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diff --git a/41273-h/41273-h.htm b/41273-h/41273-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c0d56c --- /dev/null +++ b/41273-h/41273-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5094 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Story of Tonty, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood: A Project Gutenberg eBook. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + + .subtitle {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 2em; font-size:80%;} + +div.w50 { width: 50%; } + +p.titlepage {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 2em; font-size:100%;} +p.titlepage140 {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 2em; font-size:140%;} +p.titlepage120 {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 2em; font-size:120%;} + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + border-color: #CC6633; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%} +hr.full {width: 95%;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +table.right { + margin-right: 0%; + } + + .tdr {text-align: right;} + .tdc {text-align: center;} + .pad2 {padding-left: 2em; } + +a[title].pagenum { position: absolute; right: 3%; } + +a[title].pagenum:after +{ + content: attr(title); + border: 1px solid silver; + display: inline; + font-size: x-small; + text-align: right; + color: #808080; + background-color: inherit; + font-style: normal; + padding: 1px 4px 1px 4px; + font-variant: normal; + font-weight: normal; + text-decoration: none; + text-indent: 0; + letter-spacing: 0; +} + +a:link.nodec { text-decoration: none; } + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.fakesc { font-size: smaller; text-transform: uppercase; } + +.caption {font-weight: bold; text-align: center;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + + .split { + float: right; + clear: right; + padding-right: 0%; + padding-left: 0; + padding-top: 0; + padding-bottom: 0; + } + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + + +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:smaller; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; } + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Story of Tonty, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Story of Tonty + +Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood + +Release Date: November 2, 2012 [EBook #41273] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF TONTY *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, KD Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="transnote"> + +<p class="titlepage">Transcriber’s Note</p> + +<p>The text is given here as printed with the exception of several +minor errors, which have been corrected and are noted in the End +Notes. French titles are general printed without accents, and are +retained as such.</p> + +</div> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="450" height="710" alt="" /> +</div> + +<h1><span class="smcap">The Story of Tonty</span></h1> +<p class="titlepage">BY</p> +<p class="titlepage120">MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD<br /><br /></p> +<p class="titlepage">Illustrated<br /></p> +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="216" height="200" alt="" /> +</div> +<p class="titlepage">CHICAGO<br /> +A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY<br /> +1890<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Copyright,</span><br /> +By A. C. McClurg and Co.<br /> +<span class="fakesc">A.D.</span> 1889.<br /> +</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_v" title="v"></a></p> + +<table summary="toc" width="80%"> +<col width="15%" /> +<col width="75%" /> +<col width="15%" /> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td><td class="tdr"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#INTRODUCTION"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></a></td><td class="tdr">7</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc"><b>Book I.</b></td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc">A MONTREAL BEAVER FAIR.</td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_I"><span class="smcap">Frontenac</span></a></td><td class="tdr">11</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_II"><span class="smcap">Hand-of-Iron</span></a></td><td class="tdr">20</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_III"><span class="smcap">Father Hennepin</span></a></td><td class="tdr">28</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_IV"><span class="smcap">A Council</span></a></td><td class="tdr">39</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_V"><span class="smcap">Sainte Jeanne</span></a></td><td class="tdr">48</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#I_VI"><span class="smcap">The Prophecy of Jolycœur</span></a></td><td class="tdr">57</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc"><b>Book II.