“She twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck.”—Page 152.
“She twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck.”—Page 152.
Jolycœur, lounging with his shoulders against the barrack wall, gave furtive attention to La Salle as the explorer appeared within the fort. Even his eye was deceived by his master’s bearing in giving him the signal to approach.
The wind was helpful to La Salle, but he only half met daylight and saw Jolycœur taking strange shapes.
“Go to Father Hennepin’s old mission house,” he slowly commanded, “and send Monsieur de Tonty directly to me.”
The man, not daring to disobey until he could take refuge in Fort Frontenac with the gates closed behind the explorer, went on this errand.
“What ails Sieur de la Salle?” inquired the cook, coming out of his bakehouse to get this news of a sentinel.
They both watched the Abbé Cavelier making vain efforts to get hold of his misdirected brother.
“Gone mad with pride,” suggested the sentinel. “The less he prospers the loftier I have always heard he bears himself. Would the governor of New France climb the wind with a tread like that?”
Outside the gate La Salle’s limbs failed. The laboring Abbé then dragged him along, and it seemed an immense détour he was obliged to make to pass the extended foundation.
“Now you will believe my words which I spoke this morning concerning the peril we all stand in,” panted this sorely taxed brother. “The Cavelier family is destroyed. My brother La Salle—Robert—my child! Shall I give you absolution?”
“Not yet,” gasped La Salle.
“If you had ever taken my advice, this miserable end had not come upon you.”
“I am not ended,” gasped La Salle.
“Oh, my brother,” lamented Jean Cavelier, tucking up his cassock as he bent to the strain, “I have but one consolation in my wretchedness. This is better for you than the marriage you would have made. What business have you to ally yourself with Le Ber? What business have you with marriage at all? For my part, I would object to any marriage you had in view, but Le Ber’s daughter was the worst marriage for you in New France.”
“Tonty!” gasped La Salle. With the swiftness of an Indian, Tonty was flying across the clearing. The explorer’s unwary messenger Jolycœur he had left behind him bound with hide thongs and lying in Father Hennepin’s inner room.
“Yes, yonder comes your Monsieur de Tonty who so easily gave up your post on the Illinois,” panted the Abbé Cavelier. “Like all your worthless followers he hath no attachment to your person.”
“There is more love in his iron hand,” La Salle’s paralyzing mouth flung out, “than in any other living heart!”
Needing no explanation from the Abbé, the commandant from Fort St. Louis took strong hold of La Salle and hurried him to the mission house. They faced the wind, and Tonty’s cap blew off, his rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.
The surgeon ran out of the dwelling and met and helped them in, and thus tardily resistance to the poison was begun, but it had found its hardiest victim since the day of Socrates.
Tonty’s iron hand brought out of Jolycœur immediate confession of the poison he had used.
In an age when most cunning and deadly drugs were freely handled, and men who would not shed blood thought it no sin to take enemies neatly off the scene by the magic of a dish, Jolycœur was not without knowledge of a plant called hemlock, growing ready to the hand of a good poisoner in the New World.
Noon stood in the sky, half shredding vapors, and lighting cool sparkles upon the lake. Afternoon dragged its mute and heavy hours westward.
Men left the mission house and entered it again, carrying wood or water.
“His rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.”—Page 158.
“His rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.”—Page 158.
The sun set in the lake, parting clouds beforehis sinking visage and stretching his rays like long arms of fire to smite the heaving water.
Twilight rose out of the earth and crept skyward, blotting all visible shore. Fort Frontenac stood an indistinct mass beside the Cataraqui, as beside another lake. Stars seemed to run and meet and dive in long ripples. The wash of water up the sand subsided in force as the wind sunk, leaving air space for that ceaseless tune breathed by a great forest.
Overhead, from a port of cloud, the moon’s sail pushed out suddenly, less round than it had been the night before, and owning by such depression that she had begun tacking toward her third quarter. Fort and settlements again found their proportions, and Father Hennepin’s cross stood clear and fair, throwing its shadow across the mission house.
