CHAPTER VI
Donald Meets a Strange God
Philip read his friend's thoughts accurately.
"What's this about your stopping only a few days?" he asked quickly. "Why is this new man at the Bay?"
"I've been sent on to Fort James," said Donald.
Philip whistled. He knew Fort James was the pride of the Hudson's Bay, the best post in the district, and that his own company had been undermining its prestige.
"You've earned it!" he exclaimed. "Mactavish knows what he is doing. Your ladder's set against a star. I'm going to miss you terribly but that doesn't make me less glad. I fancy you know how I feel."
Then he added with his old banter, "Perhaps it's going to be to my advantage. I'm not up to my former speed and you had me on the run. But how about this chap Millington? Will he give me time to catch my breath?"
"You'd better not try it," Donald laughed. "They say he is a wonder. One of the new school."
"I know what you mean. The efficiency sort. But how about it? Do you like him?"
"I don't know," Donald answered. "I haven't had time to get acquainted since I've been here and he came on from the Saskatchewan district only a couple of years ago."
"But you've seen him at Fort Bruce."
"A year ago. He's popular because there's a sort of dash and wit about him that's amusing to most of the people."
"You don't like him, then?"
"I didn't say that."
"No, but I think I understand. I've called on him, of course, yet I fear I'll be rather lonesome this winter. I'm an Englishman but not the sort that thinks everyone who comes from London is—well, I know London."
The next morning as Donald tramped along the shore to the Keewatin post he found Nee-tah-wee-gan waiting for him beside the trail. He had not seen her since his return. As he approached she studied his face closely before speaking.
"Now that you have seen the country where the white man comes from you are sure you are one," she sneered at last.
Donald had long refused to be drawn into such a discussion but as he watched her now he saw something other than contempt in her eyes. It was very close to fear.
"Is that what you are afraid of?" he demanded suddenly.
"Afraid!" she laughed, the old, bitter, contemptuous laugh. "Why should I be afraid of what can never be? A white man with Nee-tah-wee-gan his mother! He is still the same boy who wishes to make his canoe fly like a bird."
Donald walked on but Nee-tah-wee-gan followed. "And where does Wen-dah-ban go now?" she asked. "Where does he go to try to be a white man?"
For a moment he did not answer and then, realizing that she could easily learn, he swung around.
"The 'big trader' has sent me to Fort James," he answered.
For the first time since he had told her of his fasting dream a genuine fear was in her eyes. She cowered before him and then she asked haltingly: "Is it that you are to be the trader at Fort James?"
"Yes, but why do you fear it?"
"Fear it!" she screamed in sudden fury. "There is nothing I fear. It is good. I laugh. It is what I wish. The higher you go the harder will be your fall. For never forget, Wen-dah-ban, that you are an Indian, that some day the white man will drive you back to your own people."
She turned abruptly and left him and he did not see her again during his visit at Whitefish Lake. He went on to Fort James, confident that she would follow, but the first ice came and her canoe did not appear. The year passed and she did not come and at last he began to believe that his success had dismayed her and that she had abandoned her attempt to drive him back to a wigwam.
When Donald reached Fort Bruce the next summer he learned that Merton Layard had been shifted to the managership of the headquarters post and that he and his family had already arrived. Although they had written to each other as often as fur land's mail service permitted and Merton had come to Fort Bruce each summer, Donald had not seen Evelyn Layard for seven years and he went at once to the dwelling house.
"Donald!" Evelyn cried when she opened the door.
She stared at him a moment, unable to hide her amazement, and then she added: "It is Donald, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's still Donald, Donald Norton," he answered. "Do you remember?"
She knew he referred to the day she had given him her father's name but the thought back of it told her that this handsome, well dressed young man whose poise and ease of manner had been startling and a little disconcerting was still, at heart, the boy she had known at Kenogami.
"How could I forget what a dear lad you were?" she cried and, urged by pride and affection, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Oh, Donald, you have made me so proud and happy."
Tears came, tears of joy through which her smile shone more gloriously. Donald's arms tightened about her in a sudden throb of emotion.
"But tell me about yourself," she commanded as she drew him into the living room. "Everything! Every detail! Donald! Donald! I can't believe it. Seven years! What a short time! And how long it has been!"
She drew up a chair and he found himself falling easily into confidential chatter, for the years had not changed Evelyn Layard. There was still the same warm, impulsive nature, the same quick understanding.
Evelyn, seeing reminders of the boy she had known but exulting in the new Donald that had emerged from those first intense years, watched and marveled as his charm expanded and she found her love recaptured.
While they were still talking Janet entered the room. The girl did not recognize Donald. She had carried away with her the memory of a serious youth, who sometimes frightened her with his relentless application and who had often aroused her anger because of the ease with which he surpassed her in their school work together. She had never forgotten their first meeting, when he had peered through the fence at her and had vehemently denied that he was an Indian, or the time when she had heard Nee-tah-wee-gan hiss "keen nish-e-na-be" and she had flown so fiercely to his defense.
