Buckskin Brigades by L. Ron Hubbard

Author:L. Ron Hubbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2019-12-22T00:03:37+00:00

Chapter 20

The Chipmunk

Yellow Hair had no thoughts to spare for McGlincy.

He hated the river because the current was striving relentlessly to carry him back to York Factory.

Already the English would have made oars and manned their barges. With the glee and questionable mercy of foxhunters, the English had been quick to take up the chase and their long sweeps were driving their boats upriver at a speed which curled white froth on the cannon-mounted bows.

At York Factory the governor had been worked up into puffing rage and sweating activity and the word was gone on the roar of the snow-laden wind that Hudson’s Bay Company would pay, in cash or trade goods, the sum of fifty pounds—a half year’s wages—for the presentation of Yellow Hair’s scalp at the factory.

As a sort of apology for this barbaric cry, the governor added that the sum of seventy-five pounds would be paid for Yellow Hair’s return alive.

The word, traveling mouth to mouth, post to post, river to river, did not take long to hit the Rockies and echo back. It was astonishing to note that the news went farther in one day than a brigade could travel in a month. But then, in the world’s every wilderness there have been swift and wholly unaccountable communication systems so mysterious and complete that nothing short of mental telepathy could account for them.

In this case there were visible means of relaying the offer and the orders. Posts along the Nelson, the Saskatchewan, Lake Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods were very close together in one long network. Numerous hunters’ cabins were between each pair of posts, and all hugged the river which was the grand highroad of travel.

Added to this was the presence of roving bands of Cree hunters who had, themselves, a complete communication system.

Before Yellow Hair was one day out of York Factory the word that he was on the river had leaped two hundred miles ahead of him and HBC brigades all along the banks were on the alert to intercept him.

It has ever been a weary task to try to outguess and outlast the English. Such thoroughness is laudable and scarcely to be escaped by one man. The trap was open before him, ready to snap shut, and the foxhunters were shouting “Tallyho” behind him.

Yellow Hair knew all this because he had more than once witnessed the speed of spreading news on the plains.

The problem had to be squarely met and Yellow Hair was never one to dally over a decision.

At noon, with everything washed out by the fall of snow that had changed places with the rain, Yellow Hair ran his canoe into the beach.

Deliberately he burned his bridge by rolling it over and knocking a hole in the bottom of it with a large rock. He thrust the sinking craft back into the stream and resolutely turned his face inland.

The forest was silent and gloomy, filled with thickets and windfalls and darkness. It was not much like the clean timber of the Rockies and it weighed in upon him.

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