Within the silent mission house warmth and redness were diffused from logs piled in the chimney.
The Abbé Cavelier’s cassock rose and fell with that sleep which follows great anxiety and exhaustion. He reclined against the lowest step of a broken ladder-way which once ascended from corner to loft. The men, except one who stoodguard outside in the shadow of the house, were asleep in the next room.
La Salle rested before the hearth on some of the skins Tonty had received from his Indian friend and brother. Whenever the explorer opened his eyes he saw Tonty sitting awake on the floor beside him.
“Sleep,” urged La Salle.
“I shall not sleep again,” said Tonty, “until I see you safely on your way toward France.”
“This has been worse than the dose of verdigris I once got.”
“Jolycœur says he used hemlock,” responded Tonty. “He accused everybody in New France of setting him on to the deed, but I silenced that.”
“I had not yet dismissed him, Tonty. The scoundrel hath claims on me for two years’ wages.”
“He should have got his wages of me,” exclaimed Tonty, “if this proved your death. He should have as many bullets as his body could hold.”
“Tonty, untie the fellow and turn him out and discharge his wages for me with some of the skins you have put under me.” La Salle roseon his elbow and then sat up. His face was very haggard, but the practical clear eye dominated it. “These fellows cannot balk me. I have lost all that makes life, except my friend. But I shall come back and take the great west yet! A man with a purpose cannot be killed, Tonty. He goes on. He must go on.”
“Fort Lewis is in the country of the Illinois and seated on a steep Rock about two hundred Foot high, the River running at the Bottom of it. It is only fortified with Stakes and Palisades, and some Houses advancing to the Edge of the Rock. It has a very spacious Esplanade, or Place of Arms. The Place is naturally strong, and might be made so by Art, with little expence. Several of the Natives live in it, in theirHuts. I cannot give an Account of the Latitude it stands in, for want of proper Instruments to take an Observation, but Nothing can be pleasanter; and it may be truly affirmed that the Country of the Illinois enjoys all that can make it accomplished, not only as to Ornament, but also for its plentiful Production of all Things requisite for the Support of human Life.
“The Plain, which is watered by the River, is beautified by two small Hills about half a League distant from the Fort, and those Hills are cover’d with groves of Oaks, Walnut-Trees, and other Sorts I have named elsewhere. The Fields are full of Grass, growing up very high. On the Sides of the Hills is found a gravelly Sort of Stone, very fit to make Lime for Building. There are also many Clay Pits, fit for making of Earthen Ware, Bricks, and Tiles, and along the River there are Coal Pits, the Coal whereof has been try’d and found very good.”[17]
The young man lifted his pen from the paper and stood up beside a box in the storehouse which had served him as table, at the demand of a priestly voice.
“Joutel, what are you writing there?”
“Monsieur the Abbé, I was merely setting down a few words about this Fort St. Louis of the Illinois in which we are sheltered. But my candle is so nearly burned out I will put the leaves aside.”
“You were writing nothing else?” insisted La Salle’s brother, setting his shoulders against the storehouse door.
“Not a word, monsieur.”
The Abbé’s ragged cassock scarcely showed such wear as his face, which the years that had handled him could by no means have cut into such deep grooves or moulded into such ghastly hillocks of features.
“I cannot sleep to-night, Joutel,” said the Abbé Cavelier.
“I thought you were made very comfortable in the house,” remarked Joutel.
“What can make me comfortable now?”
They stood still, saying nothing, while a candle waved its feeble plume with uncertainty over its marsh of tallow, making their huge shadows stagger over log-wall or floor or across piled merchandise. One side of the room was filled with stacked buffalo hides, on which Joutel,nightly, took the complete rest he had earned by long tramping in southern woods.
He rested his knuckles on the box and looked down. A Norman follower of the Caveliers, he had done La Salle good service, but between the Abbé and him lay a reason for silence.
“Joutel, what are you writing there?”—Page 169.
“Joutel, what are you writing there?”—Page 169.
“Tonty may reach the Rock at any time,”[18]complained the Abbé to the floor, though his voice must reach Joutel’s ears. “There is nothing I dread more than meeting Tonty.”