But there was nothing in the young man before her in the least reminiscent of that boy or suggestive of what she might have expected him to become. Long ago fur land had ceased to look for native characteristics in his face or actions. There was a touch of brown in his hair, of gray in his eyes, and his features were clear cut and handsome in a purely British fashion. But most of all it was in the eyes, those unmistakable countermarks of race, that were found the qualities which made her forget Nee-tah-wee-gan. Donald's eyes lacked utterly the furtiveness and suspicion, the veiled yet ever-present questioning, which indicate the Indian. In them was the warmth, the clearness and directness and the half-hidden dancing lights of a kindly, strong and lovable nature.
As the girl hesitated in the door the mother exclaimed: "Janet! You haven't forgotten Donald!"
At the name, Donald stared in as great bewilderment as the young woman. He remembered a light haired, pink-and-white skinned child, shut off from the Indian children by the picket fence. His last sight of her had been as a long-legged, awkward youngster of thirteen waving good-by to him from the Kenogami dock when he had left for Fort Bruce. He was not prepared for the startlingly vivid beauty who now stood before him.
"Donald!" Janet repeated. "Not—not Wen-dah-ban?"
It was the name by which she had first known him and with which she had always spoken to him and it came naturally to her lips.
"Janet!" her mother cried in quick dismay.
"Wen-dah-ban," Donald laughed. "Of course. Janet never called me anything else."
Janet's glance thanked him for the easy manner in which he had met the situation. The moment she had spoken the name she had regretted it, though he had not shown resentment.
"I can't believe it!" Donald exclaimed in frank admiration, as he stepped back and looked at the girl. "And yet I don't imagine you had any difficulty in getting used to her," he laughed to her mother.
"You won't either," Evelyn laughed back.
"How about me?" Janet asked. "I'll have to begin all over again, too. Mother, it wasn't fair of you. You should have warned me."
She said it easily but in reality her banter was hiding a genuine amazement. Since her return she had heard much of Donald from her father but had attributed that warm-hearted gentleman's praise to pride in the development of a successful fur trader. With her London viewpoint, she had not been able to imagine Donald being anything else.
"It is seven years since I have seen him," Evelyn reminded her. "I, too, will have to get acquainted again."
"Please don't," Donald begged. "You make me feel like a stranger and—well, I don't want to be one."
He was not a stranger to the Layards in the days that followed. The old relationship with Evelyn was established immediately but with Janet it was another matter. They had parted as boy and girl, one uncouth and in deadly earnestness, the other only a child. There was little left from their five years at Kenogami that could serve as a bond or basis of understanding.
Yet youth never lives in the past and these two quickly ceased trying to pick up the days when they had first known each other. During her six years in England Janet's interests had been varied. She had lived with an aunt who was a rebel in many ways and the girl had escaped the rigorous and stifling supervision usual in an English home. She had been thrown in contact with minds that were keen and not heavy, that found pleasure in lightness and gayety and thereby gave to their serious moments an added weight.
In Donald she found a man so much like those she had known that she was constantly puzzled. There was a different exterior, a sturdiness and a directness, but beneath was a delightful keenness and mobility as amazing to Janet as it was charming. Her wonder drove her to what she believed to be a discreet question.
"You were in London only three months?" she asked.
"I had six years of it before I went there," he answered, for he had divined her thought.
"You mean the free trader at Whitefish Lake?"
"Yes," and Donald's eyes lighted with the thought of his friend. "I wish you could know Philip. You would like him. I missed him a lot last winter."
"Dale Millington doesn't seem to share your opinion of Mr. Collinge."
"What does he say?" Donald demanded.
"Nothing direct. He has mentioned him only incidentally. He once spoke of him as a squaw man with a couple of savage youngsters."
"That would be like Millington," Donald said quietly but with a sudden hardening of his voice. "He would see only that."
Janet flushed and glanced at him in sudden panic. She had regretted the words instantly, for she had recognized their application to his own history, and yet it was not of this that Donald was thinking. For a week Dale Millington had been vaguely disturbing. The young Englishman was the modern type of fur trader, a little in advance of his time, although old Duncan Mactavish had read the signs long before and knew his worth. He was daring, clever and original in his methods and he brought to the management of a post that system and quick efficiency which the older servants of the Hudson's Bay, steeped in precedent and routine, had failed to adopt when a strengthened opposition began to force the change.
Personally Millington was something of a favorite. He had a ready wit and a certain ease of manner which made him a welcome addition to "Bachelors' Hall" during the summer gatherings of the post managers and the central figure in the round of teas given by the women of Fort Bruce.
Janet Layard was not only unusually beautiful and charming but she was the only young white woman in the entire district. It was inevitable that she should attract Millington and that the girl herself should find enjoyment in his company after the lonely winter at Kenogami.
