Book: Conjuror\'s House

S >> Stewart Edward White >> Conjuror\'s House



CONJUROR'S HOUSE


_Beyond the butternut, beyond the maple,
beyond the white pine and the red, beyond
the oak, the cedar, and the beech, beyond
even the white and yellow birches lies a
Land, and in that Land the shadows fall
crimson across the snow._



[Illustration: PAUL GILMORE, in "THE CALL OF THE NORTH"--The dramatic
version of "CONJUROR'S HOUSE."]





CONJUROR'S HOUSE

_A Romance of the Free Forest_



BY

Stewart Edward White

AUTHOR OF THE WESTERNERS,
THE BLAZED TRAIL, ETC.



GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK





COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Published, March, 1903. R.




CONJUROR'S HOUSE

_Chapter One_


The girl stood on a bank above a river flowing north. At her back
crouched a dozen clean whitewashed buildings. Before her in
interminable journey, day after day, league on league into remoteness,
stretched the stern Northern wilderness, untrodden save by the
trappers, the Indians, and the beasts. Close about the little
settlement crept the balsams and spruce, the birch and poplar, behind
which lurked vast dreary muskegs, a chaos of bowlder-splits, the
forest. The girl had known nothing different for many years. Once a
summer the sailing ship from England felt its frozen way through the
Hudson Straits, down the Hudson Bay, to drop anchor in the mighty
River of the Moose. Once a summer a six-fathom canoe manned by a dozen
paddles struggled down the waters of the broken Abitibi. Once a year a
little band of red-sashed _voyageurs_ forced their exhausted
sledge-dogs across the ice from some unseen wilderness trail. That was
all.

Before her eyes the seasons changed, all grim, but one by the very
pathos of brevity sad. In the brief luxuriant summer came the Indians
to trade their pelts, came the keepers of the winter posts to rest,
came the ship from England bringing the articles of use or ornament
she had ordered a full year before. Within a short time all were gone,
into the wilderness, into the great unknown world. The snow fell; the
river and the bay froze. Strange men from the North glided silently
to the Factor's door, bearing the meat and pelts of the seal. Bitter
iron cold shackled the northland, the abode of desolation. Armies of
caribou drifted by, ghostly under the aurora, moose, lordly and
scornful, stalked majestically along the shore; wolves howled
invisible, or trotted dog-like in organized packs along the river
banks. Day and night the ice artillery thundered. Night and day the
fireplaces roared defiance to a frost they could not subdue, while the
people of desolation crouched beneath the tyranny of winter.

Then the upheaval of spring with the ice-jams and terrors, the Moose
roaring by untamable, the torrents rising, rising foot by foot to the
very dooryard of her father's house. Strange spirits were abroad at
night, howling, shrieking, cracking and groaning in voices of ice and
flood. Her Indian nurse told her of them all--of Maunabosho, the good;
of Nenaubosho the evil--in her lisping Ojibway dialect that sounded
like the softer voices of the forest.

At last the sudden subsidence of the waters; the splendid eager
blossoming of the land into new leaves, lush grasses, an abandon of
sweetbrier and hepatica. The air blew soft, a thousand singing birds
sprang from the soil, the wild goose cried in triumph. Overhead shone
the hot sun of the Northern summer.

From the wilderness came the _brigades_ bearing their pelts, the hardy
traders of the winter posts, striking hot the imagination through the
mysterious and lonely allurement of their callings. For a brief
season, transient as the flash of a loon's wing on the shadow of a
lake, the post was bright with the thronging of many people. The
Indians pitched their wigwams on the broad meadows below the bend; the
half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright teeth and wicked dark
eyes at whom it might concern; the traders gazed stolidily over their
little black pipes, and uttered brief sentences through their thick
black beards. Everywhere was gay sound--the fiddle, the laugh, the
song; everywhere was gay color--the red sashes of the _voyageurs_, the
beaded moccasins and leggings of the _metis_, the capotes of the
_brigade_, the variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the
wild roses around the edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the
year passed. Again the nights were long, again the frost crept down
from the eternal snow, again the wolves howled across barren wastes.