“We can leave the Rock before Monsieur de Tonty arrives,” said Joutel, repeating a suggestion he had made many times.
“Certainly, without the goods my brother would have him deliver to me, without a canoe or any provision whatever for our journey!”
“They say here that Monsieur de Tonty led only two hundred Indians and fifty Frenchmen to aid the new governor in his war against the Iroquois,” observed Joutel. “He may not come back at all.”
“I have thought of that,” the Abbé mused. “If Tonty be dead we are indeed wasting our time here, when we ought to be well on ourway to Quebec, to say naught of the voyage to France. But this fellow in charge of the Rock refuses to honor my demands without more authority.”
“He received us most kindly, and we have been his guests a month,” said Joutel.
“I would be his guest no longer than this passing night if my difficulties were solved,” said the Abbé. “For there is even Colin’s sister to torment me. I know not where she is,—whether in Montreal or in the wilderness between Montreal and this fort. If I had taken her back with Colin to France, she would now be safe with my mother. There was another evidence of my poor brother’s madness! He was determined Mademoiselle Cavelier should be sent out to Fort St. Louis. When he sailed on that last great voyage, he sat in one of the ships the king furnished him and in the last lines he wrote his mother refused to tell her his destination! And at the same time he wrote instructions to the nuns of St. Joseph concerning the niece whose guardian he never was. She must be sent to Fort St. Louis at the first safe opportunity! She was to have a grant in this country to replace her fortune which he had used. Andthis he only told me during his fever at St. Domingo on the voyage.”
Joutel folded and put away his notes. The Abbé’s often repeated complaints seldom stirred a reply from him. Though on this occasion he thought of saying,—
“Monsieur de Tonty may bring news of her from Montreal.”
“You understand, Joutel,” exclaimed the Abbé, approaching the candle, “that it is best,—that it is necessary not to tell Tonty what we know?”
“I have understood what you said, Monsieur the Abbé.”
“You are the only man who gives me anxiety. All the rest are willing to keep silence. Is it not my affair? I wish you would cease writing your scraps. It irritates me to come into this storehouse and find you writing your scraps.” He looked severely at the young man, who leaned against the box making no further promise or reply. Then seizing the candle, the Abbé stepped to a bed made of bales, where, wrapped in skins and blankets, young Colin Cavelier lay uttering the acknowledgement of peaceful sleep. Another boy lay similarly wrapped on the floor beside him.
The priest’s look at these two was brief. He went on to the remaining man in the room, a hairy fellow, lying coiled among hides and pressed quite into a corner. The man appeared unconscious, emitting his breath in short puffs.
Abbé Cavelier gazed upon him with shudders.
The over-taxed candle flame stooped and expired, the scent of its funeral pile rising from a small red point in darkness.
While Abbé Cavelier stood in the storehouse, Tonty, a few miles away, was setting his camp around a spring of sulphur water well known to the hunters of St. Louis. The spring boiled its white sand from unmeasured depths at the root of an oak, and spread a pool which slipped over its barrier in a thin stream to the Illinois.
Though so near his fortress, Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut, fresh from their victorious campaign with the governor of New France against the Iroquois, thought it not best to expose their long array of canoes in darkness on the river. They had with them[19]women and children,—fragments of families, going under their escort to join the colony at Fort St. Louis.
Du Lhut’s army of Indians from the upper lakes had returned directly to their own villages to celebrate the victory; but that unwearied rover himself, with a few followers, had dragged his gouty limbs across portages to the Illinois, to sojourn longer with Tonty.
Their camp was some distance from the river, up an alluvial slope of the north shore. Opposite, a line of cliffs, against which the Illinois washes for miles, caught the eye through darkness by its sandy glint; and not far away, on the north side of the river, that long ridge known as Buffalo Rock made a mass of gloom.