Donald's own pleasure in Janet's presence was such that his month at Fort Bruce was nearly gone before he realized just how much of her attention Millington claimed and what was at the bottom of his own reaction to it. But it was the Englishman who, in the last few days, discovered exactly what the situation was. Confident and a little vain, he had boasted to Janet of the Whitefish Lake fur receipts.
"I've got that fellow Collinge on his last legs," he said. "Another year or two and there'll be no Keewatin post at Whitefish."
Janet flared instantly.
"Don't forget that someone else spent six years laying the foundation for such a thing," she retorted.
Millington hesitated for an instant before he said: "Oh, Norton is a good man, though he has his limitations. Just at present I am encumbered with one of them."
"That is contemptible!" Janet cried. "You are the first person I have heard refer to Donald's mother since I came to Fort Bruce."
"But I don't mean it as you think," Millington answered quickly, for he had recognized his mistake. "I was merely marveling that he could have suffered her presence there so long. She isn't even human. She's pure venom. I understand that she never let a day go by without reminding him that he is part Indian."
"She is the only person in the entire Fort Bruce district who thinks he is," Janet declared. "I don't know a finer man than Donald Norton."
The very vehemence of her defense not only showed Millington that he had made a mistake but it opened his eyes to a new possibility. He had believed that Donald's history automatically eliminated him and he had seen in Janet's unconcealed interest in Donald's success only the natural result of their childhood association. Now he realized that in the Fort James manager he had a rival and a strong one and, although it touched his pride and vanity to be forced to compete with the son of a venomous old squaw for the favor of the only girl he had ever wished to marry, he never transgressed in Janet's presence again.
But his attitude toward Donald changed immediately. They met frequently at "Bachelors' Hall," yet Donald had always sensed something in the young Englishman that made him withhold his friendship. Now Millington gave cause. The word "half-breed" began to find a place in his vocabulary when Donald was present. From the first Donald had accepted the fact that all fur land should know of his parentage but he felt that it could not be circumstance alone that permitted him to overhear Millington make several references to Nee-tah-wee-gan.
Yet Donald gave little heed to this. He was absorbed by a new and baffling emotion, was responding to stimuli which had never touched his life before. Love was a factor which had not entered the struggle through which he had lifted himself from a wigwam to a position high in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He had made no provision for it, had never considered it as a possibility.
Isolated from white people during the first half of his life, reared in an atmosphere of bitterness and savagery, shut up in lonely posts, battling always to lift himself and attain the goal he had set, knowing for only five crowded years the softening influence of a woman, he was not prepared even to recognize the true significance of what had come to him until it was time to say good-by to Janet.
He was starting early in the morning for Fort James and Evelyn asked him to dinner.
"It will be like the old times at Kenogami," she said. "Just the four of us."
But Donald found it was not like the old times. Then he had always turned to the mother. Now it was to Janet. Every word the girl said held his attention. He caught himself staring at her, trying to impress every feature of her vivid beauty upon his memory, storing up her characteristic phrases for solace during the long winter.
Later in the evening when duties called both Evelyn and Merton from the room, Donald discovered a difficulty in saying farewell he had never before experienced. He had always gone out to his post eager for the battle for pelts. Now he found himself thinking of the long, lonely months which lay ahead and he was conscious of an inexplicable desire to remain in Janet's presence.
"I'll be away almost a year," he finally forced himself to say. "Will you be here when I get back next summer?"
"Of course," and there was a catch in her laugh which prompted a quick, intuitive defense. "At least, I have no other plans now."
"You mean you may go back to England?"
Consternation had caused a sudden tremor in his voice. Janet saw, but her own emotions, in a quickening whirl, were equally disturbing.
"I should stay with father and mother," she admitted. "I have been away so long."
"But you would rather go back, rather live there?" He was almost accusing in his apprehensions.
"It was wonderful in London. I have missed many things."
There was no cruelty in Janet's thoughts, no attempt at coquetry. She had suddenly found herself on the brink of something new and startling and inexplicably alluring and was fighting desperately for poise. Before Donald could speak he heard Evelyn returning. Suddenly conscious of what his expression must tell, he began to examine a book on the table.
Even this would have told Evelyn something had her thoughts not been busy with a bit of news—the story of an Indian hunter at Kenogami, who, when his family was starving, had dragged his frozen feet over many torturing miles to get aid—which she had just heard through that important agency of fur land gossip, the kitchen. All three knew the Indian, a jovial, easy-going fellow, and in their expressions of sympathy Janet and Donald regained their composure.
But a little later when Donald arose Janet went forward with outstretched hands.
"You'll write to me, won't you?" she asked. "By the winter packet. A big, long letter."
"And you?" he demanded joyfully.
"Of course. We all will. Now that we have found you again, Donald, we are not going to lose you."
"But next summer?"
She laughed as she withdrew her hands. There was the instinctive feminine attempt to speak lightly of her decision but it could not conceal the sincerity or courage of her answer.
"I'll be here," she said. "I've come home to stay."