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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The strict code of manhood in the barrens
threatens a young fur-trapper's romance.
ALL the summer stocky, brown-eyed Etienne fished Lac Manitou, drying the fish not needed by his six sled dogs in the warm season. Those stacks of fish, like cordwood, were to keep the dogs sleek and healthy all the long winter. Etienne, an up-to-date trapper, was the best in the whole region of the Kississing.
The banker down at St. Croix knew Etienne, and unbent enough to smile and inquire his health and that of his young lady, each time the trapper came down to make his regular deposit.
Etienne's health was abundant. Why then did he scowl, and allow that hurt look of utmost misery to creep into the depths of his brown eyes?
The reason centered about the young lady about whom the banker always thought it courteous to ask. Her name was Jeanette Perreault. She was already 18, a marriageable age among her people, and most decidedly one of those intended to make some man most happy.
Jeanette did not consider herself a backwoods maiden, by any means. True, she could cook, and keep a house spic and span. What was more she expected and hoped to do this, living with a good man of her choice, and loving him. In that house, however, there would be a very fine radio, one which in the long winter would pick up Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec, and even the big Yankee networks. There would be a stove which burned gas and a refrigerator.
And most of all there would be a man who liked to take her now and then down to Le Pas, yes, even once a year to the big city, Winnipeg, and who could dance with her whenever there was a wedding or another good time going begging, down at St. Croix.
Jeanette, who had two dimples all men could see —and perhaps more hidden, who could tell?—with smiling black eyes, a voice sweet and just a little husky, a lovely, curving figure, quite tall, of the sort which stops a young man in his tracks, stops his breath, and can make his heart race until it almost stops, as well, had thought she knew quite well the young man of her choice.
True, he lacked an inch of her height, which was five feet seven inches. And he was like a barrel around shoulders and chest, though thin enough of waist and hips. But Etienne Duroq danced with her better than any man. She loved that. And she knew his long silences were those of adoration, not of dumbness.
No, Etienne had a brain. He had courage. He had ability—and a sense to go with it. Jeanette did not see him often. But each time he came, either with his bales of furs for Papa Perreault, or to bring her a little present, she found that she liked the other men who sought her company that much the less.
ALL promised happiness. But then came Black Bart, out of the great Sitka spruce, sugar pine and Douglas fir forests of British Columbia. Bart, whose last name was the honest Irish cognomen of Shannon, did not look like an Irishman at all. He was six feet three, and weighed 225 pounds—bone and muscle. He was a little ponderous on his feet, but terrific in a brawl. Nothing could hurt him. Nothing any ordinary man could do, anyhow.
He had been a member of the proudest forest profession. A timber-topper. One of the daring few who climb to the very 200-foot tops of spruces and firs, there to cut away the last few yards and plumes before the tree itself is felled.
And he had fallen. Not very far, or there would have been no Black Bart Shannon. Just one sickening lurch as his safety belt broke. Then by a freak his foot and climbing spur caught under a very small branch, and he hung, dangled, head down, screaming and praying, until one of his mates could come with a rope made secure at the top, and a loop he could clutch frantically.
That had broken his nerve for heights, as it almost invariably did with timber-toppers. Survive or perish, they were allowed only one accident to a man. They were either dead or no good afterward. Black Bart shivered when he looked at a forest giant. He accepted fate, and never tried to climb one again.
He drifted east, in the general direction of the Peace river thence toward Hudson Bay. He ended at St. Croix, which is a base for both the Kississing and Cranberry districts. There were fine furs for the trapping, and perhaps a copper and gold lode just waiting somewhere for a lucky man to find.
Also, as Black Bart quickly discovered, there was Jeanette Perreault. Not only did she stir this big, black Irishman with her own modest but tantalizing person, but she was the only child of Papa Perreault, who not only kept a prosperous woods commissary and supply depot, but was the largest buyer of all the Independents who still bought furs. He represented an American company of St. Louis, which is the greatest central fur market of the Americas.
At first Jeanette was awed by the hugeness of her new admirer. Also he had an assurance and speed of courting unknown here In the Manitoba muskeg country. With those of French parentage, going to church with a young man Sundays—or any Sunday at all—was a good sign that marriage was being contemplated, at least secretly, by both parties.