Dependent and unarmed colonists were placed in the centre of the camp. Tonty himself, with his usual care on this journey, had helped to pitch a tent of blankets and freshly cut poles for Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier and the officer’s wife, who clung to her in the character of guardian. The other immigrants understood and took pleasure in this small temporary home, built nightly for a girl whose proud silence among them they forgave as the caprice of beauty. The wife of the officer Bellefontaine,on her part, rewarded Tonty by attaching her ceaseless presence to Barbe. She was a timid woman, very small-eyed and silent, who took refuge in Barbe’s larger shadow, and found it convenient for an under-sized duenna whose husband was so far in the wilds.
Mademoiselle Cavelier was going to Fort St. Louis at the first opportunity since her uncle La Salle’s request, made three years before.
At this time it was not known whether La Salle had succeeded or failed in his last enterprise. He had again convinced the king. His seigniories and forts were restored to him, and governor’s agents and associates driven out of his possessions. He had sailed from France with a fleet of ships, carrying a large colony to plant at the Mississippi’s mouth. His brother the Abbé Cavelier, two nephews, priests, artisans, young men, and families were in his company, which altogether numbered over four hundred people.
Fogs or storms, or dogged navigators disagreeing with and disobeying him, had robbed him of his destination; for news came back to France, by a returning ship, of loss anddisaster and a colony dropped like castaways on some inlet of the Gulf.
The evening meal was eaten and sentinels were posted. Even petulant children had ceased to fret within the various enclosures. Indians and Frenchmen lay asleep under their canoes which they had carried from the river, and by propping with stones or stakes at one side, converted into low-roofed shelters.
Barbe’s tent was beside the spring near the camp-fire. She could, by parting overlapped blanket edges, look out of her cloth house into those living depths of bubbling white sand, so like the thoughts of young maids. Two or three fallen leaves, curled into quaint craft, slid across the pool’s surface, hung at its barrier, and one after the other slipped over and disappeared along the thread of water. A hollow of light was scooped above the camp-fire, outside of which darkness stood an impenetrable rind, for the sky had all day been thickened by clouds.
The Demoiselle Bellefontaine, tucked neatly as a mole under her ridge, rested from her fears in sleep; and Barbe made ready to lie down also, sweeping once more the visibleworld with a lingering eye. She saw an Indian creeping on hands and knees toward Tonty’s lodge. He entered darkness the moment she saw him. The girl arose trembling and put on her clothes. She had caught no impression of his tribe; but if he were a warrior of the camp, his crawling so secretly must threaten harm to Tonty. She did not distinctly know what she ought to do, except warn Monsieur de Tonty.
But on a sudden the iron-handed commandant ran past her tent, shouting to his men. There was a sound like the rushing of bees through the air, and horrible faces smeared with paint, tattooed bodies, and hands brandishing weapons closed in from darkness; the men of the camp rose up with answering yells,and the flash and roar of muskets surrounded Barbe as if she were standing in some nightmare world of lightning and thunder. She heard the screams of children and frightened mothers. She saw Tonty in meteor rushes rallying men, and striking down, with nothing but his iron hand, a foe who had come to quarters too close for fire-arms. Indian after Indian fell under that sledge, and a cry of terror in Iroquois French, which she could understand, rose through the whoop of invasion,—
“The Great-Medicine-Hand! The Great-Medicine-Hand!”
Brands were caught from the fire and thrown like bolts, sparks hissing as they flew. Her tent was overturned and she fell under it with the Demoiselle Bellefontaine, who uttered muffled squeals.
When Barbe dragged her companion out of the midst of poles, all the hurricane of action had passed by. Its rush could be heard down the slope, then the splashing of bodies and tumultuous paddling in the river. Guns yet flashed. She heard Frenchmen and Illinois running with their canoes down to the water to give chase. Farther and farther away soundedthe retreat, and though women and children continued to make outcry, Barbe could hear no groans.
The brands of the fire were still scattered, but hands were busy collecting and bringing them back,—processions of gigantic glow-worms meeting by dumb appointment in a nest of hot ashes and trodden logs. All faces were drowned in the dark until these re-united embers fitfully brought them out. A crowd of frightened immigrants drew around the blaze, calling each other by name, and demanding to know who was scalped.
