FOR THE GREAT FATHER
At Half-Way-House, far over the Height-of-Land on the James Bay watershed, the bitter December wind drove around the whitewashed log buildings in swirls of powdery snow. In the post clearing outside the dog-stockade the tepees of Crees in for the Christmas trade stood deep in drifts. Around the roaring stove in the trade-house lounged a group of red trappers filling the long room with smoke as they gloomily discussed in Cree the news brought by the freshly arrived winter mail-team from the southern posts. Behind the huge slab trade-counter sat Nicholson, the factor, and his clerk buried in papers, weeks old, blazoned with accounts of the world war raging since August; for mail from outside came but twice a year to Half-Way-House, marooned in the wilderness of Rupert Land.
Presently the yelping of huskies announced the arrival of another team. Dog-bells jingled in front of the building. The low guttural of the Crees about the stove ceased as heads turned to inspect the newcomer. Then the door of the trade-house opened, admitting a tall figure crusted with snow from moccasins to hood.
"Quey! Quey!" came the greetings from the loungers, for the voyageur was well known at Half-Way-House.
"Quey! Quey!" he threw out as he strode to the counter.
"Hello, Joe! I didn't expect to see you till spring!"
The factor turned from his paper to shake hands over the counter with the tall trapper.
"I thought you said you were going to winter in the Sinking Lake country and wouldn't get in for Christmas?"
"I cum from de Sinkeen Lak' in seex sleep; I got nice fur for you."
"Nice fur, eh? Black fox?"
"Tree of dem," said the Cree, his small black eyes snapping with pride. The loungers who had moved to the counter to shake hands with the voyageur and hear the talk, grunted in surprise.
"Too bad! Too bad, Joe!" The factor shook his head. "We've sad news from Quebec. War across the Big Water! Nobody buys fur! Prices all gone to smash!"
The dark face of the Indian changed with disappointment.
"How? What you spik?"
"The Great Father in England fights the Germans," explained the factor. "Mail-team just in with new prices for the Company posts. I'm sorry, Joe, I can't allow you much on your skins."
"I got plentee marten an' feesher-cat," the Indian muttered in his chagrin.
"Too bad, furs all gone down; bad times for the Company, bad for the Injun."
"A-hah!" The dazed Cree sighed, thinking of the rich fur pack outside on his sled and the long days he had toiled for it on his trap-lines in distant ice-locked valleys.
"What you geeve now for black fox?"
"Can't give you half last year's price; nobody buys 'em; they've all gone to war. Canada sends soldiers too, to fight for the King, the Great Father, across the Big Water."
"A-hah!" The tall trapper listened in amazement. Then he asked:
"How long dees fight las'?"
"No one knows, Joe. It's the worst war the world has seen and it may last a long time. The Big English Chief says three years."
"Fur no good w'ile de fight las'?"
"No, fur won't be worth much for some time."
"A-hah! " The Cree sighed heavily and went out to look after his dogs.
For two days Joe Lecroix—although a full-blooded Cree, his family had acquired the French name generations before—listened silently to the lamentation of the trappers at Half-Way-House. It was destined to be a sad Christmas indeed for those who had journeyed from their winter camps for the revel that the Great Company annually provides for its children of the snows. And long before the trails went soft in April there would be many a tepee in Rupert Land that had not known flour or tea in moons.
But Joe Lecroix did not trade his black fox and marten skins. While the Crees smoked, mourning over the hard times, his active mind was busy. He had long credit at the post; in fact, had never been in debt since he swung out for himself as a youth, and so could hold his fur.
One morning he drove his team of half-breed Ungava huskies, loaded with his outfit and fur pack, up to the trade-house. Entering the store he asked for provisions for three weeks.
"What, Joe, you ain't goin' back before Christmas?" asked Nicholson in surprise.
"No, I travel sout'. No good hunt fur dees long snows," answered the Indian dryly.
"South? What do you mean?"
"Fur too cheap! I got no woman to feed. I t'ink I go to Kebec and see de sojer."
"Why, you're crazy, man!" cried the amazed factor. "It's four hundred miles to the Transcontinental at Weymontechene and it's the same back. They don't want Injuns; they won't take you."
