I  
Behind the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Fort Hearne, they were wrestling for wives. Forgotten were the words of Catholic priests on the sanctity of marriage, forgotten the precepts of Episcopal missionaries. In the twinkling of an eye those high-flown, newfangled notions had been swept aside by the deep rooted usage of ancient days. The Indians had been peaceably playing at “Button, button, who has the button?” with half the spectators staking shirts and blankets on the issue of the game. The real fun started when drunken Ramsay MacCrae reeled into the crowd and hugged Blanche Lecouvreur. Her husband sent him staggering to the ground, but the toper rose and, thrusting his fingers into Lecouvreur’s face, challenged him to an old-time combat for his spouse.
There was no more guessing game after that, there was genuine sport. Ramsay was laid low, but he had set the example and another young swashbuckler fell foul of Casimir; and so it went on. There was nothing riotous about the affair, it was as nicely regulated as a prize fight. There was never more than one contest at a time for no one would miss part of the spectacle by engaging in a side show of his own. The wrestlers pulled each other about by the hair and ears, after the approved Athabaskan fashion before attempting other holds. What amusement when Angus had thrown the gauntlet to little Gordon and was on the point of carrying off buxom Peggy by default! But there was still more laughter when the crafty wag of the camp, supposed to be cowering in a hiding-place, popped out of his tent, his skull cropped, ears and body glistening with grease, and, seizing his handicapped adversary by his long locks, dragged him to the ground. Cries of encouragement and admiration filled the air. One wagered his gun on a friend’s victory, another staked his net or tent. The women fought for, looked on stolidly while the battle was waging, but when Ramsay had fallen, Blanche heaved a sigh of relief, and Peggy could not suppress a sneer at her would-be captor.326 Others were hauled away whimpering, but with Marie every one knew that she was wailing only to satisfy the proprieties, for she was well rid of her brute of a husband who had nearly beaten her to death after his last journey.
But the climax came when big Douglas thrust his paw in Pierre Villeneuve’s face. To be sure, Louise was as comely as any young matron in or near the settlement, yet until now the bullies had refrained from challenging her husband. Every one respected her for her virtue and her kindness; and every one, too, was fond of Pierre. He was such a harmless, easy-going, good-natured chap, so handy with packstrap and toboggan, a prime companion after a two days’ trip without food, keeping up his blithe old ditty about “ma belle patrie” or warbling some native melody, when every one else was ready to sink down from exhaustion. But what was all that to crazy Douglas when he was in drink and lusting for a woman? He had the advantage of four inches in height, and of at least two stone in weight,—good enough reason for trying for a prize. Still, Pierre was no mean antagonist with his sinewy, agile frame and his widely famed strength of grip. Nor was it long before Douglas discovered that he had caught a tartar. Twice he was on the point of scoring, only to have Pierre wriggle unhurt from his grasp. At last a cry of anguish from Louise as the inevitable was about to happen. Douglas had lifted her husband and was about to hurl him to the ground. But then things happened quickly, no one knew how, and Douglas lay stretched out on the ground panting. He limped off with a sprained ankle, amidst the mocking and jubilations of Pierre’s friends, while even his backers had sportsmanship enough to congratulate the conqueror.
Then through the laughing, shouting, gesticulating crowd a Titanic figure elbowed his way. In the midst of the din and excitement the strange half-breed’s approach had passed unnoticed. He had arrived only yesterday, with a letter of credit from the Company of Gentlemen and Adventurers’ Trading into Hudson’s Bay. His name was George MacDonald; beyond that nothing was known about him. What a frame was his! Beside it, huge Douglas looked puny. Pierre seemed a mere babe. MacDonald was not a man of many words. He strode towards Louise, lightly touched her arm and said, “I want you.” She shrank back shrieking, and Pierre rushed at the327 giant in a blind fury, only to be firmly grasped and gently deposited on the ground. Once more he leaped at his conqueror but was caught in a vise-like grip and laid low again, raging and impotent. In his madness he unsheathed his knife, but now Casimir and Gordon pinioned his arms and the crowd shouted, “Peace, peace! The stranger has won fairly!”
