CHAPTER XXII
The Real Man Wins
When Millington gained the shelter of the dwelling house after his disastrous attempt to play windigo he dropped into a chair, spent physically after his run through the snow and in a panic because of the sudden collapse of his plans.
It was not a question of momentary success, he knew, but of his whole career in fur land. Failure that night meant failure in everything. Donald and Philip had wrought such havoc at Fort James that Millington, trying desperately to regain his standing with Corrigal, had resorted to doctored monthly statements, fictitious entries and many minor tricks against the Indians themselves in the matter of "debt" and fur purchases, in an effort to make a good showing. He had counted on some turn of events to make it possible, with increased business, to balance his books before spring.
When his losses had continued and Corrigal began to spend much time going over the reports and books, Millington knew the situation was desperate and he planned the windigo story. The trick was not new. It had been employed elsewhere with success and with Nee-tah-wee-gan as a confederate he did not see how he could fail.
But he had failed, so suddenly and so unaccountably that he was stunned. And there had been something menacing in the swift pursuit of the hunters. He was not certain whether they had recognized him. If they had! He sprang to his feet in terror, for he knew how their superstitious fears would be converted to blind, savage fury.
He hurried to the kitchen and sent the cook for one of the half-breed employes. When the man came he was instructed to keep a careful watch from behind a warehouse and report at once if anything happened.
When the man had gone Millington returned to his chair beside the stove. He found himself listening for any sound. He tried to concentrate on some plan that would pacify the Indians, perhaps turn the fiasco into victory.
A step on the verandah startled him and he sprang to his feet. It was the soft pad of a moccasin and he believed the hunters were coming. The door was opened, someone was in the hall. Not a man at the post ever dared enter the dwelling house thus. Then the hall door was thrown back and Corrigal entered the living room.
"Why—why, I thought you were at Whitefish Lake," Millington stammered.
So great were his astonishment and sudden fear he could not hide them. Corrigal eyed him for a moment and then said:
"I changed my mind. What's happening here?"
"Happening? Nothing. That is, nothing unusual."
"Many hunters in for New Year's?"
"Not a great many. I gave a big feast this noon."
"But what is Norton doing?"
"That is what I would like to know. So far as I can learn he hasn't done a thing, which makes me sure he is busy. In fact, from one or two things that happened late this afternoon, I think he's ready to pull off a coup of some sort but I can't get an inkling as to what it is."
Millington appeared more at ease but only at great effort. Corrigal was staring at him with that disturbing, vacant expression of a man giving only a small part of his attention to what he sees or hears. Corrigal's attitude was hypnotizing in its effect on Millington and neither man was conscious that some one had entered the room until they heard a low inhalation of breath and glanced up to see Nee-tah-wee-gan in the dining room doorway.
She was glaring at Millington and did not seem to be aware of Corrigal's presence.
"You fool!" she cried in Ojibwa. "You have ruined everything—your plan and mine."
"Get out of here!" Millington shouted angrily. "I told you to keep away. I can't be bothered with you."
It was a bluff pure and simple, a disowning of any collusion, but Corrigal did not seem to have heard.
"What's this?" he demanded. "What plans have been ruined? What is she doing here? What does this mean, Millington?"
His voice aroused Nee-tah-wee-gan to fury. She turned upon the district manager, choking and sputtering, but before the words could come a half-breed burst in at the front door.
"Those Indians, they coming back!" he cried. "All of them. They coming from the Keewatin post and they bring their guns."
"What's happened here, Millington?" Corrigal demanded. "You can't fool me any longer. What is it?"
For a moment the post manager did not answer. Panic induced by the fact that disaster was close at hand kept him from thinking clearly.
"There is nothing——" he began, only to be cut short by a shrill yell outside.
Corrigal ran out through the door and in the starlight he saw a dark mass coming around the corner of the trade shop. Yells and whoops broke the stillness of the winter night and, fur land veteran though he was, they brought fear to the district manager.
The cause he had not been able to learn but that mob of at least fifty hunters, that concerted movement of men bred through centuries to individual action, meant only that the savage nature of the Indians had been aroused. And, once aroused, he knew it could end only in destruction.
Though understanding perfectly well what he faced, for when the blind rage of an Ojibwa is unleashed it means that the repressed savagery of many generations holds sway, Corrigal ran forward, unarmed and single-handed, to meet the Indians. It was not alone personal courage, for in an instant he had grasped the situation. Disaster not only for himself but for the great company to which he had devoted his life was imminent.
