor here at Prince of Wales. She had been raised at the fort and was not used to the hard ways of the Chipewyan. They left her to starve. He never forgave them and seems to blame all Indians.
“If any Indian could have changed his mind it would have been old Matonabbee. He was chief of all the northern Chipewyan tribes and Hearne’s most trusted ally. Matonabbee guided Hearne on his explorations and organized all the Chipewyan trade for the factor. But Matonabbee hanged himself when the French took Hearne and his men. The chief thought his white friend had been taken out to the Bay and drowned by the French. The old chief had allied himself so closely with Hearne and the British that when the British were believed defeated and all dead, the chief had no more authority over his people, and he was shunned. All his family, his wives and children, having lost their status, starved during that same cruel winter of 1783.
“Now our factor is losing himself in brandy. He’s been holed up in that den built from English boards most of the time. I think he’s slowly losing his grip. Since he’s come back he’s done little to rebuild company trade with the Chipewyan, who are selling more and more furs to our competition from Montreal. The Board of Governors in London knows of it and will soon remove him. Too bad – he was one hell of a fur trader in his day.”
By October, the river was frozen over and there was little to do but wait out the long winter. The wood they collected was enough for only two fires a day, one in the morning and another in the evening. Most of the time the bunkhouse was unheated. By November, ten