Chapter XII: By Cart Train to Pembina

Louis slept with friends on the other side of the river, Walter remaining with his country people. The weather was sharp and cold, but Governor McDonnell’s promise of fuel and food was fulfilled. After a hearty meal, the newcomers, in spite of their disappointment, passed a more comfortable night than many they had endured during the long journey. They were somewhat disturbed, however, by the sounds of revelry borne on the wind from Fort Douglas. That the voyageurs and their friends would celebrate hilariously, the Swiss had expected, but not that such wild revels would take place within the fort walls, where lived the Governor and his household.

“The Colony is short of food, so they say,” Matthieu the weaver complained bitterly, “but the folk in the fort must have plenty to eat and drink and make merry with.”

Walter clung to the hope that the departure for Pembina might be delayed until after the arrival of the second boat brigade. But early in the morning word came from Fort Douglas that the Swiss must make ready to leave at once. The boy resolved to ask the Governor to let him remain. He went up to the fort, and felt encouraged when he was admitted at the gate without question, but his request to see the Governor met with flat refusal. The Governor was busy and could not be disturbed. He had given his orders and those orders must be obeyed. Walter was well and strong and able to travel. He had no friends in the settlement to take him in. Well, then, he must go on to Pembina.

Finding it useless to plead his cause to the Governor’s underlings and impossible to get to McDonnell himself, the angry, discouraged lad left the fort. He found Louis Brabant at the Swiss camp, and poured out his story wrathfully. “I have a notion to stay here anyway,” he concluded stubbornly. “I can find someone who will give me lodging for a few days.”

“Yes,” Louis admitted. “At St. Boniface, across the river, I can ask my friends to take you in, but if the Governor learns you have disobeyed his command he will be most angry.”

“What can he do to me? I have a right to be here.”

“Perhaps, but when the Governor is angry, he does not think of the rights of others. You would have to go anyway, tied in a cart as a prisoner, or he would shut you up in the fort, or send you out of the Colony.”

“Where could he send me except to Pembina?” Walter questioned, still unconvinced.

“To Norway House,—to be taken to Fort York in the spring and sent back to Europe in a ship,” was the startling reply. “Oh, yes, as Governor of the Colony, he could do all that.”

“But surely he wouldn’t do it, for such a little thing?”

“Governor ‘Sauterelle’ does not think it a little thing when he is disobeyed. He is not gentle to one who opposes his will. No, no, Walter, you must not think of it. At Pembina you will be far enough away to do as you please, but not here. Come, you shall stay at my home, and we will find a place for your friends and make all ready for them. It won’t be long until they join you.”

Reluctantly Walter yielded to the Canadian boy’s advice. He did not want to yield, but, if what Louis said of the Governor was true, the risk of disobedience was too great. He himself had seen enough already of Alexander McDonnell to realize that he was not the kind of man to be lenient with anyone who disobeyed his orders. So the Swiss boy set about getting his own scanty belongings ready for the journey. He had taken for granted that the party would travel by boat, but he had returned to the camp on the river bank to find his companions’ baggage being loaded into carts.

Clumsy looking things were those carts,—a box body and two great wheels at least five feet tall, with strong spokes, thick hubs, and wooden rims three inches wide and without metal tires. Between the shafts, which were straight, heavy beams, a small, shaggy, sinewy pony, harnessed with rawhide straps, stood with lowered head and tail and an air of dejection or sleepy indifference.

“What queer vehicles,” Walter exclaimed. “Are we to travel overland?”

“Yes, the journey is much shorter that way. By water, following the bends of the river, is almost twice as far. You never saw carts like these before? No, I think that is true. The _bois brulés_ of the Red River invented this sort of cart. It is made all of wood, not a bit of metal anywhere. Every man makes his own cart. All the tools he needs are an axe, a saw, and an auger or an Indian drill. I have a cart at home I made myself, and it is a good one. In this country you must make things for yourself or you have nothing.”

Examining one of the queer contrivances, Walter found that Louis had spoken the simple truth. No metal had been used in its construction. Wooden pegs and rawhide lashings took the place of nails and spikes. Even the harness was guiltless of a buckle. The carts were far from beautiful, but they were strong and serviceable. The Swiss boy, who knew something of woodworking, admired the ingenuity and skill that had gone into their making. Enough vehicles had been supplied to transport the few belongings of the Swiss and to allow the women and children to ride. Now other carts,—with the families and baggage of the Scotch settlers who were leaving for Pembina,—began to arrive at the rendezvous, the discordant squeaking and screeching of their wooden axles announcing their approach some time before they came in sight.

