The Desperate Journey (11 page)

“My! That was a narrow escape!” He shuddered. Kirsty was trembling violently.

“We must go back the way we came,” Davie said. “We can follow the path we’ve made through the undergrowth.”

It seemed as if the bushes held out thorny hands to pull them back. The sun dipped below the horizon and the grey mist seeped through the forest, blotting out their surroundings. Soon they could not even discern their former tracks. They came to an open glade among the trees.

“Which way now?” Davie said desperately.

“We’re lost! We’re lost!” Kirsty lamented.

“Let’s try that way.” Davie pointed.

“No, no! I’m sure that will take us back to the bog. Oh, Davie, I’m so frightened. I dare not go on any more.”

“Let’s shout,” Davie suggested. “Maybe the camp is not so far away and they’ll hear us.”

They lifted their voices again and again, but not even an echo answered them.

“They’ll come and look for us when they find we’re missing.” Davie tried to sound more confident than he really felt. “We’ll stay here where we can rest our backs against the trunk of this big tree.”

They sank down beside it. The darkness began to creep around them. There was a rustling in the undergrowth. Kirsty sat bolt upright.

“Davie! There’s something creeping among the bushes. Could it be a wolf?”

Davie knew it was quite possible, but he answered boldly, “Nonsense! It’s more likely to be a rabbit.”

“I wish we’d a fire,” Kirsty said. “I’m so cold, and wild animals will not come near a fire, Peguis told me.”

“It’s clean daft I am!” Davie declared. “I’ve got a flint and tinder
in my pocket after lighting the camp fire this morning. Feel round and see if you can find a bit of dry grass and some twigs.”

Kirsty found a handful of withered reedy grass, and Davie, on his hands and knees, found dry cones beneath the pine tree. He struck away at his flint till a spark flew, and then another and the tinder caught alight. He touched the papery grass with it and a little flame shot up. He fed it with the fir cones and bits of brittle twigs. Soon he had a small steady fire glowing. “That feels better,” he said.

Kirsty, her back firmly against the tree trunk, glanced nervously round the encircling forest. In the darkness among the bushes she saw something gleaming. She clutched her brother.

“Davie, there are eyes watching us from those bushes, not just one pair, either! There must be animals there, perhaps wolves, waiting, waiting –”

Davie saw them too. He lit a large twig in the fire, then stood up and whirled it round his head till it glowed bright red, then he flung it with all his might and main among the bushes to which Kirsty had pointed. There was a plunging and rustling in the undergrowth and the gleaming points of light vanished.

“They’re gone, but they’ll come back again,” Kirsty said in a frightened whisper. “What shall we do, Davie? They’ll tear us to pieces.”

“Keep the fire going!” Davie said. “Here’s a thick dead branch, like a small tree trunk. It’s too thick to break but we can keep pushing an end of it into the fire as it burns. I’m going to find more wood.”

“Oh, Davie, don’t leave the fire! The wolves might get you!” Kirsty cried in terror.

“I shall take fire with me,” Davie said, lighting another small branch and waving it about his head. He searched at the base of other nearby trees and came back several times with an armful of dead twigs and branches. “Perhaps these will keep us going till daylight,” he said. “Daylight comes early in this country.”

“What if we fall asleep and the fire dies down?” Kirsty said
fearfully.

“We must not fall asleep. We must sing to keep ourselves awake,” Davie decided.

“We’ll sing together at first, then each in turn, as we used to do when we looked after the herd at Culmailie.”

Suddenly Kirsty’s voice rang out in the well-known words of the 23rd Psalm.

As they sang, they both felt comforted.

At the camp, when it was found just at sunset that the two children were missing, the search began. James Murray thought Davie might have gone fishing along the river and he and Mr Finlay tramped along the bank, searching and calling. They returned to the camp dismayed. Robert Finlay sought out Peguis.

“We think the two children belonging to Mr Murray must be in the forest.”

“I go look for them,” Peguis said at once. “I take Indian hunter with me.”

“We had better take lanterns,” Finlay said. He, too, thought of the wolves that might be roaming the forest and shuddered to think what might have happened to the children. Each man took a lantern lit with oil made from animal fat. Peguis also brought one of his hunting dogs. “Give dog something to smell belong squaw-child,” he said to James Murray. Kate brought out a pair of Kirsty’s moccasins from the tent and the dog smelt them, then cast around for a while along the river bank, then seemed to pick up a trail that led to the forest. Peguis followed the trail as keenly as the dog, noting bent grasses here, a broken twig there, a couple of flowers that had fallen from the bunch that Kirsty had picked. The trail wandered through the woods till, all at once, the dog gave a bark and bounded forward. A still shape
lay across their path. James Murray gave a cry of fear, but the still figure proved to be the body of the deer Davie had shot. Already beasts of prey had been at its carcase. In its throat the arrow was still sticking. “My arrow! The boy shot it,” said Peguis.

