The Fur Bringers Part 29

"What is the use of our bandying words?" she asked with cold scorn.

"Nothing you can say to me or I to you can help matters now."

"Good Lord, but women can be stony!" Ambrose cried involuntarily.

Colina took it as a compliment. Her eye brightened with a kind of pride. "I don't know what men are!" she cried. "Apparently you want to fight me with one hand and hold the other out in friends.h.i.+p. Only a man could think of such a thing."

Ambrose gazed at her sullenly. "You are right!" he said abruptly. "I am a fool!"

He left her with his head up, but inwardly beaten and sore. Somehow she had got the better of him, he could not have told how. He was conscious of having intended honestly. This cold parting was worse than the most violent of quarrels.

Simon Grampierre was waiting on a point of his land that commanded a view up and down river. Here he had set up a lookout bench like that at the fort. At sight of Ambrose he shouted from a full breast and hastened down to the waterside. He received him with both hands extended.

"You have come!" he cried. "It is well!"

Ambrose was surprised and a little disconcerted to see the grim old patriarch so moved.

"Where is your outfit?" Simon asked anxiously.

"Half a day behind me," said Ambrose. "It is safe."

"Have you flour?" asked Simon.

"Flour? No!" said Ambrose staring. "With twenty thousand bushels of wheat here?'"

"Have you got a little mill?"

Ambrose shook his head. "There was none in Prince George," he said.

"I had to telegraph to the East. It had not arrived when I was ready to start, and I couldn't wait.

"I made arrangements for it to be forwarded; a friend of mine will bring it in. Martin Sellers promised to hold the last boat at the landing until October 1st for it."

"Wa!" said Simon, raising his hands. "That is bad! We need flour. We cannot wait a month for flour."

"What's the matter with the mankiller?"

"Broke," was the laconic answer. "We fix it. Every day it break again. Now it is all broke."

"Well, every family will have to grind for themselves," said Ambrose.

Simon shrugged. "We have a new trouble here."

"What is it?" Ambrose anxiously demanded.

"The Kakisa Indians," Simon said. "They are the biggest tribe around this post, and the best fur bringers. They live beside the Kakisa River, hundred fifty miles northwest.

"All summer they come in two or six or twenty and get a little flour, little sugar, tea, tobacco from me. They want to trade with you because Gaviller is hard to them like us. They are good hunters, but he keep them poor.

"In the late summer they come all together to get a fall outfit. They are here now. They want a hundred bags of flour. They come to me. I say I have got no flour. They go to the fort.

"Gaviller say; 'Ambrose Doane bought all the grain. You want to trade with him; all right. Make him sell you flour now.'

"They are here a week now--sixty teepees. I feed them what I can. It is not much. They are ongry. They begin to talk ugly."

Ambrose would not let Simon see that he was in any way dismayed by this situation. "Where are the Indians camped?" he asked coolly.

"Mile and a half down river. Across from the fort."

"Very well," said Ambrose. "Tell them at your house to keep watch here until Tole and Germain come with the raft. Six men should be ready to help them land and unload. You come with me in the dugout, and we will go down and talk to the Indians."

A gleam of approval shot from under Simon's beetle brows. "Good!" he said. "You go straight to a thing. I like that, me!"

Ambrose found the teepee village set up in the form of a square on a gra.s.sy flat beside the river. The quadrangle was filled with the usual confusion of loose horses, quarrelsome dogs, and screaming children.

Simon called his attention to a teepee in the middle of the northerly side distinguished by its size and by gaudy paintings on the canvas.

"Head man's lodge," he said. "Name Joey Providence Watusk."

"A good mouthful," said Ambrose.

"Joey for English, Providence for French, Watusk for Kakisa," explained Simon.

He called a boy to him, and made him understand that they wished to see the head man.

"I send a message that we are coming," he explained to Ambrose. "He lak to be treated lak big man. It is no harm when you are trading with them."

Ambrose agreed. "So this what's-his-name fancies himself," he remarked while they waited.

"It is so," said Simon, grimly. "Thinks he is a king! All puff up with wind lak a bull frog. He mak' me mad with his foolishness. What would you? You cannot deal with the Kakisas only what he say. Because only Watusk speaks English. He does what he wants."

"And can n.o.body here speak Kakisa?" Ambrose asked.

"n.o.body but Gordon Strange. It is hard talk on the tongue."

"What else about him?"

"Wa! I have told you," said Simon. "You will know him when you see!

All tam show off lak a c.o.c.k-grouse in mating-time. He is not Kakisa.

He is a Cree who went with them long tam ago. Some say his father was a black man."

"So!" said Ambrose. "And they stand for that?"

Simon shrugged. "The Kakisas a funny people. Not mix with the whites, not mix with other Indians lak Crees. They keep old ways. They not talk about their ways to other men. So n.o.body knows what they do at home." Simon lowered his voice. "Some say cannibals."

"Pooh!" said Ambrose, "that yarn is told about every strange tribe!"

"Maybe," said Simon, cautiously. "I do not know myself."

The Indian boy returning, signified that Joey Providence Watusk awaited them.