The Gun-Brand Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  THE MASTER MIND

  After the visit of MacNair, Chloe noticed a marked diminution in theanxiety of Lapierre to resume his interrupted journey. True, he drovethe Indians mercilessly from daylight till dark in the erection of thebuildings, but his air of tense expectancy was gone, and he ceased todart short, quick glances into the North, and to scan the upper reachof the river.

  The Indians, too, had changed. They toiled more stolidly now withapathetic ears for Lapierre's urging, where before they had worked infeverish haste, with their eyes upon the edges of the clearing. It wasobviously patent that the canoemen shared Lapierre's fear and hatred ofMacNair.

  In the late afternoon of the twelfth day after the rolling of the firstlog into place, Chloe accompanied Lapierre upon a tour of inspection ofthe completed buildings. The man had done his work well. Theschool-house and the barracks with the dining-room and kitchen werecomfortably and solidly built; entirely sufficient for present needsand requirements. But the girl wondered at the trading-post and itsappendant store-house they were fully twice the size she would haveconsidered necessary, and constructed as to withstand a siege.Lapierre had built a fort.

  "Excellent buildings; and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, MissElliston," smiled the quarter-breed, as with a wave of his hand heindicated the interior of the trading-room.

  "But, they are so big!" exclaimed the girl, as her glance swept thespacious fur lofts, and the ample areas for the storing of supplies.She was concerned only with the size of the buildings. But her wonderwould have increased could she have seen the rows of loopholes thatpierced the thick walls--loopholes crammed with moss against the cold,and with their openings concealed by cleverly fitted pieces of bark.Lapierre's smile deepened.

  "Remember, you told me you intend to sell to all alike, while yourgoods last. I know what that will mean. It will mean that you willfind yourself called upon to furnish the supplies for the inhabitantsof several thousand square miles of territory. Indians will travel farto obtain a bargain. They look only at the price--never at the qualityof the goods. That fact enables us free-traders to live. We sellcheaper than the H.B.C.; but, frankly, our goods are cheaper. Thebargains are much more apparent than real. But, if I understand yourposition, you intend to sell goods that are up to H.B.C. standard atactual cost?"

  Chloe nodded: "Certainly."

  "Very well, then you will find that these buildings which look so largeand commodious to you now, must be crowded to the ceiling with yourgoods, while the walls of your fur lofts will fairly bulge with theirweight of riches. Fur is the 'cash' of the North, and the trader mustmake ample provision for its storage. There are no banks in thewilderness; and the fur lofts are the vaults of the traders."

  "But, I don't want to deal in fur!" objected the girl. "I--since youhave told me of the terrible cruelty of the trappers, I _hate fur_! Iwant nothing to do with it. In fact, I shall do everything in my powerto discountenance and discourage the trapping." Lapierre cleared histhroat sharply--coughed--cleared it again. Discourage trapping--northof sixty! Had he heard aright? He swallowed hard, mumbled an apologyanent the inhalation of a gnat, and answered in all seriousness.

  "A worthy object, Miss Elliston--a very worthy object; but one thatwill require time to consummate. At present the taking of fur is thebusiness of the North. I may say, the only business of thousands ofsavages whose very existence depends upon their skill with the traps.Fur is their one source of livelihood. Therefore, you must accept thecondition as it exists. Think, if you refused to accept fur inexchange for your goods, what it would mean--the certain and absolutefailure of your school from the moment of its inception. The Indianscould not grasp your point of view. You would be shunned for onedemented. Your goods would rot upon your shelves; for the simplereason that the natives would have no means of buying them. No, MissElliston, you must take their fur until such time as you succeed indevising some other means by which these people may earn their living."

  "You are right," agreed Chloe. "Of course, I must deal in fur--for thepresent. Reform is the result of years of labour. I must be patient.I was thinking only of the cruelty of it."

  "They have never been taught," said Lapierre with a touch of sadness inhis tone. "And, while we are on the subject, allow me to advise you toretain LeFroy as your chief trader. He is an excellent man, is LouisLeFroy, and has had no little experience."

  "Do you think he will stay?" eagerly asked the girl. "I should like toretain, not only LeFroy but a half-dozen others."

  "It shall be as you wish. I shall speak to LeFroy and select also thepick of the crew. They will be glad of a steady job. The others Ishall take with me. I must gather my fur from its various _caches_ andfreight it to the railway."

  "You are going to the railway! To civilization?"