"What does this mean?" he shouted in Ojibwa as he reached the gate in the picket fence that surrounded the dwelling house. "I am the 'big trader.'"
The Indians crowded up to the fence and recognized him. The word was passed back that it was Corrigal but there was no lessening of their savage determination.
"It makes no difference who you are!" one of them shouted. "Millington has lied to us. He has cheated us and tried to make fools of us so that he could cheat us more."
There were cries of encouragement and the crowd moved closer. Corrigal, still blocking the way, was thinking rapidly. He had been given no facts to explain the attack but he believed he understood. There was only one man in all the north country who had sufficient influence and knowledge of the Indian character to arouse them to such action.
"You are like children!" he shouted, trying to overawe them with his anger. "The great company has never tried to cheat or lied to its hunters. But because Donald Norton, who hates the Hudson's Bay and is trying to make you hate it, has told you so, you have believed him. It is he who has lied and has tried to trick you."
"Donald Norton has not spoken to us," an Indian answered, "and a man cannot lie without words. He has always been our friend but this other, this man you have sent to buy our fur, he is a liar and a cheat and he must suffer."
There was no need now for Corrigal to simulate anger. He knew Millington had blundered in some way, probably had played into his adversary's hands, and he believed Donald had taken advantage of the credulity of the Indians, working upon the racial hatred that lay just beneath the surface friendship and unleashing a whirlwind of violence.
In that moment Corrigal looked upon Donald as a renegade, as a man neither of one race nor the other. He saw him as one who, failing to gain a place with the white people, had gone to the red, not to become one of them but to employ untutored minds and savage natures in avenging the hurt to his own vanity, to destroy the peace which a mere handful of men had brought to four thousand miles of wilderness. The thought drove Corrigal to fresh anger.
"Get out!" he shouted, shaking his fists in the faces of the hunters. "Go back to the Indian house where you belong. In the morning I will hear your troubles. Do you want me to bring the police and have them take you all away? Go back and think of what the great company has always done for you and in the morning I may forget the foolishness this man has——"
An angry roar drowned his words as the Indians pressed forward.
"Burn the liar's house!" one of them cried. "Drive him out! Let him starve!"
Frantically now, Corrigal strove to still the roar of the mob but he could barely hear his own voice. And then with a rush the hunters swept through the gate, shoved him to one side and surged on toward the dwelling house.
"Fire! Fire!" they shouted. "Burn out the dog! Burn all his houses!"
Corrigal ran around the mob but before he could pass it he saw a dark figure dash across to the verandah. He believed it was an Indian swifter than the others and then he saw the man throw open the door and turn so that the light from the living room revealed him to the on-rushing horde. It was Donald Norton.
Maddened and bent on destruction though the Indians were, they stopped when they recognized him. The yelling ceased but they crowded close to the verandah railing and as the light shone on their dark, savage faces Corrigal saw that their lust for vengeance was as strong as ever.
He started forward but when Donald saw someone approaching along the wall he whirled fiercely.
"Go back there!" he commanded. "Stand outside with the others. How dare you place an angry foot within the home of 'that to which we owe thanks'?"
Corrigal hesitated. He was confident the Keewatin man was at the bottom of the uprising, that he had started something which, like a brush fire, had been whipped into undreamed of peril, but a quality in Donald's voice and his use of the Ojibwa name for the Hudson's Bay made him pause. Moreover, he was certain Donald did not recognize him.
"Go back," Donald repeated when the figure did not move from the wall. "Get out there with the others while I talk to you."
Without a word Corrigal slipped back to the outskirts of the group. Whatever Donald may have done in inciting the Indians against the company, the district manager understood that he meant to check it. And Corrigal knew that Donald alone could do it.
The free trader still confronted the Indians. Slowly and calmly he surveyed the angry faces in the dim light from the open door and then just as the leaders were about to break forth he began to speak.
"Each of you has caught a lynx in a trap," he said. "You know how the big cat spits and claws and tries to bite. And yet none of you ever became angry when the lynx did that. You knew that the lynx faced the end, that it was to die, that it could no longer roam the forest and gorge on rabbits.
"You killed the lynx, not because you were angry but because you wanted its fur so that you could bring it to the trader and get blankets and tea and powder, so that you would not starve and freeze.