</b></td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc">FORT FRONTENAC.</td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_I"><span class="smcap">Rival Masters</span></a></td><td class="tdr">71</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_II"><span class="smcap">A Travelled Friar</span></a></td><td class="tdr">81</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_III"><span class="smcap">Heaven and Earth</span></a></td><td class="tdr">87</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_IV"><span class="smcap">A Canoe from the Illinois</span></a></td><td class="tdr">96</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_V"><span class="smcap">Father Hennepin’s Chapel</span></a></td><td class="tdr">109</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_VI"><span class="smcap">La Salle and Tonty</span></a></td><td class="tdr">118<a class="pagenum" name="Page_vi" title="vi"></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_VII"><span class="smcap">An Adoption</span></a></td><td class="tdr">128</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_VIII"><span class="smcap">Tegahkouita</span></a></td><td class="tdr">136</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_IX"><span class="smcap">An Ordeal</span></a></td><td class="tdr">146</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#II_X"><span class="smcap">Hemlock</span></a></td><td class="tdr">155</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc"><b>Book III.</b></td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td class="tdc">FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.</td><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_I"><span class="smcap">In an Eagle’s Nest</span></a></td><td class="tdr">167</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_II"><span class="smcap">The Friend and Brother</span></a></td><td class="tdr">176</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_III"><span class="smcap">Half-Silence</span></a></td><td class="tdr">188</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_IV"><span class="smcap">A Fête on the Rock</span></a></td><td class="tdr">200</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_V"><span class="smcap">The Undespairing Norman</span></a></td><td class="tdr">210</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td class="pad2"><a class="nodec" href="#III_VI"><span class="smcap">To-Day</span></a></td><td class="tdr">224</td></tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_7" title="7"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</a></h2> + + +<p>No man can see all of a mountain at once. He sees its differing sides. +Moreover, it has rainy and bright day aspects, and summer and winter +faces.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z013.jpg" width="500" height="269" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The romancer is covered with the dust of old books, modern books, great +books, and out of them all brings in a condensing hand these pictures of +two men whose lives were as large as this continent.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_8" title="8"></a></p> + +<p>La Salle is a definite figure in the popular mind. But La Salle’s +greater friend is known only to historians and students. To me the +finest fact in the Norman explorer’s career is the devotion he commanded +in Henri de Tonty. No stupid dreamer, no ruffian at heart, no betrayer +of friendship, no mere blundering woodsman—as La Salle has been +outlined by his enemies—could have bound to himself a man like Tonty. +The love of this friend and the words this friend has left on record +thus honor La Salle. And we who like courage and steadfastness and +gentle courtesy in men owe much honor which has never been paid to Henri +de Tonty.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_9" title="9"></a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_10" title="10"></a></p> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<h2><a name="Book_I" id="Book_I">Book I.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">A MONTREAL BEAVER FAIR.</span><br /> +1678 <span class="fakesc">A. D.</span></h2> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_11" title="11"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_TONTY" id="THE_STORY_OF_TONTY">THE STORY OF TONTY.</a></h2> + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<h2><a name="I_I" id="I_I">I.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">FRONTENAC.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">Along the entire river front of Montreal camp-fires faded as the +amphitheatre of night gradually dissolved around them.