Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ambush “Mon Dieu, no, I am no niggard,” Rich- elieu boasted pompously. “I grudge them nothing, Father, for they serve me well, and they shall have what you say andall that you say. Only, none of the Grande Portage buildings will hold one-tenth of their number.” “True, yet the stockade ground here will hold them all,” suggested Andrews, craftily straining for the point he wished to gain. “And it is lighted like day with the canoe- men’s fires on yonder beach. Have canoe- men and all gather here to eat and let every man of your company see for himself how fair a mate sits at your table.” “Ciel, but you have spoken it, Father!’’ cried Richelieu, swallowing the bait offered to his conceit, to his love of pomp and dis- play. ‘Thompson, send out the word to the beach for them all to gather within the stockades. They can sit on the steps and the sand terrace, and I will have them served with food and wine where they sit.” Thompson himself strode out of the stock- ade ground and moved amid the mob across the level sand beach toward the shoreway of the long canoe pier. At his word the canoe- men, leaving their fires with joyous whoops over their good fortune, surged up the beach and into the stockade ground. “Tust when Richelieu turns to lead us in— run for the sloop!”’ was all Andrews had op- portunity to whisper to Carlisle who, under Richeliew’s watchful eye, still had Joan by the arms. Carlisle passed the whisper to Eugene Drummond, Missowa and Waseyawin who likewise had their hands upon the Free- Trader, and they all felt their tense nerves thrill vibrantly as the last of the mob of canoemen came in through the gateway. It required only a slight shifting of their gaze to mark the eastern cribwork of the old canoe pier where the fur sloop Ofer, empty after its run to the Falls of St. Mary, lightly rubbed its rail against the timbers. The harbor water within the angle of the pier and also the curve of the sand beach nearer at hand were lined with canoes. The beach itself, starred with scores of camp- fires sending their crimson flares across the lake, was deserted as Andrews had schemed. Here, stamping on the sand terrace, climbing on the steps were the men who had peopled it, eleven hundred and twenty en- rolled canoemen—thirty-six brigades—the total strength of the Northwest Company’s “15 boatmen drawn from the world’s outposts and massed together in one spot; three hun- dred and fifty Rabiscaw paddlers of Mon- treal, in company with all the countless In- dians of the district gathered for the yearly trade, the carousal and the carnival. Never had Carlisle gazed on so weird and motley a horde of Northmen and Indians and nowhere else on the continent could Richelieu have marshaled such a retinue. For these men Canada and the Atlantic States were only faint memories somewhere East. The Church for them was an im- pression fainter still. No man-made law had they ever seen forged farther than the Sault. : They drew breath in an unclaimed land, and rum and bedlam rioted in their hearts. Only their fear of Richelieu postponed their songs and their brawls as they jostled up for their unexpected feast, and in the moment of their silence, Richelieu raised his voice from the threshold of his dining hall. “Ho! Northmen from the Pays d’en Haut, and you Rabiscaw paddlers from Montreal,” he smirked. ‘“‘Void! Hereisa priest with a kind heart, and on his thought- ful suggestion I ug The snoring surge of waters swiftly cloven, a triumphal yell out of the lake- ward dark, the thump of a quickly-wielded paddle upon a canoe gunwale interrupted Richelieu, and the next instant a lone birch- bark craft tore through the water gate of the pier and spilled its single occupant upon the beach outside the stockade. “Who in the devil are you?” bellowed Richelieu, glaring truculently as the in- truder bounded in through the open gateway and drove like a wedge up the jammed steps. ‘“‘Bertand—Montreal mail courier—way- laid—just escaped from the Hudson’s Bay men’s camp down the north shore,”’ panted the courier in French, his furtive eyes, filled with the streaming lamplight, scanning them over. ‘“‘And there,” leveling an excited finger at Carlisle, “is their Factor wearing my very clothes!’ Gh its hold on the arm of Joan Wayne, launched his mighty body forward. His right foot shot into Bertand’s chest, his right fist into the black beard of Richelieu, and both men, catapulted back off the steps, went rolling down the sand terrace among the massed men. CARLISLE, his left hand keeping C@nniclooo S (C@