The trail led them to the edge of the morass where they found trampled footmarks on the muddy bank. Peguis held James Murray back “Not good go there. Man sink!” He pointed to the marsh.

“Have my children been swallowed up in the bog?” James cried in agony.

“No! I read the marks. Feet go in a little way, the boy’s, but feet come out. It is plain. They go back to the forest.”

Suddenly Peguis flung his head back. “I smell smoke!” He sniffed around. “That way!” The dog was straining at the thong which held him.

They plunged back into the forest, crashing through the undergrowth. Suddenly the big chief stopped and held up his hand for silence.

“Listen!” he said. From among the trees came the faint sounds of a Highland Jacobite song, “Will ye no’ come back again?” sung by two very tired voices. Peguis hesitated no longer but broke into a run. A minute or two later they came on the two children crouched by their sinking fire.

“Kirsty! Davie! I wondered if I’d find ye alive!” James Murray said as he ran to them.

“I
knew
you’d find us, Father,” Davie said in a trusting weary voice.

“It was Peguis found you. He followed your tracks through the forest to the morass. He knew you were not in the mud there and turned us back.”

Kirsty held out a hand to Peguis. “Dear Peguis!” she said, the tears beginning to fall.

“Give me the squaw-child,” Peguis said. “I carry her back to camp.” With infinite tenderness the Indian gathered her into his arms and the bobbing lanterns led the glad procession back to the waiting camp and Kate.

After travelling twenty-nine days the Sutherlanders reached the forks of the Red River where they were to make their new homes. Here on a long point of land, where the Red River took a bend to its meeting with the Assiniboine River, the first settlers in the New Colony had already built their wooden houses. Behind the settlement stretched hundreds of miles of rolling prairie lands.

“Where are the mountains?” Kate cried in some disappointment. James, however, looked pleased.

“This is far better land for farming than mountains. This land has deep good soil for crops, and grass in plenty for the animals.

“It is a good wide river too, with plenty of fish,” Davie said with satisfaction.

“Here is the Governor, Miles MacDonell, and the first settlers, waiting to welcome you,” Robert Finlay told his company.

Every settler carried a musket in his hand. At a sign from the Governor, each man raised his musket and fired a salute of welcome in the air.

Willing hands helped them ashore. There were shouts of greeting, for many of the Sutherlanders had relations among the settlers already there. Miles MacDonell shook hands with every person as they came up the river bank. A sturdily-built man clad in deerskin trousers and jacket ran forward. “Hullo, there, Robert Finlay!”

“Why it’s Peter Fidler! What are you doing here?”

“Mapping and parcelling out the ground for Lord Selkirk’s settlers. I’m making sure every man gets his hundred acres. I never
did a job with a better heart. I’ll give you a hand with your gear.”

“Help this bundle of liveliness with her blankets, first,” Finlay laughed, pointing to Kirsty. “Came on snowshoes she did, from Fort Churchill to York Factory, the youngest one of us to make that tough journey!”

“Well done, little lass!” Peter Fidler said in a voice which still had a pronounced Derbyshire accent.

“And this young man has every promise of being a good hunter. He’s a fine fisherman already, so you’d better give him a piece of land right on the river bank.”

“I’ll try to do that,” Peter Fidler laughed.

“And here are James Murray and Mistress Murray. Mr Fidler is the surveyor and map-maker to the Hudson’s Bay Company.”

They shook hands all round and Peter Fidler eyed the Sutherlanders with approval. “Know anything of farming, Mr Murray?”

“Aye, I was a crofter back hame in Scotland.”

“You will find it grand farming soil here,” Peter Fidler assured him. “But come this way now, for Governor MacDonell is waiting to welcome you.”

Miles MacDonell made them a speech of welcome. Food and drink were handed round, then came the more serious business. Governor MacDonell handed out a musket and ammunition to every man.

“Our first care must be the protection of our colony,” the Governor told the settlers; “I warn you, you will find we have enemies among the Norwesters. You will also need to hunt for your meat. The Indians will supply us with buffalo meat and pemmican, but it may not be enough.”

Davie lined up with the men who were receiving the guns. The Governor paused when he saw him. “Why, you’re but a lad!” he said, holding back the musket.

“He is a good shot, that same laddie!” Robert Finlay said
quietly.

“He make good hunter,” came the deep voice of Peguis from behind the group.