Courtship necessarily was slow. It sometimes stretched over years, since when a man went out on trapline in the autumn he might not reappear at all until the snows melted in spring. Of course, if his blood ran hot, he might journey down one time or two, and steal those precious days for moments with his beloved.
Etienne Duroq did that, all right, but the prudent girl, who foresaw swifter and more complete happiness if her man tended strictly to business another year, did not encourage winter visits.
In the summer Etienne prospected, making short dashes into the surrounding country, trying to find another such lode as the Mandy or the Flin-Flon. But he was not likely to do so. The whole province had been pretty carefully combed over years before the railway was finished from Le Pas to the Bay.
Black Bart had captured the fancy of the young bucks in St. Croix, of course. He had traveled. He had tales to tell of a country where the trees grew taller from the ground than the tops even of the low Manitoba hills. These little sticks, from which the Cree Indians made their lobsticks? Bah! one of these trees entire was smaller than the smallest branch lopped off a great sugar pine.
And fights? Bart Shannon had just one in St. Croix, before he began trying to win the favor of tall, lovely Jeanette Perreault. In that one brawl, fought out behind the Revulon Frères factory, Bart put one Olaf Peterson, a huge, tow-headed Swede, in condition for the hospital.
The shocked onlookers saw then for the first time how western lumbermen fought. They did not use savate, or fists. It was wrestle, throw, kick, bite, gouge, tear hair, swing the knee where it would do the most damage, elbow an opponent's throat, then perhaps bend the whole man backward until his spine snapped in two places.
After that no one sought battle with Shannon, though there was one slender, rather pale-faced young fellow—ho coughed just a trifle, back of his hand—who had seen that slaughter of Olaf Peterson, and who had not cringed or toadied to the victor.
This young fellow was sick. He lived in a tent on the bluff above the Slate river, which is really just a creek flowing southward into the Saskatchewan. He had a Cree to cook for him, and he went his own way. No one knew much about him, except that he was trying to cure his lung trouble by living out in the sun, summer and winter.
Jack Lewis, as he was known up here, had started forward to stop the killing of the Swede. But he had stopped, and let the regular inhabitants of the place manage their own affair. But the pale youth had looked at Black Bart in a curious way—almost as though he despised the exhibition of brute strength, and was minded to take a hand himself.
Jack also had seen Jeanette. His eyes followed her hungrily, but he never spoke. The girl was aware of him, but only felt sympathy. The first winter probably would kill him, if he stayed, perhaps he thought so, too. Just the same, he stayed. Etienne, because of his prospecting trips, knew nothing at all of the bully from the west. How suddenly and terrible he did learn!
Jeanette had refused Shannon twice, when he asked her to go to church with him. This Sunday, coming out with Etienne, a sudden panic smote the girl. Here, stalking along behind them as they strolled down toward the creek, came the giant woodsman!
The girl's heart fluttered, and she caught Etienne's hand with a convulsive squeeze. "Look out for this one!" she whispered in warning. "He is a bad man, and I hate him!"
Surprised, Etienne turned to look with a beginning frown at any individual who could incur the censure of Jeanette—she who always spoke the best she knew of every one. Then his eyes widened. He had glimpsed this big, burly, handsome fellow. Had he made any motions toward Jeanette?
That second trouble same. Striding straight toward the pair, Shannon growled in his chest. "I do not like little frogs to play in my garden," he said, showing white teeth in a flashing smile that was mostly snarl.
That second he thrust the heel of his left hand straight into the face of the astonished and unprepared Etienne Duroq, Jolting out his arm in such fashion that the smaller man was lifted cleanly from his feet, thrown backward, and half stunned by the blow, plus the impact of the solid ground upon his shoulders.
"Oh!" cried Jeanette. "Oh!" She felt herself taken firmly by the arm and hurtled along as if the bulk of a great brown bear had her.
She was no untempered sweet nothing, though. She immediately fought to get free. And Etienne, scrambling up, his face reddened with shame beneath the bronze of his skin, rushed straight to aid her. He flung both arms about the big man and yanked him free from the girl.
