A Rich Man's Relatives Volume I Part 4

"Papoose come plenty soon."

"Then you have a wife."

"Got squaw;" but still he looked out impa.s.sively over the water.

"Would she like to keep a child for me? do you think?--good pay, you know."

"Pay-Ouff?" The words was clearly interrogative now, and the beady eyes returned from their wandering, and settled on the speaker.

"A healthy child twelve months old--would make a l.u.s.ty squaw. She can make anything of it she likes. No questions will be asked, you know."

"Yours?"

"Not exactly. But I have an interest in the child."

"How much money?"

"Fifty dollars, as soon as she has done the job."

The beady eyes kindled into animation, and the lips grew moist, but the Indian sat motionless as before, and waited in silence for what was to come.

"She will have to _take_ the child, you know. It will not be hard for her to get it at this time of year, when the nurse is out of doors with it most of the time; on the steps, at the garden gate, or down the street. She can easily take it away from the nurse, a little slip of a French girl. A strong Indian woman could easily knock her down and run away with the child under her blanket. Only she must not be caught or the child brought back. You must send her to some reservation far away--up West, say--the farther West the better. I will pay as soon as she gets clear off. But you must not mix me up in the thing, mind that! That is why I offer to pay so much for the job."

"Much for job? Ouff. Le Pere Theophile--the judge court--prison long time. Ouff!" and he shook his head slowly.

"You must send her where the cure's admonitions will not reach her.

Send her to Brantford, or up the Ottawa; you know better than I do where. You can do a good deal with fifty dollars, you know, Paul."

"Ouff. And send 'way my squaw. Fidele good squaw."

"Chut! Paul, you rascal! You have plenty more sweethearts you know; and they do not marry you so tight as us white men."

Paul grunted. "The Pere Theophile very strict. Make squaw confess right up. Poor Fidele go to prison--all found out. Paul sent to Isle aux Noix--you too, then."

"Stuff, man! No fear of your letting yourself be caught. Send your squaw away at once, before she has time to go near her priest."

"Police?"

"Not much fear of _them_, if you are half sharp. But, let me see. It might not be a bad idea if she changed clothes with some other girl before she started West. One squaw is so like another in white folks'

eyes. It might turn pursuit in a wrong direction while she is getting away."

"Ouff," Paul grunted again, but nothing more. The two dusky shadows swung silently on the dim bosom of the waters, whitening now beneath the glimmer of the rising moon.

"See here, Paul," Ralph said at last; "I shall be better than my word after all. Here are ten dollars in hand, for you. Come round to my office as soon as the work is done and your squaw safely off, and I will pay you your fifty dollars. Now land us. We shall take first train to the city. We must not be seen together, so will take different cars. Wait for me in the shadow of the cabstand, and I will go up town with you and point out the house."

"Ouff," again was the only answer, but as Paul's long arm stretched out to s.n.a.t.c.h the money, and under a deft stroke or two of the paddle the canoe shot swiftly down stream to the landing, Ralph understood that the bargain was struck.

CHAPTER V.

FIDeLE.

It was a day or two later, in the early forenoon. The air was stagnant, breathlessly awaiting the thunderstorm whose c.u.mulus vapour ma.s.ses were already drifting up from the distant horizon; though as yet the sun blazed in cloudless fervour overhead, and the world lay panting in the intolerable heat. The very light was sultry, and Mary Selby had drawn close the blinds, to shut it out where she lay on a sofa trying to stir the thick stillness into motion with her fan; but the air was heavy with heat and she felt too faint for the exertion.

She was dropping asleep when Lisette entered with a basket of May apples. They looked so cool in their green pith-like husks that she could not refrain from pulling one or two asunder to reach the blob of fragrant pulp within, tasting and awakening from her langour, before she asked where they had come from. The maid answered that a squaw without was offering them for sale, and the mistress had then to rise and go into an adjoining room to find her purse.

She took the basket in her lap and began to pull open the fruit, separating the small eatable portions from the pod-like rind. "What a feast for Edith!" she said, when she had done; and she called to Lisette to bring the baby.

Lisette appeared looking hot and troubled. "She had not seen Miss Edith," she said, since she brought the fruit to her mistress--"supposed Cato must have got her. She had been looking for the squaw to give her her money, but could not find her. She thought at first she might be prowling round the house looking for something to steal, but she had looked everywhere now, even in the wood shed and coal cellar, but could not see a sign."