“If we are attacked by the Norwesters, we shall need all the good gunmen we can muster,” Peter Fidler remarked.

The Governor hesitated no longer. “Here’s your gun then, lad, but see you make good use of it and keep it clean and in good order.”

Davie glowed with pride as he received the shining new weapon.

Next, to each family the Governor gave an Indian horse, a bag of seed potatoes, and wheat, barley and turnip seed.

“And now Mr Peter Fidler will show every man his hundred acres of land,” the Governor announced. “Every family is to have a farm by the river. The fishing of the river is free to you too.”

“Fishing!” Davie exclaimed with delight. “We’ll have to build a boat, Father.”

“The house and the land will come first,” James informed him sternly. He turned to the Governor. “Please, sir, where do we get our implements, ploughs and harrows and spades?”

The Governor looked rather uncomfortable. “I am sorry to say that these have not been sent out to the colony yet. They will come in time. Meanwhile there is a supply of hoes and one or two spades, but that is the best we can do.”

Peter Fidler brought out his plans and showed the colonists where their new homes were to be.

That night Donald Gunn played his pipes and the Highlanders held a great party with singing and dancing. Davie sat alongside Peter Fidler, and while they were watching a Highland reel he put a question that had been in his mind all day.

“Mr Fidler, what did you mean by saying that if we were attacked by the Norwesters we should need all our gunmen?”

Peter Fidler looked serious at once. “There has been a lot of
enmity between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company. We both trade over the same country with the Indians for furs, you see. Then it is a question of the buffalo herds too.”

“The buffalo herds?”

“Aye, laddie. The longer you live in the northland the more you’ll learn that everything hangs on the question of
food
. Men of the same blood will kill each other for meat. We depend on the buffaloes for dried meat for winter. The prairies round here are their chief grazing grounds. The Norwesters fear that the settlers making farms here will drive them away, or else the colony will require all the buffalo meat in the territory. Indeed, they’re right about that.”

“Would it not be better to have farms with herds of cattle on which men could depend?”

“Aye, lad, you’ve got some sense there, but it will be a long time before the settlers get their herds flourishing, and meantime you’ve all got to eat. Miles MacDonell knows if the settlers are to live through a hard winter they cannot spare any food to the Norwesters. He has forbidden the Norwesters to take any meat out of the Colony lands, either by killing buffalo or trading with the Indians for their dried meat. The Norwesters will not submit to that and there has been trouble already.”

“What kind of trouble, Mr Fidler?” James Murray was sitting near, and he heard what the surveyor had told Davie.

“Well, the Norwesters’ hunters, the Bois Brulés, have stolen some of our cattle. Then, when our settlers go out to hunt the buffalo, the Bois Brulés make the herds stampede. Then, early this year, the Governor learned that big supplies of pemmican and dried meat had been taken out of the Colony lands to Fort La Souris, belonging to the Norwesters. He sent some men from Fort Douglas in this colony to raid the fort and they brought away thirty tons of supplies.”

“Thirty tons!” Davie let out a whistle of surprise.

“Aye, that might prevent death by starvation of the colonists, but you may be sure the Norwesters will not let it rest there. They will seek their revenge.”

“We seem to have arrived in the middle of a small war,” James Murray remarked.

“Aye, man! Now you can see why the Governor was willing to supply Davie here with a musket.”

The next day the Sutherlanders said goodbye to Robert Finlay who was going on to Brandon House, another Hudson’s Bay Company post; then they set to work at once to build their new homes, felling trees to make log huts. The men worked in teams, helping each other. Meanwhile, the women were busy with spades and hoes, took off the turf and dug the soil and planted potatoes. Kirsty worked alongside Kate, and whenever Davie could be spared from house-building he dug and planted with them. What time could be spared from building and planting, Davie spent fishing in the river from the bank at the foot of their land. It was a hard life, but they were all happy in it.

“Better this than the life in Glasgow!” James said. “Here man can earn his bread like a man!”

Kirsty had marked off a plot for herself and was making a garden. She planted wild roses and prairie poppies and other field flowers in it. “I’ve always wanted a garden,” she said, “and Mr Fidler says he’ll give me seed from England that he had sent out to him, wallflowers and pinks and lavender.”

“Here I am making a home again,” Kate said with gladness, as she and James added piece after piece of furniture made with their own hands.

By the time the winter came the Sutherlanders were well settled in their comfortable huts. Their first crops had yielded well, especially the potatoes and turnips. The trouble with the Norwesters, though, was building up.

