The Heart of Unaga Part 29

There was no doubt that Seal Bay as a trading port owed its existence to two spits of mud and sand on either side of a completely inhospitable foresh.o.r.e. They stretched out, forming the two horns of a horseshoe, like puny arms seeking to embrace the wide waters of Hudson's Bay.

Within their embrace was a more or less safe anchorage for light draft craft. There was a pier. At least it was called a pier by the more reckless. It was propped and bolstered in every conceivable way to keep it from sinking out of sight in its muddy bed, and became a source of political discord on the subject of its outrageous cost of maintenance.

As for the setting which Seal Bay claimed it was no more happy than the rest. There was no background until the far-off distance was reached, and then it was only a serrated line of low and apparently barren hills.

Everything else was a wide expanse of deplorable mora.s.s and reed-grown tundra, through which ran a few safe tracks, which, except in winter, were a deadly nightmare to all travellers.

The handiwork of man is not usually wholly without merit, but Seal Bay would have sent the most hardened real estate agent seeking shelter in a sanatorium as a result of overwork. Still, traffic was possible. Seal Bay was an ideal spot for robbing Indian and half-breed fur traders who knew no better, and the plunder could be more or less safely dispatched to the markets of the world outside. Oh, yes, there was easy money and plenty. So what else mattered?

These were the opinions of those who really counted, such men as Lorson Harris, head of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation, and Alroy Leclerc, who kept a mud shelter of extensive dimensions for the sale of drink and food and gambling. There were others, those who came over the great white trail from the north, who possessed very definite opinions of their own, but were wise enough to refrain from ventilating them within the city limits.

A man who hugged to himself very strong views had just entered the city.

He always came when Seal Bay was quite at its best. It may have been simple chance. Anyway, it was one of the coldest days of winter, with a sharp north wind blowing, and the thermometer hard down to zero. Seal Bay's sins lay concealed under a thick garment of snow, while its surrounding terrors were rendered innocuous by the iron grip of frost.

Seal Bay was astir. It always was astir when this man paid his annual visit. He excited a curiosity that never flagged. His coming was looked for. His going was watched. His coming and going were two of the most baffling riddles confronting the sophisticated minds of a people whose pursuits had no relation to purity or honesty.

The man came with three great dog-trains. Sometimes he came with four, and even five. His sleds were heavy laden, packed to the limits of the capacity of his dogs. They, in turn, were more powerful and better conditioned than any Indian train that visited the place, and each was a full train of five savage creatures more than half wolf.

He drove straight through the main thoroughfare of the town. The onlookers were fully aware of his destination. It was the great store-house over which Lorson Harris presided. And this knowledge set much ill-feeling and resentment stirring. It was always the same. The st.u.r.dy, hard-faced man from the north ignored Seal Bay as a community, and only recognized a fellow creature in the great man who wove the net which the Seal Bay Trading Corporation spread over the Northern world.

Something of the position found illumination in the dialogue which pa.s.sed between two men lounging in Alroy's doorway as the great train pa.s.sed them by.

"Gee! Makes you wonder if us folks has the plague," laughed Kid Restless, the most successful gambler that haunted Alroy's dive. "He don't see a thing but Lorson's. He'd hate to pa.s.s a 'how-dy' to a cur.

But his trade ain't as big as last year. Guess Lorson'll halve his smile. He's been coming along fourteen year, ain't it?"

Dupont nodded, his contemplative gaze following the procession of sleds under the skilful driving of their attendants.

"Yep." Dupont was a lesser trader who lived in a state of furious discontent at the monopoly of the greater store. "The Brand outfit's been trading here fourteen years--and more."

"How's that?"

"Oh, ther's a heap queer about that outfit," said the envious whiskered man, whose dark, sallow features suggested plainly enough his Jewish origin. "Maybe it's that makes that feller act same as if we had the--plague. He calls himself Brand, but he ain't the Brand who traded here more than twenty years ago. Guess you wasn't around then. Guess I wasn't, neither. I'd be crazy by now if I had been. But the story's right enough. Brand--Marcel Brand--and his pardner traded here with Lorson more than twenty years back. He came from G.o.d knows where, an' he just went right back to the same place. Then him an' his pardner got done up. The darn Eskimos, or neches, or ha'f-breeds, shot 'em both up to small chunks. Lorson was nigh crazy for the trade he lost, for all Brand was a free-trader like Lorson hates best. Then, three years or so later, along comes this guy with the name of 'Marcel Brand,' and carried on the trade. And he's a white man same as the other. It was then Lorson took to smiling plenty again."

"You figger he's the feller that?----"

"I don't know. I 'low' got notions though."

Kid Restless was interested. There was little enough to interest him in Seal Bay beyond the life of piracy he carried on at the card tables.

"It's some queer sort o' trade, ain't it?" he asked.

"Queer?" Dupont spat. "Oh, he trades pelts, some o' the best seals ever reach this darnation swamp. But the trade that makes Lorson smile is queer. I've seen bales of it s.h.i.+pped out of this harbour, an' it looks like dried seaweed, an' smells like some serrupy flower you'd hate to have around. Lorson just loves it to death, and I guess it needs to be a good trade that sets him lovin'. But he keeps his face closed. Same as the feller that calls himself Brand. Oh, yes, Lorson's the kind of oyster you couldn't hammer open with a haf ton maul."