The Cree straightened to his six feet, squaring his wide shoulders. His eyes glittered angrily as he broke into his native tongue,
"You say they ask for young men in Quebec to fight for the Big Chief. You say they will not take me, Joe Lecroix, to fight over the Big Water? Because my skin is dark, can I not fight? Where will you find at the posts of the Great Company any who shoots the running caribou so far as Joe Lecroix? Is there a dog-runner at Rupert House, at Whale River, at Mistissini, at the post by the Fading Waters, who can take the trail from Joe Lecroix? What Company packer carries four bags of flour over the Devil's Portage on the Nottaway without rest? You saw Joe Lecroix do it two summers ago. Has any canoe man in Rupert Land run the Chutes of Death on the Harricanaw and lived? One! That one was Joe Lecroix. You say the white men will not take Joe Lecroix to fight across the Big Water because he has a skin like the red cedar. I will go to their camps and ask them."
The deep chest of the Cree rose and fell rapidly, his face set hard as his small eyes fiercely held Nicholson's gaze.
"It ain't that, Joe. All you say is dead truth, my lad. You're as stout as a moose and the best white-water man I've ever seen. It ain't that you ain't as able a man as travels the north country. It's just that they haven't enlisted Indians and may not intend to. I can't tell, and it's a long journey south, a long trail and a hard one. It would be tough if they wouldn't take you. Eight weeks on the trail with the dogs for nothing. It's safer to stick to the traps, Joe."
"I go and fin' out." And no advice of Nicholson could turn the stubborn Cree from his purpose.
When his provision bags were lashed on his sled, there was a handshake all around and a babel of Bo'-jo's from the Indians gathered to speed the mad trapper who was taking a four-hundred-mile trail in midwinter for the chance of getting himself killed in the great fight across the Big Water.
The last to wring the voyageur's hand was Nicholson, who said:
"Take good care of yourself, Joe. Half-Way-House can't afford to lose its best hunter. If you enlist we'll expect to hear from you by the spring canoe or the winter packet at least. Good-bye and good luck!"
"Bo'-jo', Meester Nicholson. I sen' you news from de fight," said Lecroix, and with a parting wave of his hand he cracked his caribou-hide whip and was off on the trail to the southern posts and far-off Flanders.
Day by day, as he followed the Singing Rapids trail to the Height-of-Land, now leading his team to pack down the new drift, now riding where the wind had brushed bare the icy shell of streams or beaten the snow hard on the lakes, the Cree came to look with changed eyes on the bleak winter hills and silent forests of his native land. It was a far journey he was entering on, and, as he hurried south behind his eager huskies, he realized that there might be no return down these valleys for the dog-team of Joe Lecroix. He was going he knew not where, to fight the enemies of the Great Father—the Great Father, of whom his children of the forests had but the vaguest ideas from post-trader and missionary. In the two days he spent at Half-Way-House he had learned what the factor had gathered from newspapers and letters brought by the Christmas-mail team, and it had been sufficient for Joe Lecroix.
The fur trade stagnant and no one depending on his efforts for support, the news of the fighting in France had fired the imagination of the Cree, The Big Chief was calling for men. Thousands of white Canadians had gone and more were going. Should the red man be found wanting? Where in all Rupert Land was there a keener eye over the sights, a more daring bow-man in Company boats, as tireless a dog-runner? And the enemies of the Great Father pressed him sorely. Down in Quebec by the big river all through the autumn the air had been torn with the speaking of the rifles in the ranges—so Nicholson had read to him—and the wide plain trampled by the feet of the marching sons of the Great Father. For a year, maybe two, a black fox would be worth hardly what an otter once brought. Far at the lonely post by the Fading Waters the deep snow mounded all that had once made his life a thing of value to him—the Montagnais girl he had married one year, and lost, all in the short space between the passing and the return of the gray geese. There were no small mouths for Joe Lecroix to feed, no ties that held him, and the Big Chief was calling for men. The word had travelled far into the north, even to the snow-swept spruces of Rupert Land, and had found the heart of one of his children.
It was a bitter trail that the Cree had chosen—the trail to the St. Maurice posts. In the Height-of-Land country the first January blizzard swept down on the team hurrying south. Burrowing into the snow with his dogs, to escape the searing wind with its scourge of fine crystals that struck like shot, he waited, while the forests rocked above him, for the storm to blow itself out. Then, after days of toil in the deep snow, the spent dog-team floundered into the post at Lost Lake.
There the factor raised his hands in protest at the purpose of the voyageur to push south in the bitter weather. "There's two feet of new snow. You'll be weeks making Kickendache; wait until the cold lets up and the wind eases the trail."
But the call of the Big Chief still rang in the ears of the Cree, and when his dogs were rested he pushed on. So he journeyed south, harassed by the stinging January winds which cut the faces of dogs and driver like a knife-edge; camping under star-encrusted heavens over which the northern lights pulsed and streamed, while forest and icy shell of river and lake snapped and cracked and boomed in the pinch of the withering cold.
