Kitabı oku: «The Secret Cache: An Adventure and Mystery Story for Boys», sayfa 16
XXXIII
THE CAPTURE OF MONGA
Baptiste’s canoe was large enough to accommodate Hugh and Blaise, and the party were up and away early. The lake was no longer rough, so they made good time through Wauswaugoning Bay and around the point to the Grand Portage. Though Baptiste had been employed, in one capacity or another, by the Old Northwest Company, he was under no contract. An independent spirited fellow, who came and went much as he pleased, he did not feel under any obligation to the Old Company and was not an ardent partisan of that organization, so he made no objection when Hugh proposed that they try the X Y post for help in their undertaking. The men of either company would be glad no doubt to lay hands on the rascally Iroquois but the X Y men’s grievance was the stronger, since Ohrante had been in the employ of the Old Company when he committed his first crime. The white man he had slain was an independent trapper, affiliated with neither company, but Jean Beaupré had been under contract, for the one season at least, to the New Company. To learn that he too had come to his death through the Giant Mohawk would add fuel to the flame of the X Y men’s anger.
Shunning the Old Company’s dock, the party crossed the bay to the X Y landing. At the post Hugh and Blaise told as much of their story as was essential to prove that they had really encountered Ohrante, had learned his plans and knew where to lay hands on him. The time for the annual meeting of the New Northwest Company, still held at the Grand Portage post, was approaching. None of the partners or leading men had yet arrived, but most of the northmen, as the men who wintered inland west of the lake, were called, had come with their furs, and a considerable number of Indians were gathered at the post. The agent in charge could not leave, but in a very few minutes the boys had recruited a dozen men, half-breeds and Indians, with one white man, a Scotchman, to lead them.
It would not do to approach the Island of Torture in too great force. Hugh and Blaise, with Baptiste and the two Indians, were to go first, find out whether Ohrante’s recruits had assembled and watch for the coming of the chief himself. The men from the Grand Portage, in two canoes, would start later. Hugh had a very simple plan, which promised to be effective, to prevent Ohrante from leaving his council island before the Grand Portage party arrived.
The plan of campaign arranged, the scouts got under way at once. As they rounded the high point to the south and west of the Grand Portage Bay, they noticed, coming from the open lake, a large canoe with only two men. It was headed straight for the land, but suddenly swung about and turned down shore. Blaise, who was second from the bow, raised his paddle for a moment, while he gazed intently at the other canoe.
Turning his head, he called back to Hugh and Baptiste, “Red Band! We must catch them. It is Red Band and I think Monga.”
“Vite! Make speed!” ordered Baptiste. “We will separate those two from the rest of Ohrante’s rascals.”
He scarcely needed to give the command. Keneu, in the bow, had already quickened his powerful stroke. The others followed his lead and the five blades dipped and rose with vigorous, rapid rhythm. The Indians ahead did their best, bending to their paddles with desperate energy, but their canoe was fully as large as Baptiste’s and they were two paddles to five. The pursuers gained steadily. They must certainly overtake the fugitives.
Suddenly the fleeing canoe swerved towards the land. Keneu saw in an instant what the two men were trying to do. They intended to beach their boat and take to the woods, trusting to lose their pursuers in the thick growth. The Indian bow-man gave a sharp order. Baptiste’s canoe swung in towards shore. It must cut off the fugitives, get between them and the land. The shore was steep and rocky, and there was no good place to beach a boat. Yet so great was the panic of Monga and Red Band that they kept straight on. Despairing of escape by water, they were ready to smash their canoe on the rocks and take a chance of reaching land.
They did not even get near to the shore. In their panic haste, they failed to notice a warning ripple and eddy ahead. Their canoe struck full on the jagged edge of a rock just below the surface. The pursuers were close enough to hear the ripping sound, as the sharp rock tore a great gash in the thin bark. The water rushed in. Red Band sprang from the bow, but Monga remained where he was in the stern, the canoe settling under him.
The pursuers bent to their paddles and shot towards the wrecked boat. They reached the spot just as Monga was going down, but they did not intend to let him escape them by drowning. Keneu reached out a sinewy arm and seized the sinking man by the neck of his deerskin shirt, while the others threw their bodies the other way and backed water to hold the canoe steady and keep it off the sharp rock.
The sensation of going down in that cold water must have instilled in Monga a dread greater than his fear of capture, for he made no struggle to free himself. As if the fellow had been a fish too large to be landed, his captors passed him back from hand to hand until he came into the keeping of the other Indian in the stern. The captive could not be pulled aboard, so Manihik ordered him to hold to the rim. Kneeling face towards the stern, he held Monga by the shoulders, and towed him behind the canoe till Keneu found a landing place.