Barbe saw nothing better to do than to stand beside her wrecked tent, and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine burrowed closely to her, uttering distressed noises.
The pursuers presently returned and quieted the camp. Tonty had not lost a man, though a few were wounded. The attacking party carried off with them every trace of their repulse.
Overturned lodges were now set straight, and as soon as Bellefontaine’s wife found hers inhabitable she hid herself within it. But Barbe waited to ask the busy commandant,—
“Monsieur de Tonty, have you any wound?”
“No, mademoiselle,” he answered, pausing to breathe himself, and seize upon an interview so unusual. “I hope you have not been greatly disturbed. The Iroquois are now entirely driven off, and they will not venture to attack us again.”
With excited voice Barbe assured him she had remained tranquil through the battle.
“We do not call this a battle,” laughed Tonty. “These were a party of Senecas, who rallied after defeat and have followed us to our own country. They tried to take the camp by surprise, and nearly did it; but Sanomp crept between sentinels and waked me.”
“Who is Sanomp, monsieur?”
“Do you remember the Iroquois Indian who came to Father Hennepin’s chapel at Fort Frontenac?”
“Yes, monsieur; was he among these Senecas?”
“The Senecas are his tribe of the Iroquois, mademoiselle. He was among them; but he has left his people for my sake. These Indians have visions and obey them. He said the time had come for him to follow me.”
“Sanomp was then the Indian I saw creepingtoward your tent. Did he fight against his own people?”
“No, mademoiselle. While Du Lhut and I flew to rouse the camp, he sat doggedly down where he found me. This was a last chance for the Senecas. We are so near Fort St. Louis, and almost within shouting distance of our Miamis on Buffalo Rock. Such security makes sentinels careless. Sanomp crept ahead of the others and whispered in my ear, taking his chance of being brained before I understood him. He has proved himself my friend and brother, mademoiselle, to do this for me, and moreover to bear the shame of sitting crouched like a squaw through a fray.”
“Everybody loves and fears Monsieur de Tonty,”[20]observed Barbe, with sedate accent.
Tonty breathed deeply.
“Am I an object of fear to you, mademoiselle? Doubtless I have grown like a buffalo,” he ruminated. “Perhaps you feel a natural aversion toward a man bearing a hand of iron.”
“On the contrary, it seemed a great convenience among the Indians,” murmured Barbe, and Tonty laughed and stood silent.
The camp was again settling to rest, and fewer swarming figures peopled the darkness. Winding and aspiring through new fuel the camp-fire once more began to lift its impalpable pavilion, and groups sat around it beneath that canopy of tremulous light, with rapid talk and gesture repeating to each other their impressions of the Senecas’ attack.
“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, lifting his left hand to his bare head, for he had rushed hatless into action, “good-night. The guards are doubled. You are more secure than when you lay down before.”
“Good-night, monsieur,” replied Barbe, and he opened her tent for her, when she turned back.
“Monsieur de Tonty,” she whispered swiftly, “I have had no chance during this long journey,—for with you alone would I speak of it,—to demand if you believe that saying against yourself which they are wickedly charging to my uncle La Salle?”
“Mademoiselle, how could I believe that Monsieur de la Salle said in France he wished to be rid of me? One laughs at a rumor like that.”
“The tales lately told about his madness are more than I can bear.”
“Mademoiselle, Monsieur de la Salle’s enemies always called his great enterprises madness.”
“Can you imagine where he now is, Monsieur de Tonty?”
“Oh, heavens!” Tonty groaned. “Often have I said to myself,—Has Monsieur de la Salle been two years in America, and I have not joined him, or even spoken with him? It is not my fault! As soon as I believed he had reached the Gulf of Mexico I descended the Mississippi. I searched all those countries, every cape and every shore. I demanded of all the natives where he was, and not one could tell me a word. Judge of my pain and my dolor.”[21]
They stood in such silence as could result from two people’s ceasing to murmur in the midst of high-pitched voices.
“Monsieur de Tonty,” resumed Barbe, “do you remember Jeanne le Ber?”