At last a team of gaunt huskies crept out of the north into Weymontechene, where the new Transcontinental, leaving the upper St. Maurice, swings west toward the Gatineau headwaters. The weekly train to Quebec was due in three days, but the Cree would not wait; he had never seen the Iron Horse of the white man and preferred to keep on down the river with his dogs.
One day late in January a sentinel patrolling a road leading to the great training camp at Valcartier, now almost deserted of troops which had been forwarded to England, saw approaching a team of lean huskies hitched to a sled, followed by a tall figure in caribou-skin capote. As they neared him he gazed with surprise at the huge northern dogs and their wild-looking driver. Stepping into the road in front of them, he raised his hand. The tall driver shouted to the lead-dog and the team reluctantly stopped, slant eyes, flattened ears, and low rumble in throat evidencing their desire to leap at the stranger who dared threaten the dogs of Joe Lecroix with lifted hand.
"Halt! No passing here! What d' you want?" shouted the guard, lowering his bayonet as the lead-dog bared his fangs with a menacing snarl.
"Quey! Quey!" replied the driver. Then quieting his restless dogs he continued: "I cum from de nord countree, Rupert Lan', to fight for de Great Fader."
The Canadian stared at the wind-blackened face, caribou capote with its gaudy Hudson's Bay sash, and embroidered leggings of the voyageur.
"Good Gawd! Rupert Land? You've travelled some to enlist," he said. "Come up to the sentry-box. I'll turn you over to the sergeant."
Leaving the Cree in the road, the soldier entered the neighboring shack.
"Sergeant, there's a wild Injun outside, with a team of man-eatin' dogs, who wants to enlist. He's mushed a long way from the bush."
The sergeant, who came from western Ontario, was interested.
"Bring him in!"
The Cree entered the shack where the sergeant and two privates sat around a stove.
"Quey!" said Joe Lecroix, his black eyes snapping with pleasure at the martial appearance lent the room by the rifles and kits of the men.
"Bo'-jo'! Where you from?" answered the Ontario man, using the Ojibway salutation. "You look like the end of a long trail over the snow."
"Oua, yes! My name ees Joe Lecroix. I travel one moon from Half-Way-House, four sleeps from Mistassini Lac."
"Well, I'll be damned! So you've been on the trail a month and want to enlist?"
"Oua! Fur no good! I cum to fight for de Beeg Chief. I am good man. Strong as bull moose, run lak de wolf."
The Cree squared his shoulders, shifting his gaze from one to another of his hearers as if challenging them to disprove his words.
"Well! Well! A month on the trail in midwinter over the Height-of-Land! That's some spirit, men!"
The sergeant turned to the others, whose faces pictured the impression the physique and story of the Cree had made.
"I don't know whether they've enlisted any Indians yet, Joe; but I'll take you to an officer."
The Indian's face fell. Almost fiercely he repeated: "I am good man—can shoot, run wid dog-team, bow-man on Company beeg canoe. I can fight strong for de Great Fader!"
"I believe your story, my boy! You sure look like a rough customer in a mix-up, and any man who comes clear from Rupert Land to enlist deserves recognition. I wish we had a hundred like you in our regiment. I'll take you to the officer of the guard."
Followed by the Cree and his dog-team, the sergeant strode to the neighboring barracks, passing on the way soldiers who stopped to gaze in wonder at the wild recruit and his huge huskies.
Gaining admittance to the office of the officer of the guard, the sergeant saluted and told his story.
"I've got a big Cree Indian outside, sir, who says he's driven his dogs clear from the Rupert River Country to enlist. And from the condition of his face and the looks of his dogs, I believe him. I've driven dogs myself, sir, on the Transcontinental Survey."
"We haven't enlisted any Indians yet, sergeant."
"I know, sir, but I wish you'd have a look at him. He's a big, handsome-built lad, and it seems hard to turn him back after being on the trail a month."
"You say he's come all the way from the far north with his dogs?" asked a gray-haired officer present.
"Yes, sir. They look it, too."
"Have the sergeant bring him in, captain," said the older officer. "I'd like to see the Indian who is patriotic enough to spend a month on the trail in mid-winter for a chance to get himself shot in France."
Entering the room the Cree opened his skin capote, throwing back the hood from a face cracked by wind and frost. A sinewy hand brushed the thick hair from the narrow eyes that searched the faces of the officers for a clew to the verdict that would send him back heart-broken over the bitter trail he had travelled, or make him a soldier of the Great Father.