Just what happened during the next ten seconds, Etienne never knew. Shannon smashed him down, beat him, kneed him, lifted him and slammed him back to earth, then quickly grabbed him by the heels. Even as Jeanette, horrified, ran forward to scream a pleading for mercy. Black Bart swung his victim,almost unconscious now. Then—ho!
Just what happened during the next ten seconds, Etienne never knew.
Black Bart shouted, and let go his grip on Etienne's ankles. The trapper flew out through the air. The ground at the stream bank sloped downward just there, so he kept going a full 25 or 30 feet. Then—splash!
He had fallen into two feet of creek water, suffering no more damage, but being shocked by the chill water to consciousness and a full, shamed realisation that Jeanette had seen him beaten and disgraced. And now she was moving away, her arm interlocked with Shannon's.
In justice to the girl be it said that she was shocked and terrified to the point that she could not even protest for some minutes. Bart, thinking he had won her, rushed her along toward a screen of willows. There he meant to kiss her thoroughly, no doubt.
But Jeanette herself woke up before that. She struggled, and began to scream. Then from the doorway of a tan tent, stepped out a pale young man who coughed once. He had a rifle couched at his hip. And the blazing blue eyes in the pale face looked as though he meant to shoot. Black Bart stopped in his tracks.
"You go away—quickly!" bade Jack Lewis. "And don't bother this young woman any more, or I'll put a hi-power .22 through your fat carcass!"
"I'll get you, too! Some time when you ain't got your gun!" blazed Shannon.
"Maybe you might be surprised," drawled Lewis. Jeanette turned and fled, and Shannon stalked away.
ONLY a pair of Crees from the Saskatchewan saw the miracle. It concerned the pale youth in the tent. Jack Lewis, who weighed perhaps 148 pounds—some ten pounds below the ringside weight at which he had been his best.
It was not like Black Bart Shannon to forgive any one who balked him, even temporarily. He drank some that night. Next morning he was in a vile temper. He set forth along the creek, keeping brush between himself and the tan tent where the pale youth dwelt. Then he settled himself and watched.
His chance came. Jack Lewis, wearing sneakers and trousers only, came out to stretch a blanket on the ground, and lie in the health-giving sun for an hour.
Shannon gave no warning until he was within fifteen feet. He saw the youth had no gun this time. The white teeth showed in a snarl of anticipatory satisfaction.
"I'll teach you to butt in on me!" he growled, waited till the pale young man turned swiftly to see who had come, and then put his head down and rushed. Lumber-camp tactics that always had stood him in good stead.
Not this time, strangely. With no more than three efficient motions, the ex-pugilist tossed aside the blanket from his arm. He seemed to crouch slightly, but did not retreat.
Arms flailing, heavy feet and legs jarring the ground, Black Bart somehow missed any punch at all. From below the line of his waist Jack Lewis snapped up his right fist in an upper-cut.
Crack!
The sound was surprisingly like the slap of a lath against a wet pillow.
Jack Lewis let himself be carried back one step. There he waited, arms lowered and whole body relaxed. There was no need to wait. The big man had been halted while still leaning forward, a little like one of the plumed tops of one of the great Sitka spruces he once had climbed, just before that top leans further majestically, and crashes down among the lesser growths of the forest.
The heavy arms continued to flail blindly and futilely for two seconds, while the great bulk of Black Bart seemed frozen at that slant. Then the arms fell, and Shannon toppled flat on his face, completely unconscious before he as much as touched the frail-seeming antagonist he had meant to destroy.
"Drag him down and dump him in the creek," bade Jack Lewis, addressing the appalled pair of Indians, who could not have been more astounded and scared had that fabled cannibal, the Big Indian, leapt out from his sleeping place in the muskeg, and roared at them from his 20-foot height.
ETIENNE recovered well enough in two days, so he could set forth on one last prospecting trip. His heart was not in it, however. There had been affection, but a certain strain in the manner of Jeanette, when she came to visit him. He knew what it meant, and was gloomy.
Northern Manitoba still retained much of the spirit of the frontier. And wherever man wrests a living from raw nature, there must he be prepared to protect his womenfolk from all molestation and harm.