"As the lynx fights to keep its life and as you hunt to keep yourselves and your families from starving, so Millington buys your fur. It is all the same, although each does it in a different way. When Millington found that you were bringing your fur to me and not to him he saw how he would starve. He was like the lynx when it is caught in a trap. He was like you when you are starving and want meat. He tried in the only way he could to make you bring your fur to him. He was starving, starving for fur, and he tried to make you think——"
"But he cheated us!" a hunter cried. "He lied!"
"He tried to make fools of us!" another shouted.
"Stop!" Donald commanded. "Have you forgotten the ways of the council? Have you grown so unfair you will not let one of your own people say what is in his heart? Wait! I have not finished."
Again he surveyed the angry faces.
"I am one of you," he began again. "Nee-tah-wee-gan is my mother. For half my life I lived in a wigwam. I was a hunter. Now I work for the white man, buy fur for him, but he calls me an Indian and you know that I am of your people.
"It is because I am one of you and because I have worked so long for the white man that I understand some things better than you do. You came here to-night to burn down these houses because you believed Millington had tricked you and you thought that in doing so you would revenge yourselves on him. You thought they were his houses and that his goods were in them.
"But you are wrong. Millington is only a servant. He owns nothing here. The houses and all that is in them belong not to him but to the Hudson's Bay, to 'that to which we owe thanks.' If you burn them it will not be Millington who suffers but the great company.
"I know Millington tricked you. He tried to fool you because his foot was in a trap. He told you I was a windigo, or he had a poor old woman, my mother, whose mind is filled only with hate, tell you so. And you believed and would still believe if he had not been so clumsy with his trick.
"I know, too, that because he thought you were frightened he offered you little for your fur, knowing that you would wish to return quickly to your hunting grounds.
"But Millington is not the Hudson's Bay. He is only one small, lying white man working for the great company. And you know and your fathers knew, and their fathers before them, that the men of the Hudson's Bay are your friends, that they do not trick and cheat you.
"The older of you remember Corrigal, the 'big trader,' when he was here thirty years ago and you know he would never trick or cheat you. When he learns what Millington has done he will kick him out and give you an honest trader in his place.
"There is another thing. The Hudson's Bay Company has filled these buildings with goods for your comfort, with things that will keep you from starving. It has not only goods for one year but, for fear the ship would be wrecked and you, its people, would suffer, it has always a year's supply stored in the post.
"Always the great company does these things for you. Always it watches and works that its people need not suffer. It never sleeps for fear something will happen to you.
"And you! What do you do? When the company makes one small mistake, when it places a liar and a thief here, you become as children and strike, not at the one who injured you, but at 'that to which we owe thanks.' Are you men or are you infants?"
Donald talked on for half an hour. Several times the hunters interrupted angrily but always he silenced them. Single-handed, without force or any threats of force, he stood there facing fifty Indians swayed by murderous fury.
Corrigal, listening and watching from the outskirts of the group, marveled at the skillful manner in which Norton was gaining control over the feverish minds of the savages. He had seen many white men try to talk to Indians but here was a born leader, a man with a complete understanding of the Ojibwa heart and mind.
With infinite patience and amazing skill, with a finesse that was beautiful and sure, Donald gradually turned the ferocity of the Indians to quiet channels. He never let them talk, never let them arouse themselves or each other, and in the end he led them away, laughing over a story he had told.
Corrigal stood aside as they passed. He knew the danger was over, that the miracle of this man's cleverness had averted a catastrophe, but he was not thinking of these things.
From Donald's speech he had learned the origin of the revolt and he had seen, too, how easily the free trader could have remained at home and allowed the Indians to carry out the destruction their rage demanded.
Donald's impassioned description of the great company and the place it held with them had been adroit but Corrigal had caught something more than adroitness. Incomprehensible as it seemed, incredible as he would have pronounced it an hour before, the Hudson's Bay man knew Donald's oratory had sprung from his heart and not from his head, that in pleading for the company Donald had not been actuated by policy or by fear but by a devotion to and by a love for the very thing he was fighting.
It was something that touched the grim nature of the district manager as nothing had for thirty years. He saw that here was another who loved the Hudson's Bay as he did, that here was allegiance greater than his own, for it persisted even after all hope was dead. And, more than that, in the awe and passion of the moment Corrigal felt a certain inexplicable kinship for this other lonely, hopeless soul. Unconsciously he started forward and he ran on until he had reached the head of the procession of Indians, where Donald walked.
"Oh, Norton!" he called.
