Francis William Sullivan

“I'm proud of you, lad,” were the first words that Donald recognized when he came to himself in the little shed-tent that quick hands had erected.

“I'm glad you came,” was the simple reply. “They'd have done for us in another half-minute. I don't see why Seguis threw away so many lives trying to capture that fort.”

“Dr. Craven says you mustn't talk for a bit, but you can listen while I tell you. Last night, Peter Rainy and I came upon the Fort Severn men in possession of the French traders' supply trains.”

“Peter Rainy! Good old Peter! Is he back, too?”

“Yes, but you mustn't talk. Obey orders.”

Donald smiled comfortably as he recognized the familiar, brusque speech, and closed his eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. This morning, we had started up here, when he saw a man chasing away from us for dear life. One of the boys recognized him as Seguis, and figured that his men must have come down to try to rescue the trains, but that, when they saw the number in the party, they decided to return to their camp and fight in the last ditch. Naturally, when they found you in possession—and I must tell you that was a clever piece of work for a boy—they started in to drive you out. It was their only chance.”

Donald smiled again. If he were fifty years old, he would always be a “boy” to his father.

“By that stubborn defense of yours, you have wiped the Free-Traders' Brotherhood out of existence, as well as saved a lot of exceptionally fine furs (so I'm told) for the Company. I don't think the bullets made much headway against that toughness. I'm awfully sorry so many men lost their lives, and, of course, we'll look out for their families, if they have any.

“Now, about the matter that brought me here.” The father plunged into this delicate subject with his son fearlessly, but with a deep breath, like a man diving into cold water. “I see, I've got to be pretty much alive if you and I are to get out of it with a whole skin. What I'd like to know is, how they saddle this half-breed on me.”

“If you don't know, who does?” The eyes of the son were steady in their wordless accusation. “It's this way, father: If you never married this woman Maria, it ought to be easy enough to prove.”

“I didn't marry her.”

“Well, then, there oughtn't to be any trouble.”

“Oh, yes, there ought, my boy. I didn't say she never had a place in my life.”

Donald looked at his father with something of the elder man's piercing gaze, and understood.

“Then, there were—”

“Relations. Exactly! But no children. After three years, we agreed to separate, and she went back to her people, well provided for, for the rest of her life. She was considered to have done very well. Therefore, having Seguis forced upon me is no light matter.”

“I hate to say it, father,” Donald said, “but if you look at him carefully, you will see unmistakable signs that spell 'McTavish' as plainly as though it were printed. You know, our family has very distinctive gray eyes and curly hair, with a lick of white on the crown. He has them both. But, tell me, what led you into any such relation? If you had warned me when I was old enough, I would have been prepared for it.”

“My boy, I had none of the advantages that you have had all your life. I was born at a little post so far north that it has been abandoned now by the Company. Your grandfather was in charge there, and, when I was old enough, I went out with him, and learned to hunt. Then, later, when I was a man, I was put in charge of another little post on the Whale River, one of those spots where a solitary white man lives for all the winter months alone, only visited occasionally by a passing Indian in need of supplies. Oh, if I had only realized then what I know now, that one's mistakes and wrong-doings bear their fruit in time! Well, at the fort, when the brigade went up in the spring, I saw an Indian girl, descendant of a chief. You will understand me when I say that I turned away from the advances she made. Our family isn't that kind—I would marry no Indian. My mother was white, all our McTavish women are white. I would have nothing to do with her. But then, that lonely winter post! You've never known it, Donald, that awful solitariness! The first winter I had a couple of papers a year old, and, when the brigade went up to the fort, I could almost repeat them verbatim. That's how lonely it was!

“When I thought about that, perhaps I pushed matters a little myself. The girl's parents were dead, and she was knocked around considerably by an old hag who hadn't the heart either to let her starve or to treat her kindly. Well, we fixed it up. I left the fort when the time came, and she followed a week later—and that winter I wasn't alone. It was so for three winters. Then, she began to get shrewish and lose her looks, so I gave her money enough to make her independent (my father had left me something), and we separated with mutual satisfaction... That's the story, Donald.”

“It's a hard story, father,” said the young man, soberly. “There isn't much kindness in it; it's pure selfishness. Understand, I'm not preaching against the immorality of the thing; people up here are frankly either one or the other, and it's nobody's business much, except the missionary's. But, in the light of what has happened this winter, we would all be happier if you hadn't done it.”

“I know it, my boy, I know it.” The hardness of the commissioner's voice broke. “And, so far as I can see, we aren't out of the trouble yet. This man, Seguis, and old Maria may force us to the wall yet. I wonder if I could bribe them off?” He looked pleadingly at his son.