"You want to enlist?"
"Oua, yes, I cum to fight for de Great Fader."
At the quaintness of the reply the suggestion of a smile crept into the gray eyes of the older officer.
"Where are you from?"
"I cum wid dog-team from Rupert Lan'."
"When did you leave?"
"I leave Half-Way-House, Creesmas tam."
"You've been on the trail ever since?"
"Oua, yes. I cross Height-of-Lan' to St. M'rees water and follow riviere trail. I cum more fas' but de blizzard ketch me."
Then the Cree, wondering, if men were wanted to fight, why they hesitated to accept him, impetuously burst out with:
"I am strong man! I mak' beeg fight! I can shoot goose in de air wid rifle. I show you I am good man!"
The earnestness of the Indian had its effect. While the gray-haired officer talked with his junior in low tones, Joe Lecroix, perplexity and fear written plainly on his rugged features, awaited the verdict. They wanted fighting men, and here he was, known as a hunter and voyageur from Whale River down to Grand Lac Victoria, offering his services to the Great Father, and yet these soldiers seemed unwilling to take him.
"He'd make a smashing man in khaki, captain. He's the timber we want—look at his neck and shoulders. It would be shameful after the hardship he's endured in getting here to refuse to enlist him."
"We may have trouble with Ottawa over it, sir, but I'll give him a chance. These wild ones take a lot of drilling; they don't like discipline. They want to see fighting at once because they can ride and shoot. You remember those cattlemen from Calgary, sir?"
"Yes, but give the Indian a trial; I'll take the responsibility."
So Joe Lecroix was enlisted into the—th Canadian Infantry, then at Salisbury Plain, England, a reserve unit of which was still stationed at Valcartier awaiting removal to Halifax.
When the red recruit stripped for the physical examination the surgeon grunted in admiration as muscles, steel-hardened on the white waters and the portages and sled-trails of Rupert Land, rippled and bulged under the bronze skin.
"The handsomest big man I've seen at Valcartier, colonel," he told the gray-haired officer who inquired for his protégé. "He's got the back and arms of a Greek wrestler."
Then, after much heart-burning, mumbling in guttural Cree, mauling of hairy heads and pointed ears, and rubbing of wrinkled noses, Lecroix sold his friends, loyal since puppyhood—friends which no winter trail, however bitter, had daunted—to a resident of Quebec, disposed of his furs, and became a soldier of the King.
But great as was his joy in the attainment of the goal which had lured him out of the white north, his disappointment on learning that most of the Canadian troops had already left for England was no less intense. To have toiled through the midwinter snows of the Height-of-Land country, only to find that he would be cooped up in barracks until spring, weighed heavily on the spirits of the impatient Cree thirsting for the firing line in France and a shot at these unknown enemies of the Great Father. Was it to be for this tiresome grind of daily drill and inactivity that he had left his trap-lines in frozen northern valleys?
At first there were those among the white recruits with whom Joe Lecroix was quartered who resented the idea of comradeship with a wild Cree from the Rupert Land "bush." But the big Indian who talked little and smoked much in barracks, apart from his comrades, was patently too dangerous a subject for the practical jokes or hectoring of any but the most reckless.
However, one night a commotion in the bunk-room brought a sergeant cursing to the door, to find an enraged Cree holding off two privates with the remnants of a heavy bench as he stood over the insensible bodies of three of their comrades. Blood welling from a cut made by the butt of a Ross rifle, smearing his thick black hair, heightened the fierceness of the narrow eyes blazing with the fighting lust of his race. The Cree had swung the bench back over his head for a rush at the last of his assailants, who brandished clubbed guns, when the sergeant sprang between them.
The officer afterward privately remarked to his captain: "The Injun had a fightin' look in his face as he stood over them drunks that'd 'a' put the terror to a regiment of Germans."
At the subsequent court martial, Lecroix refused to make a charge against his comrades who had returned from leave drunk and started the trouble. In fact, he scorned the opportunity, offered him by the officers presiding, to avoid punishment by pleading self-defense. So he suffered the penalty of confinement and extra duty meted out to the rest; but by the same mark, suddenly, to his surprise, found himself the most popular man in barracks.
"That Injun's white clear through, and a wolf in a fight," was the general comment from the ranks.
But Joe Lecroix was pining for the war in France and the weeks were slipping by. Then, one morning, when the reserve unit of the —th was ordered to Halifax, the heart of the Cree was made light. At last they were going—crossing the Big Water to the great fight.