</p> + +<p>Canoes lay beached in one long row as if a shoal of huge fish had come +to land. The lodges made a new street along Montreal wharf. Oblong +figures of Indian women moved from shadow to shine, and children stole +out to caper beside kettles where they could see their breakfasts +steaming. Here and there light fell upon a tranquil mummy less than a +metre in length, standing propped against a lodge side, and blinking +stoical eyes in its brown flat face as only a bark-encased Indian baby +could blink; or it slept undisturbed by the noise of the awakening camp, +looking a mummy indeed.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_12" title="12"></a></p> + +<p>The savage of the New World carried his family with him on every +peaceable journey; sometimes to starve for weeks when the winter hunting +proved bad. It was only when he went to war that he denied himself all +squaw service.</p> + +<p>The annual beaver fair was usually held in midsummer, but this year the +tribes of the upper lakes had not descended with their furs to Montreal +until September. These precious skins, taken out of the canoes, were +stored within the lodges.</p> + +<p>Every male of the camp was already greasing, painting, and feathering +himself for the grand council, which always preceded a beaver fair. +Hurons, Ottawas, Crees, Nipissings, Ojibwas, Pottawatamies, each jealous +for his tribe, completed a process begun the night before, and put on +what might be called his court dress. In some cases this was no dress at +all, except a suit of tattooing, or a fine coat of ochre streaked with +white clay or soot. The juice of berries heightened nature in their +faces. But there were grand barbarians who laid out robes of beaver +skin, ample, and marked inside with strange figures or porcupine quill +embroidery.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_13" title="13"></a> The heads swarming in this vast and dusky dressing-room +were some of them shaven bare except the scalp lock, some bristling in a +ridge across the top, while others carried the natural coarse growth +tightly braided down one side, with the opposite half flowing loose.</p> + +<p>Montreal behind its palisades made a dim background to all this early +illumination,—few domestic candles shining through windows or glancing +about the Hôtel Dieu as the nuns began their morning devotions. Mount +Royal now flickered a high shadow, and now massed inertly against stars; +but the river, breathing forever like some colossal creature, reflected +all the camp-fires in its moving scales.</p> + +<p>The guns of the fort had fired a salute to Indian guests on their +arrival the evening before. But at sunrise repeated cannonading, a +prolonged roll of drums, and rounds of musketry announced that the +governor-general’s fleet was in sight.</p> + +<p>Montreal flocked to the wharf where already the savages were arrayed in +solemn ranks. Marching out of the fortress with martial music, past the +Hôtel Dieu to the landing-place where Frontenac must step from his boat, +came<a class="pagenum" name="Page_14" title="14"></a> the remnant of the Carignan regiment. Even the Sulpitian +brotherhood, whose rights as seigniors of Montreal island this governor +had at one time slighted, appeared to do him honor. And gentle nuns of +St. Joseph were seen in the general outpour of inhabitants.</p> + +<p>This governor-general, with all his faults, had a large and manly way of +meeting colonial dangers, and was always a prop under the fainting heart +of New France.</p> + +<p>His boats made that display upon the St. Lawrence which it was his +policy and inclination to make before Indians. Officers in white and +gold, and young nobles of France, powdered, and flashing in the colors +of Louis’ magnificent reign, crowded his own vessel,—young men who had +ventured out to Quebec because it was the fashion at court to be skilled +in colonial matters, and now followed Frontenac as far as Montreal to +amuse themselves with the annual beaver fair. The flag of France, set +with its lily-like symbol, waved over their heads its white reply to its +twin signal on the fort.</p> + +<p>Frontenac stood at the boat’s prow, his rich cloak thrown back, and his +head bared to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_15" title="15"></a> morning river breath and the people’s shouts. Being +colonial king pleased this soldier, tired of European camps and the full +blaze of royalty, where his poverty put him to the disadvantage of a +singed moth.</p> + +<p>He came blandly gliding to the wharf, Louis de Buade, Count of +Frontenac, and Baron of Palluau, and the only governor of New France who +ever handled the arrogant Five Nations of the Iroquois like a strong +father,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—a man who would champion the rights of his meanest colonist, +and at the same time quarrel with his lieutenant in power to his last +breath.