Just now the girl stood ankle-deep in green grasses, a bath of
sunlight falling about her, a tingle of salt wind humming up the river
from the bay's offing. She was clad in gray wool, and wore no hat. Her
soft hair, the color of ripe wheat, blew about her temples, shadowing
eyes of fathomless black. The wind had brought to the light and
delicate brown of her complexion a trace of color to match her lips,
whose scarlet did not fade after the ordinary and imperceptible manner
into the tinge of her skin, but continued vivid to the very edge; her
eyes were wide and unseeing. One hand rested idly on the breech of an
ornamented bronze field-gun.

McDonald, the chief trader, passed from the house to the store where
his bartering with the Indians was daily carried on; the other
Scotchman in the Post, Galen Albret, her father, and the head Factor
of all this region, paced back and forth across the veranda of the
factory, caressing his white beard; up by the stockade, young Achille
Picard tuned his whistle to the note of the curlew; across the meadow
from the church wandered Crane, the little Church of England
missionary, peering from short-sighted pale blue eyes; beyond the
coulee, Sarnier and his Indians _chock-chock-chocked_ away at the
seams of the long coast-trading bateau. The girl saw nothing, heard
nothing. She was dreaming, she was trying to remember.

In the lines of her slight figure, in its pose there by the old gun
over the old, old river, was the grace of gentle blood, the pride of
caste. Of all this region her father was the absolute lord, feared,
loved, obeyed by all its human creatures. When he went abroad, he
travelled in a state almost mediaeval in its magnificence; when he
stopped at home, men came to him from the Albany, the Kenogami, the
Missinaibe, the Mattagami, the Abitibi--from all the rivers of the
North--to receive his commands. Way was made for him, his lightest
word was attended. In his house dwelt ceremony, and of his house she
was the princess. Unconsciously she had taken the gracious habit of
command. She had come to value her smile, her word, to value herself.
The lady of a realm greater than the countries of Europe, she moved
serene, pure, lofty amid dependants.

And as the lady of this realm she did honor to her father's
guests--sitting stately behind the beautiful silver service, below the
portrait of the Company's greatest explorer, Sir George Simpson,
dispensing crude fare in gracious manner, listening silently to the
conversation, finally withdrawing at the last with a sweeping courtesy
to play soft, melancholy, and world-forgotten airs on the old piano,
brought over years before by the _Lady Head_, while the guests made
merry with the mellow port and ripe Manila cigars which the Company
supplied its servants. Then coffee, still with her natural Old World
charm of the _grande dame_. Such guests were not many, nor came often.
There was McTavish of Rupert's House, a three days' journey to the
northeast; Rand of Fort Albany, a week's travel to the northwest;
Mault of Fort George, ten days beyond either, all grizzled in the
Company's service. With them came their clerks, mostly English and
Scotch younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a
vaster for their Factor's daughter. Once in two or three years
appeared the inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with
their six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners
trailing like gonfalons in the water. Then this post of Conjuror's
House feasted and danced, undertook gay excursions, discussed in
public or private conclave weighty matters, grave and reverend
advices, cautions, and commands. They went. Desolation again crept in.

The girl dreamed. She was trying to remember. Far-off, half-forgotten
visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious, beautiful women, peopled
the clouds of her imaginings. She heard them again, as voices beneath
the roar of rapids, like far-away bells tinkling faintly through a
wind, pitying her, exclaiming over her; she saw them dim and
changing, as wraiths of a fog, as shadow pictures in a mist beneath
the moon, leaning to her with bright, shining eyes full of compassion
for the little girl who was to go so far away into an unknown land;
she felt them, as the touch of a breeze when the night is still,
fondling her, clasping her, tossing her aloft in farewell. One she
felt plainly--a gallant youth who held her up for all to see. One she
saw clearly--a dewy-eyed, lovely woman who murmured loving, broken
words. One she heard distinctly--a gentle voice that said, "God's love
be with you, little one, for you have far to go, and many days to pass
before you see Quebec again." And the girl's eyes suddenly swam
bright, for the northland was very dreary. She threw her palms out in
a gesture of weariness.

Then her arms dropped, her eyes widened, her head bent forward in the
attitude of listening.

"Achille!" she called, "Achille! Come here!"