But at Halifax they were assigned to the barracks of the —d Infantry which was about to sail and the Indian gave himself up to despair. He should never see the war, never have the chance to fight the hated Germans. As he watched the men of the —d march down to their ship there grew in his heart a fierce resentment at his lot, almost a hatred of those fortunate ones chosen to go, while he who had toiled so for the opportunity to fight in that far-off France, must stay behind.
Three days later Colonel Waring of the —d Canadian Infantry, bound for Southampton on the troop-ship Ontario, was saluted by one of his captains.
"We've found a stowaway aboard, sir. He's a Cree Indian; belongs to the reserves of the —th, who arrived in Halifax Monday."
"What in thunder did he stowaway on a troop-ship for if he wanted to desert?"
"He wants to fight, sir, not desert. He has quite a history."
"What do you mean, Captain Booth?"
"Why, one of the officers of the —th told me the Indian had travelled with a dog-team from the far north to enlist. He heard about the war in a Hudson's Bay Post and mushed five hundred miles in midwinter. I wish more Canadians had his spirit."
"Well, well!" muttered the colonel, "and he couldn't wait to go with the —th, so came with us? Let me see him!"
Smeared with the grime and tar of the ship's hold, Lecroix stood before Colonel Waring and saluted.
Unflinchingly the small eyes of the Cree met the gaze of the officer.
"Do you know what desertion means?"
"Oua, yes, seer!" replied the Cree.
"Why did you leave your regiment, then?"
"I wan' to fight, not to rot all dees winter in de barrack."
"Um!" The officer scratched his chin.
"Didn't you know you'd be sent back on the next ship for Halifax?"
"I wan' to fight, seer! I travail all de Januar' moon to Kebec to fight, not to lie like a squaw in de barrack."
The black eyes of the Indian bored straight into those of the colonel. The officer dropped his own to note the bold features and powerful build of the man before him. Here was no ordinary Indian, but the makings of a magnificent soldier. He found himself wishing that he commanded a regiment of the mettle of this deserter. Finally he said:
"Desertion in time of war is the gravest offense a soldier can commit. Um!" Again the stubby fingers sought the square chin. "To be sure, you have deserted for the front. Um!" Another pause. "Still you will be sent back to your command and severely punished. Um!" More rubbing of the chin followed; then:
"Captain Booth, enroll and quarter this man temporarily with your company and report immediately to Halifax by wireless. On landing I will turn him over to the authorities for deportation."
But somehow the case of Joe Lecroix was not reported to the authorities when the regiment landed and went to the great camp at Salisbury Plain. Furthermore, later, by some magic, the Cree's name was stricken from his company roll in the —th reserve unit at Halifax and allowed to remain on the roll of Booth's company of the —d. After another severe reprimand from the colonel, there the matter rested, to the surprise of the battalion.
But Joe Lecroix soon realized that at the camp at Salisbury Plain, with its army corps of marching men at drill, its ceaseless staccato of rifle practice in the ranges and roll of the deeper-tongued field-pieces, he was still far from the fighting in Flanders. Yet regiments and divisions were daily leaving for the front and his spirits rose. Some day to him would come the call to strike for Canada and the King.
It was not long before the —d Battalion had reason to be proud of the stowaway of the Ontario for in the first rifle match in which the Canadian Division contested the red private from Rupert Land showed a total absence of nerves and an unerring eye by getting repeated bull's-eyes on the shorter ranges of two, three, and five hundred yards, winning the match for the Canadians.
That night at mess the colonel of the —d was overheard saying to a captain:
"That little matter at Halifax has been adjusted, captain. They'll have to come and get him if they want him now, after this afternoon, eh?" And the officers grinned widely as they wrung each other's hands, for the rivalry at Salisbury Plain was keen.
Finally, one day there came an end to the impatience of Private Lecroix, for the Canadians were ordered to France. At last the men from the Selkirks and the Saguenay, from the ranches of the Saskatchewan and the forests of Ontario and Quebec—cowboys, miners, and city men, farmers, trappers, and lumberjacks—were to have their chance to strike for England and Our Lady of the Snows.
Without avail they had chafed and growled and protested under the long period of preparation demanded by the chief of staff, but at last these hardy sons of the north were pronounced fit, and soon their ears would vibrate with the shriek of shells from the great guns over the channel. And at the news no eyes in the Canadian Division brightened with anticipation as did the beady ones of Private Lecroix, sharp-shooter. At last he was to see these hated enemies of the Great Father.