  "Yes, but it will take me three weeks to make ready my outfit. And inthis connection I may be of further service to you. I must depart fromhere tonight. Instruct LeFroy to make out his list of supplies for thewinter. Give him a free hand and tell him to fill the store-rooms.The goods you have brought with you are by no means sufficient. Threeweeks from today, if I do not visit you in the meantime, have him meetme at Fort Resolution, and I shall be glad to make your purchases foryou, at Athabasca Landing and Edmonton."

  "You have been very good to me. How can I ever thank you?" cried thegirl, impulsively extending her hand. Lapierre took the hand, bowedover it, and--was it fancy, or did his lips brush her finger-tips?Chloe withdrew the hand, laughing in slight confusion. To her surpriseshe realized she was not in the least annoyed. "How can I thank you,"she repeated, "for--for throwing aside your own work to attend to mine?"

  "Do not speak of thanking me." Once more the man's eyes seemed to burninto her soul, "I love you! And one day my work will be your work andyour work will be mine. It is I who am indebted to you for bringing atouch of heaven into this drab hell of Northern brutishness. Forbringing to me a breath of the bright world I have not known sinceMontreal--and the student days, long past. And--ah--more thanthat--something I have never known--love. And, it is you who arebringing a ray of pure light to lighten the darkness of my people."

  Chloe was deeply touched. "But I--I thought," she faltered, "when wewere discussing the buildings that day, you spoke as if you did notreally care for the Indians. And--and you made them work so hard----"

  "To learn to work would be their salvation!" exclaimed the man. "And Ibeg you to forget what I said then. I feared for your safety. Whenyou refused to allow me to build the stockade, I could think only ofyour being at the mercy of Brute MacNair. I tried to frighten you intoallowing me to build it. Even now, if you say the word----"

  Chloe interrupted him with a laugh. "No, I am not afraid ofMacNair--really I am not. And you have already neglected your ownaffairs too long."

  The man assented. "If I am to get my furs to the railway, do my owntrading, and yours, and return before the lake freezes, I must, indeed,be on my way."

  "You will wait while I write some letters? And you will post them forme?"

  Lapierre bowed. "As many as you wish," he said, and together theywalked to the girl's cabin whose quaint, rustic veranda overlooked theriver. The veranda was an addition of Lapierre's, and the cabin hadfive rooms, instead of three.

  The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, whileChloe wrote her letters. He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-ladenbreeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sunbetween half-closed lids. Pierre Lapierre was happy.

  "Things are coming my way," he muttered. "With a year's stock in thatwarehouse--and LeFroy to handle it--I guess the Indians won't pick upmany bargains--my people!--damn them! How I hate them. And as forMacNair--lucky Vermilion thought of painting _his_ name on thatbooze--I hated to smash it--but it paid. It was the one thing neededto make me solid with _her_. And I've got time to run in another batchif I hurry--got to get those rifles into the loft
, too. When MacNairhits, he hits hard."

  Chloe appeared at the door with her letters. Lapierre took them, andagain bowed low over her hand. This time the girl was sure his lipstouched her finger-tips. He released the hand and stepped to theground.

  "Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before Idepart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to meat Fort Resolution."

  "I will remember. Good-bye--_bon voyage_----"

  "_Et prompt retour?_" The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed thequestion.

  "_Et prompt retour--certainement!_" answered the girl as, with a widesweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward thecamp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a shortdistance above the clearing. As he disappeared in the timber, Chloefelt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, ofloneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of thewall of the clearing. She fumed impatiently.

  "Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until twoweeks ago, and besides, he's--he's an _Indian_! And yet--he's agentleman. He has been very kind to me--very considerate. He is onlya quarter-Indian. Many of the very best families have Indian blood intheir veins--even boast of it. I--I'm a _fool_!" she exclaimed, andpassed quickly into the house.

  Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous. The son of aFrench factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he wassent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course;for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in someprofession for which his education fitted him.

  But the blood of the North was in his veins. The call of the Northlured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of hisfather, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointedtrader and assigned to a post of his own far to the northward.

  While the wilderness captivated and entranced him, the humdrum life ofa trader wearied him. He longed for excitement--action.

  During the several years of his service with the great fur company heassiduously studied conditions, storing up in his mind a fund ofinformation that later was to stand him in good stead. He studied thetrade, the Indians, the country. He studied the men of the Mounted,and smugglers, and whiskey-runners, and free-traders. And it was in abrush with these latter that he overstepped the bounds which, under thechanged conditions, even the agents of the great Company might not go.

  Chafing under the loss of trade by reason of an independent post thathad been built upon the shore of his lake some ten miles to thesouthward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastilysummoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents.Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traderskilled, and the other captured and sent upon the _longue traverse_. Insome unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hardships, the manwon through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought tobook.