Mary rose to join in the search, running out with the maid to question Cato. Cato was in the far-off corner of the garden, delving with a will. The sultry fervour of the air, stifling to men of another race, was like wine to him, recalling the torrid country of his birth, and he tossed the spadefuls gleefully, perspiring and singing as he worked. He had been there all the morning, and knew nothing of Edith or the vanished squaw; but he threw down his spade at once and joined the searchers. The cook came running from her kitchen to a.s.sist, and the little band now quickening each other's alarm ran hither and thither over the small domain, peering under every bush, pulling about melon frames and empty boxes, dropping stones down the well, looking under all the beds in the house and even up the chimney. By-and-by they were out of breath and began to think. Then Lisette was sent for a policeman, and Cato to fetch a cab to carry his mistress in search of her husband, and to the police-station in case he could not be found.

The policeman arrived first with grave importance and a note-book. He questioned Lisette, but being an Irishman while she was French, he soon lost himself amongst her voluble but not very lucid English, emphasized with frequent "_mon Dieux_," and much gesticulation. She was the only one who had seen the squaw, and the last to see the child, but what of that? "Them furreigners were of no account, and n.o.body could tell what they might be afther intending to mane:" so he turned to the cook, a countrywoman of his own, and from her got ample satisfaction. It is true she had seen nothing, and only knew what she had heard Lisette say, but then she had thought a great deal since; and the thoughts and the hearsay flowed in a mixed and copious, if not too coherent stream, which Paddy could readily follow, it was so much like the meanderings of his own mind. He opened his book and proceeded to write it all down--how she had just finished was.h.i.+ng up her morning dishes, and the pan of water was in her hands to empty down the sink at that very moment "whin who should come trapezin' into moy kitchen but the gurrl, all brithless loike, an' hur hair flyin' ivery way at wanst. An' thinks oi to meself, 'whativer's the matther wid the omadhaun?' An' sorr if I was to take me boible oath this moment, thim's the very worrds that pa.s.sed through me moind whin I seed hur, an' ye may safely write them down, for oi'll stand boy thim before all the judges and juries in the land."

"Oi'll wroite thim down, mum, ye may depind; an' be me troth, it's moighty remarkable them worrds are; an' they do ye credit, mum, though it's me that says it," answered the policeman, relaxing the crooks in his shoulder and elbow, and the frown on his brow, which were with him the concomitants of penmans.h.i.+p. He had not in truth the pen of a ready writer, and it was only by pus.h.i.+ng his tongue into one cheek and closing an eye, that he was able to construct the letters at all. That was of little consequence, however; the notebook was solely for his own private eye, or rather for the eye of the public, which could not but respect a policeman who wrote everything down.

It impressed the cook immensely, and flattered her too, for never before had she seen her words put down on paper, and she resolved in her mind there should be a smoking hot morsel for this "supayrior"

man, whenever he came round to see her of a winter's afternoon. The man perfectly understood. There were several kitchens on his beat where he was wont to visit, and the cook before him smiled so hospitably that he promised himself not to forget her.

Cato now arrived with the cab for his mistress, and the guardian of the peace, hitherto engrossed with a more important person, turned to the poor lady to favour her with a few words at parting.

"You're purfecly right, ma'am," he said, "to make ivery exurtion. An'

if ye call at the station, ye'll foind the jintlemen there both poloite an' accommodatin'. An' ye may go wid an aisy mind, for well be havin' your intherests under consideration all the same as if ye was here. An' ye may rest a.s.sured that the sthrong arrum of the law will be laid on the aivil doer sooner or later. An' as for the choild, ma'am, oi'm bound to sthop ivery choild of a year old that's carried through my bait; but ye must give me marks, ye see, or they would soon be complainin' of me at head quarthers. Did the choild squint, now, maybe, ma'am, the purty angel? An' it's moighty becomin' some says that same is; an' kinvanient too, whin they gits older, an' can look both ways at wanst. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Or maybe there was something crooked about wan of its legs, or an arrum, or who knows but there might be something wrong wid its face. A hare lip, now, would be a sure mark, and oi'd arrist the first wan I met. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Oi cuddn't arrest all the childer I moight meet, ye see, an' bring thim here for you to oidintifee. How many teeth, thin, moight your purty darlin' have, ma'am?--though it's mis...o...b..in' I am if the law gives me power to open the childher's mouths an' look down their throats. But we'll do our best, ye may depind on that. An' it's wis.h.i.+n' ye a plisant dhroive, ma'am, an' thank ye keoindly," as Mary, driven desperate by his gabble, pushed a dollar into his hand and hurried to her cab.