For three weeks the —d Battalion had been holding a section of trenches in the mud at Ypres. For three weeks sharpshooter Lecroix had been watching the Prussians opposite for a shot at a head or an arm, as the gray owl of his native north watches a barren for ptarmigan. Time and again an unwary German had paid the penalty of offering the target of a few square inches to an eye trained to the keenness of the hawk's in wringing a livelihood from the lean lands of muskeg and forest. An eye and a hand that had held the rifle-sights true on a gray goose riding the wind found little leisure in the trenches of Flanders.
But this holing up in the mud like a musquash, this dull waiting for action which never came, wore sorely on the patience of the restless Cree. This was not the manner of war he had pictured to himself as he lay by his camp-fire in the snow on the long trail south through the stinging January winds. It was the personal combat of lunge and thrust, of blow for blow, after rifle-firing and a wild charge—the struggle of strong men at close grips, of which he had dreamed and for which he now thirsted. Of artillery he had known nothing and this ceaseless thundering of the great guns, this taking to earth, like a fox to his burrow, when the high-explosive shells shrieked over, harassed his pride; this wiping out of men with shrapnel and machine guns was like emptying a charge of shot into a flock of bewildered yellow-legs on the James Bay marshes—it was not man's work.
But at length fate smiled on the one who had waited long. From the day that the —d Battalion reached the front, tales of the night forays of a neighboring Gurkha regiment had travelled to them down the trenches. In twos and threes these little brown men of Nepal, armed only with their terrible native kukeri, had been wriggling over on black nights, like snakes through the grass, to the advanced trenches and listening posts of the enemy. A leap, a thrust in the dark, a groan, and the stabbed men lying stiff in the gray dawn alone told the relief that the Gurkhas had been out again.
That these miniature men from far Himalayan foot-hills, whom he could toss with one hand, as he tossed the fur packs of the Great Company on a summer portage, should show the way to the German trenches to a dog-runner of the Rupert Land trails rankled sorely in the heart of the proud Cree.
"I know," replied his lieutenant, when asked for leave to go out on the next dark night, "but they haven't got a listening post or advanced trench in front of us; they're too far away and you can't expect to pile into a main trench full of Boches and not get wiped out. You're crazy, and besides, we need you."
However, one night, when, anticipating a surprise attack, the eyes of those on watch were straining into the blackness which enveloped them, the heavy silence was broken by a shout from the enemy's line, followed by rapid rifle-firing; then all sounds ceased. For three hours an officer of the battalion, followed by a sergeant, nervously patrolled his position. At intervals they climbed to the parapet and peered long into the darkness, conversing in low tones. Then, just before dawn broke blue in the east, there was a challenge from a sentinel, followed by a low reply from the gloom outside and shortly over the parapet into the trench crawled a dark shape. A half-frozen, mud-caked figure, with a crimson blotch smearing the neck of his sweater, stood before the captain.
"Are you hit hard, Lecroix?" Captain Booth asked anxiously. "We thought they had got you."
"Eet bleed beeg, but ees only leetle t'ing, seer. I lessen by dere trench, but many men camp dere. Eet was no good." And, shaking his head regretfully. Private Lecroix ran a calloused thumb over the razor edge of the long knife he carried lashed to his left wrist by a thong. "Wen I grow ver' cold," he continued, "and tak' de back trail, dey hear me and shoot."
During the following nights the Germans were heard digging, and shortly they occupied a new listening post a stone's throw from the Canadian lines. Following this discovery. Private Lecroix was observed putting the finishing touches on the edge of a second long knife, borrowed from a company cook in the rear. At last there was fighting ground within reach where he might find the odds as small as three or four to one, and the heart of the Cree beat high, for his great moment was at hand.
But at dusk, something was in the air on the front of the —d Battalion. Officers talking in low tones hurried up and down the trench. Then support battalions from the rear began pouring out of the communicating trenches, and from man to man sped the news that brigade headquarters had ordered a surprise attack at midnight.
Joe Lecroix lifted clenched fists to the skies and cursed his luck in French, English, and Cree. These officers in the rear at headquarters were going to spoil his little personal affair out in front, and it was sure to be a night of nights, for the darkness was closing in black as a spruce swamp. He had promised himself a call with a knife in either hand on that listening post, and now it was to be a general attack.
Shortly the order was read to the men in groups along the trench.
"At one o'clock the —d Battalion will rush the enemy's first line with the bayonet. At one-fifteen, the artillery will shell the enemy's support trenches to check counter-attack. The advanced trench in front of —d Battalion will first be taken by surprise by a special detail to prevent drawing enemy's fire on main attacking force following."
