CHAPTER V.
NITCHE M'NAB.
When, a week after, we sighted Ballou's cabin there was smoke coming from the chimney. It was noon, and we were bucking a stiff head wind as well as current, and I for one was both tired and hungry.
"Let's stop and eat with them," I suggested.
"Good enough," Dunleath agreed. "I've got Fothergill's letter in my war bags somewhere. And we can ask Ballou about this McNab. But I won't tell him we've found anything. We're after information, not out to give it."
"Sure," I said. "I won't say a word."
As it turned out old Hayes was at the cabin, too, and as much at home as any of them. But he and Louis did not seem on very good terms. I suppose because they had seen too much of each other. Tom Ballou read Mr. Fothergill's letter of introduction and looked Jim Dunleath up and down.
"Sorry we was away," he said. "But you look as if Bob had treated you all right."
"He certainly did. I don't look like a sick man now, do I?"
"No more'n I do."
"Well," Dunleath laughed, eying the lean old frontiersman, "if I look as healthy as you do I guess I'm over the hump. The cold fact is that for the last week I've had all I could do to keep from eating Bob alive. I have an appetite like a wolf."
"We'll fix that. Louis is rustling grub right now."
"Did you have any luck?" I asked.
"Same old thing—colors and float. One bar might pay a Chinaman to work."
"I told you we took the wrong fork o' that crick," Hayes put in. "I told you when we was"
"Ah, shut up your face on dat!" Louis interrupted in a swift flare of exasperation, as if the other had been harping too long on one string. "I ain't been hear not'ing but about dat since t'ree week! If you know so moch why don't you pass yourself on dat odder fork when we come to her? For why don't you go prospec' by your lonely, hey?"
"I sure will next time," drawled old Hayes. "When I'm by my lone I can keep clean. But campin' with a Frenchman"
"Ol'-timer," said Louis, "you want to go slow, or some day for sure I twis' your ol' neck so you spit on your heel!"
"Quit that and sweeten up your stomachs with some sody," Ballou put in.
"Pshaw! I was only foolin' with him," said old Hayes. "Louis can take a joke, can't you, Louis?"
"I tak' a joke the way you mak' her," Louis replied enigmatically, and began to prepare dinner, while Ballou and Dunleath talked.
"Did you ever hear of a man named McNab?" the latter asked a few minutes later.
Louis was frying pork, which was sputtering great blisters of fat, and as Dunleath spoke he jumped as if he had been stung, and swore and wrung his hand.
"Mo' gee!" he ejaculated. "Dat pork gr-ris she's burn comme le diable!"
Old Hayes was lighting his pipe, and he held the burning match several inches from the bowl, while from force of habit he sucked vigorously at the cold tobacco, his lean old cheeks working like a bellows. Then the flame nipped his fingers, and he, too, swore. But Ballou asked:
"McNab? There's lots of McNabs. What one do you mean?"
"This one would be an old-timer. I think his first name was Angus."
"How did you hear of him yourself?"
"I think somebody mentioned the name when I was coming in. Or else I saw it somewhere. Somehow I got the idea that he was a rather hard citizen."
"Lots of old-timers were hard citizens."
"And that's no lie," Hayes put in. "Did you ever hear of this Angus McNab, Tom?"
Ballou reflected, with narrowed eyes.
"No, I don't think so. I knew an Archie McNab in Cariboo," and there was a Duncan McNab down in the Bitter Root once. That's all I remember. They wouldn't be the ones. I never heard of Angus McNab, did you, Louis?"
"Nevaire!" Louis replied emphatically above his pork.
Old Hayes, it appeared, did not know him either. It was a disappointment. I had made sure that one of them would have heard of McNab if he had been at all celebrated. We had dinner and went down to the canoe.
"You headin' for the outside now?" Ballou asked.
"Not immediately. I'm here for my health, and I may stay a month. If Bob's folks get tired of me I may ask you to let me camp around here somewhere."
"No chance of our getting tired," I said.
"If they do," said Ballou, "you know where to come. Come anyhow. We ain't got much, but you're welcome."
