THE PRIEST JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY
INTRODUCTION.
I, Rufus Gillespie, trader and clerk for the North-West Company, which ruled over an empire broader than Europe in the beginning of this century, and with Indian allies and its own riotous Bois-Brulés, carried war into the very heart of the vast territory claimed by its rivals, the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company, have briefly related a few stirring events of those boisterous days. Should the account here set down be questioned, I appeal for confirmation to that missionary among northern tribes, the famous priest, who is the son of the ill-fated girl stolen by the wandering Iroquois. Lord Selkirk's narration of lawless conflict with the Nor'-Westers and the verbal testimony of Red River settlers, who are still living, will also substantiate what I have stated; though allowance must be made for the violent partisan leaning of witnesses, and from that, I—as a Nor'-Wester—do not claim to be free.
On the charges and counter-charges of cruelty bandied between white men and red, I have nothing to say. Remembering how white soldiers from eastern cities took the skin of a native chief for a trophy of victory, and recalling the fiendish glee of Mandanes over a victim, I can only conclude that neither race may blamelessly point the finger of reproach at the other.
Any variations in detail from actual occurrences as seen by my own eyes are solely for the purpose of screening living descendants of those whose lives are here portrayed from prying curiosity; but, in truth, many experiences during the thrilling days of the fur companies were far too harrowing for recital. I would fain have tempered some of the incidents herein related to suit the sentiments of a milk-and-water age; but that could be done only at the cost of truth.
There is no French strain in my blood, so I have not that passionate devotion to the wild daring of l'ancien régime, in which many of my rugged companions under Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest gloried; but he would be very sluggish, indeed, who could not look back with some degree of enthusiasm to the days of gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, in a word, to the workings of the great fur trading companies. Theirs were the trappers and runners, the Coureurs des Bois and Bois-Brulés, who traversed the immense solitudes of the pathless west; theirs, the brigades of gay voyageurs chanting hilarious refrains in unison with the rhythmic sweep of paddle blades and following unknown streams until they had explored from St. Lawrence to MacKenzie River; and theirs, the merry lads of the north, blazing a track through the wilderness and leaving from Atlantic to Pacific lonely stockaded fur posts—footprints for the pioneers' guidance. The whitewashed palisades of many little settlements on the rivers and lakes of the far north are poor relics of the fur companies' ancient grandeur. That broad domain stretching from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean, reclaimed from savagery for civilization, is the best monument to the unheralded forerunners of empire.
RUFUS GILLESPIE.
Winnipeg—one time Fort Garry
Formerly Red River Settlement,
19th June, 18—
LORDS OF THE NORTH
CHAPTER I
WHEREIN A LAD SEES MAKERS OF HISTORY
"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I asked.
For an hour, or more, I had been lounging about the sitting-room of a club in Quebec City, waiting for my friend, who had promised to join me at dinner that night. I threw aside a news-sheet, which I had exhausted down to minutest advertisements, stretched myself and strolled across to a group of old fur-traders, retired partners of the North-West Company, who were engaged in heated discussion with some officers from the Citadel.
"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I repeated, indifferent to the merits of their dispute.
"That's the tenth time you've asked that question," said my Uncle Jack MacKenzie, looking up sharply, "the tenth time, Sir, by actual count," and he puckered his brows at the interruption, just as he used to when I was a little lad on his knee and chanced to break into one of his hunting stories with a question at the wrong place.
"Hang it," drawled Colonel Adderly, a squatty man with an over-fed look on his bulging, red cheeks, "hang it, you don't expect Hamilton? The baby must be teething," and he added more chaff at the expense of my friend, who had been the subject of good-natured banter among club members for devotion to his first-born.
I saw Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' arguments than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his unconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up to the company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenzies and other retired veterans of the north country.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said I, "what were you saying to Colonel Adderly?"
"Talk of your military conquests, Sir," my uncle continued, "Why, Sir, our men have transformed a wilderness into an empire. They have blazed a path from Labrador on the Atlantic to that rock on the Pacific, where my esteemed kinsman, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, left his inscription of discovery. Mark my words, Sir, the day will come when the names of David Thompson and Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie will rank higher in English annals than Braddock's and——"
"Egad!" laughed the officer, amused at my uncle, who had been a leading spirit in the North-West Company and whose enthusiasm knew no bounds, "Egad! You gentlemen adventurers wouldn't need to have accomplished much to eclipse Braddock." And he paused with a questioning supercilious smile. "Sir Alexander was a first cousin of yours, was he not?"
My uncle flushed hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemen adventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the adventurers, was not to his taste.
"Pardon me, Sir," said he stiffly, "you forget that by the terms of their charter, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company have the privilege of being known as gentlemen adventurers. And by the Lord, Sir, 'tis a gentleman adventurer and nothing else, that stock-jobbing scoundrel of a Selkirk has proved himself! And he, sir, was neither Nor'-Wester, nor Canadian, but an Englishman, like the commander of the Citadel." My uncle puffed out these last words in the nature of a defiance to the English officer, whose cheeks took on a deeper purplish shade; but he returned the charge good-humoredly enough.
"Nonsense, MacKenzie, my good friend," laughed he patronizingly, "if the Right Honorable, the Earl of Selkirk, were such an adventurer, why the deuce did the Beaver Club down at Montreal receive him with open mouths and open arms and——"
"And open hearts, Sir, you may say," interrupted my Uncle MacKenzie. "And