Part 1 (1/2)
The Gun-Brand.
by James B. Hendryx.
CHAPTER I
THE CALL OF THE RAW
Seated upon a thick, burlap-covered bale of freight--a ”piece,” in the parlance of the North--Chloe Elliston idly watched the loading of the scows. The operation was not new to her; a dozen times within the month since the outfit had swung out from Athabasca Landing she had watched from the muddy bank while the half-breeds and Indians unloaded the big scows, ran them light through whirling rock-ribbed rapids, carried the innumerable pieces of freight upon their shoulders across portages made all but impa.s.sable by scrub timber, oozy muskeg, and low sand-mountains, loaded the scows again at the foot of the rapid and steered them through devious and dangerous miles of swift-moving white-water, to the head of the next rapid.
They are patient men--these water freighters of the far North. For more than two centuries and a quarter they have sweated the wilderness freight across these same portages. And they are sober men--when civilization is behind them--far behind.
Close beside Chloe Elliston, upon the same piece, Harriet Penny, of vague age, and vaguer purpose, also watched the loading of the scows.
Harriet Penny was Chloe Elliston's one concession to convention--excess baggage, beyond the outposts, being a creature of fear. Upon another piece, Big Lena, the gigantic Swedish Amazon who, in the capacity of general factotum, had accompanied Chloe Elliston over half the world, stared stolidly at the river.
Having arrived at Athabasca Landing four days after the departure of the Hudson Bay Company's annual brigade, Chloe had engaged transportation into the North in the scows of an independent. And, when he heard of this, the old factor at the post shook his head dubiously, but when the girl pressed him for the reason, he shrugged and remained silent. Only when the outfit was loaded did the old man whisper one sentence:
”Beware o' Pierre Lapierre.”
Again Chloe questioned him, and again he remained silent. So, as the days pa.s.sed upon the river trail, the name of Pierre Lapierre was all but forgotten in the menace of rapids and the monotony of portages.
And now the last of the great rapids had been run--the rapid of the Slave--and the scows were almost loaded.
Vermilion, the boss scowman, stood upon the running-board of the leading scow and directed the stowing of the freight. He was a picturesque figure--Vermilion. A squat, thick half-breed, with eyes set wide apart beneath a low forehead bound tightly around with a handkerchief of flaming silk.
A heavy-eyed Indian, moving ponderously up the rough plank with a piece balanced upon his shoulders, missed his footing and fell with a loud splash into the water. The Indian scrambled clumsily ash.o.r.e, and the piece was rescued, but not before a perfect torrent of French-English-Indian profanity had poured from the lips of the ever-versatile Vermilion. Harriet Penny shrank against the younger woman and shuddered.
”Oh!” she gasped, ”he's swearing!”
”No!” exclaimed Chloe, in feigned surprise. ”Why, I believe he is!”
Miss Penny flushed. ”But, it is terrible! Just listen!”
”For Heaven's sake, Hat! If you don't like it, why do you listen?”
”But he ought to be stopped. I am sure the poor Indian did not _try_ to fall in the river.”
Chloe made a gesture of impatience. ”Very well, Hat; just look up the ordinance against swearing on Slave River, and report him to Ottawa.”
”But I'm afraid! He--the Hudson Bay Company's man--told us not to come.”
Chloe straightened up with a jerk. ”See here, Hat Penny! Stop your snivelling! What do you expect from rivermen? Haven't the seven hundred miles of water trail taught you _anything_? And, as for being afraid--I don't care _who_ told us not to come! I'm an Elliston, and I'll go whereever I want to go! This isn't a pleasure trip. I came up here for a purpose. Do you think I'm going to be scared out by the first old man that wags his head and shrugs his shoulders? Or by any other man! Or by any swearing that I can't understand, or any that I can, either, for that matter! Come on, they're waiting for this bale.”
Chloe Elliston's presence in the far outlands was the culmination of an ideal, spurred by dissuasion and antagonism into a determination, and developed by longing into an obsession. Since infancy the girl had been left much to her own devices. Environment, and the prescribed course at an expensive school, should have made her pretty much what other girls are, and an able satellite to her mother, who managed to remain one of the busiest women of the Western metropolis--doing absolutely nothing--but, doing it with _eclat_.
The girl's father, Blair Elliston, from his desk in a luxurious office suite, presided over the destiny of the Elliston fleet of yellow-stack tramps that poked their noses into queer ports and put to sea with queer cargoes--cargoes that smelled sweet and spicy, with the spice of the far South Seas. Office sailor though he was, Blair Elliston commanded the respect of even the roughest of his polyglot crews--a respect not wholly uncommingled with fear.
For this man was the son of old ”Tiger” Elliston, founder of the fleet.
The man who, shoulder to shoulder with Brooke, the elder, put the fear of G.o.d in the hearts of the pirates, and swept wide trade-lanes among the islands of terror-infested Malaysia. And through Chloe Elliston's veins coursed the blood of her world-roving ancestor. Her most treasured possession was a blackened and scarred oil portrait of the old sea-trader and adventurer, which always lay swathed in many wrappings in the bottom of her favourite trunk.
In her heart she loved and admired this grandfather, with a love and admiration that bordered upon idolatry. She loved the lean, hard features, and the cold, rapier-blade eyes. She loved the name men called him; Tiger Elliston, an earned name--that. The name of a man who, by his might and the strength and mastery of him, had won his place in the world of the men who dare.