Red Band had disappeared. Blaise, who had watched, felt sure Monga’s companion had not reached shore. He had gone down and had not come up. Either he was unable to swim or had struck his head on a rock. Whatever had happened, there was no sign of him.
When shallow water was reached, Manihik took good care that his dripping prisoner should not escape. Monga was towed ashore and his wrists and ankles bound with rawhide rope. He said not a word, his broad face sullen and set.
Not until Blaise had asked him several questions in Ojibwa, did the captive deign to speak. Even then he answered with reluctance, a word or two at a time in sullen grunts. Then a question suddenly loosed his tongue, and he poured out a torrent of guttural speech. The other two Indians and Baptiste, who understood a little Ojibwa, listened intently, but Hugh could make out no word, except the names Ohrante and Minong.
When Monga paused, Blaise, his hazel eyes shining, turned to his brother. “We have not so many enemies to oppose us as we thought. Ohrante has only five of his old men left. The young Iroquois who captured you is dead.”
“That fellow dead?” Hugh exclaimed. “Are you sure Monga isn’t lying?”
“He speaks the truth, I am certain,” Blaise replied confidently. “When Ohrante found you had escaped, he was in a great rage. He held the young Iroquois, Monga and Red Band to blame, and threatened all three with death, unless they found you and brought you back. Because the small canoe was gone, they believed you had escaped by water. We hoped the empty canoe might drift up the bay, but they found it not. The Iroquois thought you might have gone into the Bay of Manitos. Monga had no wish to go there. He was afraid of the giant manitos, he says, but he was desperate and at last agreed. They found our fire on the stones at the end of that island. Monga believed you had crossed the mouth of the bay and had gone on the other side of Minong, but the Iroquois wished to go up the narrow channel. They went up the channel, as we know, to what they believed to be the end. The shallow water and the fallen cedar deceived them. So they turned back and went on across the mouth of the Bay of Manitos.”
“What were Ohrante and the others doing all that time?”
“They searched the western side of Minong. Monga says Ohrante would not go into the Bay of Manitos himself.”
“Then he evidently didn’t suspect our trick.”
“No, but I think perhaps the young Iroquois suspected, and that was why he wished to search the bay.” Blaise went on with his tale. “Monga and Red Band were in despair when they could not find you. They proposed that the three of them should run away to the mainland, but the Iroquois was too proud to be a coward. He wished to go on with the search or go back to take the punishment. So Monga pretended he could see the end of a canoe among the trees on an island. They landed, and Monga and Red Band murdered the Iroquois and left him there. Then they started for the mainland.”
“They were the ones we saw when we were going out of the bay.”
“Yes, they went around the long point, past that bay, and along the northwest side of Minong, but the wind came up and they could not cross. This morning they have crossed over.”
“We should have nothing further to fear from Monga then, even if we had not captured him.”
Blaise shrugged contemptuously. “Monga is a coward and a fool. He says he was angry because the traders sold him a bad musket. It exploded when he tried to fire it and blew off his little finger. So he joined the Mohawk wolf who boasted that he would drive the white men away. Monga thought Ohrante was a great chief and a powerful medicine man, but when he proposed to go to Minong, Monga was afraid. Then Ohrante told him that Minong was a wonderful place where they would grow rich and mighty and have everything they wished. He said he was such a great medicine man that the spirits of the island would do his bidding.”
“And they didn’t,” put in Hugh with a grin.
The swift, flashing smile like his father’s crossed the younger boy’s face. “Monga was disappointed to find Minong little different from the mainland. When he heard the spirits threatening Ohrante and saw the chief frightened, he began to lose faith in him. You escaped, and Ohrante’s medicine was not strong enough to find you and bring you back. He would not even go to the Bay of Manitos to seek you. So Monga knew the Chief of Minong was just a man like other men. He has run away and wants no more of Ohrante.”
“Just the same I think we had better keep an eye on him,” Hugh decided. “We’ll take him with us.”
Blaise nodded. “There is still much Monga has not told us,” he replied.
It was finally settled that Baptiste and the two Indians should take the prisoner with them, while Hugh and Blaise went on ahead in the captured canoe. It was their plan to approach the Island of Torture under cover of darkness. Conditions being good, the two boys paddled steadily. Late in the afternoon they paused for a meal. They had not many more miles to go, and would wait until nightfall. Before they had finished their supper, Baptiste’s canoe came in sight. Monga had expressed willingness to wield a paddle, but Baptiste did not trust him. The “Loon” rode as a compulsory passenger, wrists and ankles still bound. At Hugh’s signal, Baptiste ran in to shore to wait with the others for darkness.
XXXIV
MONGA’S STORY
During the enforced wait for nightfall, Blaise put more questions to the Indian prisoner. Monga, anxious to ingratiate himself with his captors, talked freely.