Miles MacDonell had to go away from the colony to deal with
an attack on Fort Daer, another of the Company’s posts, and while he was absent the Norwesters made a camp at Frog Plain, three miles north of the settlement, not far from the camp of Peguis and his Indians. The leader of the Norwesters, Duncan Cameron, tried to persuade the Indians to join with him against the colonists. Peguis shook his head. “Among these people I have my friends,” he told Cameron. “It is a bad thing for a man to take up weapons against his friends.” The faithful Indian could not be moved.

It was difficult for the Sutherlanders to defend their farms when the men were working in the fields, and often a band of the Bois Brulés made a raid on their homesteads, broke open the byres and drove off the cattle and plundered the houses.

One day in June when James Murray was helping another settler to fell trees some distance away, a band of Bois Brulés rode up to the Murrays’ farm and drove away the cow which was pastured in a field near the farm. For the cow James Murray had paid most of his savings. It was their dearest possession and meant milk and butter and cheese for them. Davie and Kirsty saw what happened from where they were working in the vegetable garden.

“They shall not get away with it!” Davie cried in anger.

The horse was stabled next to the house, and Davie dashed in to it, carrying saddle and bridle. Kirsty went with him and helped him to fasten the girths, and when Davie mounted the horse she climbed up behind him and held on to his belt.

“Better get down, Kirsty! I’m going after our cow and there’ll be rough men to deal with, and perhaps shooting,” Davie told her.

“They’ll be less likely to shoot if there’s a girl with you on the horse,” Kirsty said, sounding a lot braver than she felt, but she was determined not to let Davie go alone.

“
Will
you get down, Kirsty?” Davie besought her.

“I will
not
! If you do not want to lose our cow for good, then you will waste no time getting after the thieves, Davie Murray!”

Davie was forced to ride away with Kirsty clinging round his
middle. He urged the hardy Indian horse as fast as it would go. He knew the cattle thieves could not go faster than the pace of the cattle they had stolen and that he could catch up with them. There was a cloud of dust ahead as the raiders drove the cattle, towards the Norwesters’ encampment. The thieves had to pass the Indian camp as they went. Peguis watched them with an unmoved stare till a few minutes afterwards when Davie and Kirsty went galloping past. This time Peguis was moved to action. “Bring my horse!” he called to his son.

Davie and Kirsty caught up with the raiders just as they were turning into the encampment.

“Hi, there! Give us back our cow!” Davie challenged them.

“What cow?” the leader said with a sneer when he saw he had only two children with whom to reckon.

“That cow!” Kirsty pointed to the animal. “She’s Rosie, our cow!”

The leader burst into a scornful laugh. “How can you prove she is your cow?”

“She is! She is!” Kirsty insisted.

“Not any longer!” the leader sneered. “You children had better get back home if you don’t want to be made prisoners along with the cow.”

“If I had my gun with me, you would not speak to us so!” Davie cried angrily.

“Oh! Got a gun, have you?” said one of the Bois Brulés. “So you’d threaten us? I think perhaps such a dangerous fellow should be taken prisoner. His horse would be useful to us. Get down, both of you! Your sister can walk back by herself.”

“I will not!” Kirsty kicked out at them when they made to lift her from the horse.

“Looks like we’re going to have two prisoners on our hands,” the leader said. “I wonder what ransom the settlers would pay to have her returned to them unhurt? They think a lot of their women.”

Kirsty realised with horror the trap into which she had fallen. The enemy would use her in bargaining against her people. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried wildly as they came once more towards her.

“Do not touch the squaw-child!” came a stern voice from behind the crowd. It came from Peguis, mounted on his horse, with his son on another one beside him. Both had drawn bows with the deadly arrows fixed. “The first man who touches the white child shall have my arrow through his heart!” he declared.

The Bois Brulés knew that at that distance Peguis could not miss. One by one they stepped back from the two children on horseback.

“Which is their cow?” the Indian chief demanded.

“There she is!” Davie cried, pointing out Rosie.

“Drive that cow away from the others!” Peguis ordered.

“Are you going to obey an Indian?” the leader asked the Norwesters. “Will you let
him
tell you what to do? What would two be against the lot of us, if we rushed at them?”

The situation looked ugly, but the Indians never flinched. The hands that held the bows remained steady as ever.

“We should not be two against you,” Peguis told the leader. “Kill us and all our tribe will come against you. They will come silently in the night. You will know nothing till you feel knives at your throats. Are one cow and two Indians worth that vengeance?”

The thieves drew back and muttered among themselves. “He is right! Let the children go, Pierre,” the Bois Brulés urged their leader. “What are the children worth to us?”

Pierre saw the temper of the crowd was against him. No man wanted Peguis’s arrow through his heart. “Be gone with you!” he shouted at Davie.

“Not unless I take our cow too!” Davie said, holding his ground.