</p> + +<p>Merchants of Quebec followed him with boat-loads of Indian supplies. +Even Acadia had sent men to this voyage, for the Baron de Saint-Castin +appeared in the fleet, with his young Indian Baroness. It is told of +Saint-Castin that he had kept a harem in his sylvan principality of +Pentegoet; but being a man of conscience, he confessed and reformed. It +is also told of him that he never kept a harem or otherwise lapsed into +the barba<a class="pagenum" name="Page_16" title="16"></a>risms of the Penobscots, among whom he carried missionaries +and over whom he was a great lord. Type of the Frenchman of his day, he +came to New France a lad in the Carignan regiment, amassed fortunes in +the fur trade, and holding his own important place in the colony, goaded +like a thorn the rival colony of New England along his borders.</p> + +<p>But most conspicuous to the eyes of Montreal were two men standing at +Frontenac’s right hand, a Norman and an Italian. Both were tall, the +Italian being of deeper colors and more generous materials. His large +features were clothed in warm brown skin. Rings of black hair thick as a +fleece were cut short above his military collar. His fearless, kindly +eyes received impressions from every aspect of the New World. There +dwelt in Henri de Tonty the power to make men love him at +sight,—savages as well as Europeans. He wore the dress of a French +lieutenant of infantry, and looked less than thirty years old, having +entered the service of France in his early youth.</p> + +<p>The other man, Robert Cavelier,—called La Salle from an estate he had +once owned in France,—explorer, and seignior of Fort Fron<a class="pagenum" name="Page_17" title="17"></a>tenac and +adjacent grants on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was at that time in +the prime of his power. He was returning from France, with the king’s +permission to work out all his gigantic enterprises, with funds for the +purpose, and one of the most promising young military men in Europe as +his lieutenant.</p> + +<p>Montreal merchants on the wharf singled out La Salle with jealous eye, +which saw in the drooping point and flaring base of his nose an endless +smile of scorn. He was a man who had only to use his monopolies to +become enormously rich, cutting off the trade of the lakes from +Montreal. That he was above gain, except as he could use it for hewing +his ambitious road into the wilderness, they did not believe. The +merchants of Montreal readily translated the shyness and self-restraint +of his solitary nature into the arrogance of a recently ennobled and +successful man.</p> + +<p>La Salle had a spare face, with long oval cheeks, curving well inward +beside the round of his sensitive prominent chin. Gray and olive tones +still further cooled the natural pallor of his skin and made ashen brown +the hair which he wore flowing.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_18" title="18"></a></p> + +<p>The plainness of an explorer and the elegance of a man exact in all his +habits distinguished La Salle’s dress against that background of +brilliant courtiers.</p> + +<p>He moved ashore with Frontenac, who saluted benignly both the array of +red allies and the inhabitants of this second town in the province.</p> + +<p>The sub-governor stepped out to escort the governor-general to the fort, +bells rang, cannon still boomed, martial music pierced the heart with +its thrill, and the Carignan squad wheeled in behind Frontenac’s moving +train.</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle! Sieur de la Salle!” a little girl called, breaking +away from the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose convent robes had enclosed +her like palisades, “take me also in the procession!”</p> + +<p>This demand granted itself, so nimbly did she escape a nun’s ineffectual +grasp and spring between Tonty and La Salle.</p> + +<p>Frontenac himself had turned at the shrill outcry. He laughed when he +saw the wilful young creature taking the explorer by the wrist and +falling into step so close to his own person.</p> + +<p>A pursuing nun, unwilling to interrupt the governors train, hovered +along its progress,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_19" title="19"></a> making anxious signs to her charge, until she +received an assuring gesture from La Salle. She then went back +dissatisfied but relieved of responsibility; and the child, with a proud +fling of her person, marched on toward the fort.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_20" title="20"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="I_II" id="I_II">II</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">HAND-OF-IRON.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">“Mademoiselle the tiger-cat,” said La Salle to Tonty, making himself +heard with some effort above the din of martial sound.</p> + +<p>The young soldier lifted his hat with his left hand and made the child a +bow, which she regarded with critical eyes.</p> + +<p>“I am the niece of Monsieur de la Salle,” she explained to Tonty as she +marched; “so he calls me tiger-cat.”