“Come again?”
“Free”
But if he proved to be their saviour, all the timber land adjoining the Cherry River—including mineral rights, he put in quickly—would be signed over to him.
Once saved, twice shy, the Millenarians began to walk out one by one, drifting over to Crosby’s Hotel. Watching from a window, they saw Russell Morgan endure a tongue-lashing from his two confederates, one of whom actually reached into a pocket of Morgan’s beaver coat, yanked out the sterling silver flask, and flung it into a snowbank. As a contrite Morgan retrieved his flask, “Ratty” Baker rushed up, said something, and the three Montrealers immediately set out for Sherbrooke. On arrival, they repaired to the bar of the Prince of Wales Hotel, and there they discovered a short fierce man with hot eyes and an inky black beard drinking alone at a table in a dim corner. They did not so much approach the table as surround it.
“What can I do for you, my good fellows?”
Morgan wagged a finger at him. “You are Ephraim Gursky!”
The fierce little man, his eyes darting, tried to rise from his chair but was quickly knocked back, wedged into place, the three men having joined him at his table. Morgan, charged with glee, took his time lighting an Havana, watching the little wretch begin to sweat. Cornered, they were all the same. That lot. Laughing aloud, his belly bouncing, Morgan blew smoke in his face. “I am trying to decide,” he said, “whether to escort you back to Magog, where you would undoubtedly be hanged from the nearest tree, or whether I should show you a modicum of Christian charity and merely hand you over to the authorities. What do you think, Hugh?”
“Oh, heavens, what a conundrum.”
“Please,” a tearful Ephraim whined just before he slumped forward in a faint.
The waiter was hastily summoned. “I’m afraid,” Morgan said, “that our companion has overindulged himself. I assume that he is a guest of your establishment.”
Darcy retrieved the room key from the desk and the three men, supporting Ephraim between them, led him back to his room, dumped him in a chair and slapped him awake.
“Well, my little man,” Morgan said, “I’d say, not to put too fine a point on it, that you are a rat caught in a trap.”
Darcy began to go through Ephraim’s suitcase. Hugh searched the bureau drawers.
“What little money I’ve got is under the mattress. You can have it, if you let me go.”
“Now isn’t that rich, boys. He takes us for common thieves.”
“You are obviously gentlemen of quality. But I don’t know what you want with me.”
“Possibly we wish to buy your illicitly gained properties on the Cherry River.”
“They’re worthless, sir.”
“Oh, why don’t we just take him back to Magog and be done with it?”
Ephraim watched, his eyes bulging with anguish, as Darcy pulled out a heavy pine chest from under the bed. “It’s locked,” Darcy said.
“The keys, Gursky.”
“Lost.”
Morgan dug the keys out of Ephraim’s jacket pocket.
“I collect rocks,” Ephraim said. “It’s a passion of mine.”
“That’s rich. That’s very rich. I should tell you that Mr. Walker is a geologist, and Mr. Clarkson a mining engineer.”
The pine box unlocked, the rock samples lay bare.
“You will find a gold nugget or two in there,” Ephraim said, “but I swear they do not come from any creek near here.”
“Where from, then?”
“The north, my good fellows.”
The men passed the rocks from hand to hand.
“You can beat me,” Ephraim suddenly lashed out. “You can turn me over to the police or take me back to Magog to be hanged, but unless I’m offered a fair price I will not sign over deeds to properties that took me three long years of hard work to accumulate.”
THE MILLENARIANS, their properties lost, were in a hallelujah mood. Brother Ephraim, who had promised to save them, had been as good as his word so far as they were concerned. No sooner did the snows melt than most of the dispossessed packed their wagons and headed south. Free free. Free at last. Free to put the unyielding wintry land behind them. Some struck out for Texas, which they had read so much about in dime novels, but others made it no further than the “Boston-States”, where eight years later a few accepted money to replace rich Yankees in the Union Army.
One of the volunteers, Hugh McCurdy, had been related to Strawberry on his mother’s side. A letter of his survived on three-coloured newspaper from a Magnus Ornamental and Glorious Union Packet. It had been written on the eve of the battle of Shiloh, where McCurdy fell, and one night Strawberry brought it to The Caboose to show Moses.
Dear Bess,
Bess, there is grate prospect of my Being Called into Battle Tomorrow—And for fear of it and not knowing how I may come out I will incloes 15 dollars and in Cayse of my Being Short of Money, which I may be, I will rite you if Necessary. You better give Father the little pocket Charm in Cayse only if its necessary. Tell Amos to Be a good boy and take Care of him Self, and I advise him as a Brother never to inliss for this is not a place for him. Tell Luke to Be Contented where he is and never to inliss and Battle all day. Bess! will you kiss little Frankie for me for I may never have that ocasion to do so my Self. I don’t think of Enything more very important. This is from Your Dear Husban,
HUGH MCCURDY
The next morning Moses had hiked to Strawberry’s house on the hill and together they had rooted through an attic trunk, surfacing with other intriguing items, among them a traveller’s account, from an 1874 issue of Harper’s Magazine, of a trip through the Lake Memphremagog country following its short-lived mining boom. “From Knowlton to South Bolton extends a wilderness. Small bears have been seen, foxes are often killed and the trout brooks yield up their treasures. From there we moved on to Cherry River. Gold was once thought to be abundant in the streams feeding the Cherry River, a Magog banker having displayed several large nuggets as evidence. But sadly for the many investors in New Camelot Mining & Smelting this turned out not to be the case. Therein, however, lies a tale. We sought out Sir Russell Morgan at his Peel Street residence in Montreal, the proud family coat-of-arms emblazoned over the portico. We hoped Sir Russell might enlighten us over what still remains a subject of some controversy. Unfortunately, he was unavailable.”
New Camelot Mining & Smelting was the rock on which three considerable Montreal family fortunes were founded, that of the Morgans, the Clarksons and the Walkers. The mining stock, originally issued at 10¢, soared to $12.50 before it crashed. Radical members of parliament called for an inquiry at the time, arguing that Morgan and his partners had sold before the bubble burst, but nothing came of the protestations.
Sir Russell Morgan, in his privately printed autobiography, A Country Gentleman Remembers, dwelled at length on his progenitors, whom he had no difficulty tracing back to the Norman Conquest of 1066, even though—or just possibly because, some wags ventured—surnames had not yet been introduced in England. But he devoted only two paragraphs to the short, febrile life of New Camelot Mining & Smelting, the company he had founded in partnership with Senator Hugh Clarkson and Darcy Walker, MP. The three of them had been misled in the first place, he noted, by an Israelite renegade who had assured them that the hills were veined with gold. He deeply regretted that many investors had endured a beating. Mining, alas, was a risky business. Mind you, he added, he had never heard so much as a peep from the many more who had made money trading the stock or from those who had profited on his later ventures, but—he reflected—c’est la vie, as our charming habitant friends are so fond of saying.