The Secret Cache

fore, but work on the log buildings within the walls was still going on. Quarters for the agents, clerks and various employees, storehouses,

off their bartering with Indians and half-breed trappers, and all ran down to the riverside. There they mingled with the wild looking men, squaws and children who swarmed from the camps

xiously he scanned the crowd of white men, half-breeds and Indians, wondering which one of the black-haired, deerskin-clad, half-grown lads, who slipped so nimbly between their elders into the front

e of the crew about what he intended to do at the Kaministikwia, and was relieved to reach shore without having to dodge the curios

was worth seeing, but he did not choose to visit the place for fear someone might ask his business there. He was keenly aware that his business was likely to be, not with the Old Northwest Company, but with its ri

k and the Fort, the place was not cheerful or encouraging to a lonely boy on that chill spring day. The sky was gray and lowering, the wind cold, the distance shrouded in fog, the air heavy with the earthy smell

chance into a narrow path that led through the woods up-river. He was walking slowly, so wrapped in his own not very pleasant thoughts as to be scarcely conscious of hi

e deerskin tunic and leggings of the woods and with a scarlet handkerchief bound about his head instead of a cap. His dark features were unmistakably Indian in form, but from under the straight, black brows s

d repeated with a questioni

Blaise?" Hugh asked, so

ogetically in excellent French, "My Engl

though I doubt if I sp

ce. "I was at school with the Jesuit father

wild savage. The schooling in Quebec accounted for the well written letter. B

n I saw you, you must be my brother, though you have litt

le my mother's people." Hugh's

slightly singsong drawl. "I wished not to speak to you there among the others. I

ing me around ever since I came a

ain. "Not following, but,"-he dropped into French-"I watched. It was not difficult, since you thought

ace. After perhaps half a mile, they came to the top of a low knoll where an opening had been made by the fall of a big spruce. Blaise seat

t Wauswaugoning Bay, north of the Grand Portage. Just at dusk of a night late in March, Beaupré staggered into their camp, his face ghastly, his clothes blood stained, mind and body in the last stages of exhaustion. At the lodge en

ached the trading post at the Fond du Lac on the St. Louis River. While he was there, a spell of unusually warm early spring weather cleared the river mouth. The winter had been mild, with little ice in that part of the

much agitated. He gasped out again and again that he had hidden the furs and the "packet" in a safe cache, and that Blaise and his other son Hugh must go get them. He called the furs his sons' inheritance, for he was clearly aware that he could not live. The pelts were a very good season's catch, and the boys must take them to the New Northwest Company's post at the Kaministikwia. But it was the packet about which he seemed

uiet manner, how strongly he felt his loss. Hugh respected the depth of the boy's sorrow, yet he could not but feel as if he, the elder son, had been unrightfully defrauded. The half-breed lad had known their common father so

e remarked. "Have you no clue to t

hort way only from the place

t," commented Hugh thoughtfully. "It m

the wreck happened, though I asked several times. Th

panion? Was

id nothing of Black Thunder, but I think he must

e set about

although he was the younger by two or three years. "We will look first for the wr

he said suddenly, "what was it caused my father's death, starvation, exhaustion, hards

im, at the still and silent woods shadowy with approaching night. Then he leaned towards Hugh and spoke so low the latter could scarcel

gh whispered, unconsciously imit

I know not how, but not in the storm or

in his surprise. "Had he enemies who

ed. The bull moose himself is not braver. Yet I think the blow was not a fair one. I think it was struck f

ave been. Could it have been

would have carried away the furs. Our fat

he added, "Yet the fellow may have attacked him, and

u and I are left to avenge our father." It was plain that Christian schooling in Quebec had not rooted out from Little Caribou's nature the savage's cra