A couple of hours afterward we reached home, and Peggy hugged me as if I had been away a year. We set up Dunleath's tent again on the old spot, and I resumed my daily tasks, which after my taste of freedom were more distasteful than ever. And Peggy and Dunleath resumed their long talks and walks. Even I could see that they did not want company, and so I let them severely alone.
Uncle Fred could tell us nothing about Angus McNab, though the name seemed vaguely familiar, and I had given up hope of learning more when one night old McClintock, the factor at Carcajou House, traveling back from Neepaw by canoe, stopped with us overnight, as was his custom, for he and my uncle were great friends.
"Angus McNab!" he exclaimed when he heard the name. "Did ever I hear of him? Aye, that I did. Ye'll be meanin' 'Nitche' McNab, Mr. Dunleath."
"I don't know," said Jim Dunleath. "Who was Nitche McNab?"
"He was a deevil," McClintock replied. "A dour, thievin', bluidy-minded deevil!"
"A half-breed?"
"Weel, I'll na go that far. Maybe an eighth. Ye'll understan' that man—and mair especially a Scotchman—wasna made to live alone, and in the early days white weemin were scarce. But on the male side he was Hielan' blood, and he was born in the Selkirk settlements of white parents. 'Nitche' was just a nickname, because he had Indian habits—bad ones at that. Also he was dark of skin—a swart deevil. But his brother was red as a fox."
"He had a brother, had he?"
"A younger brother, Alec, little better than himsel', but with less brain. Bluidy murderers, the pair o' them. First an' last they cost the company a fortune."
"But what did they do?"
"Suffeecient!" McClintock replied grimly, lighting the clay pipe that was his inseparable companion. "Ye'll be wantin' the yarn? Weel, it was this way: In the beginning Nitche was in the service of the company, and he rose to a small post on the Churchill. There he robbed the company with both hands, trading on his own account and stealing the best skins, and his brother helped him at it. Ye'll understan' that in those days—that'll be upward of twenty years ago—the company made its own laws and enforced them. When Nitche's thievin's were discovered he tried to get away. Inside fifty miles he was caught and brought back to be tried. He was flogged before all the Indians and the men of the post, and turned loose to leave the country—if he could."
"Well, couldn't he?"
"The company," McClintock replied, "wasna stakin' him to gun, canoe, or food."
"Great Scott!" Dunleath exclaimed as the full meaning of this dawned on him.
"It wasna intended as a humane measure, but as an example," said McClintock grimly. "In dealin' with Indians, ye'll understan', humanity is a mistake. The company was forced to punish its own men caught in wrong-doin' in the same way. But Nitche McNab was long-headed as weel as bluidy-minded. Against preceesely sic an eventuality he had cached a gun and food. A week afterward the man who laid the lash on him was found stabbed to death in his blankets. And two days after that Donald Murdoch, that had ordered the floggin', was shot from the dark as he sat in his chair."
"Donald Murdoch?"
"Aye, Black Donald Murdoch. A hard man. He was just wounded, and got over it. But na doubt Nitche thought he had killed him, for he seemed to vanish from the country. No one heard of him for a year or two. Then it was discovered that he was tradin' with the Indians across the divide on the Athabasca. Six men were sent to take him and his brother, and but one came back. The Indians say the brothers killed them, one at a time, from ambush. Then they disappeared, as they had before."
McClintock paused, refilled his clay, and relighted it deliberately.
"The rest," he continued, "is but little known, and at the time the company had its own reasons for silence. But at this date I'm violatin' no confidence when I tell ye. Nitche McNab, ye'll understand, knew the country an' the posts an' the customs of the company. And so he got together a small band of desperate characters like himself— maybe a dozen or more in all—to raid certain of the company's posts when the winter's catch of furs was in and before the brigades came to take them out."
"By George!" Jim Dunleath exclaimed, and suddenly a great light broke on me. Furs! That was what it was. That was what the cache of Nitche McNab held.
