The Buffalo Runners: A Tale of the Red River Plains, R. M. Ballantyne [most recommended books .txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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The remonstrative expression on La Certe’s face deepened. The idea of his own taste or comfort had not once entered his head: but he had a wife and child whom he was bound to consider, and he had a hut—a home—in Red River which he felt constrained to look after. Besides, he had social duties of many kinds which claimed attention.
“I’ve no doubt ye hev,” said McKay, with a short sarcastic laugh, “an’ ye will attend to them too—I’ll be bound. But ye did not come here, I suppose, to take a tender farewell o’ me. What iss it you will be wantin’? Oot wi’ it, man!”
“There is a canoe—” said La Certe, with some hesitation.
“There iss many a canoe!” returned McKay with a peculiar grin.
“True, but there is one on the shore now, close to the flat rock which—”
“My own canoe!” interrupted the other, “what will ye be wantin’ wi’ that?”
La Certe did not wish to appear greedy, but the season was late, and his own canoe was not in a very fit condition to carry a family round the shores of a lake so large as Lake Winnipeg. Would the white father lend his canoe to him? It could not be wanted much longer that Fall, and the one he would leave behind him was an excellent canoe for ordinary fishing and hunting purposes. He would be quite willing to hire the canoe or to pay the full price for it if any accident should happen to it.
“No,” said McKay, firmly. “No, La Certe; your hiring means borrowing, and your payin’ means owin’ a debt for the remainder o’ your natural life. I will see you at the bottom o’ Lake Winnipeg before I will be lending you my canoe.”
La Certe smiled sadly, and gazed at the cap with which his hands played, as if appealing to it for sympathy.
With an aspect of the profoundest resignation he made his bow and left the Presence.
But La Certe was not in the least put out by this failure. He went to his tent, and recounted the interview to his squaw, who, when he entered, was in the act of giving her child, a creature of about four years of age, one or two draws of her pipe, to let it taste how nice it was.
Smoking in calm placidity, the amiable pair discussed the subject. The conclusion they came to was, as usual, harmonious.
“I think he will agree to lend it next time I go to him,” said La Certe, hopefully.
“He will give in,” replied Slowfoot, decidedly.
The four-year-old could not understand the subject, and made no comment; but it howled for another smoke, and got it.
La Certe was wrong, and his wife was right—as usual. Old McKay did not agree to “lend” his canoe the “next time,” or the next again, but he did “give in” at last, more, perhaps, to get rid of the half-breed’s importunity than because of good-will, and sold the canoe to him—on credit.
When that winter was over, the Hudson’s Bay Company again encouraged the settlers to return, under promise of protection, and the spring found the persevering people, in spite of all difficulties and previous failures, busy putting into the ground what little seed they possessed, and otherwise cultivating the soil.
Some of them there were, however, who, after lending a hand in this work, determined to provide second strings to their bows by following the buffalo-hunters to the plains. These were chiefly the young and strong men, such as Dan Davidson and his brother Peter, Fergus McKay, Antoine Dechamp, and Jacques Bourassin, among many others.
La Certe also went, as well as his squaw and the four-year-old. He managed the thing characteristically thus.
When the half-breeds were making preparations for their spring hunt, he paid a visit to Duncan McKay, who was busy at the time helping his father and brother to rebuild their house. Indeed the edifice was almost rebuilt, for the erection of small wooden houses does not usually take long.
“You’ve come to beg, borrow, or steal, no doubt,” said Cloudbrow, who was worthy of his nickname, for he was as short of temper as Duncan senior.
No, La Certe had come to do none of these things, he said, with a conciliatory smile.
“Well, then, you can’t have come to buy or to ask advances,” growled Duncan; “for you see that our store and all we possessed has been burnt by your precious countrymen.”
La Certe knew this, and professed himself profoundly grieved as well as indignant with his countrymen. No, he did not come to buy or to borrow, but to hire. The McKays had still some horses left, and carts. Could they not spare a horse and cart to him on hire?
“No, we can do nothing of the sort,” said Duncan shortly, resuming his axe and work. “You can go to the Company. Perhaps they will trust you—though they are fools if they do.”
La Certe was regretful, but not cast down. He changed the subject, commented on the building that was going on, the prospects of a good harvest, and finally took refuge in that stale old subject, the weather. Then he said in a casual way—as if it had just occurred to him—
“By the way—that knife that my wife got from Marie Blanc—”
Young McKay stopped, and looked quickly up for a moment, with a slight flush, but instantly resumed work.
“Well,” he said, quietly, “what about the knife?”
“Would you like to have it—my wife bade me inquire?”
“Why should I like to have it?” he asked carelessly.
“Oh! I thought it was yours,” said La Certe.
“You are mistaken. I said it was very like mine. But it is not mine—and I have no wish for what does not belong to me.”