“Mademoiselle, I never saw her.”
“She refused my uncle La Salle at Fort Frontenac, and I detested her for it. In the new church at Montreal she has had a cell made behind the altar. There she prays day and night.She wears only a blanket, but the nun who feeds her says her face is like an angel’s. Monsieur, Jeanne le Ber fell with her head bumping the floor,—and I understood her. She had a spirit fit to match with my uncle La Salle’s. She thought she was right. I forgave her then, for I know, monsieur, she loved my uncle La Salle.”
When Barbe had spoken such daring words she stepped inside her tent and dropped its curtain.
The October of the Mississippi valley—full of mild nights and mellow days and the shine of ripened corn—next morning floated all the region around Fort St. Louis in silver vapor. The two small cannon on the Rock began to roar salutes as soon as Tonty’s line of canoes appeared moving down the river.
To Barbe this was an enchanted land. She sat by the Demoiselle Bellefontaine and watched its populous beauty unfold. Blue lodge-smoke arose everywhere. Tonty pointed out the Shawnee settlement eastward, and the great town of the Illinois northwest of the Rock,—a city of high lodges shaped like the top of a modern emigrant wagon. He told where Piankishaws and Weas might be distinguished, how many Shawanoes were settled beyond the ravine back of the Rock, and how many thousand people, altogether, were collected in this principality of Monsieur de la Salle.
A castellated cliff with turrets of glittering sandstone towered above the boats, but beyond that,—round, bold, and isolated, its rugged breasts decked with green, its base washed by the river,—the Rock[22]of St. Louis waited whatever might be coming in its eternal leisure. Frenchmen and Indians leaped upon earthworks at its top and waved a welcome side by side, the flag of France flying above their heads.
At Barbe’s right hand lay an alluvial valley bordered by a ridge of hills a mile away. Along this ancient river-bed Indian women left off gathering maize from standing stalks, and ran joyfully crying out to receive their victorious warriors. Inmates poured from the settlement of French cabins opposite and around the Rock. With cannon booming overhead, Tonty passed its base followed by the people who were to ascend with him, and landed west of it, on a sandy strip where the voyager could lay his hand on that rugged fern-tufted foundation. Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine followed him along a path cut through thickets, around moss-softened irregular heights of sandstone, girdled in belowand bulging out above, so that no man could obtain foothold to scale them. Gnarled tree-roots, like folds of snakes caught between closing strata, hung, writhed in and out. The path, under pine needles and fallen leaves, was cushioned with sand white as powdered snow. Behind the Rock, stretching toward a ravine, were expanses of this lily sand which looked fresh from the hands of the Maker, as if even a raindrop had never indented its whiteness.
Three or four foot-holes were cut in the southeast flank of rock wall. An Indian ran down from above and flung a rope over to Tonty. He mounted these rocky stirrups first, helped by the rope, and knelt to reach back for Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine. The next ascent was up water-terraced rock to an angle as high as their waists. Here two more stirrups were cut in the rock. Ferns brushed their faces, and shrubs stooped over them. The heights were studded thick with gigantic trees half-stripped of leaves. Rust-colored lichens and lichens hoary like blanched old men, spread their great seals on stone and soil.
Wide water-terraced steps, looking as if cut for a temple, ascended at last to the gate. Throughthis Tonty led his charge upon a dimpled sward, for care had been taken to keep turf alive in Fort St. Louis.
Recognition and joy were the first sensations of many immigrants entering, as the people they loved received them. But Barbe felt only delicious freedom in such a crag castle. There was a sound of the sea in pine trees all around. The top of the Rock was nearly an acre in extent. It was fortified by earthworks, except the cliff above the river, which was set with palisades and the principal dwellings of the fort. There were besides, a storehouse, a block-house, and several Indian lodges. But the whole space—so shaded yet so sunny, reared high in air yet sheltered as a nest—was itself such a temple of security that any buildings within it seemed an impertinence. The centre, bearing its flagstaff, was left open.