In this way "the law's delays" left the coast clear for the escape of the kidnapper. It was an hour or two before the police throughout the city became aware that a squaw had run away with an infant, and by the time they had begun to be on the alert, the thief had made good her retreat. Wrapped in her bright blue blanket and broad-leafed straw hat, she pa.s.sed swiftly along, as might any of her fellows who hawk their beadwork and like wares about the streets. A lump of fat, rubbed in the juice of some narcotic herb, pushed into the little mouth had stilled the child's cries and made it sleep as though in its nurse's arms--evidence of the practical wisdom of the wilderness still lingering among its erewhile people, as yet but partially elevated to our higher plane of life. Our women may become doctors of divinity, law, or physic; they can play the piano, or stand in the front rank of culture; but can they handle a baby like the artless daughters of the North-West, whose charges, packed in moss and fur, strapped upon a board and suspended from a branch, sway gently in the breeze, watching and growing silently, like the plants, for hours together, with never a cry to disturb the resting sire or the laborious mother? In the march of improvement some useful knowledge has been dropped by the way, and there are regrettable losses to set off against the manifest gains.

The thunder which had been threatening all the morning began to rumble, the sky darkened, and soon the rain came down in torrents. The ferry-boat between Lachine and Caughnawaga had whistled, and was throwing loose from the wharf, when a squaw--it was Fidele, Paul's squaw, of course--rain-soaked and draggled, leaped on board. She squatted on the deck beside the three or four others who were the only pa.s.sengers, cowering over the bundle under her blanket, but not uncovering its face as did the mothers near her.

"She has stolen something," the purser observed to the mate, "and is pa.s.sing it off for a child. She don't behave to it as the others do.

If there is a constable on the pier, I'll give her in charge. But there won't be in this heavy rain, and there would be a row if we attempted to stop her. Best take no notice, I guess; 'taint no business of ours."

On reaching the pier, Fidele was the first to land and flit away through the village. "I told you so," said the purser, looking wise.

"You just see if we don't hear more about that one. Blue blanket, with a tear in one corner; straw hat--brim badly broken; face, like they all have--broad and brown as a b.u.t.ternut; red cheeks--must be young--and real spry on the pins. Guess I'd know her again--know the clothes, any way. Injuns are as like one another as copper cents."

Fidele reached a cabin in the outskirts, of square logs, whitewashed, one window and a door, with a "lean-to" addition of boards in the rear, where the cooking-stove stood in the warm weather. Entering, she found her sister Therese awaiting her, who with very few words proceeded to strip off her own brightly printed cotton gown. Fidele carried the child into the room behind, and returning, removed her blanket and dripping headgear.

"Ouff," said Therese, undoing the gay handkerchief from her head and picking up the hat in evident disgust. "No good."

There was a small silver cross hanging from her neck by a black riband, to which Fidele stretched out her hand expecting it to be taken off likewise. But no. Therese drew back with a head-shake, explaining that that belonged to the ladies of the Convent school, adding, that it was bad enough to give up the smart frock and kerchief in exchange for such a hat and a damp blanket. Fidele reminded her of the new ones she was to receive from Paul, after she had worn the blanket for a week, and again s.n.a.t.c.hed at the nuns' silver badge of merit. Therese caught the hand and bit it. Fidele screamed, and a battle was imminent, when Paul's growl from the back room, threatening violence, restored calm, and Therese sulkily took up the blanket and drew it over her head. Presently, Paul looked out to bid her begone, and Therese, through the open door, saw enough to silence remonstrance, and send her trembling away.

Paul entered as Therese went out, and stood before his squaw. He spoke in Iroquois, briefly, and in the conclusive tone which admits neither of question nor reply. Another, Messieurs the Benedicts, of those natural gifts dropped by the way in the march of improvement. The squaw never "speaks back," but the "last word" belongs of right to every self-respecting Christian woman, and she takes it. Ask the ladies!

"To work at once," was the purport of Paul's orders, "then sweep up.

Put on your sister's gown, and that black blanket over all. Go out by the back, into the bush. Hide in the old roothouse by the corner of the clearing till sundown; then away, across the reservation. Take care you are not seen. Travel all night, going west. Stay in the woods to-morrow till dusk. Travel your quickest till you reach Ogdensburg.

Cross the river there, and go west to Brantford, taking your own time.

Go to your brother, and tell him to expect me next winter." And so saying, he went out by the front of the house, locking the door behind him.