The Broken Blade Read online

  OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  THE SIGN OF THE BEAVER, Elizabeth George Speare

  THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, Elizabeth George Speare

  JOHNNY TREMAIN, Esther Forbes

  ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, Scott O’Dell

  SING DOWN THE MOON, Scott O’Dell

  THUNDER ROLLING IN THE MOUNTAINS, Scott O’Dell

  and Elizabeth Hall

  WAR COMES TO WILLY FREEMAN, James Lincoln Collier

  and Christopher Collier

  WHO IS CARRIE?, James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

  JUMP SHIP TO FREEDOM, James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

  THE SLAVE DANCER, Paula Fox

  YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  I would like to extend special thanks to my editors, Kathleen Squires and Timothy Robinson, for their insightful suggestions; and to my agent, Barbara Markowitz, for believing in both me and the beauty of the canoe country.

  I am also grateful to the staff of the Hibbing Public Library and the Minnesota Historical Society for their help with my research, and to the special people who went out of their way to encourage me, including Jessica, Reid, Gregory, Honore, John, and the HAT class at Washington Elementary in Hibbing, Minnesota.

  To Barbara,

  with love

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Furs were a symbol of status and power in medieval Europe. Strict laws dictated that only royalty could wear ermine, sable, and marten. Less valuable furs such as beaver and mink were worn by the middle class, while poor people were limited to rabbit, lamb, and sometimes cat.

  As the middle class grew, so did the demand for furs. Convinced that North America contained a wealth of fur-bearing animals, French explorers of the seventeenth century such as Father Nicolet, Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre Radisson laid claim to vast tracts of land that became known as New France.

  With the cooperation of dozens of Native American tribes who agreed to exchange pelts for trade goods, Pierre La Verendrye, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, David Thompson, Alexander Henry, and other later adventurers mapped out canoe routes and established posts along the frontier. Thus began the era of the voyageur.

  From the 1700s on, these French-Canadian canoemen were hired to transport trade goods and furs over the four-thousand-mile waterway that extended from Montreal to the Pacific Ocean. Paddling sixteen to eighteen hours a day and portaging 180-pound loads, voyageurs were legendary for their endurance and good humor. They lived hard and in many cases died young, but their irrepressible and adventuresome spirit still serves as a perfect model for modern-day canoeists who paddle through the Quetico-Superior wilderness and dream of the north country beyond.

  William Durbin

  LAKE VERMILION, MINNESOTA, June 1996

  CHAPTER 1

  An Errant Stroke

  PIERRE WOKE TO the sound of an ax. The thunk of the blade on the chopping block told him that his father was splitting dry pine. Now that it was spring, his mother let the fires die out during the warm part of the day. That meant she needed more kindling than she did during the winter.

  At thirteen years of age Pierre knew he should be up and helping. It had been his job to keep the woodbox filled since he was ten, but it was Saturday, and it felt good to lie in bed a few extra minutes. Besides, the heavy work was done, and he knew his father enjoyed making kindling.

  Chunk, crack. The ax snapped down. Pierre closed his eyes and imagined the splinters piling up at his father’s feet.

  Chunk, crack. Pierre could see the blade biting into the knotty grain as his father gave the ax a quick twist—a splitting lick, he called it—to shave the wood clean and to keep the blade from burying itself in the chopping block.

  Chunk, crack. Pierre watched his father in his mind. Quick fingers rotated the piece and flicked free the instant before the ax fell. Chunk, crack, chunk … Despite the sharp crackling of the pine shearing off, there was a rhythm to the sound that made Pierre drowsy.

  He drifted back to sleep and dreamed of riding in an open carriage down a broad, cobbled street bathed in green-gold light. The air smelled of polished leather and coal smoke and dew. Ahead Pierre saw the River Seine and the towering Cathedral of Notre Dame. Beyond the bright music of the clattering hooves, a boatman sang. Pierre listened, but he couldn’t understand the song. He tilted his head to better hear the strange words.