"Why don't they trail him--this guy?" demanded Kid sharply.

"Trail? Why, the sharps are after him all the time. But he skins 'em to death. Lorson's at the game, too. Oh, yes. Guess Lorson 'ud jump the claim if he could get wise. But he ain't wise. No one is. But they'll get that way one time, and then that mule-faced guy, who guesses we'll hand him plague, will forget to get around in snow time. You can't beat the Seal Bay 'sharps' all the time, though I allow he's beat 'em plumb to death fourteen years."

"I'd guess it'll need grit to beat him," returned the Kid. "That is," he added thoughtfully, "if you can judge the face of a--mule."

"Oh, _he's_ got grit--in plenty. Even Lorson gets his hat off to him when he's around."

Dupont laughed maliciously.

"You mean----?"

"I was remembering Lorson's play," the trader went on. "He had his 'toughs' that time. Brand had pulled out two weeks and more. Then one day a bunch of Northern neches pulled in. They'd beat down the coast in a big-water canoe. The folks didn't notice them. It's the sort of thing frequent happens. But Lorson got the scare of his life. He woke up next morning with his pet 'tough'--a big breed--lying across his home doorstep. He guessed he was dead. But he wasn't. He woke up about midday and started guessing where he was. Later on he handed out a fancy yarn what the neches had done to him. An', happening to dove a hand into a pocket, he hauled out a letter addressed to Lorson himself. It just said four words, an' Lorson spoke them. I don't guess they'd mean a thing to the likes of him. They just said, 'Play the darn game.' And under them was wrote 'Brand.'"

Kid grinned back into the other's eyes which were alight with malicious delight.

"That's the med'cine to hand a feller that can understand white--not Lorson," the gambler said. "I like that guy that calls himself 'Brand.'"

"Guess he's some boy all right. But--I was thinkin' of that breed. He was doped."

The other nodded.

"You're guessing about that--queer trade," he said.

Dupont gazed out in the direction whence the dog train had disappeared behind the group of great frame buildings which represented the establishment of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation.

"Yep," he said thoughtfully.

Lorson Harris was a type common enough in outland places, where money is easy and conscience does not exist. He was vulgar, he was brutal, he was a sensualist in his desire for all that wealth could buy him. He was not a man of education. Far from it. He was a clever, unscrupulous schemer, a product of conditions--rough conditions.

He was a large, coa.r.s.e man who had permitted his pa.s.sions to gain the upper hand in the control of his life, but they by no means interfered with his capacity as the head of the Seal Bay Trading Corporation.

He overflowed a big armchair before his desk in the office of his great store, and beamed a hard-breathing good-nature upon all those who seemed likely to be useful in his mult.i.tudinous schemes. Just now the victim of his smile was a man at the zenith of middle life. He was of medium height, but of herculean muscle, and the fact was patent enough even under the dense bulk of fur-lined buckskin clothing he was wearing.

There was no more sympathy in the two men's appearance than there was in their condition of mind. While a pa.s.sionate desire for the flesh-pots enjoyed by other magnates of commerce, whose good fortune had provided them with a happier hunting-ground than Seal Bay, was the primal motive power of the trader, the man who had just come off the great white trail was driven by a desire no less strong, but only selfish in that the final achievement should be entirely his.

Just now the fur cap was removed from the visitor's head, and a tingeing of grey was apparent in the shock of brown hair he had bared. A few sharp lines scored his forehead and played about his clean-shaven mouth, but the steady, serious eyes, with their strongly marked, even brows were quite devoid of all sign of pa.s.sing years. They accentuated the impression of tremendous vigour and capacity his personality conveyed.

The smiling eyes of Lorson read all these things. It was his business to read his visitors. He pushed the cigar box across the desk invitingly.

"They're some cigars, boy," he said complacently. "Try one."

The other shook his head.

"Don't use 'em, thanks. Maybe I'll try my pipe."

"Sure. Do. A horn of whisky--imported Scotch?"

The same definite shake of the head followed, but before the visitor could pa.s.s a verbal negative the trader laughed.

"Nothing doing?" he said amiably. "Well, maybe you're right. You boys need fit stomachs. Drink's a darn fool play, but--Here's 'how,'" he added, as he gulped down the dash of spirit he had poured out for himself. He smacked his heavy, appreciative lips, and fondly contemplated the label on the bottle. But he was not really reading it.

"Your trade in the dope's growing," he said, his fat fingers fondling the gla.s.s bottle neck as though he were loth to release it. "Nearly fifty thousand dollars. That's your credit for a year's trade. It's the biggest in--fourteen years. And it don't begin to touch the demand I got for the darn stuff. I could sell you a hundred thousand dollars' worth, and still ask for more at the same price. You don't get what that means to me," he went on, with a laugh intended to be disarming. "You ain't running a great store that's crazy to hand out dividends. Here's a market gasping. Prices are sky high, an' we can't 'touch.' I tell you it wouldn't lower the price a haf cent if you quadrupled your output. I want to weep. I sure do."

The man in buckskin was filling his pipe from a bag of Indian manufacture.