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier is the tiger-cat’s human name,” the +explorer added, laughing. “It is flattering to have this nimble animal +spring affectionately on one from ambush; but I should soon have +inquired after you at the convent, mademoiselle.”</p> + +<p>“I did not spring affectionately on you,” said Barbe; “I wanted to be in +the procession.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_21" title="21"></a></p> + +<p>“Hast thou then lost all regard for thy uncle La Salle during his year +of absence?”</p> + +<p>Barbe’s high childish voice distinctly and sincerely stated, “No, +monsieur; I have fought all the girls at the convent on your account. +Jeanne le Ber said nothing against you; but she is a Le Ber. I am glad +you came back in such grandeur. I was determined to be in the grandeur +myself. But it is not a time to give you my cheek for a kiss.”</p> + +<p>La Salle smiled over her head at Tonty. The Italian noted her marked +resemblance to the explorer. She had the same features in delicate +tints, the darkness of her eyelashes and curls only emphasizing the +type. Already her small nose drooped at the point and flared at the +base. As La Salle and his young kinswoman stepped together, Tonty gauged +them alike,—two self-restraining natures with unmeasured endurance and +individual force like the electric current.</p> + +<p>Montreal’s square bastioned fort, by the mouth of a small creek flowing +into the St. Lawrence, was soon reached from the wharf. It stood at the +south end of the town.</p> + +<p>“My dear child,” said La Salle, stating his<a class="pagenum" name="Page_22" title="22"></a> case to Barbe, “it is +necessary for me to go into the fort with Count Frontenac, and equally +necessary you should go back at once to the Sisters. I will bring you +out of the convent to-morrow to look at the beaver fair. This is +Monsieur de Tonty, my lieutenant; let him take you back to the nuns. I +shall be blamed if I carry you into the fort.”</p> + +<p>Barbe heard him without raising objections. She looked at Tonty, who +gave her his left hand and drew her out of the train.</p> + +<p>It swept past them into the fortress gates,—gallant music, faces +returning her eager gaze with smiles, plumes, powdered curls, and laces, +gold and white uniforms, soldiers with the sun flashing from their +gun-barrels.</p> + +<p>Barbe watched the last man in. To express her satisfaction she then rose +to the tip of one foot and hopped three steps. She was lightly and +delicately made, and as full of restless grace as a bird. Her face and +curls bloomed above and strongly contrasted with the raiment her convent +guardians planned for a child dependent, not on their charity, but on +their maternal care.</p> + +<p>The September morning enveloped the world in a haze of brightness, like +that perfecting blue<a class="pagenum" name="Page_23" title="23"></a> breath which we call the bloom upon the grape. A +great landscape with a scarf of melting azure resting around its +horizon, or ravelling to shreds against the mountain’s breast, or +pretending to be wood-smoke across the river, drew Tonty’s eye from the +disappearing pageant.</p> + +<p>That fair land was a fit spot whereon the most luxurious of +civilizations should touch and affiliate with savages of the wilderness. +Up the limpid green river the Lachine Rapids showed their teeth with +audible roar. From that point Mount Royal could be seen rising out of +mists and stretching its hind-quarters westward like some vast mastodon. +But to Tonty only its front appeared, a globe dipped in autumn colors +and wearing plumes of vapor. The sky of this new hemisphere rose in +unmeasured heights which the eye followed in vain; there seemed no +zenith to the swimming blinding azure.</p> + +<p>A row of booths for merchants had been built all along the outside of +Montreal’s palisades, and traders were thus early setting their goods in +array.</p> + +<p>At the north extremity of the town that huge stone windmill built by the +seigniors for defence, cast a long dewy shadow toward the west. Its<a class="pagenum" name="Page_24" title="24"></a> +loopholes showed like dark specks on the body of masonry.</p> + +<p>Sun-sparkles on the river were no more buoyant and changeable than the +child at Tonty’s side. Dimples came and went in her cheeks. Her blood +was stirred by the swarming life around her.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” she confided to her uncle’s lieutenant, “I am meditating +something very wicked.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly that is impossible, mademoiselle,” said Tonty, accommodating +his step to her reluctant gait.</p> + +<p>“I am meditating on not going back to the convent.”</p> + +<p>“Where would you go, mademoiselle?”</p> + +<p>“Everywhere, to see things.”</p> + +<p>“But my orders are to escort you to the nuns. You would disgrace me as a +soldier.”