The Buffalo Runners: A Tale of the Red River Plains, R. M. Ballantyne [most recommended books .txt] 📗

“An’ whusky, doctor,” added old McKay. “Don’t forget the best pheesic; an’ I hev goot store of it, too, in my cellar at Ben Nevis.”

“I’m not so sure about the whisky, Mr McKay,” returned the doctor with a laugh. “I think we shall manage to pull him through without that.”

The other requisites for recovery were applied without stint at Prairie Cottage; for, despite the misfortune which had attended the cultivation of the soil, the Davidsons had a little money, which enabled them to buy provisions and other necessaries, obtainable from the Hudson Bay Company, and thus tide over the disastrous year in greater comfort than fell to the lot of many of the other settlers.

Thus Dan was well looked after. His brother Peter found the food—at least much of it—on the prairie and in the woods; his sister Jessie cooked it; Louise helped, looked on, and learned; home afforded rest; Elspie supplied the peace of mind—at least as much of it as it was possible for a fellow-mortal to supply; and his mother superintended all. Add to this that Archie Sinclair cheered him with miscellaneous gossip; that Little Bill read to him, or entertained him with serious talk and grave speculation; that André Morel and his sister often entertained him with song; that on such occasions Jenkins, the sailor, frequently amused him with nautical tales; that old Peg sometimes came from Ben Nevis to gaze at him tenderly; and that Okématan came to glare at him more or less affectionately—and we have said enough to warrant the conclusion that Dan Davidson had a pretty good time of it in spite of his weak condition.

Nevertheless Dan was not quite happy. He could not get rid of the memory of Henri Perrin’s murder, and the terrible thought that Elspie’s brother Duncan had some sort of guilty knowledge of it. These thoughts he buried deep, however, in his own breast, and even tried to forget them. Vain effort! for does it not stand to reason that the thing we strive most earnestly to forget is the very thing which, by that effort, we are fixing with a deeper stamp on memory?

François La Certe was somewhat exercised about the same question, about the same time.

That estimable member of the colony was seated one fine day on the banks of the river fishing for goldeyes—a small fish about the size of a plump herring. His amiable spouse was helping, or rather fishing with him. It was a fine healthy, contemplative occupation; one that admirably suited their tendency to repose, and at the same time filled them with that virtuous sensation which awaits those who know that they are engaged in useful occupation—for were not goldeyes the best of eating?

Branches of trees were their primitive rods, twine their simple lines, grasshoppers their bait, and a violent jerk their method.

“Slowfoot!” said La Certe.

“My husband!” or some such Indian phrase, answered the woman.

“I have been wondering for a long time now why—hi!—no! I thought there was something at my bait—but it was deception. Nothing is so unreal as the bite of the goldeye—when it is not there. It brings to mind the lights in the sky of winter, which dance and shoot—and yet they are not. Hi! ho!—I have him. I was mistaken. I thought the fish was not—but it was.”

While speaking La Certe sent a small fish with bursting violence on the grass behind him. Almost at the same moment Slowfoot landed another, with less violence and more coolness.

“What was I saying, Slowfoot?” asked the half-breed, when the hooks had been re-baited, and their eyes were riveted on their respective floats.

“Nothing that any one could remember,” answered his truthful spouse.

“Now I remember—ho! was that another?”

“No, it was not,” answered his matter-of-fact helpmate.

“Where is our child?” asked the father, with that wayward wandering of mind which is a not uncommon characteristic of genius.

“Smoking in the tent,” answered the mother.

“And with my pipe, no doubt,” said the father, laying down his rod and searching in the bag in which he was wont to carry, among other things, his pipe and tobacco.

A cry of pain from the tent in question—which was close behind the pair—apprised the parents that something was wrong. Immediately their first and only one issued with a tobacco pipe in one hand and a burnt finger on the other. It came to the father for sympathy, and got it. That is to say, La Certe put the burnt finger in his mouth for a moment, and uttered some guttural expressions of sympathy. Having thus fulfilled duty and relieved conscience, he exchanged the finger for the pipe-stem, and began to smoke. The spoiled, as well as despoiled, child uttered a howl of indignation, and staggered off to its mother; but she received it with a smile of affectionate indifference, whereupon the injured creature went back to the tent, howling, and, apparently, howled itself to sleep.

Again La Certe broke the piscatorial spell that had settled down on them, and, taking up the thread of discourse where he had dropped it, repeated his statement that he had been wondering for a long time why Cloudbrow, alias young Duncan McKay, was so sharp and fierce in denying that he knew anything about the murder of Henri Perrin.

“Hee! hee!” was Slowfoot’s significant reply.

“Can Slowfoot not guess?” he asked, after attending to a hopeful nibble, which came to nothing.

“Slowfoot need not guess; she knows,” said the woman with an air of great mystery.

“What does Slowfoot know?”

The woman’s answer to this was a look of exceeding slyness. But this did not content her lord, who, after repeated questions, and a threat to resort to extreme measures in case of continued refusal, drew from her a distinct answer.

“Slowfoot knows that Cloudbrow killed Perrin.”