  Just then the shadow of an enormous bird arched out over the river. There was a dark croaking sound, followed by a human cry. Pierre jerked his head back.

  “Sweet Mother of God,” the voice groaned. Pierre’s eyes opened wide. For a moment he was lost between sleep and waking.

  “Charles?” his mother called from the kitchen. “Are you all right?”

  By the time Pierre pulled on his pants and ran out the door, Mother was already outside. Father sat cross-legged on the ground beside the chopping block, cradling his left hand in his right. The dark hair at his temples glistened with sweat.

  His mother bent to take one look and then stood up. Her cheeks were pale. “Camille,” she called back into the house, to Pierre’s older sister, “bring a towel. Quickly.”

  She turned to her son. “Get the doctor, Pierre. You must get the doctor.” But Pierre stood openmouthed, staring at the bright blood that pumped from his father’s half-severed thumb.

  “Pierre!” Mother shouted, cuffing his shoulder. “Go, now. The doctor.”

  Pierre ran down the path toward the village of Lachine. As he sprinted down the trail, he thought of the blood at their annual fall slaughter. His head pounded with the ringing of the butcher’s steel. He saw the blade flash and the blood and the fire-blackened kettle. He smelled the stubbly hides that hung, scraped and stinking, against the barn wall each November.

  Reaching Dr. Guilliard’s house, Pierre pounded on the heavy door. “Doctor,” he gasped. “Dr. Guilliard.”

  When the door swung open, Pierre froze. It was Dr. Guilliard’s daughter, Celeste. Her fine black hair hung loosely over a white shawl. Tall and graceful, Celeste was the prettiest girl in his class at school. She and Pierre had often played together when they were little. Hiking in the woods beyond Pierre’s house, they’d picked flowers for their mothers and played hide-and-seek with friends. Sometimes they pushed each other on the swing that Pierre’s father had tied to a huge oak tree behind the woodshed. If they pumped extra hard, they could swing high enough to glimpse a tall church spire in Montreal. But in the past few years Celeste had been too busy to spend time with Pierre or any of the other village boys. Every Saturday private tutors came to teach her piano and dance and other skills deemed by her mother to be appropriate for a young lady. Though she and Pierre were the same age, Celeste suddenly seemed older.

  Pierre looked into her pale blue eyes and blushed. He lowered his head. “There’s been an accident.”

  “Papa,” Celeste called down the hallway.

  Dr. Guilliard appeared, his breakfast napkin in hand.

  “What is it, son?”

  “My father … cut bad … an ax …”

  The doctor turned and reached for his frock coat and bag. “Settle down,” he said, “everything will be all right.”

  Pierre tried to help the doctor saddle his horse, but Guilliard pushed him aside. He pulled the cinch cord tight, tied his bag to his saddle bow, and was off, the tails o
f his coat flying up behind. Long after the doctor was out of sight, Pierre could hear his instrument bag bouncing and rattling.

  Starting up the trail at a jog, Pierre was suddenly angry with himself. The kindling was his job. He should have swung that ax. His own thumb should be chopped to a bloody stub.

  He wondered how his family would survive if Father couldn’t work. Each spring Father signed on as a voyageur for the North West Company, but Pierre knew that no canoe brigade would hire a crippled steersman.

  The closer Pierre got to home, the more slowly he walked. He stopped at the edge of a clearing, just out of sight of his house, and looked across the greening valley. “Make him be all right,” he whispered, half in prayer.

  By the time Pierre reached home, Dr. Guilliard had finished dressing Father’s wound and was talking with Mother in the kitchen. “I am sorry, madame,” he said, “but when the bone is cut through there is so little we can do.”

  Pierre’s heart went cold. Would his father die? He ran to the back bedroom. As he threw open the door, Camille jumped up from her bedside chair and waved at him to be quiet. Father groaned, “What’s that?” and turned his head toward the door.

  He was pale. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and his eyes were half open. The room smelled of blackberry brandy. “Eh, Pierre,” he whispered, pausing to take in a shallow breath. “I’m glad you’re back. You took so long.”