“Of course not. Well, I must be going,” said the half-breed, preparing to leave. “I wished much to have your horse and cart, for they are both good, and I would offer you 4 pounds for the trip, which, you know, is double the usual charge, for I never grudge a good price for a good thing.”
“Yes, all the more when you hev no intention to pay it,” said McKay with a laugh. “However, since you seem so anxious, and offer so good a price, I am willing to oblige you this time, in the hope that you are really becoming an honest man!”
The half-breed was profuse in his thanks, and in his assurance that Cloudbrow’s hopes would certainly not be disappointed.
Having thus attained his chief object, our arch-beggar went off to obtain provisions. Those which had been supplied him the previous autumn by young McKay had been quite consumed by himself and his friends—for the man, you see, had a liberal heart and hand.
But his first attempts were unsuccessful. He wanted ammunition. To go to the plains without ammunition was obviously useless. He wanted food—sugar, tea, flour, pork. To go to the plains without these would be dreary work. But men knew La Certe’s character, and refused him. One after another he tried his friends. Then he tried them again. Then he tried comparative strangers. He could not try his enemies, for, strange to say, he had none. Then he went over them all again.
At last, by indomitable perseverance, he managed to wear out the patience of one of his friends, who believed in the restoration of the incorrigible, and he found himself fully equipped to take the field with his hard-working comrades.
It may be remarked here that the buffalo runners generally went on the credit system, trusting to a successful hunt to pay off their debts, and leave them supplied with food for the winter. But, then, most of these men were in earnest, and meant to pay off their debts loyally. Whereas La Certe—good, humorous, easy-going man—had not the slightest intention of paying his debts at all!
At this time the half-breeds of the colony of Red River formed a small party compared with the numbers to which they multiplied in after years, and the band of hunters who annually went to the plains to chase the buffalo was proportionally small. Nevertheless, they were numerous enough to constitute a formidable band, capable of holding their own, when united, against any band of wandering Indians who might feel disposed to attack them. They were a brave, hardy race of men, but of course there were some black sheep among them like La Certe.
About sixty or a hundred miles from the Settlement, the party, under command of Antoine Dechamp, found the buffalo, and preparations were at once made to attack them. It was dusk, however, when the herds were discovered, so that the hunt had to be postponed to the following day.
A small clump of bushes afforded wood enough for camp-fires. The carts were ranged in a circle with the trains outward. Sentries were posted; the horses were secured; the kettles put on; pipes lighted; and noise, laughter, song and story, mingled with the shrill voices of children, were heard far on into the night.
Among the children, if we may venture so to class them, were Archie and Billie Sinclair—though we suspect that Archie would have claimed, and with some reason, to be classed with the men. They belonged to the camp-fire, which formed a centre to the party composed of Dan and Peter, Fergus, Dechamp, and Fred Jenkins the sailor. The latter, who it was thought had come out to the country by way of a skylark rather than as a settler, had followed the hunters, bent, he said, on firing a broadside into a buffalo. He had brought with him a blunderbuss, which he averred had been used by his great-grandfather at the battle of Culloden. It was a formidable old weapon, capable of swallowing, at one gulp, several of the bullets which fitted the trading guns of the country. Its powers of scattering ordinary shot in large quantity had proved to be very effective, and had done such execution among flocks of wild-fowl, that the Indians and half-breeds, although at first inclined to laugh at it, were ultimately filled with respect.
“I doubt its capacity for sending ball straight, however,” remarked Dan to Jenkins, who was carefully cleaning out the piece, “especially if charged with more than one ball.”
“No fear of it,” returned the sailor, with a confident air. “Of course it scattered the balls about six yards apart the only time I tried it with a lot of ’em, but that was at fifty yards off, an’ they tell me that you a’most ram the muzzle against the brutes’ sides when chasin’ buffalo. So there’s no room to scatter, d’ee see, till they get inside their bodies, and when there it don’t matter how much they scatter.”
“It’s well named a young cannon by La Certe,” said Peter Davidson, who, like the seaman, was out on his first buffalo-hunt. “I never heard such a roar as it gave that time you brought down ten out of one flock of ducks on the way up here.”
“Ay, Peter, she barked well that time,” remarked the sailor, with a grin, “but, then there was a reason. I had double-shotted her by mistake.”
“An’ ye did it too without an aim, for you had both eyes tight shut at the time,” remarked Fergus. “Iss that the way they teach ye to shoot at sea?”
“In course it is,” replied Jenkins, gravely. “That’s the beauty o’ the blunderbuss. There’s no chance o’ missin’, so what ’ud be the use o’ keepin’ yer eyes open, excep’ to get ’em filled wi’ smoke. You’ve on’y got to point straight, an’ blaze away.”
“I did not know that you use the blunderbuss in your ships at all,” said Dechamp, with
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