“I don't think so. The old woman is so ambitious for Seguis that she won't take anything but the whole cake, and, besides, why expose yourself to a system of everlasting blackmail, with the chance of their getting angry some time and squealing anyhow? We've got to force them to the wall some other way. When are you going to have a council, and settle this thing?”

“To-morrow morning, my boy;” and the commissioner rose.

Donald noted, with a little pang of sorrow, that his father's face looked older than he had ever seen it, and conjectured rightly that beneath the surface this gruff man, who had raised himself to second in command of the Company, was profoundly, abjectly miserable.

The elder McTavish rested his hand for a moment on his son's well shoulder.

“I'm going out now,” he said. “I've tired you enough. Try to rest, or Craven will give me the deuce for rousing you... Oh, by the way, Donald, I know all that's happened between you and Fitzpatrick. Rainy told me. I sent old Bill Thompson up here to command Fitzpatrick's presence, when I arrived. Pretty foxy fellow, old Bill; seemed to tell everything, and hear nothing, when it was really the other way about.”

“So that was why he came up here so suddenly. Poor old man, he died game.”

“And he lived game, which is more than I can say of some people higher up,” was the gruff, self-condemnatory appreciation of the dead.

The commissioner was just opening the door of the tent when a bustle and shouting, mingled with the tinkle of sleigh-bells, announced the arrival of a dog-train.

“Hello, father!” cried Donald, “who's that?”

“An old and loved friend of yours.”

“If I've got a real friend except Peter Rainy, please show him in.”

“It's Angus Fitzpatrick.”

“Well, you can show him out; shoot him if you want to. By the way, any one with him?” The sense of dry humor that characterized the elder McTavish took in the situation at once. His eye twinkled briefly.

“There's a round bundle of furs on the sledge. Why?”

“Well, you show that bundle of furs which is my tent, and watch it come to life,” was Donald's smiling order.

His father fussed and fumed in apparent rage for five minutes, and finally snapped out:

“Well, all right! But I always told your mother you would be spoiled, if she gratified every one of your whims.” Wherewith, he disappeared outside.

The next morning found a small and solemn gathering in the large tent that Commissioner McTavish carried with him on his journeys de luxe. Present were Maria who had been rooted out of her tree like a bear; Seguis and Donald (both carried in), the commissioner, Angus Fitzpatrick, delirious with fever half the time, and Peter Rainy, gaunt with his record-breaking journey of fourteen hundred miles in four weeks. The day before, there had been a fervent, but quiet, reunion of the old Indian and his young master, in which the banter of the wounded man was barely removed from tears of gratitude. Now, he sat on the edge of Donald's pile of skins, and smoked his vile pipe with complete contentment.

It was a strange company. Angus Fitzpatrick, in the deserted camp of the Hudson Bay Company, had risen from his bed, the old loyalty and discipline urging him on, and, in the face of death itself, had come down at the command of his hated enemy and superior. To the last, he was the uncompromising disciplinarian, more severe with himself than with the meanest underling. The commissioner thought it best to secure Fitzpatrick's story while he yet retained his reason, and addressed him first.

“When did you first learn of this scandal concerning me, Fitzpatrick?” he demanded. “No, lie down!” he commanded, as the other attempted to rise.

“In the middle of last summer, sir. Maria, the squaw, came to me with certain proof that made the evidence incontrovertible.”

“What proof?”

“A signed statement by a well-known missionary, declaring that he had united you in marriage.”

For an instant, there was the absolute silence of amazed horror, in which, presently, broke the snorting and chuckling of Maria, who rocked herself back and forth on her haunches, like some witch muttering over an evil brew.

“Where is that statement?” demanded the commissioner.

“Maria had it the last time I knew of its whereabouts.” Fitzpatrick closed his eyes, wearily.

“Maria!” The commissioner's voice was sharp with command and disgust. The withered squaw suddenly stopped her rocking, and opened her little, fire-shot eyes steadily for a moment.

“Douglas!” she said, pronouncing his first name with careless familiarity.

Fitzpatrick, at this breach of ceremony, rose, furious, on his pile of blankets, inarticulate.

But McTavish waved him back.

“Where is that certificate?”

“I have it,” replied Maria, sullenly.

“Let me see it.” Not many people resisted that tone of McTavish's.

“I refuse,” she said.

“You refuse, eh?” The blue eyes darkened to ominous black. “If you repeat that, old woman, you start with me for Winnipeg to-morrow, and you spend the rest of your life in jail. You have done me enough injury already to land you in a dozen courts. I'll give you another chance. Let me see that paper. And no funny business. I mean what I say, and you know it. We're at the point now where you, or I, win forever. Come now, dig up, and be quick!”