To a grim group crowded in a dusk-filled bomb-proof. Captain Booth repeated the order for the night's work. As they listened to the call which meant to many there certain death gradually the earnest tones of the officer's voice died into the distance, while before their eyes flashed visions of far familiar hills and prairies fresh with rain, of rivers singing through forests green in a Canadian June, of loved faces—and then the deep voice of their leader brought them back overseas to a trench in the mud of the Flemish lowlands.
"Men," he was saying, "I want volunteers to go out and get that sentry-post. This is the job of A Company. If we get them without a racket, the —d Battalion will see the sunrise from the German's first line. If we make a mess of it, dawn will find most of us out there stiff in the mud. I want single men, for it's desperate work."
For an instant the men stood motionless, silent, as the officer waited, then the tall figure of Private Lecroix pushed forward from the rear and saluted.
"I weel get dem trench, seer," said the Cree, his eyes glittering with excitement, for he knew now that he had not ground the edge of that second knife in vain.
Then another and another followed the Cree, and passing down the trench, repeating his call. Booth soon had the pick of the company. From these, six were chosen.
"Lecroix," said the officer, "you've been out there and know the ground. You are in command of this party and will arrange the details at once."
The general attack was to start at one o'clock, so the six men on whose success depended the lives of hundreds of their comrades made their preparations.
At twelve, the scouting party, stripped to sweaters, jeans and moccasins, wrung the hands of officers and comrades, slipped over the parapet, and crawled out into the Flemish murk to their tryst with death. With a knife in his teeth and another bound to his left wrist with a thong, Joe Lecroix moved snakelike through the slime toward the trench-head fifty yards away. By agreement he was to attempt first to learn the number of men in the post and wait for the others to come up; they would then divide, three circling to the communicating trench in the rear, and at a whistle all rush the sentries with the knife. It was a long chance that they might wipe out the Prussians without warning the enemy's main trench, but the desperate nature of the work only steeled the muscles of Joe Lecroix, filling his heart with a wild exultation.
While his comrades of the forlorn hope had sent home many messages before starting, Lecroix had dictated but one, addressed to the factor at Half-Way-House.
"Meester Nicholson," he had said to the sergeant, writing in the dim lantern-light of the bomb-proof.
"De huntin' ees ver' good een dees countree. To-night I tak' leetle voyage, not ver' far, to see fr'en'. I bring leetle present for dem, one een each han'. Eef dey like dem present, I see you some tam een Half-Way-House, maybe. Eef ma fr'en' don' tak' dem present, tell de peop' een Rupert Land dat Joe Lecroix was no good to fight for de Great Fader.
"Bo'-jo'! ma Fr'en',
"Joe Lecroix,
"—d Battalion Canadaw Infantree"
This was the farewell of Private Lecroix to Rupert Land. But as he wormed his way, foot by foot out into the black silence of the No Man's Land between the trenches to the death-grapple that the hour would bring, there went with him the poignant memory of a mound in a far forest clearing, where now the birch leaves of two autumns lay thick under the shifting snow, at the lonely post by the Fading Waters.
The Canadians, flat in the mud fifty feet from the trench-head, waited for Lecroix to reconnoitre.
Wriggling on his chest, like a goose stalker of his northern marshes, often stopping for minutes to listen for voices, the Cree noiselessly advanced. Finally, out of the impenetrable gloom, came the low sound of conversation. Whether the parapet was feet or yards away he could not tell. So he crept nearer. Again he heard voices. His keen eyes were unable to pierce the black wall in front. Yet the trench must be close at hand. The Cree moved a few feet. The voices ceased.
Lecroix waited, hardly breathing, for what seemed an eternity, then he thrust out his hand and touched a rise in the ground. It was the sand-bag parapet. With mad indifference to the risk he ran he rose to his knees, groping up the face of the slope, when his fingers met a cold, unyielding surface. He extended his reach. It was the steel barrel of a machine gun.
Like a cat the Cree withdrew and circled the trench-head, hoping to find in the rear a vantage-point from which, if a match were struck to light a pipe, he might determine the number of his foes. Reaching the narrow passageway leading to the listening post, he crawled upon the loose earth thrown up at the sides and waited. Shortly in the trench-head an electric flash was turned on, and in the faint glow the Indian caught a glimpse of two faces bent over pipes and a burning match. Then all was dark again.