Etienne Duroq knew he had failed, and knew that when the crisis arose a second time, he would fail again. Not for lack of courage or of understanding. Simply lack of inches and poundage. A lack, just the same. He gripped his rifle, and frowned.
He knew, as all men in the province knew, that shooting another man is no solution. The law is swift and sure. Even a bully like Shannon was careful enough to not quite kill one of his victims, lest the law take him and hang him by the neck.
Etienne found nothing on his trip. Depressed of heart, but firmly facing what must be, he came back to outfit for his seven months of trapping.
BLACK BART had been drinking steadily, and was in the vilest humor. He did not understand what had happened to him in the encounter with the pale, frail-looking Jack Lewis.
Two hours after he reached St. Croix, Etienne came face to face with his enemy.
Ten minutes later, after a fury of striving hopelessly, and a thudding, whirling nightmare of pain and smashing and being beaten to a bloody pulp, they carried him unconscious into the unpointed frame cottage of Dr. Armand Jugues.
Jeanette came to see him, bringing broth. She stroked the back of one brown, hard-calloused hand which lay atop the bedspread. But tears choked her voice, and Etienne, after one misery-filled look at her, turned his face to the wall. He wanted to die, but could not. Dr. Jugues saw to that.
When the girl, her face working, with tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks, made her way blindly out of the place, hurrying for the seclusion of her own home where none would torture her with pity, Jack Lewis saw her coming and stopped in his tracks. As she passed, his lips moved as though he meant to speak. But no sound came.
Both Etienne and Black Bart Shannon had been away seven weeks with their traps and sled dogs, before Jack Lewis finally summoned enough courage to ask a certain person a question. The pale youth was not coughing so much now, perhaps, but he had gained no weight, and he feared the winter now upon him. Living to a tent was so terribly cold! But these cabins, kept hermetically sealed by their owners through the cold months, would be infinitely worse.
It never occurred to Jack Lewis now that he might journey back down into the States, and go to some comfortable sanatorium. The happiness or sorrow of a black-eyed French-Canadian girl, one whom he could not have for himself ever, had become a paramount issue with the ex-pugilist.
Jeanette looked up in wonder, her sad eyes questioning, when the invalid spoke to her a little huskily.
"Your pardon, Miss Perreault," said Jack Lewis hurriedly. "It's none of my d—uh, my business, but I wish you'd tell me one thing. I—I got a sorta idea that's how it is, that maybe I c'd help a little. Do—do you still love M-Mr. Duroq? I—"
He halted, hectic color flaming upward into his cheeks.
"Why—why—" stammered Jeanette. These were the first words spoken to her by this poor fellow. What could he mean?
But welling tears, and the choking of a sorrow she could not bear, made a reply in words impossible to her. She gulped, put a handkerchief to her eyes, turned and fled back into the house.
Jack Lewis stood there a whole minute without moving. He did not need the words. He had her answer. He spat into the handkerchief he carried, then turned and went back to his tent where the pair of Crees were stacking firewood.
"Ne' mind any more of that—here," Jack said brusquely. "We're going up in the woods tomorrow morning. Know where Jack-the-Horse and Little Beaver lakes are? Tha's good. That's where we're going, tent and all. You bring your own tent or wigwam, of course. And get me some dogs and a sled...."
A moment later in the tent, he hauled a steamer trunk from under the cot. Opening it, he drew forth five strange objects, things he had not expected to use again in this world.
Four ten-ounce practice gloves, and a deflated punching bag....
ETIENNE DUROQ'S 60-mile trapline circled three small lakes—Manitou, Jack-the-Horse and Little Beaver. His main cabin was at Lac Manitou, and he had tiny cabins at each of the other two, places for overnight accommodation. There was no other trapper nearer than Scotty McClintock, over on Lake Kississing.
Furs were prime and plentiful. A small fortune piling up—but to what end?
Might as well bale the furs and throw them on the fire, now. No chance for life and love. No chance for anything—except another terrible defeat, the next time he met the giant bully, in the street of St. Croix.