Perhaps, the flinty hardness, the indifferent crispness, of that voice raised dim memories in the woman's mind, for her glance wavered, for the first time.

“Come on, Maria,” interposed Donald, as the old woman framed a whining reply, “the paper is in that muskrat-skin bag around your neck. I know, because I've seen it.”

She turned upon him, bristling like an angry cat.

“Yes, and be quick, or you'll have help you don't want,” added the commissioner, coolly.

With a snarl, Maria thrust her hand into her meager bosom, and drew forth a little bag with its draw-strings. Under the fascinated eyes of the group, she opened it, and carefully extracted the worn paper.

“Please identify it, Fitzpatrick,” ordered the commissioner, and the factor of Fort Severn took the sheet in his hands.

“It's the same she showed me last summer,” he said, after a careful examination. “I would know the handwriting of Burns Riley, the missionary, anywhere.”

“Good heavens!” cried the commissioner. “Did Burns Riley write and sign that?” He reached out an agitated hand, and Fitzpatrick passed over the paper.

“Who was this Riley, father?” asked Donald.

“One of the first men to reach the Whale River districts,” was the agitated answer. “When Fitzpatrick and I were your age, he was one of the most famous characters in the Northland, because he carried Christianity in either fist when it was necessary. But he was the squarest man that ever lived, was old Burns.”

“Is he dead now?”

“Yes, these fifteen years. Wait a minute. Let me see this.” He ran his eyes slowly along the faded lines, and read:

This is to certify that on April 17, 1873, I united in marriage Douglas McTavish, fur trader at Fort Miskati, son of Duncan McTavish, pure Scotch, to Maria Seguis, Ojibway Indian. “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

BURNS RILEY, Missionary.

That was all. McTavish saw his whole life go down in wreckage and ruin under the weight of those five or six lines of writing. There was no question as to the authorship—he himself recognized Riley's handwriting, though it was many years since he had seen any of it. And Riley's name was the symbol of righteousness and squareness throughout his whole vast parish, and beyond. The date was the spring that he and Maria had separated for the last time. But he was sure that Riley never wrote the certificate as far back as that.

“If I only had an ink-and-writing expert here!” he groaned to himself. “But that writing is Riley's all right,” he admitted aloud.

Maria began to rock herself again, and to mutter. The commissioner changed his attack.

“Who's this man, Maria?” he suddenly asked, pointing to Charley Seguis.

“Your legitimate son and rightful heir,” snapped the squaw, and she went on rocking, while McTavish wrestled with a deadly impulse to strangle her.

“When was he born?”

“In November, 1873, seven months after you sent me away.” McTavish did not question this. Acting on Donald's advice, he had observed the half-breed closely, and had detected unmistakable signs of McTavish blood. Furthermore, the man looked his age.

The commissioner turned to Seguis, and questioned him in regard to certain events he would remember, had he been alive at the time Maria claimed.

He answered correctly in all regards, and with a naturalness that showed he had not been coached. The commissioner was satisfied that here was his first-born, and the pang that went through his heart was like a red-hot arrow. But he turned his mind to the necessities of the occasion, not yielding to its griefs.

“Maria,” he said despairingly, “you know we were never married. You know you came to me willingly and gladly, when I offered you the only life I would permit myself to offer an Indian. You came as my companion until such time as we should see fit to separate; in fact, you were the first to put the idea into my mind. That paper shows me you have done something very wrong. I can't now disprove the statements there: that will come later. But what I want to say now is that you are forcing through one of the dirtiest pieces of work that ever took place in the Company.”

Fitzpatrick feebly pawed his beard, and his eyes glittered with triumph. This was what he had waited for—to see the commissioner slowly come to his knees before a filthy squaw, and plead for his life!

“You don't hate me,” McTavish continued, “for I never wronged you. When you left me, I gave you enough to make you comfortable. Why did you not tell me of this child?

“Factors have too many ways of getting such things out of the way,” Maria mumbled.

“Fool! Do you think I am a murderer at heart? You lie when you say that. It was ambition that changed you from a pretty Indian girl to a ruthless fiend; ambition for your child that would take him and you up to the heights, perhaps. But not by the open road! The dirty back alleys were what you used to climb, and now you're nearly there. But you never did it alone, never. You enlisted the help of a man that hates me and mine, as a trapper hates a wolverene. A man who has lied to me and tried to deceive me for years; a man who, boasting of his devotion to the Company, has let personal animus sway every thought and action for twenty years.