Two priests, a Récollet and a Sulpitian, met Tonty and the girl he led in, the Sulpitian receiving her in his arms and bestowing a kiss on her forehead.
“Oh, my uncle Abbé!” Barbe gasped with surprise. “Is Colin with you? Is my uncle La Salle here?”
But Tonty, swifter than the Abbé’s reply, laid hold of the Récollet Father and drew him beside Abbé Cavelier, demanding without greeting or pause for courteous compliment,—
“Is Monsieur de la Salle safe and well? You both come from Monsieur de la Salle!”
“He was well when we parted from him,” replied the Abbé Cavelier, looking at a bunch of maiden-hair fern which Barbe had caught from a ledge and tucked in the bosom of her gown. “We left him on the north branch of the Trinity River, Monsieur de Tonty.”
The Récollet said nothing, but kept his eyes fixed on his folded hands. Tonty, too eager to mark well both bearers of such news, demanded again impartially,—
“And he was well?”
“He left us in excellent health, monsieur.”
“How glad I am to find you in Fort St. Louis!” exclaimed Tonty. “This is the first direct message I have had from Monsieur de la Salle since he sailed from France. How many men are in your party? Have you been made comfortable?”
“Only six, monsieur. We have been made quite comfortable by your officer Bellefontaine.”
“And he was well?”—Page 192.
“And he was well?”—Page 192.
“Monsieur the Abbé, where did Monsieur de la Salle land his colony?”
“On a western coast of the Gulf, monsieur. It was most unfortunate. Ever since he has been searching for the Mississippi.”
“While I searched for him. Oh, Fathers!” Tonty’s voice deepened and his swarthy joyful face set its contrast opposite two downcast churchmen, “nothing in Fort St. Louis is good enough for messengers from Monsieur de la Salle. What can I do for you? Did he send me no orders?”
“He did commit a paper to my hand, naming skins and merchandise that he would have delivered to me, as well as a canoe and provisions for our journey to New France.”
“Come, let me see this paper,” demanded Tonty. “Whatever Monsieur de la Salle orders shall be done at once; but the season is now so advanced you will not push on to New France until spring.”
“That is the very reason, Monsieur de Tonty, why we should push on at once. We have waited a month for your return. I leave Fort St. Louis with my party to-morrow, if you will so forward my wishes.”
“Monsieur the Abbé, it is impossible! You have yet told me nothing of all it is necessary for me to know touching Monsieur de la Salle.”
“To-morrow,” repeated the Abbé Cavelier, “I must set out at dawn, if you can honor my brother’s paper.”
Tonty, with a gesture of his left hand, led the way to his quarters across the esplanade. As Barbe walked behind the Récollet Father, she wondered why he had given no answer to any of Tonty’s questions.
Her brother advanced to meet her, and she ran and gave him her hands and her cheek to kiss. They had been apart four years, and looked at each other with scrutinizing gaze. He overtopped her by a head. Barbe expected to find him tall and rudely masculine, but there was change in him for which she was not prepared.
“My sister has grown charming,” pronounced Colin. “Not as large as the Caveliers usually are, but like a bird exquisite in make and graceful motion.”
“Oh, Colin, what is the matter?” demanded Barbe, with direct dart. “I see concealment in your face!”
“What do you see concealed? Perhaps you will tell me that.” He became mottled with those red and white spots which are the blood’s protest against the will.
“The Récollet Father did not answer a word to Monsieur de Tonty’s questions, Colin; and the voice of my uncle the Abbé sounded unnatural. Is there wicked power in those countries you have visited to make you all come back like men half asleep from some drug?”
“Yes, there is!” exclaimed the boy; “I hate that wilderness. When we are once in France I will never venture into such wilds again. They dull me until my tongue seems dead.”
“And, Colin, you did leave my uncle La Salle quite well?”
“It was he who left us. He was in excellent health the last time we saw him.” The boy spoke these words with precision, and Barbe sighed her relief.
“For myself,” she said, “I love this wild world. I shall stay here until my uncle La Salle arrives.”
