II
THE GRANDE PORTAGE

That night and the next day the two lads’ heads were full of the Island of Yellow Sands. They wanted to be alone to discuss the Indian’s tale, but found it impossible to avoid their companions. Moreover they had few idle moments, for the Northwest Fur Company’s station was a busy place that July day in 179 – . Nearly a thousand men were gathered at the post, and there was much work to be done.

The Bay of the Grande Portage, where the station was located, is on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, a few miles south of the Pigeon River. The river forms a part of the line between the United States and the Dominion of Canada. Although the peace treaty that followed the Revolution had been signed, defining the boundary, the Northwest Company, a Canadian organization, still maintained its trading post on United States ground. The place had proved a convenient and satisfactory spot for the chief station, that marked the point of departure from Lake Superior for the country north and west.

Separated from a much larger bay to the northeast by a long point of land, and further cut off from the main lake by an outlying, wooded island, Grande Portage was well screened from all winds except the south. The land at the head of the bay formed a natural amphitheatre and had been cleared of woods. On one side of the open ground, underneath a hill more than three hundred feet high, with higher hills rising beyond, a cedar stockade walled in a rectangular space some twenty-four rods wide by thirty long. Within the stockade were the quarters of the men in charge of the post, clerks, servants, artisans and visiting traders and members of the Company, as well as the buildings where furs, supplies and goods for trade were stored and business transacted. There also was the great dining hall where proprietors, clerks, guides and interpreters messed together.

Outside the stockade were grouped tents and upturned canoes, supported on paddles and poles. The tents were the temporary homes of the “northmen,” the men who went to the far north and west for furs. The “comers and goers” or “pork eaters,” as the canoemen who made the trip between Montreal and the Portage, but did not go on to the west, were called, slept under their canoes. In that queer town of tents and boats, men were constantly coming and going; clerks and other employees from the fort; painted and befeathered Indians, many of them accompanied by squaws and children; and French-Canadians and half-breed voyageurs, strikingly clothed in blanket or leather tunics, leggings and moccasins of tanned skins, and scarlet sashes and caps.

Offshore a small sailing vessel of about fifty tons burden lay at anchor. This boat was to take a cargo of pelts back across the lake, but the main dependence of the Company was placed upon the great fleet of canoes. Other smaller canoes were arriving daily from the northwest or setting out in that direction, the route being up the Rivière aux Tourtres, now known as Pigeon River, the English translation of the French name. The mouth of the stream is about five miles northeast of Grande Portage Bay, and the falls and rapids near the outlet were so many and dangerous that boats could not be paddled or poled through them. So the canoes from the west had to be unloaded several miles above the mouth of the river, and the packages of furs carried on the backs of men over a hard nine-mile portage to the post, while provisions and articles of trade were taken back to the waiting canoes in the same way. This was the long or great portage that gave the place its name.

Busy with their work, and surrounded almost constantly by the other voyageurs, the boys had no opportunity to discuss the prospect of reaching the Island of Yellow Sands, but Jean found a chance to answer some of Ronald’s questions about the tall Ojibwa. The Indian’s gratitude and devotion to Jean’s father dated from fifteen years back, when the elder Havard had saved him from being put to death by white traders at the Sault de Ste. Marie, for a crime he had not committed. Convinced of Nangotook’s innocence, Havard had induced the angry men to delay the execution of their sentence, and had sought out and brought to justice the real offender, a renegade half-breed. For that service the Indian had vowed that his life belonged to his white brother. The Ojibwa and the Frenchman had become fast friends, for Nangotook, or Etienne, as the French priests, in whose mission school he had been trained, had christened him, was one of the higher type of Indians, possessing most of the better and few of the worse traits of his tribe. He visited Havard at his home on the St. Lawrence, and there became the devoted friend of little Jean, then a child of three.

