The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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Each man seemed to know his work and to be busy about it. The Company manager had general charge over the embarkation of the cargo, and certainly the men under him were willing workers.
A long line of men passed over the narrow planks which lay between the warehouses and across the muddy flats to the deep water where the boats lay. Each man carried on his shoulders a load which would have staggered the ordinary porter. All went at a sort of trot, so that the cargo was being moved rapidly indeed. It was obvious that these half-breeds, but now so lazy and roistering, were very able indeed when it came to the matter of work, and easy to see that they were, as Uncle Dick had said, the backbone of the fur trade of the North.
One after another a young half-breed would come hurrying down the street, his hair close cut and his face well washed, wearing all the finery for which he had been able to get credit, now that he had a prospect of wages coming in erelong. The resident population joined those idling about the warehouses and the boat-yard, for this was the greatest event of the year for them, with one exception — that is, the return of the much smaller brigade bearing the fur down from the northern country. This would come in the fall. Now it was spring, and the great fur brigade of the Company was starting north on its savage annual journey.
Here and there among these were strange faces also to be of the north-bound company now embarking. Good Father Le Fèvre passed among them all, speaking to this or that man of the half-breeds pleasantly, they having each a greeting for him in turn. This was by no means his first trip with the brigade, and hundreds of the natives knew him.
The boys stood wondering at the enormous loads which these men carried from the warehouses out to the boats. Here a man might have on his back a great slab of side-meat weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds, and on top of that a sack of flour or so. It was not unusual to see a slight young chap carrying a load of two or three hundred pounds, and some of the older and more powerful men engaged in a proud sort of rivalry among themselves, shouldering and carrying out literally enormous loads. It was said of one of these men that he once had carried a cook-stove weighing five hundred pounds on his back from the boat landing up the hill to one of the posts, a distance of many hundred yards.
“Well, at this rate,” said Rob, after a time, “it won’t take long before we’ll be loaded and on our way. These men are simply wonders. Aren’t they?”
Uncle Dick nodded his quiet assent.
“Our boat’s getting loaded, too,” said Jesse, pointing to where the Midnight Sun stood swinging in the current. “Look at them fill her up.”
It was true; the factor in charge of the embarkation-work was checking out the cargo for each boat. Each scow had its number, and that number was credited to a certain fur-post along the great route to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. The supplies intended for each boat, therefore, went into the proper boats. All the cargo intended for Uncle Dick’s party was marked in black, “M. S.,” in courtesy to the name of this boat, the Midnight Sun, which carried no number at all.
“We’ll not go as heavily loaded as some of the others,” Uncle Dick explained, “although it is only courteous that we should take all we can, since transportation is so hard. We need only enough to take us to the mouth of the river and over the Rat Portage to the Yukon. Of course we’ll forget all about our boat when we get below the rapids, but they’ll tow her down alongside the steamer.
“I have told you,” he went on, “that this is a starving country. Now you can see why. They can’t possibly carry into that far-away region as much stuff as they need to eat and to wear. The Company does the best it can, and so do all these mission men do the best they can.
“Now you see how the brigade goes north — not in birch-bark canoes, but in scows, to-day. The scow has even taken the place of the old York boat. That was the boat which they formerly used on the Saskatchewan and some of these rivers for their up-stream work. It’s a good deal like a Mackinaw boat. You’ll see here, too, one or two scows with blunt ends, such as they call the ‘sturgeon’ nose. They tow a little easier than the square-ended scow. But these new square-facers are the best things in the world for going down-stream with the current.”
“Hadn’t we better get our packs ready?” asked Rob, methodical as ever.
“Yes,” replied their leader, “you ought to get the bed rolls made up and the tent in its bag before very long. I don’t think we’ll be started a great while before sundown, but we’ll get ready.
“It’s enough to get ready,” he continued. “Don’t carry your own stuff down to the boats.”
“Why not?” asked John, curiously. “We can do it easily enough.”
“Well, you’re in another sort of country now,” said Uncle Dick to him, quietly. “Follow customs of the country. You must remember that the Hudson’s Bay Company is a very old monopoly, and it has its own ways. Always it treats the natives as though they were children and it was the Great Father. A factor is a sort of king up here. He wouldn’t think of carrying a pound of his own luggage for anything in the world. If he began that sort of thing the natives would not respect him as their bourgeois.”
“Bourgeois? What does that mean?” asked John, again.
“Well, about the same as boss, I suppose. It’s always necessary in dealing with ignorant and savage peoples to take the attitude that you are the boss, and that they are to do what you tell them. If you get too familiar or lower yourself too much with primitive people, they don’t respect you, because they think you’re afraid of them.
“Now, that has always been the custom of the Hudson’s Bay Company in this work. In the old days, when things were more autocratic, when a factor went on a journey his people picked him up and carried him into his boat, and when he went ashore they picked him up and carried him out again. If anybody got wet or tired or hungry be sure it wasn’t the boss!
“You see, young gentlemen, while I don’t want you, of all things in the world, ever to be snobbish, I do want you to be observant. So just take this advice from me, and let these men do your work right at the start. They expect it, and they will treat you all the better — and of course you will treat them well.”
“Who is that old pirate standing over there by the boat landing?” asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a tall, dark, and sinewy man with full black beard, who seemed to have a certain authority among the laborers.
“That’s Cap. Shott. I’ve told you that he was the first man who ever ran the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca River. His real name is Louis Faisoneure. He’s seventy-seven years old, but still he likes to go down with the brigade, part way at least.
“The quiet young man just beyond him is his son, François. He is the real captain — or commodore, as they call it — of the brigade, and has been for several years. He’ll be the steersman on our boat, so that in one way you might say that the Midnight Sun, although not a Company boat, will pretty much be the flag-ship of the brigade this year. They’re treating us as well as they know how, and I must say we’ll have no cause to complain.”
“Cap. Shott,” as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look, as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant scarf, and his generally ferocious appearance, gave him a peculiarly wild and outlandish look, although personally he was gentle as a child.
“Well, Cap. Shott,” said Uncle Dick, approaching him, “we start to-day, eh?”
“Mebbe so, oui,” replied the old man. “We load h’all the boats bimeby now. Yes, pretty soon bimeby we start, mebbe so, oui.”
“Well,” said Uncle Dick, smiling, as he turned to the boys, “that’s about as definite as you can get anything. We’ll start when we start! Just get your stuff ready to be embarked and tell the manager where it is. It will be on board all right.”
“But what