“Yes, I mean, Fitzpatrick. You!” snarled the commissioner, shaking a swift, accusing finger at the factor, who had raised himself on his elbow, his face purple. “You think you have gone on unobserved; and wonder why you were never promoted to York factory, and why honors never came to you as you grew older. Know now that I was watching you and that I knew everything you did—almost the thoughts that passed in your mind. You have persecuted my son, you would have succeeded in taking his life, if your own pretender, Seguis there, hadn't defeated you. Under a mask of loyalty, you've been the one accursed rebel in the Company's ranks, and, if I were a commissioner of the old regime, I'd have you taken out and hanged to a tree this afternoon. But I won't do that. Your own life has been its own punishment. For years, you haven't known a happy day or a contented hour; your venom has eaten your own heart away, and what life remains to you will be more miserable still, because, after all, you go down in defeat, dishonored and disgraced. You are hereby removed from any office and any connection with the Company, and are commanded to leave its territories as soon as you can travel.”

The commissioner ceased speaking abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury, and his outstretched arm trembling. The factor cowered before the accusing presence, like a boy caught in a theft, and sank back upon his blankets, shame and pain struggling on the scarred battlefield of his face. For him, life had come to a bitter and inglorious end, and, during all that followed, he never spoke again.

There was a minute's pause while the commissioner recovered himself. Then, the thought of his own helplessness and the inevitable ruin that faced him and his returned, and his face grew drawn and hopeless. The triumphant and gleeful chortling of the old squaw attracted his stunned senses.

“Maria,” he said quietly, “you have it in your power to ruin and disgrace me—and my boy. Perhaps, it is the punishment for the evil thing I did so many years ago. If so, I accept it. I shall not beg you, or try to buy you, or humble myself. The document you have is a lie, and you know it. Neither you nor your son shall ever receive a cent of money from me. All you can claim is the dirty honor of ruining me. If you want that, take it. I have spoken my last word on the subject.” He ceased, and sat, a picture of misery.

Suddenly, there was a choking sound from the opposite side of the tent where Seguis lay.

“I can't stand this!” the half-breed cried. “Listen to me, commissioner! All of you listen! That certificate is a lie, and I can prove it. I—”

There was a raucous scream, and Maria leaped upon the wounded man, and buried her talons in his throat. Rainy and the commissioner seized her, and tore her from her helpless victim violently, hurling her back across the tent, screeching.

“Silence!” roared McTavish. “Or I'll gag you with your own fist.”

The woman subsided, but Rainy took his place beside her, and relieved her of two knives that she made an effort to reach.

“Now, go on, Seguis.”

“I didn't know, sir,” said the half-breed, “until the other day, that—what I was. Then, Donald McTavish told me, by accident or design, I don't know which. I asked my mother, and she confessed that Donald had spoken the truth. So great was her elation at the success of her claims for me that she showed me that certificate, signed by the missionary. I was as delighted as she.

“Then the next day she told me how she got it, and since then I have been in hell. Oh, sir, you don't know what an existence like mine can be. All my life I have been torn by two natures. I have wanted things that a man of my standing has no right to wish. I have brains, I have intelligence; I want to rise above my handicaps—to be something besides a common half-breed rover of the woods. I headed the free-traders because it gave me an opportunity to do something for myself. When my mother showed me that paper I thought my way was clear, and that I had not worked in vain. But—but, when she told me how she got it—then, the struggle started.

“I am a McTavish, sir, and I am proud of it; but it is that honorable blood that is this minute sending me back to the life I hate, and the oblivion I loathe. I can't lie here, and see you and Captain McTavish ruined. The Indian part of me says, 'Yes, take it; no one will ever know.' But the McTavish of me rebels, and I can't do it.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the commissioner feverishly, “but about the certificate? What about that?”

“I was getting to it, sir. Years ago, I don't know how many, my mother and I were living in a little cabin by a lake during the winter. I was small then, and did not realize the significance of things. One night, we heard faint noises in the woods near by, and my mother went out to see what made them. She found Burns Riley, the missionary, half-insane with suffering, his features frozen, and almost at the point of starvation. He had had a similar adventure to Captain McTavish's this winter.

“My mother saw his plight, and the vague plan that had been in her mind took shape. There, in the snow, she forced the missionary at the price of his miserable life to agree to write that certificate, and, as soon as his fingers could hold the pen and dip it in the soot-ink of the chimney, he did it, and before him sat the food that his words would purchase. Burns Riley was a square man, but his life was at stake, for my mother would have turned him out into the snow as he was, if he had not done as she wished—and he knew it.”

“But why didn't he come and tell me?” demanded McTavish.