  The Company stood loyally between its trader and the prison bars; butthe old order had changed in the Northland. Young Lapierre's actionwas condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with apayment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turnedfree-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., theIndians, and the country, made largely for success.

  The life of the free-trader satisfied his longing for travel andadventure, which his life as a post-trader had not. But it did notsatisfy his innate craving for excitement. Therefore, he cast about toenlarge his field of activity. He became a whiskey-runner. Hisprofits increased enormously, and he gradually included smuggling inhis _repertoire_, and even timber thieving, and cattle-rustling uponthe ranges along the international boundary.

  At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of anorganized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended overhundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whosecrimes was limited only by the index of the penal code.

  Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization--a born leader of men.He chose his liegemen shrewdly--outlaws, renegades, Indians, breeds,trappers, canoemen, scowmen, packers, claim-jumpers, gamblers,smugglers, cattle-rustlers, timber thieves--and these he dominated andruled absolutely.

  Without exception, these men feared him--his authority over them wasunquestioned. Because they had confidence in his judgment and cunning,and because under his direction they made more money, and made iteasier, and at infinitely less risk, than they ever made by playing alone hand, they accepted his domination cheerfully. And such was hisdisposition of the men who were the component parts of his system ofcriminal efficiency, that few, if any, were there among them who could,even if he so desired, have furnished evidence that would haveseriously incriminated the leader.

  The men who ran whiskey across the line, _cached_ it. Other men,unknown to them, disguised it as innocent freight and delivered it tothe scowmen. The scowmen turned it over to others who, for all theyknew, were bona fide settlers or free-traders; and from their _cache_,the canoemen carried it far into the wilderness and either stored it insome inaccessible rendezvous or _cached_ it where still others wouldcome and distribute it among the Indians.

  Each division undoubtedly suspected the others, but none but the leader_knew_. And, as it was with the whiskey-running, so was it with eachof his various undertakings. Religiously, Pierre Lapierre followed thescriptural injunction; "Let not thy left hand know what thy right handdoeth." He confided in no man. And few, indeed, were the defectionsamong his retainers. A few had rebelled, as Vermilion hadrebelled--and with like result. The man dismissed from Lapierre'sservice entered no other.

  Moreover, he invariably contrived to implicate one whom he intended touse, in some crime of a graver nature than he would be called upon tocommit in the general run of his duties. This crime he would stage insome fastness where its detection by an officer of the Mounted wasexceedingly unlikely; and most commonly consisted in the murder of anIndian, whose weighted body would be lowered to the bottom of aconvenient lake or river. Lapierre witnesses would appear and the manwas irrevocably within the toil. Had he chosen, Pierre Lapierre couldhave lowered a grappling hook unerringly upon a dozen weightedskeletons.

  Over the head of the recruit now hung an easily proven charge ofmurder. If during his future activities as whiskey-runner, smuggler,or in whatever particular field of endeavour he was assigned, plansshould miscarry--an arrest be made--this man would take his prisonsentence in silence rather than seek to implicate Lapierre, who with aword could summon the witnesses that would swear the hemp about hisneck.

  The system worked. Now and again plans did miscarry--arrests were madeby the Mounted, men were caught "with the goods," or arrested uponevidence that even Lapierre's intricate alibi scheme could not refute.But, upon conviction, the unlucky prisoner always accepted hissentence--for at his shoulder stalked a spectre, and in his heart wasthe fear lest the thin lips of Pierre Lapierre would speak.

  With such consummate skill and finesse _did_ Lapierre plot, however,and with such Machiavelian cunning and _eclat_ were his plans carriedout, that few failed. And those that did were credited by theauthorities to individual or sporadic acts, rather than to the work ofan intricate organization presided over by a master mind.

  The gang numbered, all told, upward of two hundred of the hardestcharacters upon the frontier. Only Lapierre knew its exact strength,but each member knew that if he did not "run straight"--if he, by wordor act or deed, sought to implicate an accomplice--his life would beworth just exactly the price of "the powder to blow him to hell."

  A few there were outside the organization who suspected PierreLapierre--but only a few: an officer or two of the Mounted and a fewfactors of the H.B.C. But these could prove nothing. They bided theirtime. One man _knew_ him for what he was. One, in all the North, aspowerful in his way as Lapierre was in his. The one man who had spiesin Lapierre's employ, and who did not fear him. The one man PierreLapierre feared--Bo
b MacNair. And he, too, bided his time.