Donald stopped in surprise and when the district manager drew him to one side he asked, "Where did you come from? I didn't know you were at Fort James."
"I just got here, when these hunters arrived. But will you come back later? I—I want to talk to you."
Donald hesitated. There was a note in Corrigal's voice he had never heard before.
"All right," he said at last. "I'll take these men over and quiet them down for the night. But I want Millington to be there."
"Yes. We'll be in the dwelling house."
When Donald returned he found the two Hudson's Bay men in the living room. Corrigal arose and placed a chair for him.
"Norton," he said, "Millington denies some of the things you said to the hunters out there. He charges you with having stirred them up against him."
"Is that what you got me over here for?" Donald demanded angrily.
"No. I believe you. A man does not talk as you did unless he speaks the truth. But why did you want Millington here when you came?"
"I wanted you to know the facts in this affair and I felt certain he would lie to you."
"Then there is no need for his remaining here. Millington, I want to talk to Norton alone."
"If you won't take my word against that of a half——" Millington began furiously, but Donald had sprung to his feet and started forward.
"None of that!" Corrigal shouted as he sprang between.
He pushed Millington out into the hall and closed the door but when he turned back he did not speak. For a full minute he paced back and forth. His hands were clenched behind him and his eyes were on the floor. Donald, watching him in amazement, sensed that the man was in the throes of a terrific struggle.
Then the pacing suddenly ceased and Corrigal stood in front of Donald.
"Norton," he said huskily, "you have been as fair and as clean and—and as white as any man I know. When the big test came you met it like any—like any other white man. I understand what has happened here and I think I understand why you came over here and saved this post. With perfect right you could have remained at home and let the Indians do as they pleased."
Donald, dumfounded by what he heard, did not speak but Corrigal seemed oblivious of his silence and again paced back and forth.
"There are some things I want to tell you," he said at last. "First of all, I want you back in the Hudson's Bay. I don't mean that you should just come back and take a post and go on as before. I want to do more than that. I want to right the wrong I have done. I want you to know that I——"
He broke off and turned to Donald.
"But first of all there is something else that you must understand, that you must believe. It is absolutely untrue what Nee-tah-wee-gan has charged. I am not your father but—I had a boy once. He died right where this house stands. He would have been thirty years old now. Before he came I dreamed of what he might be—a servant of the company.
"For thirty years I have been unable to forget him. He has been with me all that time, in my mind, growing, working, developing. But only in my mind until to-night—out there on the verandah. When I heard you talk to those Indians, when I saw you win out single-handed, when I knew how you felt, what was in your heart, you were to me at that moment as I have wished my boy might have become.
"I could not say more than that to any man but I say it that you may know I was wrong, unjust. I want to make that up to you. I want—don't you see? I am not your father but—but I wish I were."
Tears were in Donald's eyes. Once before, in that same room, he had been given a glimpse of this man's soul. During the winter he had caught flashes of him, had begun to sense that Corrigal not only struggled under a terrific handicap but that there was something big and fair in him.
But now, with the background of long years of yearning, of the hardening, blighting effects of a desperate effort to forget, he saw the man as he really was. And because his own fate was as hopeless, because he felt the kinship of emptiness, he struggled to express himself. Yet he could only hold out his hand and grip Corrigal's with fierce passion.
"You will come back?" the district manager asked.
Donald's heart leaped. He saw in this man's offer the one way out for himself, an escape from that crushing despondency which had seized him when he heard the windigo story. He had believed everything was gone, that he had been driven back to a wigwam, but here was the Hudson's Bay, holding out its hand.
"Yes," he said, "I want—but—but I can't do it this winter. You see——"
Corrigal threw an arm across the other's shoulders.
"I understand that," he hastened to say. "There's a promise, of course, a contract. But next year?"
"Yes, next year. I want to. The Hudson's Bay—well, I never knew anything else, never expected to. It wasn't until after I left it that I knew what it meant to me, what it——"
"I understand that, boy," Corrigal interrupted quickly when he saw Donald struggling with his emotions. "I know why you saved this post to-night. The Hudson's Bay is home, religion, family—everything—to a man who knows it and——"
Donald's face had become gray with pain and Corrigal stopped in amazement.
"And has nothing else in the world, or hope for anything else," the young man finished for him in an unsteady voice.
He turned and walked out of the room and Corrigal, because he understood and was thinking of Janet Layard, was silent as he went.