“Our uncle the Abbé will decide that,” replied Colin. “It is unfortunate that you left Montreal. Your only hope of staying hererests on the hard journey before us, and the risks we run of meeting winter on the way. I wish you had been sent to France. I wish we were all in France now.” Colin’s face relaxed wistfully.
Two crows were scolding in the trees below them. Barbe felt ready to weep; as if the tender spirit of autumn had stolen through her, as mists steal along the hills. She sat down on the grassy earthwork, and Colin picked some pine needles from a branch and stood silent beside her, chewing them.
But those vague moods which haunt girlhood held always short dominion over Barbe. She was in close kinship with the world around, and the life of the fort began to occupy her.
The Rock was like a small fair with its additional inhabitants, who were still running about in a confusion of joyful noises. Children, delighted to be freed from canoes at so bright a time of day, raced across the centre, or hid behind wigwam or tree, calling to each other. An Indian stalked across to the front of the Rock, and Barbe watched him reach out through an opening in the low log palisade. A platform was there built on the trunks of two leaning cedars.The Indian unwound a windlass and let down a bucket to the river below. She heard its distant splash and some of its resounding drips on the way up. Living in Fort St. Louis was certainly like living on a cloud.
“I will go into the officers’ house,” suggested Colin, “and see how the Abbé’s demands are met by Monsieur de Tonty. We shall then know if we are to set out for Quebec to-morrow.”
Barbe did not object or assent. Youth shoves off any evil day by ignoring it, and Colin left her in lazy enjoyment of the populous place.
The Demoiselle Bellefontaine approached to ask if she desired to come to the apartment the commandant reserved for her; but Barbe replied that she wished to sit there and amuse herself awhile longer with the novelty of Fort St. Louis.
A child she had noticed on the journey brought her, as great treasure, a handful of flints and crumble-dust from the sandstone. They sorted the stuff on her knee,—fat-faced dark French child and young girl fine enough to be the sylvan spirit of the Rock.
Mademoiselle Cavelier’s wardrobe was by no means equal to that gorgeous period in which she lived, being planned by her uncle the Abbé and executed by the frugal and exact hands of a self-denying sisterhood. But who can hide a girl’s supple slimness in a gown plain as a nun’s, or take the blossom-burnish off her face with colonial caps? Dark curls showed around her temples. Barbe’s aquiline face had received scarcely a mark since Tonty saw it at Fort Frontenac. The gentle monotonous restraint of convent life had calmed her wild impulses, and she was in that trance of expecting great things to come, which is the beautiful birthright of youth.
While she was sorting arrow-head chips, her uncle came out of Tonty’s quarters and cast his eye about the open space in search of her. At his approach Barbe’s playmate slipped away, and the Abbé placed himself in front of her with his hands behind him.
Barbe gave him a scanty look, feeling sure he came to announce the next day’s journey. This man, having many excellences, yet roused constant antagonism in his brother and the niece most like that brother. When he protruded his lower lip and looked determined, Barbe thought if the sin could be set aside a plunge in the river would be better than this journey.
“I have a proposal for you, my child,” said the Abbé. “It comes from Monsieur de Tonty. He tells me my brother La Salle encouraged him to hope for this alliance, and I must declare I see no other object my brother La Salle had in view when he sent you to Fort St. Louis. Monsieur de Tonty understands the state of your fortune. On his part, he holds this seigniory jointly with my brother, and the traffic he is able to control brings no mean revenue. It is true he lacks a hand. But it hath been well replaced by the artificer, and he comes of an Italian family of rank.”
Barbe’s head was turned so entirely away that the mere back of a scarlet ear was left to the Abbé. One hand clutched her lap and the other pulled grass with destructive fingers.
“Having stated Monsieur de Tonty’s case I will now state mine,” proceeded her uncle. “I leave this fort before to-morrow dawn. I must take you with me or leave you here a bride. The journey is perilous for a small party and wemay not reach France until next year. And an alliance like this will hardly be found in France for a girl of uncertain fortune. Therefore I have betrothed you to Monsieur de Tonty, and you will be married this evening at vespers.”