Ohrante, the captive said, after his first crime, capture and escape, had fled with Monga and the other Ojibwa who had helped him to get away. At the lake shore they had come across two Iroquois hunters, the tall fellow with the malicious grin and another. When Ohrante proposed to take refuge on Minong, the Ojibwas held back. The Mohawk, however, told them a long story about how his mother, a captive among the Iroquois, had been a direct descendant of the ancient tribe or clan who had once lived on Minong and had mined copper there. Her ancestors had been chieftains of that powerful people, Ohrante asserted, and he himself was hereditary Chief of Minong. From his mother’s people and also from his father, who was a Mohawk medicine man, the giant claimed to have inherited marvellous magic powers. He had further increased those powers by going through various mysterious experiences and ordeals. The manitos of Minong, he said, awaited his coming. He had had a dream, several moons before, in which the spirits, in the forms of birds and beasts, had appeared to him and begged him to come and rule over them. They would do his bidding and aid him to destroy his enemies and to become chief of all the tribes about the Upper Lakes. He would unite those tribes into a powerful nation and drive the white men from the country.
Persuaded by Ohrante’s arguments, the four Indians accompanied him to Minong. Their first camp was made on the southwestern end of the island. There Ohrante and the two Ojibwas, secure from pursuit, remained while the others crossed again to the mainland and brought back more recruits, an Ojibwa, a Cree and another Iroquois hunter. The band of eight roamed about the western side of the island by land and water. Most of the winter they spent in a long, narrow bay, where, according to Monga, they found many pieces of copper. In the spring, in search of the wonders their chief had promised them, they reached the northeastern end of the island. Then came a hard storm of wind, rain and snow, accompanied by fog. Three days after the storm, when the waves had gone down, the band entered, for the first time, the bay west of the long point. There they found and captured Jean Beaupré and Black Thunder. It was evident from Monga’s tale that he knew nothing of the hidden furs. Ohrante had accepted the story Jean Beaupré had told of having lost everything in the storm, when his bateau, driven out of its course, had been dashed into a rift in the rocks of the long point. Undoubtedly Beaupré must have had some warning of the approach of the Indians, for he had had time, as the boys knew, to secrete the furs. The fact that Black Thunder had suffered an injury to one leg, when the boat was wrecked, might account for the failure of the two to dodge the giant and his band.
When Monga finished this part of his story, Blaise turned from him to translate to Hugh.
“Ask him,” the elder brother suggested, “if father knew he was on the Isle Royale.”
Blaise put the question and translated the reply. “Monga says our father knew not where he was. The weather was thick and cloudy, there was no sun and it was not possible to see far. Our father thought he was somewhere on the mainland. Ohrante did not tell him where he was. The chief wished no man to know the hiding place. The prisoners were kept bound. They were given something cooked from leaves that made them sleep sound. Then they were put in the canoes and taken to the other end of the island. By night they were brought across to the Isle of Torture.”
“That explains father’s not telling you where he was wrecked. He had no idea he had been driven to Minong. But why did Ohrante bring his captives away over here? What was his motive? Can you find out?”
Again Blaise asked a question, listening gravely to the answer. “Monga says that he and Ohrante and the other Ojibwa camped on that little island they now call the Isle of Torture, when they first escaped from our father, and Ohrante dreamed that night that he had many white captives and put them to the torture one after another. Monga thinks it was because of that dream that the chief brought his captives over to that island.”
“How did father escape?” Hugh questioned eagerly.
Again Blaise turned to Monga, and soon had the rest of the story. At the Torture Island, Ohrante had met with several recruits, who brought with them a supply of liquor stolen from some trading post. The torture of the two captives, Ohrante’s part of the entertainment, was postponed until night. During the day the party feasted and drank. They consumed all of the liquor, which was full strength, not diluted with water as it usually was before being sold to the Indians. By night the whole band were lying about the island in a heavy stupor. Even the lookout, who had been stationed in a tree to give warning of the approach of danger, had come down to get his share.
When the band came to their senses next morning, they found the prisoners gone. The thongs with which they had been tied lay on the ground, one piece of rawhide having been worn through by being pulled across a sharp-edged bit of rock. A canoe was gone and another had a great hole in it, but a third boat, on the other side of the island, the prisoners had not found. Monga’s Ojibwa comrade, the one who had helped Ohrante to escape justice, had been set to guard the captives. In a rage, Ohrante threatened the fellow with torture in their stead. The guard begged to be allowed to track the escaped prisoners, and the chief consented. A high wind had blown all night and the lake was rough, too rough for the fugitives to have travelled far by water. The channel between shore and island was protected from the wind, however, and some of the band crossed and found the canoe the escaped prisoners had used. Black Thunder’s lame leg prevented rapid travelling, and at the Devil Track River, the negligent guard and one of the Iroquois overtook the fugitives. Stealing quietly upon them, the Ojibwa attacked Jean Beaupré, the Iroquois, Black Thunder. Black Thunder struggled desperately, and the Iroquois was obliged to fight for his life. He slew Black Thunder, only to find his Ojibwa companion lying dead a little farther on. Jean Beaupré was gone.