“Sh!” exclaimed La Certe, with a look of real concern, “I am not yet tired of you, Slowfoot; and if old McKay hears you say that he will shoot you.”

“Slowfoot is not a fool,” retorted the woman: “the old man will never hear her say that. What has Slowfoot got to do with it? She can hold her tongue!”

“She can do that, for certain,” returned her husband with good-natured sarcasm. “In that, as in many things, she excels other women. I would never have married her had it not been so. But how do you come to be so sure?”

“I know the knife,” returned the woman, becoming more literal as she went on, “and Marie Blanc knows it. Her husband once got the loan of it from Cloudbrow, and she looked at it with care, because she had never seen such a knife before. She knew all its marks. Why does Cloudbrow deny that it is his? Because it was Cloudbrow who killed Perrin. If it had been anybody else he would have known it, and he would have said so—for he was there.”

“How know you that he was there?”

“Marie Blanc knows. She netted the snowshoes that Cloudbrow wore, and she saw the footprints.”

“But pairs of snowshoes are very like each other,” objected La Certe.

“Very like. Yes; but did ever two shoes have the same mends in the same places of the netting, where it had been broken, and the same marks on the frames?”

“Never. It will go hard with Cloudbrow if this is true.”

“It will go hard with him whether it is true or not,” returned the woman; “for some of the friends of Perrin believe it to be true, and swear—”

The disappearance of Slowfoot’s float at this moment stopped her swearing, and brought the conversation to an abrupt end. The landing of another goldeye prevented its resumption.

Having caught more than enough for a good supper, this easy-going pair leaned their rods against a tree, and ascended the bank towards their tent, which was an ordinary conical Indian wigwam, composed partly of leather and partly of birch-bark, with a curtain for a door and a hole in the top for a window; it also served for a chimney.

On the way they encountered one of the poor Swiss immigrants, who, having a wife and family, and having been unsuccessful in buffalo-hunting, and indeed in all other hunting, was in a state which bordered on starvation.

“You have been lucky,” said the Switzer, eyeing La Certe’s fish greedily.

“Sometimes luck comes to us—not often,” answered the half-breed. “Have you caught any?”

“Yes, two small ones. Here they are. But what are these among three children and a wife? I know not how to fish,” said the mountaineer disconsolately.

The fact was not surprising, for the poor man was a watchmaker by trade, and had never handled rod or gun till he was, as it were, cast adrift in Rupert’s Land.

“I will sell you some of my fish,” said La Certe, who on all occasions had a keen eye for a bargain.

“Good! I am ready to buy,” said the poor fellow, “but I have not much to spend. Only last week I gave my silver watch for eight gallons of wheat. I meant it for seed, but my wife and children were starving, so we were have no seed and only five shillings to spare.”

“Well, my friend,” said La Certe, “fish is very scarce just now, but you may have five goldeyes for your five shillings.”

“O! that is too much,” remonstrated the Switzer.

“No, no,” interrupted the half-breed, amiably, “by no means—but if you really think it too much fish for the money I will give you four goldeyes!”

“Come, you know I don’t mean that,” returned the other, with a cynical smile. “Make it six, and I will agree. And here is a pinch of snuff in to the bargain.”

He pulled out a box as he spoke, and opened it.

“Ha!” said La Certe, helping himself. “I love snuff, and so does my wife. Do you not?”

Slowfoot answered, “Hee! hee!” and helped herself to as much as a good broad finger and thumb could grasp, after which she sneezed with violence.

“Now, behold! my friend—a-wheesht!” said La Certe, sneezing a bass accompaniment to Slowfoot’s treble. “I will give you a catfish—a whole catfish for—a-wheesht!—for that box and snuff.”

The Switzer shook his head.

“Nay,” he said. “The snuff you may have, but the box was the gift of a friend, and I am loath to part with it. Besides, the box is of little real value.”

“You may have the head of the catfish for the snuff, and the whole catfish for the box,” said La Certe, with the firmness of a man who has irrevocably made up his mind—for there are none so firm of purpose as the weak and vacillating when they know they have got the whip-hand of any one! “And, behold! I will be liberal,” he added. “You shall have another goldeye into the bargain—six goldeyes for the five shillings and a whole catfish for the box and snuff—voilà!” The poor Switzer still hesitated.

“It is a great deal to give for so little,” he said.

“That may be true,” said the other, “but I would not see my family starve for the satisfaction of carrying a snuff-box and five shillings in my pocket.”

This politic reference to the starving family decided the matter; the poor Switzer emptied his pockets with a sigh, received the fish, and went on his way, leaving La Certe and Slowfoot to return to their wigwam highly pleased with their bargain. As must have been noted by the reader long ere now, this like-minded couple did not possess a conscience between them—at least, if they did, it must at that time have been a singularly shrunken and mummified one, which they had managed to keep hidden away in some dark and exceedingly un-get-at-able chamber of the soul.

Commercially speaking, however, they had some ground for satisfaction; for at that time the ordinary price of a catfish, which is a little larger than a haddock, was threepence.

Awakening the juvenile La Certe to the blissful realisation that a good “square” meal was pending, Slowfoot ordered it to fill and light the