  Pierre resolved to be brave. But when he saw the bloodstained bandage on his father’s hand, lying upon his father’s chest, he started to cry, even though he knew it was the worst thing he could do.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pierre’s Plan

  ON MONDAY MORNING Pierre visited with his father before he left for school. Pierre sat carefully down beside him.

  “You know,” Pierre said, “this wouldn’t have happened if I’d been—”

  Father interrupted him. “It’s not your fault I chopped off my thumb,” he said, scowling at the heavy bandage in disgust. Short, dark, and always energetic, Father was never one to hide his feelings. His voice resounded with conviction; the same voice that loved to sing and tell stories.

  Pierre stared at the wrapped thumb, imagining the stub and its stitched flap of skin. What he wanted to say was, Tell the truth, Father. Tell how my laziness has crippled you.

  “You’ll not hear this hivernant complain about anything but his own clumsiness,” Pierre’s father continued. “Why, I was wielding an ax when I was half your size.”

  “But if I’d—”

  “I’ll hear none of it. And I’ll thank you to not manufacture excuses for me. I’m old enough to know the difference between a stick of wood and my thumb.”

  As Pierre left the bedroom, he heard the nervous whispers of his mother and his sister. He knew what they were talking about: His father was scheduled to sign his engagement papers with the North West Company this very week.

  Like most of the men in Lachine, Canada, Pierre’s father was a voyageur who freighted goods from Montreal to Grand Portage. He knew the Ottawa River system and the Great Lakes as well as any man alive, and the canoes he guided were famous for their speed.

  If Father couldn’t sign on, Camille, who was already seventeen, could work as a maid or housekeeper to help the family survive. They might manage if Mother could do the same, but she needed to take care of Pierre’s baby sister, Claire.

  When Pierre sat down to breakfast, Camille asked, “Are you all right?” He ignored her, hating the way she babied him lately. Since she’d got an engagement ring last Christmas from a Montreal boy, it was as if he had two mothers. She was always ordering him around, and to make matters worse, she had a loud voice like Father’s. Even a casual comment sounded irritatingly bossy. Pierre couldn’t wait until she married next summer and moved into a house of her own.

  As he ate, Pierre watched little Claire tug at Camille’s hair ribbon. Though Claire had spent the first six months of her life crying, she was smiling a lot lately. Last week she had even pointed at Pierre and said “Ba,” a word he proudly insisted meant brother. If this baby had to go hungry because of him, Pierre would never forgive himself. But what could he do?

  After breakfast, Pierre left for school. Pierre’s mother insisted he go to school, even though most of his friends had left the schoolroom and gone to work. Like Father, Mother wasn’t shy about her opinions. She’d always told her son that he would be a great man someday. She hoped he would become a judge, a merchant, or even a priest, but Pierre didn’t care to look that far ahead.

  School had always been easy for Pierre, but now that he was thirteen and the oldest boy still enrolled, he was bored. Sister Marguerite tried to make things more interesting by having him tutor the younger students, but tutoring was dull compared with the stories his working friends told of their lives as canoemen, lumberjacks, and apprentice tradesmen. He was tired of being a mere schoolboy when everyone else had entered the real world. They were driving wagons and piloting riverboats and voyaging in canoes while he was stuck memorizing Latin verbs.

  This morning, though he told no one of his plan, he walked straight past his school to the waterfront district and the main depot of the North West Company. The riverbank was crowded with at least twelve dozen men. The voyageurs were dressed in red caps, short shirts tied with bright sashes, breechclouts, deerskin leggings, and moccasins. They were all busy packing trade goods or working on their canoes.

  Pierre felt nervous and out of place. He’d never stayed away from school before, and he worried about what his mother would think. During breakfast, when he’d planned this trip in his mind, he’d thought it would be easy to find a company clerk or one of his father’s friends, but he had no idea where to begin in this maze of men.