The young fellow approached respectfully.

"Mademoiselle?" he asked.

"Don't you hear?" she said.

Faint, between intermittent silences, came the singing of men's voices
from the south.

"_Grace a Dieu_!" cried Achille. "Eet is so. Eet is dat _brigade_!"

He ran shouting toward the factory.




_Chapter Two_


Men, women, dogs, children sprang into sight from nowhere, and ran
pell-mell to the two cannon. Galen Albret, reappearing from the
factory, began to issue orders. Two men set about hoisting on the tall
flag-staff the blood-red banner of the Company. Speculation, excited
and earnest, arose among the men as to which of the branches of the
Moose this _brigade_ had hunted--the Abitibi, the Mattagami, or the
Missinaibie. The half-breed women shaded their eyes. Mrs. Cockburn,
the doctor's wife, and the only other white woman in the settlement,
came and stood by Virginia Albret's side. Wishkobun, the Ojibway
woman from the south country, and Virginia's devoted familiar, took
her half-jealous stand on the other.

"It is the same every year. We always like to see them come," said
Mrs. Cockburn, in her monotonous low voice of resignation.

"Yes," replied Virginia, moving a little impatiently, for she
anticipated eagerly the picturesque coming of these men of the Silent
Places, and wished to savor the pleasure undistracted.

"Mi-di-mo-yay ka'-win-ni-shi-shin," said Wishkobun, quietly.

"Ae," replied Virginia, with a little laugh, patting the woman's brown
hand.

A shout arose. Around the bend shot a canoe. At once every paddle in
it was raised to a perpendicular salute, then all together dashed
into the water with the full strength of the _voyageurs_ wielding
them. The canoe fairly leaped through the cloud of spray. Another
rounded the bend, another double row of paddles flashed in the
sunlight, another crew, broke into a tumult of rapid exertion as they
raced the last quarter mile of the long journey. A third burst into
view, a fourth, a fifth. The silent river was alive with motion,
glittering with color. The canoes swept onward, like race-horses
straining against the rider. Now the spectators could make out plainly
the boatmen. It could be seen that they had decked themselves out for
the occasion. Their heads were bound with bright-colored fillets,
their necks with gay scarves. The paddles were adorned with gaudy
woollen streamers. New leggings, of holiday pattern, were
intermittently visible on the bowsmen and steersmen as they half rose
to give added force to their efforts.

At first the men sang their canoe songs, but as the swift rush of the
birch-barks brought them almost to their journey's end, they burst
into wild shrieks and whoops of delight.

All at once they were close to hand. The steersman rose to throw his
entire weight on the paddle. The canoe swung abruptly for the shore.
Those in it did not relax their exertions, but continued their
vigorous strokes until within a few yards of apparent destruction.

"Hola! hola!" they cried, thrusting their paddles straight down into
the water with a strong backward twist. The stout wood bent and
cracked. The canoe stopped short and the _voyageurs_ leaped ashore to
be swallowed up in the crowd that swarmed down upon them.

The races were about equally divided, and each acted after its
instincts--the Indian greeting his people quietly, and stalking away
to the privacy of his wigwam; the more volatile white catching his
wife or his sweetheart or his child to his arms. A swarm of Indian
women and half-grown children set about unloading the canoes.

Virginia's eyes ran over the crews of the various craft. She
recognized them all, of course, to the last Indian packer, for in so
small a community the personality and doings of even the humblest
members are well known to everyone. Long since she had identified the
_brigade_. It was of the Missinaibie, the great river whose
head-waters rise a scant hundred feet from those that flow as many
miles south into Lake Superior. It drains a wild and rugged country
whose forests cling to bowlder hills, whose streams issue from
deep-riven gorges, where for many years the big gray wolves had
gathered in unusual abundance. She knew by heart the winter posts,
although she had never seen them. She could imagine the isolation of
such a place, and the intense loneliness of the solitary man condemned
to live through the dark Northern winters, seeing no one but the rare
Indians who might come in to trade with him for their pelts. She could
appreciate the wild joy of a return for a brief season to the company
of fellow-men.