"Ye may weel say that," McClintock nodded. "Siccan an enterprise was never undertaken before or since, to my knowledge. There are reasons why I shouldna tell ye the names of the posts. But they came in at the heel of the winter, overland, and held up one post after another, looted them of their best furs, and went on to the next. As luck would have it that winter's catch of fur was far above the ordinar' in quantity and quality. It was a good year—the best I remember. They took a fortune in skins from those posts, as prices went then. At present-day values the total would be something ye'd scarce credit.
"Now, at the last post they raided was that same factor, Black Donald Murdoch, that Nitche had shot on the Churchill. Nitche may have known that or he may not. They took the post, but they had to fight hard. In the fighting men were killed on either side, and among them was Murdoch. Nitche McNab scalped him."
"He must have been a good hater," Dunleath commented.
"Aye, I grant him that—an' it's na so bad a point," McClintock admitted grudgingly. "Weel, then, having taken this last post, they tried to get away with their plunder. But the men of the looted posts had combined and were after them. And that year, because of an early spring, the brigades came in earlier than usual. So that though the robbers had smashed all the canoes they could find except what they took for themselves, they found a force on their trail which was too large for them to fight. They were headed, and had to turn north, up the Reindeer and the Brulé, and heavily loaded with plunder as they were, they could not travel fast enough to escape."
"Do you mean they were captured?" Dunleath asked anxiously.
"I didna say that, young man. What I have told ye so far is fact. The rest is supposeetion and rumor. It is said that Nitche and his men quarreled. When they found themselves hard pressed, Nitche was for makin' one cache of the plunder, and the others wished to divide it, break up the party, and each take his chance. In the end Nitche had his way. They cached the furs, and broke up, some overland and some by canoe, so that it was like lookin' for needles in a haystack. Of the lot only two men were caught, and the tale of these is what I have told you."
"But did they tell where the cache was?"
"Oh, aye, they told where it was. I'll no' say they volunteered the information, but they yielded to persuasion. But the cache had been lifted. There was not much as a rat skin left. And from that day to this the company has never seen or heard of its stolen furs."
"What is the theory?" Dunleath asked.
"Naturally that some of the thieves doubled back and lifted it. Still, the company could never find that these skins had been offered for sale. Very strange that. But the result is the same so far as the company is concerned."
"And what became of Nitche McNab?"
"Nobody knows. Pairsonally I have little doubt that it was Nitche lifted the cache. He was like a fox for cunning, and he would know that if any of his men were captured the secret would not be safe. And, as I say, they had quarreled. He would not trust them. Takin' one thing with another, it seems likely that having lifted the cache he perished by some mischance, and the secret of the furs with him."
"So that the furs are still where he cached them?"
"Aye, pro-bably."
"Would they be worth anything now?"
"That'll depen'. Furs will keep indefinitely if dry and free from insects. It's like he would cache them well."
"And you say they were very valuable?"
"Accordin' to the men who bought them and the company's books. It was a rare year. The pack was like that of a hundred years gone, when the country was new. There were many black fox, and marten big and black as tomcats, and even sea otter traded in somehow from the far-coast Indians. Oh, aye, it was a verra serious loss to the company." And old McClintock shook his head sadly.
That night I dreamed of furs. In the morning, when McClintock had gone, sitting in state in his big canoe, with its six paddles, and the smoke from his clay pipe floating out astern like a steamer's, Jim Dunleath turned to Uncle Fred.
"I'm going after those furs," he said, "and I want Bob. Half of what we find belongs to him, of course. Can you spare him for the rest of the summer?"
"I guess so," my uncle replied. "But it's a long way to those lakes, and he can't guide you. You'd never get there yourselves. And if you did, and found the furs, you couldn't bring out more than a fraction of them."
"I know that," Dunleath replied. "I'm going to get a proper outfit of men and canoes. The deuce of it is"—he hesitated for a moment—"well, the cold fact is, I haven't got the money."
"Neither have I," said my uncle bluntly, "if that is what you mean."
"No, I didn't mean that. I can get the money, but it will take a little time. I'll have to go to Neepaw and wire, and I want to start to-morrow."
"Well," said my uncle, with a twinkle in his eye, "if you can coax Bob away from his work on the ranch he may go with you."