It was late, how late he did not know, but surely well on toward one o'clock. There was no time to lose. To go back to the men waiting for him and bring them up to rush the trench-head might take too long—and if they were heard? Then all was lost! He had been chosen by his captain to do this thing. He could not fail. He had seen but three, the two faces in the light and the back of another standing. This was the way to them, from the rear through their own trench, and—in a flash came the decision—he, Joe Lecroix, would go—alone.
At Valcartier they had hesitated to enlist an Indian. Well, a Cree should show them all, now, how one of his red children could strike for the Great Father. He would prove that the forests and barrens bred men. Here to-night, in the alien mud of Flanders, he would vindicate his dark skin and the honor of his race. He, Joe Lecroix, would go into that den of Prussian wolves and with the naked knife carve the name of the northern Cree high on the honor roll of the soldiers of the Great Father.
Fearing to disturb loose earth, he followed the trench back, then slipped into it. Down the passage, barely wide enough for a man's body, he crept upon his foes. At length the Indian lay within two yards of the opening into the trench-head, listening. He had already forgotten the men waiting out there for his return, for one o'clock was near and the lives of the —d Battalion now rested solely on the fighting blood of a dog-runner of Rupert Land.
Grasping a long knife in each hand, his legs set under him like steel springs, the Cree crouched at the opening for the leap, when again the flash illuminated the floor of the trench; but the light only served him the better to drive his first thrusts home as he sprang upon the Prussians.
Lunging savagely as he rose from the stabbed men, Lecroix knifed the sentry at the machine gun before the German knew the fate of his comrades, but at the same instant, from behind, a bayonet following a German oath was driven deep into the right shoulder of the frenzied Cree, crippling his arm. Brought to his knees, the Indian drove the knife in his left hand upward in a desperate thrust as another heavy body hurled itself upon him from the parapet, and the three, fighting blindly, rolled to the trench floor. But the left hand of the wounded Cree, underneath, finally wrenched free from the mêlée of arms and legs; the long knife lashed to the wrist of steel found its men, once, twice—and in the trench-head between the lines there was left no sentry to warn the Prussians in the rear of the coming of the Canadians.
Smeared with mud and blood, his right arm hanging helpless from his bayoneted shoulder, his comrades of the scouting party found Joe Lecroix with his Prussian dead. Close on their heels, the —d Battalion stole by and leaped, like wolverines, with knife and bayonet into the German trenches before a single machine gun spat its red flash into the blackness. Then the artillery opened on the enemy's supports hurrying up the boyaux from their second line, and chaos was loosed.
Dawn broke on the Canadians anchored in their goal, but long before this the tale of how the surprise was made possible by the taking of the Prussian trench-head, single-handed, by Private Lecroix, —d Battalion, had travelled far up and down the lines.
Days later Booth told an interested group at brigade headquarters:
"When the rest of the advance party, fearing Lecroix had been wiped out, rushed the trench, they found the Indian stanching a bayonet wound in his shoulder with his good hand, and five dead Huns piled around him. Our stowaway, colonel, has paid for his passage. He saved the —d."
"And the —d, and Canada, will not forget," came the answer.
The spring mail-canoe was in from the south at Half-Way-House. Nicholson, the factor, sat in his trade-room devouring the first papers he had seen since the Christmas dog-team brought into the north the news of the great war. The tepees of Crees in for the spring trade—little as the Company now offered for fur—covered the post clearing where huskies yelped and Indian children shouted at play while their elders lamented the ruin of the fur trade by the great war across the Big Water.
Presently Nicholson gasped, and with eyes bulging sprang to his feet.
"My glory! Listen to this!" he cried to the clerk.
"Official Gazette: For conspicuous gallantry in taking single-handed an advanced post of the enemy with machine gun, at Ypres, Flanders, in which he was severely wounded, Joseph Lecroix, private, —d Canadian Infantry, awarded the Victoria Cross."
"Hooray for Joe Lecroix and Rupert Land!" bellowed the excited Scotchman, waving the paper in his hand as he rushed past his open-mouthed clerk and the astonished Crees to tell his wife the news.
Presently a chattering throng of Indians and whites gathered at the flagstaff in the stockade, while the howls of the huskies added to the clamor. Then Nicholson shouted:
"Ten volleys of Company shells, lads, for Joe Lecroix and Half-Way-House! "
As the red emblem of the Great Company fluttered to the breeze, the explosion of many rifles shattered the age-long silence of the wild valley, loosing the echoes among the timbered lulls, and from a hundred throats was shouted the name of one who had journeyed long and dared much in the far lowlands of Flanders for the honor of Rupert Land and the Great Father.