When her glance fell upon the last of the canoes, it rested with a
flash of surprise. The craft was still floating idly, its bow barely
caught against the bank. The crew had deserted, but amidships, among
the packages of pelts and duffel, sat a stranger. The canoe was that
of the post at Kettle Portage.

She saw the stranger to be a young man with a clean-cut face, a trim
athletic figure dressed in the complete costume of the _voyageurs_,
and thin brown and muscular hands. When the canoe touched the bank he
had taken no part in the scramble to shore, and so had sat forgotten
and unnoticed save by the girl, his figure erect with something of the
Indian's stoical indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined
himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His
hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here
and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something which
Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to
which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his
features, darkening them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice he
ran his eye over the vociferating crowd on the narrow beach.

Absorbed in the silent drama of a man's unguarded expression, Virginia
leaned forward eagerly. In some vague manner it was borne in on her
that once before she had experienced the same emotion, had come into
contact with someone, something, that had affected her emotionally
just as this man did now. But she could not place it. Over and over
again she forced her mind to the very point of recollection, but
always it slipped back again from the verge of attainment. Then a
little movement, some thrust forward of the head, some nervous, rapid
shifting of the hands or feet, some unconscious poise of the
shoulders, brought the scene flashing before her--the white snow, the
still forest, the little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but
cool, thrusting its blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope
of an orifice of escape. Somehow the man reminded her of the animal,
the fierce little woods marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning
to cower as would the gentler creatures of the forest.

Abruptly his expression changed again. His figure stiffened, the
muscles of his face turned iron. Virginia saw that someone on the
beach had pointed toward him. His mask was on.

The first burst of greeting was over. Here and there one or another of
the _brigade_ members jerked their heads in the stranger's direction,
explaining low-voiced to their companions. Soon all eyes turned
curiously toward the canoe. A hum of low-voiced comment took the
place of louder delight.

The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to his
feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of
movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he
reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale just
above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead silence fell.
Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like the slow
agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at last they
formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre was the bow of the
canoe and the stranger from Kettle Portage. The men scowled, the women
regarded him with a half-fearful curiosity.

Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric
polarity. The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained
hostility. The desperation she had thought to read but a moment before
had vanished utterly, leaving in its place a scornful indifference and
perhaps more than a trace of recklessness. He was ripe for an
outbreak. She did not in the least understand, but she knew it from
the depths of her woman's instinct, and unconsciously her sympathies
flowed out to this man, alone without a greeting where all others came
to their own.

For perhaps a full sixty seconds the new-comer stood uncertain what he
should do, or perhaps waiting for some word or act to tip the balance
of his decision. One after another those on shore felt the insolence
of his stare, and shifted uneasily. Then his deliberate scrutiny rose
to the group by the cannon. Virginia caught her breath sharply. In
spite of herself she could not turn away. The stranger's eye crossed
her own. She saw the hard look fade into pleased surprise. Instantly
his hat swept the gunwale of the canoe. He stepped magnificently
ashore. The crisis was over. Not a word had been spoken.




_Chapter Three_


Galen Albret sat in his rough-hewn arm-chair at the head of the table,
receiving the reports of his captains. The long, narrow room opened
before him, heavy raftered, massive, white, with a cavernous fireplace
at either end. Above him frowned Sir George's portrait, at his right
hand and his left stretched the row of home-made heavy chairs,
finished smooth and dull by two centuries of use.

His arms were laid along the arms of his seat; his shaggy head was
sunk forward until his beard swept the curve of his big chest; the
heavy tufts of hair above his eyes were drawn steadily together in a
frown of attention. One after another the men arose and spoke. He made
no movement, gave no sign, his short, powerful form blotted against
the lighter silhouette of his chair, only his eyes and the white of
his beard gleaming out of the dusk.

Kern of Old Brunswick House, Achard of New; Ki-wa-nee, the Indian of
Flying Post--these and others told briefly of many things, each in his
own language. To all Galen Albret listened in silence. Finally Louis
Placide from the post at Kettle Portage got to his feet. He too
reported of the trade,--so many "beaver" of tobacco, of powder, of
lead, of pork, of flour, of tea, given in exchange; so many mink,
otter, beaver, ermine, marten, and fisher pelts taken in return. Then
he paused and went on at greater length in regard to the stranger,
speaking evenly but with emphasis. When he had finished, Galen Albret
struck a bell at his elbow. Me-en-gan, the bowsman of the Factor's
canoe, entered, followed closely by the young man who had that
afternoon arrived.