  He walked over to a fellow who was holding a torch in one hand and dripping a ball of pitch onto the seams of a canoe. Pierre tapped the man on the shoulder, “Excuse me, sir, could—”

  The man stood up and growled, “What you want with Bellegarde?”

  Pierre quickly drew back. This was the ugliest man he’d ever seen. The man’s hair was thin and scraggly; one of his earlobes was missing; and the left side of his face was pushed toward the center. White scars ran along his cheek and nose in stark relief against his dark face.

  “I was looking … I mean, could you tell me …” The fumes from the torch burned Pierre’s eyes. He coughed.

  The voyageur threw back his head and laughed. One front tooth was missing. “You used to prettier men than Andre Bellegarde,” he said. “But I tell you, I’m best-looking fellow you’ll ever see who wrestled a grizzly bear and lost. One swipe to the head”—he pointed to the jagged scars with the warm pitch block in his hand—“is all it took to make this mess.”

  “I …” Pierre could think of nothing to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Save your pity for the dead, boy.” Bellegarde spat into the sand at Pierre’s feet. “Besides, that bear’s worse off than me.” He rattled the bear-claw necklace that hung down the front of his leather shirt. “Don’t never be sorry for no man what’s still alive.”

  Pierre stared at the bear claws, as huge as a man’s fingers, and his eyes widened. “Please. I’m looking for your brigade chief.”

  “McKay,” the man said, pointing with his torch toward a log storehouse just up the riverbank.

  For a moment Pierre thought about heading back to the schoolhouse. He liked to go slowly, to consider every option, but he could tell that these men plunged headlong into their work. As he walked cautiously up the bank, men hurried by on all sides, carrying bundles of trade goods and laughing and whistling. One man with a powder keg on each shoulder called out, “Step aside, boy, these casks got more bite than you’d care to handle.”

  This was the company his father kept. Dark-skinned, with heavily muscled arms and shoulders, each man carried two ninety-pound bales of cargo on his back. A few swaggering fellows hauled three parcels without complaint.

  As Pierre studied the men, he recall
ed the first time his father brought him down to this landing. He was only seven or eight. One of the last brigades of the season was just arriving, and Father hoisted him on his shoulders so he could see over the gathering crowd. Pierre counted twenty-four canoes.

  “It’s the biggest brigade of the year,” Father said. Then he whispered, “There’s more than a million dollars’ worth of pelts in those canoes. Not bad for a single season of fur trade with the Indians, eh?”

  “A million dollars?” Pierre repeated.

  “Yes.” Father nodded. “And the lot of it paddled and portaged more than a thousand miles from Grand Portage, just so gentlemen can wear beaver-pelt hats.”

  “Hats?” Pierre looked at his father’s simple red cap.

  “Beaver hats this tall,” Father said, raising his hand to an absurd height above his head, “for fancy gents to wear when they walk with fancy ladies.”

  When Pierre reached the top of the riverbank, there was no mistaking Commander McKay. He stood half a head taller than any of the men clustered around him. Bushy red hair covered his face and ringed his balding head, and he was dressed more like a banker than a frontiersman. An unlit briar pipe stuck out of his vest pocket; a pencil stub was tucked behind one ear. He was deep in conversation with another man.

  When McKay finally noticed Pierre, he stopped. “What’ll it be, laddie?”

  “I’ve come to engage, sir,” Pierre said.

  “Bit young, aren’t ye?”

  Pierre lied, “I’m nearly fourteen.” He had just turned thirteen the month before. But at five feet, five inches and 130 pounds, he was confident he could do the work of a man, though he knew his boyish face and cropped hair made him look young.

  “Sorry, but we don’t have time to play nursemaid. Our trips are a hard push all the way.” McKay looked again at his list.

  Pierre’s face reddened as he struggled to think of a reply. He knew McKay wouldn’t care that he could spell well or that he’d won Sister’s geography prize three years in a row. He hated himself for his shyness. Why couldn’t he be loud and bold like his father?