“Because he was on his way to a mission, at Fort Chimo, on the Koksook River, near Ungava Bay. He didn't come back until shortly before he died, and he never saw you. No doubt he was afraid to trust the story of the disgrace of his cloth to a messenger. That, Mr. McTavish, is the story of the certificate. I'm glad I've told it; I'm glad I've relinquished my claims; I'm glad that I am still as honest as the best blood in me. But now,” he added drearily, “what is there for me? Commissioner, you have done me the irreparable wrong of making me what I am. All our two lives there can never be any righting of that wrong. I am a half-breed, and must forever yearn vainly for better things that I know I can never attain.”

During his words, which were evenly spoken, without excitement, but with intense feeling, the head of Douglas McTavish remained sunk upon his breast. He realized now the irreparable injury that his youth had wrought, and in the depths of his heart he admired this heroic half-breed, who, in the exercise of the truest nobility, was a better man than he. The selfish gratitude for his deliverance was secondary to shame for his own unworthy life and humble worship of Seguis's sterling character.

“Seguis,” he said at last, quietly, “you are right; I never can undo the wrong I have done you. But will say this: I admire your spirit and your manhood. I admire the way you sought to defeat us in honorable competition on the hunting-grounds, and the skill with which you managed it. The position of factor at Fort Severn is open, and I wish you to take it. You are one of my most valued men. This appointment will be ratified in the usual form when the time comes.”

He rose and walked across the tent: Then, he took the left hand of Seguis and pressed it warmly.

“You will accept?” he asked.

The half-breed's only response was a return pressure and a look of glorious gratitude.

“What is to become of me, father?” asked Donald in a half-serious tone of injury.

“You're to come down to civilization as soon as spring opens. I had already decided that this would be your last year in the woods. I need you there to learn the ins and outs of the administrative end. Of course, I'll give you a factory if you want it, but I don't think you need the experience.”

“No, I don't think I do,” replied Donald. “And then, besides, I have other reasons for wishing to live in a civilized community. I wonder what is the current price of house-furniture?”

A month later Jean Fitzpatrick, her sister, Laura, and Donald McTavish sat in the luxurious drawing-room of the factor's house at Fort Severn. The two women were in black, and Laura dabbed at her eyes occasionally, but with considerable care lest the penciling of her eyebrows should smear... Out in the cold, a little distance away, a fresh mound lay, dun-colored, under the oblique rays of the setting sun.

“Poor father,” said Jean softly, slipping her hand into Donald's, “I'm glad he's at rest. His life was a bitter one.”

“Yes, princess, it is better so. That last sledge ride to the camp in response to orders was the final straw. He never spoke again, did he? Even in regard to our marriage?”

“No, dear, he didn't, and I'm glad, for my mind was made up already. I suppose Seguis will take possession here now?”

“Yes, as soon as we all start for Winnipeg, which will be when the ice is out of the rivers. It will be a long journey; but after it, when you have got some clothes, there will be a big church wedding, and we'll settle down like civilized beings in a real house. Oh, princess, I can hardly wait. I'm still afraid something will take you from me again.”

“Nothing ever will, dear boy,” she replied, patting his hand. “But look here, Donald,” and she smiled, “you haven't arrested Seguis yet for the murder of Cree Johnny.”

“No, and I don't need to. The man who reported the crime has finally confessed that he lied about it. Cree Johnny was drunk, and attacked Seguis, who killed him in self-defense. The man who brought the news to Fort Dickey had been Johnny's partner for years, and lied about it out of revenge. Speaking of murders, I would like to know who killed Indian Tom. I really think that a passing hunter mistook him for an animal moving. The deed was done in a storm, which made it very hard to see, and that same storm wiped out the murderer's tracks. Since you have sworn you were with me at the time of the shot, of course they can't accuse me any longer.”

“I wonder what will become of old Maria,” asked Jean. “She is a helpless idiot now. The strain of Seguis's confession that day seemed to break something in her brain, and now she is an amiable, helpless old squaw, without a single memory.”

“Seguis promised me the other day he would look after her. Once I asked him what was the motive that prompted his bringing that command of yours for me to go away, but he wouldn't explain. He only smiled. He seems very glad that we are to be married and happy, at last.” Donald smiled affectionately on her.

“Well, who wouldn't be glad that I am going to marry my hero?” asked the girl, with shining eyes.

McTavish grew suddenly grave.

“Don't call me that,” he said, gently. “There is another hero, to whom we both owe more than we can ever repay.”

“Who is that?”

“Charley Seguis,” Donald said.

[End of The Wilderness Trail by Frank Williams]