He was dressed still in his costume of the _voyageur_--the loose
blouse shirt, the buckskin leggings and moccasins, the long tasselled
red sash. His head was as high and his glance as free, but now the
steel blue of his eye had become steady and wary, and two faint lines
had traced themselves between his brows. At his entrance a hush of
expectation fell. Galen Albret did not stir, but the others hitched
nearer the long, narrow table, and two or three leaned both elbows on
it the better to catch what should ensue.

Me-en-gan stopped by the door, but the stranger walked steadily the
length of the room until he faced the Factor. Then he paused and
waited collectedly for the other to speak.

This the Factor did not at once begin to do, but sat
impassive--apparently without thought--while the heavy breathing of
the men in the room marked off the seconds of time. Finally abruptly
Galen Albret's cavernous voice boomed forth. Something there was
strangely mysterious, cryptic, in the virile tones issuing from a bulk
so massive and inert. Galen Albret did not move, did not even raise
the heavy-lidded, dull stare of his eyes to the young man who stood
before him; hardly did his broad arched chest seem to rise and fall
with the respiration of speech; and yet each separate word leaped
forth alive, instinct with authority.

"Once at Leftfoot Lake, two Indians caught you asleep," he
pronounced. "They took your pelts and arms, and escorted you to
Sudbury. They were my Indians. Once on the upper Abitibi you were
stopped by a man named Herbert, who warned you from the country, after
relieving you of your entire outfit. He told you on parting what you
might expect if you should repeat the attempt--severe measures, the
severest. Herbert was my man. Now Louis Placide surprises you in a
rapids near Kettle Portage and brings you here."

During the slow delivering of these accurately spaced words, the
attitude of the men about the long, narrow table gradually changed.
Their curiosity had been great before, but now their intellectual
interest was awakened, for these were facts of which Louis Placide's
statement had given no inkling. Before them, for the dealing, was a
problem of the sort whose solution had earned for Galen Albret a
reputation in the north country. They glanced at one another to obtain
the sympathy of attention, then back toward their chief in anxious
expectation of his next words. The stranger, however, remained
unmoved. A faint smile had sketched the outline of his lips when first
the Factor began to speak. This smile he maintained to the end. As the
older man paused, he shrugged his shoulders.

"All of that is quite true," he admitted.

Even the unimaginative men of the Silent Places started at these
simple words, and vouchsafed to their speaker a more sympathetic
attention. For the tones in which they were delivered possessed that
deep, rich throat timbre which so often means power--personal
magnetism--deep, from the chest, with vibrant throat tones suggesting
a volume of sound which may in fact be only hinted by the loudness the
man at the moment sees fit to employ. Such a voice is a responsive
instrument on which emotion and mood play wonderfully seductive
strains.

"All of that is quite true," he repeated after a second's pause; "but
what has it to do with me? Why am I stopped and sent out from the free
forest? I am really curious to know your excuse."

"This," replied Galen Albret, weightily, "is my domain. I tolerate no
rivalry here."

"Your right?" demanded the young man, briefly.

"I have made the trade, and I intend to keep it."

"In other words, the strength of your good right arm," supplemented
the stranger, with the faintest hint of a sneer.

"That is neither here nor there," rejoined Galen Albret, "the point is
that I intend to keep it. I've had you sent out, but you have been too
stupid or too obstinate to take the hint. Now I have to warn you in
person. I shall send you out once more, but this time you must promise
me not to meddle with the trade again."

He paused for a response. The young man's smile merely became
accentuated.

"I have means of making my wishes felt," warned the Factor.

"Quite so," replied the young man, deliberately, "_La Longue
Traverse_."

At this unexpected pronouncement of that dread name two of the men
swore violently; the others thrust back their chairs and sat, their
arms rigidly braced against the table's edge, staring wide-eyed and
open-mouthed at the speaker. Only Galen Albret remained unmoved.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, calmly.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.