The Iroquois tried to follow Beaupré, but, being himself wounded, fell fainting from loss of blood. Monga and another of the band, sent after the two by Ohrante, found the Iroquois unable to travel without help. It was Monga who had kindled the cooking fire, the remains of which Hugh had found. Blaise spoke of finding the blood-stained tunic and Monga said that the Iroquois had stripped it from Black Thunder, but Monga and the other Indian would not let him carry the shirt away for fear of the vengeance of the thunder bird pictured upon it. The three returned to the Island of Torture without attempting to follow Beaupré farther. When the lake calmed, two of the band took the winter catch of furs to the Grand Portage and exchanged them for supplies. Then the whole party returned to Minong, living for some time at the southern end. In a later raid they captured the unfortunate Indian, Ohrante’s personal enemy, whom the boys had seen being tortured. One of the chief’s men was killed in the encounter, another deserted and several were left on the mainland to obtain recruits.
The rest went back to Minong and travelled to the northern end again. In the bay west of the long, high point, they found the spot the crew of the Otter had cleared, and built their wigwams there. The discovery that someone else had visited the place made Ohrante a bit uneasy, and he kept a lookout stationed on the high ridge. When the Beaupré brothers reached the point, all of the band except two happened to be away on a hunting trip. The two guards, neglectful of lookout duty, had failed to see the lads approach. It must have been one of them who had fired the shot that aroused the boys at dawn. Ohrante and one canoe of the hunting party returned that very day. The call that had so startled Hugh, when he was about to open the packet, was a signal from one of the camp guards to the returning chief. Luckily for the brothers they were well hidden in the pit, and Ohrante and his men were back at their camp long before the two lads reached theirs. The other canoe of hunters did not return until the following day. Luck had been poor, and Monga proposed to his companions that they round the long, high point and look for game on the other side. They were headed towards the rocky tip, when, suddenly, before their astonished eyes, a giant form appeared on the open rocks. The giant turned, looked straight at the canoe, then seemed to sink into the ground. Just as he vanished, however, a second giant, even taller than the first, loomed up. Monga and his comrades turned and fled. Monga looked back once, just in time to see one of the giants spring up out of the rocks, he said. The frightened Indians took refuge beyond the low point on the other side of the bay, and stayed there until the fog came in, before daring to venture to camp. They told Ohrante of seeing Nanibozho and Kepoochikan on the end of the long point, but he, to strengthen his followers’ belief in his magical powers, insisted next day on rounding the point. In the Bay of Manitos, the Chief of Minong had the scare of his life.
Darkness had come by the time Blaise had learned all this from the prisoner and had translated it to Hugh and Baptiste. It was time to make a start. Monga was left behind, and to prevent his crying out or attracting attention in any way, he was gagged and tied to a tree. Then the others embarked in Baptiste’s canoe. The weather favored them. The night was dark, not a ray of moonlight penetrating the thick clouds. Only a light breeze rippled the water and the air was unusually warm.
Noiselessly, through the deepest shadows, the canoe approached the Island of Torture. From the upper end, the black mass appeared to be quite deserted. No gleam of fire shone through the trees. As the canoe slipped along close to the mainland, however, the flickering light of a small fire appeared ahead. That fire was not on the island, but on the mainland opposite. Swerving in to shore, the canoe was brought to a stop, its prow just touching a bit of beach. Without speaking a word, and making scarcely a sound, the five stepped out, deposited the boat upon the pebbles and gathered around it in a knot.
Keneu, his mouth close to the half-breed boy’s ear, whispered a word or two. Blaise nodded, and in an instant the Indian was gone into the darkness. Blaise turned to Hugh and explained in the softest of whispers: “Keneu goes to learn who they are.”
Silent, almost motionless, the rest of the party remained standing on the bit of beach in the thick darkness of the sheltering bushes. Hugh’s eyes were fastened on the black, silent island across the narrow channel. Had Ohrante changed his plans? He felt his younger brother’s hand on his arm, and turned about. He could just distinguish a low, hissing sound, which he realized was the Indian making his report to Blaise.
The sound ceased and the boy’s lips were at Hugh’s ear. “There are four men camping there. One is an Iroquois. They wait for Ohrante to come. Then they go to the island.”
“He hasn’t come yet, then?” Hugh whispered back.
“No, these are new men except the Iroquois. They come to join Ohrante. They have liquor, but the Iroquois will not let them drink until the chief comes.”
“Then the only thing we can do is wait.”
“That is all. We can watch the island from here. When Ohrante comes we shall know it.”
