Away in the Wilderness by R. M. Ballantyne (best short books to read TXT) 📕

A week after the events narrated in the last chapter, Jasper Derry was sitting beside the stove in the hall at Fort Erie, smoking his pipe and conversing with his father-in-law about his intention of going to Lake Winnipeg with the brigade in spring and proceeding thence to Canada in a bark canoe.

“Of course,” said he, “I will take Marie with me, and if you’ll take my advice, father, you’ll come too.”

“No, my son, not yet a while,” said old Laroche, shaking his head; “I have a year yet to serve the Company before my engagement is out. After that I may come, if I’m spared; but you know that the Indians are not safe just now, and some of them, I fear, bear me a grudge, for they’re a revengeful set.”

“That’s true, father, but supposin’ that all goes well with you, will ye come an’ live with Marie and me?”

“We shall see, lad; we shall see,” replied Laroche, with a pleased smile; for the old guide evidently enjoyed the prospect of spending the evening of life in the land of his fathers, and under the roof-tree of his son and daughter.

At that moment the report of a gun was heard outside the house. One of the window-panes was smashed and at the same instant Laroche fell heavily forward on the floor.

Jasper sprang up and endeavoured to raise him, but found that he was insensible. He laid him carefully on his back, and hastily opened the breast of his coat. A few drops of blood showed where he had been wounded. Meanwhile several of the men who had been attracted by the gunshot so close to the house burst into the room.

“Stand back, stand back, give him air,” cried Jasper; “stay, O God help us! the old man is shot clean through the heart!”

For one moment Jasper looked up with a bewildered glance in the faces of the men, then, uttering a wild cry of mingled rage and agony, he sprang up, dashed them aside, and catching up his gun and snow-shoes rushed out of the house.

He soon found a fresh track in the snow, and the length of the stride, coupled with the manner in which the snow was cast aside, and the smaller bushes were broken and trodden down, told him that the fugitive had made it. In a moment he was following the track with the utmost speed of which he was capable. He never once halted, or faltered, or turned aside, all that day. His iron frame seemed to be incapable of fatigue. He went with his body bent forward, his brows lowering, and his lips firmly compressed; but he was not successful. The murderer had got a sufficiently long start of him to render what sailors call a stern chase a long one. Still Jasper never thought of giving up the pursuit, until he came suddenly on an open space, where the snow had been recently trodden down by a herd of buffaloes, and by a band of Indians who were in chase of them.

Here he lost the track, and although he searched long and carefully he could not find it. Late that night the baffled hunter returned to the fort.

“You have failed—I see by your look,” said Mr Pemberton, as Jasper entered.

“Ay, I have failed,” returned the other gloomily. “He must have gone with the band of Indians among whose tracks I lost his footsteps.”

“Have you any idea who can have done this horrible deed?” said Pemberton.

“It was Darkeye,” said Jasper in a stern voice.

Some of the Indians who chanced to be in the hall were startled, and rose on hearing this.

“Be not alarmed, friends,” said the fur-trader. “You are the guests of Christian men. We will not punish you for the deeds of another man of your tribe.”

“How does the white man know that this was done by Darkeye?” asked a chief haughtily.

“I know it,” said Jasper angrily; “I feel sure of it; but I cannot prove it—of course. Does Arrowhead agree with me?”

“He does!” replied the Indian, “and there may be proof. Does Jasper remember the trading store and the bitten bullet?”

A gleam of intelligence shot across the countenance of the white hunter as his comrade said this. “True, Arrowhead, true.”

He turned, as he spoke, to the body of his late father-in-law, and examined the wound. The ball, after passing through the heart, had lodged in the back, just under the skin.

“See,” said he to the Indians, “I will cut out this ball, but before doing so I will tell how I think it is marked.”

He then related the incident in the trading store, with which the reader is already acquainted, and afterwards extracted the ball, which, although much flattened and knocked out of shape, showed clearly the deep marks made by the Indian’s teeth. Thus, the act which had been done slyly but boastfully before the eyes of a comrade, probably as wicked as himself, became the means whereby Darkeye’s guilt was clearly proved.

At once a party of his own tribe were directed by their chief to go out in pursuit of the murderer.

It were vain for me to endeavour to describe the anguish of poor Marie on being deprived of a kind and loving father in so awful and sudden a manner. I will drop a veil over her grief, which was too deep and sacred to be intermeddled with.

On the day following the murder, a band of Indians arrived at Fort Erie with buffalo skins for sale. To the amazement of every one Darkeye himself was among them. The wily savage—knowing that his attempting to quit that part of the country as a fugitive would be certain to fix suspicion on him as the murderer—resolved to face the fur-traders as if he were ignorant of the deed which had been done. By the very boldness of this step he hoped to disarm suspicion; but he forgot the bitten ball.

It was therefore a look of genuine surprise that rose to Darkeye’s visage, when, the moment he entered the fort, Mr Pemberton seized him by the right arm, and led him into the hall.

At first he attempted to seize the handle of his knife, but a glance at the numbers of the white men, and the indifference of his own friends, showed him that his best chance lay in cunning.

The Indians who had arrived with him were soon informed by the others of the cause of this, and all of them crowded into the hall to watch the proceedings. The body of poor Laroche was laid on a table, and Darkeye was led up to it. The cunning Indian put on a pretended look of surprise on beholding it, and then the usual expression of stolid gravity settled on his face as he turned to Mr Pemberton for information.

“Your hand did this,” said the fur-trader.

“Is Darkeye a dog that he should slay an old man?” said the savage.

“No, you’re not a dog,” cried Jasper fiercely; “you are worse—a cowardly murderer?”

“Stand back, Jasper,” said Mr Pemberton, laying his hand on the shoulder of the excited hunter, and thrusting him firmly away. “This is a serious charge. The Indian shall not be hastily condemned. He shall have fair play, and justice.”

“Good!” cried several of the Indians on hearing this. Meanwhile the principal chief of the tribe took up his stand close beside the prisoner.

“Darkeye,” said Mr Pemberton, while he looked steadfastly into the eyes of the Indian, who returned the look as steadily— “Darkeye, do you remember a conversation you had many weeks ago in the trading store at Jasper’s House?”

The countenance of the Indian was instantly troubled, and he said with some hesitation, “Darkeye has had many conversations in that store; is he a medicine-man (a conjurer) that he should know what you mean?”

“I will only put one other question,” said the fur-trader. “Do you know this bullet with the marks of teeth in it?”

Darkeye’s visage fell at once. He became deadly pale, and his limbs trembled. He was about to speak when the chief, who had hitherto stood in silence at his side, suddenly whirled his tomahawk in the air, and, bringing it down on the murderer’s skull, cleft him to the chin!

A fierce yell followed this act, and several scalping knives reached the dead man’s heart before his body fell to the ground. The scene that followed was terrible. The savages were roused to a state of frenzy, and for a moment the white men feared an attack, but the anger of the Indians was altogether directed against their dead comrade, who