MacDonald stood there calm and supercilious. “I have won,” he said to Louise, “come.” Without looking back he walked towards his tent, and the woman followed sobbing. That was the last wrestling bout that day.
II
 
MacDonald stayed at Fort Hearne and built himself a cabin at the other end of the post. He went off for a few days and returned with a retinue of Slaveys. Then he began trading against the Company itself. He had a way of dealing with the Indians that no other man had. He paid less, rather than more, for their furs, and disdained to coddle them with gifts and favors. Yet, when the peltry hunters caught a silver fox or some other valuable fur, the prize went to the gruff giant’s shack rather than to the Company’s warehouse. There was no competing with him. One factor was sent to relieve another, but without avail. At last the Commissioner himself braved the journey to the Fort, bought out MacDonald, and set him up as head of the post.
Now, things began to hum at Fort Hearne. Never had such a factor been seen as MacDonald. He spoke Dogrib and Chipewyan and Cree and French as well as his father’s Orkney Island brogue: there was no hunter for hundreds of miles with whom he could not converse in his own tongue. He was on his feet from morning until night and kept every one else on the go. As a freetrader he had beaten the Company at its own game. With the Company’s prestige behind him he allowed no freetrader to raise his head. By fair means none could compete, and who dared try force or trickery against MacDonald? In the long winter evenings, when boresome hours of sloth were whiled away with story telling, strange tales began to circulate about the big factor. Since little or nothing was known of his early life, imagination ran riot. Angus knew that the factor could transform himself into a wolf, and hunt deer thus disguised. 328 Casimir pictured him in his youth, pulling cargo-laden scows, single-handed, that were wont to be towed by a half-dozen strapping Indians. Jean had it from an aunt that MacDonald had once swum a river in pursuit of a bear, had stabbed it with a knife and carried the carcass twenty miles to camp. Some said he was bulletproof, and others with a tincture of Christian lore spoke of his pact with the devil. He grew into the central figure of a new mythology.
The hero himself moved across his stage with the saturnine grandeur of a Norse god. He never boasted, never faltered, never failed. He ran unscathed through rapids never attempted since two parties of canoemen had been capsized and drowned. He walked toward the cocked gun of a drink-crazed competitor, and calmly knocked it out of his hand. MacDonald did not know what it was to be afraid.
Between the trader and Pierre a curious relationship developed. The factor of course used men as pawns, and knew a good lieutenant when he saw one. But for Pierre he showed more consideration than was due to even the best of assistants. Perhaps it was because Louise prompted kindness to her former husband; perhaps there was some spontaneous sentimentalism for a man he had wronged. However that might be, Pierre became a sort of attendant-in-ordinary on MacDonald, his companion on trips of inspection and the rarer jaunts of pleasure.
For Pierre, his sullen, imperious master became the one and only subject of interest. He studied his habits and gestures and speech. He had set out eager to detect weakness, but his prying skepticism had changed to grudging admiration, and later to despondent amazement. He had begun by hating his wife’s abductor, and he came to hate with an ever intenser hatred the man who was without peer. It was not merely the giant’s strength or dauntless courage, it was the way he had with men. How he ordered about Casimir or Angus or Ramsay! A word was enough to quell rebellion. Again and again, in the beginning, Pierre had resolved to bid him defiance, yet when the moment came his resolution had failed. Yes, people liked Pierre and after a fashion they respected him, but that was a different thing. It was not in him to issue commands to others. If he ever mustered courage to do so, they would think he was putting on airs and laugh in his face, so that he would slink off in shame and humiliation.329 Why were men born so different? Why was he not born superior to the rest, like MacDonald? Why born at all only to be lorded over by another? Thus he brooded and brooded for hours at night, losing all hope and joy in life.