It took so long to gather the cart train together and make everything ready for departure, that Walter kept hoping for the appearance of the boat brigade. But not a craft, except a canoe or two, came into view around the bend of the river, and no songs or shouts of voyageurs were heard in the distance. The boy, still determined to plead his cause, kept a lookout for Governor McDonnell, but he did not appear. He left the carrying out of his commands to his assistants.

The start was made at last. At the sharp “_Marche donc!_” of the drivers, the sleepy looking ponies woke into life and were off at a brisk trot. The carts pitched and wobbled, each with a gait of its own, over the rough, hard ground, the ungreased axles groaning and screeching in every key. The discord set Walter’s teeth on edge, as he walked with Louis beside the vehicle the latter was driving.

At the head of the column the guide in charge, Jean Baptiste Lajimonière, rode horseback, followed closely by the cart carrying his wife and younger children. The whole family had come from Pembina a short time before to have the newest baby christened by Father Provencher, the priest. Behind the Lajimonières, the train stretched out across the plain, the two wheeled carts piled with baggage and household belongings or occupied by the women and children sitting flat on the bottom, their heels higher than their hips. The drivers sat on the shafts or walked alongside. The Swiss men and boys went afoot, but some of the Scotch and Canadians rode wiry ponies and drove a few cattle. The riders used deerskin pads for saddles and long stirrups or none at all. Spare cart horses ran loose beside their harnessed companions.

Not all of the Swiss were in the party. Several families, taken into the cabins of the DeMeurons, had been allowed to remain. Matthieu and his wife also stayed behind. The baby was ill and Matthieu himself scarce able to travel. The Colony had started a new industry, the manufacture of cloth from buffalo hair, and the weaver was to be given employment. When Walter learned that Matthieu was to remain, the boy entrusted to him a letter for Mr. Perier, explaining how he had been forced to go on to Pembina.

Leaving Point Douglas, the cart train turned southeast, traveling a little back from the west bank of the river, along a worn track across open prairie. Beyond the narrow valley, scattered cabins could be seen among the trees on the east side.

“That is St. Boniface settlement,” Louis told his companion. “Père Provencher is building a church there.”

About a mile south of Point Douglas, the carts approached the junction of the Assiniboine River with the Red, the place Louis called _Les Fourches_, the Forks. On the north bank of the Assiniboine stood a small Hudson Bay post, and not far from it were piles of logs for a new building or stockade.

“The Company is going to make a new fort,” Louis explained. “M’sieu Garry and M’sieu McGillivray chose this spot. There was an old Northwest post, Fort Gibraltar, here, but five years ago M’sieu Colin Robertson, a Hudson Bay man, seized it, and Governor Semple had it pulled down. The logs and timber were taken down river to Fort Douglas. Fort Gibraltar had been here a long time, and so has this trading house. Les Fourches is an old trading place. Men say there was a fort here a hundred years ago, when all Canada and the fur country were French, but nothing is left of those old buildings now.”

The cart train halted near the trading post, as some of the men had business there, and Louis asked Walter to go with him to see the Chief Trader. “At Fort Douglas I told a clerk how our pemmican disappeared and about _le Murrai’s_ package of trade goods. _Le Murrai_ had received his pay and had left the fort. The clerk knew not where he had gone. He told me to report the affair to M’sieu the Chief Trader here. Come with me, and we will tell what we know.”

The men of the little post were busy outfitting boats to go up the Assiniboine with goods and supplies for stations farther west, but the two boys had a few minutes’ conversation with the Chief Trader. Louis told the story and Walter corroborated it. The trader looked grave and shook his head perplexedly. The charge against Murray,—stealing supplies and exchanging them for goods with which to trade on his own account,—was a serious one. Could it be proved? The trader did not doubt the story of the contents of the bundle, but Murray might have come by the things honestly and for a legitimate purpose.

“He is due here to-day to go with the Assiniboine brigade,” the trader explained, “but I have seen nothing of him. You have no proof that he took the pemmican and substituted the bag of clay. If he denies it, the only thing I can do is to report the matter to Norway House at the first opportunity. They ought to know whether anyone exchanged pemmican for goods while your brigade was there. Of course Murray didn’t make the bargain himself. Someone else did it for him. It won’t be necessary to mention your names at present, to Murray I mean. You would find the Black Murray a bad enemy.”

“Yes,” Louis agreed. “He does not love either of us now. I thank you, M’sieu.”

“The thanks are due to you, from the Company, for reporting this matter. Don’t you want to sign for the Assiniboine voyage? We can use you both.”

Walter shook his head. He had had quite enough voyaging for the present. Louis answered simply, “No, M’sieu. I go to my mother at Pembina.”