"I should shoot him and then myself," said Etienne aloud. But he knew that this was the sort of deed he never could do. Murder and suicide were unthinkable things, the deeds of wicked men and cowards.
Then came a trip around the trap-line, with Etienne frowning down at traces in the drifted snow—what looked much as though a dog sled had come this way, straight toward the traps he had set!
It was hard to be sure—at first. The snow had drifted over the marks. But before he had gone half of the circle, Etienne was lifting gloved fists, shaking them, and cursing the sneak thief.
Someone—and he could guess only too well who it must be—had taken a head start of a day, and simply cleaned out every trap.
One man was on his mind, the only man in all this north country who could do a thing like this. Etienne's dark eyes narrowed. He thought deeply. Then his mouth compressed. He dug to the bottom of his trap-chest, and brought to light some rusty, immense old contraptions with toothed jaws strong as the jaws of a lion.
These were bear traps, terrific things. Each one had its heavy chain and padlock, for attaching to a drag-log. Leverage was needed to spring one open. No man could do it with his hands, or with any instrument either, if the trap fastened itself upon any part of his body. These were traps bought in a miscellaneous collection, secondhand. There no longer were any bear in this part of the Barrens large enough for these traps.
No, but there were men. Or one man, anyhow....
IT took him four days instead of three, to make that circuit. Behind him all the usual traps were set. In addition, diabolically concealed under snow. Just where a sneak thief must step or kneel when he came to rob, were three terrible bear traps, each with its short but heavy drag-log.
Bearing his loaded rifle and pausing only to pack more fish for the dogs on his sled, the trapper started immediately on his next circuit of the 60-mile line.
He had not far to go this time. At the first two traps, the thief had taken the fur prizes. Then, at the third—well, he had not taken anything. There in the snow huddled a cursing, half-frozen man. The terrible bear trap had caught the shin and calf of his right leg. He had tried to drag himself to his dog team. But the huskies, afraid of this unusual thing, had broken loose and dragged his overturned sled several hundred yards away.
Yelling incoherently for Etienne to hurry and spring this trap, or take a bullet through his chest, Black Bart Shannon fumblingly threw up his rifle.
His face set, Etienne stopped 20 yards away.
"Shoot, you thief—and freeze to death!" he challenged bitterly. "There is no one within 20 miles. No one else ever comes. No one but bullies—and fur thieves! I should kill you, but I cannot. There is a better way. If you wish to live, throw your gun—far. And the knife in your belt, too. Then I will help, in my own fashion. Not yours, dirty one!"
Black Bart yelled curses, threats. But the stocky little man before him was not at all afraid to die. He merely shook his head. Then at length he turned and started back toward his own dogs. That was when Black Bart Shannon, whimpering and slobbering, yielded and flung away his weapon into the deep snow.
Silently Etienne caught Shannon's dogs, righted his sled, then bundled the red-handed thief upon it, bear-trap, drag-log and all.
As he resumed his trap line round Etienne almost helplessly cursed the soft spot in himself. The black sin of murder simply was impossible, much as the natural man in Etienne longed for vengeance.
"The problem—the wall between Jeanette and me—is just as high as ever," he reflected sadly. Even if Shannon should lose that leg, as he deserves, there always would he other men as big, to come like flied toward honey...."
BUT Black Bart Shannon was not to lose his leg. Only his reputation as a trapper who let himself be caught by one of his own traps, for that was the tale he told in St. Croix. Further along though, when Etienne reached his little hut on Jack-the-Horse lake, he made a stunning discovery.
A tan tent stood there near the hut—empty. Thin smoke was curling up out of the leaning stovepipe of the hut. And the frail invalid, Jack Lewis, was inside, huddling near the reddened belly of the stove.
Jack faced the startled trapper. "Sorry, but my Injuns skipped," he said with a slight cough. "If you'll let me, I'll stay here, though. There's something I thought I might do—for you."
"For me? I do not understand," said Etienne haltingly.
"Not really for you. For a very lovely young woman who loves you," said the ex-pugilist, wasting no words. "I know what happened in town. I know why you will not marry the girl who loves you. All right, I used to be in the ring. I'm too used up myself to teach you even the rudiments of boxing. But I can do one thing. If you will give me your time, some of it, I can teach you how to stop a man much bigger than yourself—when that man is no boxer, you understand?"