Since that first visit, Nangotook had appeared at the Havard home a number of times, after irregular intervals of absence, sometimes of months, again of years. Although, until the night before, it had been more than four years since Jean had seen him, the Ojibwa had apparently not forgotten either his gratitude to the elder Havard or his affection for the boy. That gratitude and affection had led him to offer to guide the two lads to the wonderful island. Jean and his father needed gold, so Nangotook intended that they should have gold, if it was in his power to help them to it. Ronald was Jean’s friend, and the Indian was willing to include him also. Moreover what he had overheard of the Scotch boy’s remarks about the way some of the traders treated the Indians had pleased Nangotook. He had taken the teachings of the missionary priests seriously and had grasped at least a little of their meaning. By nature moderate and self-controlled, he realized the disasters that were coming upon his people through the physical degradation, idleness and other evils that followed overindulgence in the white man’s liquor. So Ronald’s disgust at the unscrupulousness of many of the traders in their dealings with the savages had met with his approval, and had made the Indian the lad’s friend.

It was nearly sunset when the two boys slipped away from the camp to the secluded spot where they were to meet Etienne. Seating themselves on the fallen tree trunk, they began at once to talk of the subject uppermost in their thoughts. In a week or two the canoes would be ready to start back around the shore of the lake to the Sault, and thence to Montreal, where they would arrive late in September. Jean and Ronald, however, were not obliged to return the whole distance, although, up to the night before, they had intended to do so. They had spent the previous winter at the Sault de Ste. Marie, the falls of the river St. Mary which connects Lake Superior with Lake Huron. Jean had been staying with a French family there, friends of his father, while Ronald, who had made the trip from Montreal with his uncle in the autumn, had remained, after the latter’s return, as a volunteer helper to the Company’s agent at the Sault. Before pledging him to the Company’s service for a term of years, his uncle had wished him to learn whether he really liked the business of fur-trading. When, in the spring, the canoe fleet from Montreal had arrived at the Sault, it had been short handed. Two men had been killed and several seriously injured in an accident on the way. So it happened that Jean and Ronald, expert canoemen and eager to make the Superior trip, had been engaged with three others. Their contracts were only for the voyage from the Sault to the Grande Portage and back again to the Sault, and they were under no obligation to go on with the fleet to Montreal.

Whether there would be time, before cold weather and winter storms set in, to come back to the lake and join the Indian in a search for the Island of Yellow Sands, they could not be sure until they had consulted him. They hoped ardently that they could make the attempt that year, for who could tell what might happen before another spring? As Ronald pointed out, Etienne alone knew how to reach the island. If anything should go wrong with him, they would have no guide. Moreover, in the interval, some other white man might discover the place. Indeed Etienne, though Jean thought that unlikely, might take it into his head to lead some one else there.

They were discussing this question, when, just as the sun was sinking, the Indian joined them. It soon became evident that he was bent on leading them on the adventure, and they were quite as eager to follow him. He seemed certain that there would be ample time, unless they were delayed by unusually bad weather, to make at least one trip from the Sault to the mysterious island and back, before winter set in. He would furnish a small canoe, and would bargain at the trading post for the supplies they would need. He was well known at the Sault, and his arrival there would excite no comment. But he cautioned them to keep their plans secret, lest others should forestall them in the discovery of the gold. They must disappear quietly and join their guide at a spot agreed upon, several miles from the little settlement. As rapidly as possible they would paddle along the north shore of Lake Superior to the place where they must strike out into the open lake. The voyage from shore to island could be undertaken only in the best of weather, but it could be made, he assured them, in a few hours. After they had loaded their canoe with as much sand as it would carry, they would return to the shelter of the shore, and make their way back to the eastern end of the lake. Not far from the Sault he knew a safe, well hidden spot where they could secrete the bulk of their precious cargo, until they could find an opportunity to return to the island for more.