</p> + +<p>Barbe lifted her gaze to his face and was diverted from rebellion. Tonty +put out his arm to guard her, but a tall stalking brave was pushed +against her in passing and immediately startled by the thud of her +prompt fist upon his back. The Indian turned, unsheathing his knife.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_25" title="25"></a></p> + +<p>“Get out of my way, thou ugly big warrior,” said Barbe, meeting his eye, +which softened from fierceness to laughter, and holding her fist ready +for further encounter.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z031.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The Indian made some mocking gestures and menaced her playfully with his +thumb. Tonty threw his arm across her shoulder and moved her on toward +the convent. Barbe escaped from this touch, an entirely new matter +filling her mind.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, even old Jonaneaux in our Hôtel Dieu hath not such a heavy +hand as thou hast. Many a time hath he pulled me down off the palisade +when I looked over to see the coureurs<a class="pagenum" name="Page_26" title="26"></a> de bois go roaring by. But thou +hast a hand like iron!”</p> + +<p>Tonty flushed, being not yet hardened to his misfortune.</p> + +<p>“It is a hand of iron. I am called Main-de-fer.”<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>Barbe took hold of it in its glove. Of all the people she had ever met +Tonty was the only person whose touch she did not resent.</p> + +<p>“The other hand is not like unto it, monsieur?”</p> + +<p>He gave her the other also, and she compared their weight. With a +roguish lifting of her nostrils she inquired,—</p> + +<p>“Will every bit of you turn to metal like this heavy hand?”</p> + +<p>“Alas, no, mademoiselle; there is no hope of that.”</p> + +<p>Tonty stripped his gauntlet off. With half afraid fingers she examined +the artificial member. It was of copper.</p> + +<p>“Where is the old one, monsieur?”</p> + +<p>“It was blown off by a grenade at Messina last year.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_27" title="27"></a></p> + +<p>“Does it hurt?”</p> + +<p>“Not now. Except when I think of the service of Monsieur de la Salle, +and of my being thus pieced out as a man.”</p> + +<p>Barbe measured his height and breadth and warm-toned face with satisfied +eyes. She consoled him.</p> + +<p>“There is so much of you, monsieur, you can easily do without a hand.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_28" title="28"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="I_III" id="I_III">III.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">FATHER HENNEPIN.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">“Thou art a comfort to a soldier, mademoiselle,” said Tonty, heartily.</p> + +<p>“But not to a priest,” observed Barbe. “For last birthday when I was +eleven my uncle Abbé stuck out his lip and said I was eleven years bad. +But my uncle La Salle kissed my cheek. There goeth François le Moyne.” +Her face became suddenly distorted with grimaces of derision beside +which Tonty could scarcely keep his gravity. A boy of about her own age +ran past, dropping her a sneer for her pains.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, these Le Moynes and Sorels and Bouchers and Varennes and +Joliets and Le Bers, they are all against my uncle La Salle. The girls +talk about it in the convent. But he hath the governor on his side, so +what can they do? I have pinched Jeanne le Ber at school, but she will +never pinch back and it only makes her feel<a class="pagenum" name="Page_29" title="29"></a> holier. So I pinch her no +more. Do you know Jeanne le Ber?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Tonty, “I have not that pleasure.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, monsieur, it is no pleasure. She says so many prayers. When I have +prayers for penances they make me so tired I have to get up and hop +between them. But Jeanne le Ber would pray all the time if her father +did not pull her off her knees. My father and mother died in France. If +they were alive they would not have to pull me off my knees.”</p> + +<p>“But a woman should learn to pray, even as a man should learn to fight,” +observed Tonty. “He stands between her and danger, and she should stand +linking him to heaven.”</p> + +<p>“I can fight for myself,” said Barbe. “And everybody ought to say his +own prayers; but it makes one disagreeable to say more than his share. I +wish to grow up an agreeable person.”</p> + +<p>They had reached the palisade entrance which fronted the river, Barbe’s +feet still lagging amid the lively scenes outside. She allowed Tonty to +lead her with his left hand, thus sheltering her next the booths from +streams of passing Indians and traders.