"You can!" gasped Etienne. "You mean I—I could—"
DURING the long, dragging 17 weeks of hopelessness, Jeanette Perreault scarcely appeared in the street of St. Croix.
Day by day she grew paler. She asked the padre one day what she would have to do to enter a convent. The good man told her, but advised against it. She was too young, too full-blooded, troubles always passed. Trust in God, who shows mercy to all....
Submissively she bowed her head for his blessing, then arose, drawing the heavy shawl about her head and went out into the snowy street.
Down there at the factory was a strange tumult. Men's hoarse voices. A dog team had come in from somewhere. There was a shrouded figure on the sled. Now the sled went on, stopping before the cottage of Dr. Jugues. Two men bore the figure indoors.
A dry gasp came from Jeanette's throat as she started to run toward the doctor's. One of those men carrying the sick one had been Etienne Duroq! And even now, as she hastened to warn him, there issued from the tavern down the street a number of men in parkas. The foremost was a limping giant, Black Bart Shannon!
Death and magic hovered over the snowy street of St. Croix. Through 10 weeks Jack Lewis had masked his own suffering, his own failing strength, from the trapper whom he taught. Twice a week the ex-pugilist had spent a whole evening with the crude, but learning pupil, adjuring him with words when strength became insufficient to allow practical demonstration any longer.
Etienne himself had known his friend was sick, but had failed to understand the true seriousness of it. Then had come the evening he had found the shack cold, the fire out, and Jack Lewis, dying, huddled under the reddened blankets.
That was when the shocked trapper bundled up his charge most heavily, filling him with hot soup first, and then mushing down to St. Croix without a stop, in the desperate hope of saving the life of the man who had given him hope.
In vain. Jack Lewis died within a half hour.
That was the death that hovered. The magic followed almost instantly. Etienne, with face in grief, stepped out into the little huddle of people who waited outside the cottage. Jeanette was there, crying aloud something that sounded like a warning.
Etienne scarcely heeded. He had seen a big man, waiting ominously over there at a distance of 30 yards—a big man around whom were five or six of the bar-room toadies who always flattered strength.
ETIENNE stepped slowly into the cleared snow of the street, his Pacs crisping into the surface. He straightened a little, took a deep breath.
"For this you have died, my friend!" he muttered to himself.
Head down, arms swinging over and over vertically, Shannon rushed. Etienne Duroq just stood there a second. Then he seemed to brace himself, his Pacs making crisp sound underfoot.
Then he strode one short pace forward to meet his foe! The trapper warded off one of those swings with his left forearm.
Then—zunkk!
Etienne's right fist, brought up with seeming awkwardness from below the line of his belt, landed flush on the cleft chin of the giant bully—with a sound which brought a grunt of mingled surprise and apprehension to the red face of Constable Joachim, hurrying over to be sure there was no murder. Joachim had heard the threats of Black Bart Shannon. But this—good heavens, look at what had happened! Shannon had been lifted a good six inches clear of the ground by that terrific punch! His eyes rolled up white. He sagged, even while he was in the air, then folded up limply, slumping down like a corpse half dismembered!
The face, when they turned it upward, was canted strangely with a broken jaw. Blood was seeping slowly from nose and ears. Constable Joachim hurried forward, knelt, and ran a hand inside Shannon's clothes.
"Run for the doc!" he bade one of the petrified toadies. "This fella was askin' for it—but he got it plenty. You wont be leaving town just now, will you, Duroq? I ain't arrestin' you, but—"
"Me?" said Etienne calmly, as he slid one arm around the waist of the speechless, staring Jeanette. "No, I will not be leaving soon, I am getting married at the church.
"Jeanette, chérie, if the padre will marry us now, you win marry two men who love you! I am both of them now, I think," he concluded, gravely.
Vaguely the girl understood what he must mean. She was far too wise to question anything her man might say, particularly as it could mean only more happiness for her in the long years of the future.
"I am glad you are so strong!" was all she whispered.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.