Some of the men carried flintlock muzzle-loaders, most the Charleville muskets used by the French army. But for Duquet the loading procedure was impossibly slow — without teeth he could not bite off the end of the cartridge, but had to tear it open with his fingers. Instead, he took as his weapon the French tomahawk, practiced endlessly until he could cleave the tail off a flying bird, gather up the body, have it gutted and half roasted while a comrade was still loading his musket.
• • •
Duquet hardened. He saw how the beaver quickly disappeared from hard-trapped areas, where the Indians took every animal, so intent were they on getting European tools and spirits, so harried were they by the acquisitive traders. The beaver country moved always farther north and west. Yet there were white men who gained prodigiously. They were not penniless runaway indentured servants. Duquet set out now to get as much as he could from his lowly position in the fur trade and swore to watch for better opportunities. He had come to New France hoping for quick riches and a return to Old France, but now he wondered if his destiny was not linked to the vast land with its infinite forests and violent rivers. Was not this country his place in the world? Yes, and he would make something of value of it. He went through a rare hour of introspection, seeing that his nature chilled other men. He consciously began to act as a smiling, open fellow of winning address who always had a good story and who, in the tavern, treated with a generous hand. He was sharpening his claws, and in his private center he was an opportunistic tiger — if he had to tear and maul his way to wealth he would do so.
• • •
He began to barter privately for furs, offering a drink or two of cheap rum to the naïve red men, hiding his activities from the others, sometimes caching the furs and returning later to pick them up. He bargained ruthlessly with the Indians, smiling guilelessly into the savage faces as he accepted their heavy bundles of furs for a yard of cheap cloth and a cup of adulterated whiskey — a monstrous profit.
Within the year he was sick of the traders who had rescued him.
“Forgeron,” he said one day as they struggled up a portage trail. “I do not enjoy these persons, especially the guide. I intend to look for another opportunity. Will you come as well?”
“Why not?” said Forgeron. “One canoe is very like another. The guide is difficult, perhaps because of his terrible history. The Iroquois threw him into a fire to roast.”
“Then why did they not finish the cooking and eat him?”
“Perhaps you will have the chance to ask them that one day.”
• • •
They worked in harmony, although Forgeron attracted storms and wind. But he had a certain regard for the wild woods. He spoke often to Duquet of the forest and its great untapped wealth.
“If a man could get the logs out, there are a hundred thousand fortunes all around us the like of which the world has not seen since the days of Babylon. It is entirely a question of moving the wood to those who need it.” Duquet nodded and began to look at trees with a more acquisitive eye.
They fell in with a flamboyant company of coureurs de bois, among whom were the easygoing Trépagny brothers, so unlike the high-minded seigneur. They had a reckless style and could outhowl wolves. Duquet needed every paddling skill he had learned for some of the wild water they ran, between rock ledges that squeezed the canoe through violent chutes, and in one extraordinary place between two towering cliffs that leaned toward each other, narrower than the river so that the sky was a rock-edged slice. When they emerged from the pinching canyon the river hurled itself into a maelstrom. It was necessary to leave the water and edge upward along the Indian trail, little more than a foot width of slippery rock, somehow carrying the canoe over their heads, its weight making their arms quiver. At last they gained the cliff top and could look down on the thrashing water below.
“Tabernac,” said Toussaint Trépagny. “I pressed against the cliff face so passionately I left the imprint of my manhood on it.” They carried their canoes for many miles that day.
One night, lying under an overturned canoe, Forgeron murmured that he intended to leave.
“My legs are no good for the canoe,” he said. It was true that his long arms worked the paddle with great power, but his legs were folded and doubled under him for many hours and when he left the canoe he often had trouble standing upright, so cramped and tightened were his muscles. Many nights he lay groaning from the pain and rubbing his thighs and calves. Voyageurs were short-legged and strong-armed. Long legs did not belong in a canoe.
When he finally left, saying he would look for surveying work, Duquet left with him, persuading the Trépagnys to come along. They headed back toward the St. Laurent. Within a month Forgeron found work laying out property lines east of Ville-Marie.
“Our paths will cross again,” said Forgeron, “but not in a canoe.”
Duquet continued gathering furs with the Trépagny brothers and they became an infamous trio, pouring rum and whiskey for the Indians, red men who gave away their furs in return for terrible and vision-invoking spirits.
9. Les Quatrains de Pibrac (Guy du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac)
He prospered during the seasons following a bad year when the settlements were sick with longing for overdue supply ships from France, sick with fear of the Iroquois, who had only ten years earlier surprised and slaughtered the inhabitants of Lachine and might do so again. In spite of ongoing fighting, huge loads of beaver pelts came down the river and kept coming, until the hatters and furriers of France could use no more, until the warehouses were packed full of rodent fur. Again Duquet saw the great weakness of the trade — surplus or scarcity. Beaver might disappear from overtrapping or disease or for no discernible reason. Or the Indians took too many. He watched and considered. He now regarded tales of immense profits in the fur trade as fables. He wanted great and permanent wealth, wealth for a hundred years. He wanted a fortune to pass on to his sons. He wanted his name on buildings. He was surprised to discover in himself a wish for children, a wish to establish a family name. The name Duquet would change from a curse to an honor. But there were difficulties — especially the ugliness of a toothless, collapsed jaw. It might be impossible to find a handsome wife. Unless he had money.
His agile mind ceaselessly worked over the question: what resource existed in this new world that was limitless, that had value, that could build a fortune? He rejected living creatures such as beaver, fish, seals, game or birds, all subject to sudden disappearance and fickle markets. He repeatedly came back to the same conclusion. There was one everlasting commodity that Europe lacked: the forest. Duquet knew, as everyone knew, that the English colonists to the south did well cutting pines for English navy masts. Could the French not do the same? He remembered Forgeron’s talk. The forest was unimaginably vast and it replaced itself. It could supply timber and wood for ships, houses, warmth. The profits could come forever. Yes, there were many problems of transport and markets, but it was an unexploited business that could expand and dominate. In France there were men who dealt in forest goods, but few in New France and perhaps not in the colonies to the south. So, he thought, he would get as much money as he could with the furs in the next few years, prepare himself in every way and then change to timber when he was ready. He would not yet give up the lucrative fur trade, a stinking, complicated business for trapper Indians, but with high profits for white traders with market connections.