Any scruples the lads might have felt at leaving the Sault without letting their friends know where they were going, were soon overcome by the lure of the adventure as well as of the gold itself. They comforted their consciences with the thought that, once they had found the yellow sands, they would make everything right by taking Jean’s father and Ronald’s uncle into confidence and partnership. Then they would secure, or build, a small sailing vessel, and bring away from the island all the gold they would ever need. M. Havard could buy back the old home on the St. Lawrence that financial reverses had forced him to lose. Jean glowed with the thought of the happiness his father and mother would feel at returning to their dearly loved and much mourned home. Ronald was an orphan, the uncle in Montreal being his only near relative, and the latter was wealthy and not in need of help. But the boy had already planned a great future for himself. First he would go to college in Montreal and perhaps even in England for a time, until he learned all the things an explorer ought to know. Then he would make up an expedition to the north and west, and, not being dependent on trade for gain, would penetrate to new lands and would add, not only to his own glory and renown, but to that of his country as well.

After their plans had been perfected, so far as they could be at that time, Nangotook left them, but the two lads lingered to discuss their hopes and dreams. As they were sitting on the log, watching the moonlight on the peaceful waters of the bay, and talking in low but eager voices, Jean’s keen ears caught the sound of a snapping twig and a slight rustle among the trees behind him. He rose quickly to his feet and peered into the shadows, but could distinguish nothing that could have made the sounds. Ronald also took alarm. They ceased their conversation, and slipped quietly back among the trees and bushes. In the darkness they could find no trace of anything disturbing, but the thread of their thoughts had been broken, and they felt strangely uneasy. With one accord they turned in the direction of the camp, and made their way towards it without speaking. As they approached the edge of the clearing, they saw ahead of them the dark figure of a man slip out from among the trees and go swiftly, but with an awkward gait, across the open. His stiff ankle and out-turning right foot betrayed him.

“Le Forgeron Tordu,” exclaimed Ronald. “Do you suppose he was listening to us?”

“I fear it,” answered Jean. “We were fools not to be more cautious. I would give much to know just what he overheard.”

“He may not have been listening at all,” Ronald returned. “Perhaps he was merely passing through the woods and didn’t hear us, or paid no heed even if he caught the sound of our voices. Unless he were close by he couldn’t have understood, for we were speaking softly.”

Jean shook his head doubtfully. “I hope he heard nothing,” he said. “There is not another man in the fleet I would so fear to have know our plans. He is not to be trusted for one moment. There is nothing evil he would shrink from, if he thought it to his advantage.”

“Well,” was Ronald’s answer, “he’s not fond of you and me, that is certain, but what harm can he do? Since Etienne left, I am sure we have not been saying anything about the island itself or how to reach it. Indeed he told us little enough. He merely said it lies south of a point on the north shore, the Rock of the Beaver he called it, but he didn’t tell us where on the north shore that rock is. Have you ever heard of such a place, Jean?”

The French lad shook his head, then said with an air of relief, “It is true Le Forgeron can have learned nothing of importance, if he has been listening. He was not near when Etienne was there or Etienne would have discovered him. Trust Nangotook not to let an enemy creep up on him without his knowing it. But we must be more careful in the future.”

The camp was ruddy with the light of fires and noisy with the voices of men, talking, laughing, singing, quarreling. Many of the voyageurs were the worse for too much liquor, which flowed far too freely among the canoemen. But the canoe where the boys lodged was near the edge of the camp, and they were able to avoid the more noisy and boisterous groups.

The night was fine, and they had no need of shelter. Wrapping themselves in their blankets, they stretched out, not under the canoe, but in its shadow, a little way from the fire. Around the blaze the rest of the crew were gathered, listening to the tale that one of the Frenchmen was telling with much animation and many gestures. Ordinarily the boys would have paused to hear the story, for they usually enjoyed sitting about the camp-fire to listen to the tales and join in the songs. They had no taste for the excesses and more boisterous merry-making of many of the men and youths who were their companions, but, as both boys were plucky, good-natured, and always willing to do their share of the work, their temperate and quiet ways did them no harm with most of their rough fellows, and they were by no means unpopular. That night, however, they took no interest in song or story. Their minds were too full of the fascinating adventure in which they had enlisted.