Then one day, unexpectedly, his despair was lifted. He had been on a fruitless hunting trip with the factor, and the two were approaching the post at the close of a rainy day. They were walking through a dense wood. Both were drenched to the skin, and Pierre was nearly exhausted. Suddenly, odd fancies crossed his mind. Weird tales of childhood, retold round many a winter camp fire, surged in memory and would not down. At dark, the forest was peopled with mysterious beings. The Windigo were about then—cadaverous shapes with glaring eyes, and feeders on human flesh. They lurked in the shadows of trees, and rose upon wayfarers from the depths of the swamps. What chance of escape when they had once sighted a victim? Rattling their skeletons, they flitted after him faster than a hawk can fly, tore him apart like a rabbit or swallowed him whole. The very wood Pierre was now traversing had been once entered by a trapper who was never seen again. Pierre began to feel oppressed by a sense of uncanniness. He peered cautiously into the gathering darkness, then glanced eagerly behind him. He was glad MacDonald was near. The great man could protect him if any one could. Pierre felt reassured, yet it was best to take no chances, so he hurried on.
Of a sudden there was a snapping of boughs, and he heard his name called as if in mockery as a long form swished through the wood, and a grim face was gaping at him not ten feet away. He turned in horror and fled towards MacDonald, crying, “Windigo! Windigo!” as he pointed at a spot ahead. But MacDonald did not smite the ogre with one of his huge fists, or seek to grapple with it as he was said to have once wrestled with a bear. His face turned an ashen hue, his mighty body was quivering like an aspen. That was the half-breed of it. Then with a bound he ran through the wood as fast as his legs would carry him, down to the river bank and along the rocky water front, till at length he caught sight of the big warehouse. There he paused panting, with the cold perspiration on his forehead. Pierre had followed as swiftly as he could, and at last overtook his master. Both were trembling 330 from head to foot and MacDonald kept muttering, “Windigo! Windigo!” Thus they walked toward the Fort. And Pierre felt happier than he had ever been since that wrestling bout when he had lost Louise: for all his way, MacDonald was afraid of the Windigo!
III
 
Casimir was dangerously ill. His appetite was gone and his limbs seemed paralyzed. There came rumors that a famous Cree doctor was visiting the Chipewyan of a nearby settlement, and Pierre was dispatched to lure him to Fort Hearne with promise of fabulous fees. The Cree consented. He was a garrulous old man and on their joint trip Pierre tried to sound him about his powers, but on that subject he was mum. “You will see,” he answered, and Pierre was obliged to wait.
When they arrived at the Fort, the medicine man erected a little booth and had himself thrust in, with his hands and feet firmly tied. He sang his incantations and the lodge began to shake. It seemed filled with strange beings, for unearthly sounds were heard, followed by a death-like silence. Opening the lodge they saw the conjuror unbound, and as if awakening from a trance. He proclaimed that the spirits had visited him and declared that Casimir would recover. Next, the patient himself was stretched out in the booth and the doctor entered it, stripped stark naked. He knelt and sang and blew at Casimir’s heart, sucked at his breasts, and talked as if with his guardian spirits. Then he swallowed a stick three feet long, and retched it up again, announcing that all was well. In sooth, Casimir was carried from the tent clamoring for food, and in a week he was able to walk about. Then his kin showered gifts on the great magician, and all the other Indians sought to curry favor with him by every manner of attention.
Pierre was less ostentatious than others in his entertainment of the old sage, but sometimes when the rest were fast asleep he would steal to the conjuror’s tent with liquor and tobacco, to ply him with questions about the magic art. And after a while his host’s reticence waned. He even confessed to having bewitched a rival by drawing his image on the ground with an arrow pointed at his heart. Yet when Pierre hinted that he, too, had a strong enemy on 331 whom he would fain cast a spell, the old fox hedged and said that sorcery was a dangerous business. Some men had power of their own, and............