</p> + +<p>Beside this open gate she would have lingered<a class="pagenum" name="Page_30" title="30"></a> indefinitely, chattering +to a guardian who felt her hatred of convent restraint, and gazing at +preparations for the council: at prunes and chopped pieces of oxen being +put to boil for an Indian feast; at the governor’s chair from the +fortress, where the sub-governor lived, borne by men to the middle of +that space yearly occupied as the council ring. But a watchful Sister +was hovering ready inside the palisade gate, and reaching forth her arm +she drew her charge away from Tonty, giving him brief and scandalized +thanks for his service.</p> + +<p>Barbe looked back. It was worth Tonty’s while to catch sight of that +regretful face smeared about its warm neck by curls, its lips parted to +repeat and still repeat, “Adieu, monsieur. Adieu, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>But two men had come between the disappearing child and him, one man, +dressed partly like an officer and partly like a coureur de bois, +throwing both arms around Tonty in the eager Latin manner.</p> + +<p>“My cousin Henri de Tonty, welcome to the New World. I waited with my +gouty leg at the fortress for you; but when you came not, like a good +woodsman, I tracked you down.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_31" title="31"></a></p> + +<p>“My cousin Greysolon du Lhut! Glad am I to find you so speedily. This +cold and heavy hand belies me.”</p> + +<p>“I heard of this hand. But the other was well lost, my cousin. Take +courage in beholding me; I had nearly lost a leg, and not by good powder +and shot either, but with gout which disgracefully loads up a man with +his own dead members. But the Iroquois virgin, Catharine Tegahkouita, +hath interceded for me.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty will observe we have saints among the savages in New +France,” said the other man.</p> + +<p>He was a Récollet friar with sandalled feet, wearing a gray capote of +coarse texture which was girt with the cord of Saint Francis. His peaked +hood hung behind his shoulders leaving his shaven crown to glisten with +rosy enjoyment of the sunlight. A crucifix hung at his side; but no man +ever devoted his life to prayer who was so manifestly created to enjoy +the world. He had a nose of Flemish amplitude depressed in the centre, +fat lips, a terraced chin, and twinkling good-humored eyes. The gray +capote could not conceal a pompous swell of the stomach and the strut of +his sandalled feet.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_32" title="32"></a></p> + +<p>“My cousin Tonty,” said Du Lhut, “this is Father Louis Hennepin from +Fort Frontenac. He hath come down to Montreal<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> to meet Monsieur de la +Salle and engage himself in the new western venture.”</p> + +<p>“Venture!” exclaimed a keen-visaged man in the garb of a +merchant-colonist who was carrying a bale of goods to one of the +booths,—for no man in Montreal was ashamed to get profit out of the +beaver fair. “Where your Monsieur de la Salle is concerned there will be +venture enough, but no results for any man but La Salle.”</p> + +<p>He set his bale down as if it were a challenge.</p> + +<p>Points of light sprung into Tonty’s eyes and the blood in his face +showed its quickening.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” he spoke, “if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for +slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_33" title="33"></a><br /> + <a class="pagenum" name="Page_34" title="34"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z039.jpg" width="600" height="354" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“Monsieur,” spoke Tonty, “if you are a gentleman you +shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”—<i>Page 32.</i></p> +</div> + +<p>“Jacques le Ber is a noble of the colony,” declared Du Lhut, with the +derisive freedom this great ranger and leader of coureurs de bois +assumed toward any one; “for hath he not purchased his patent of King +Louis for six thousand livres? But look you, my cousin Tonty, if the +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_35" title="35"></a>king allowed not us colonial nobles to engage in trade he would lose us +all by starvation; for scarce a miserable censitaire on our lands can +pay us his capon and pint of wheat at the end of the year.”</p> + +<p>“I will answer to you, monsieur,” said Jacques le Ber to the soldier, +”that La Salle is the enemy of the colony, and the betrayer of them that +have been his friends.”</p> + +<p>Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty’s arms. Du Lhut then dragged +him with expostulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Frontenac’s +strict orders that all quarrels should be suppressed during the beaver +fair, and as the young man’s furious looks still sought the merchant, +reminding him of the harm he might do La Salle by an open quarrel with +Montreal traders.</p> + +<p>“I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as thou art,—I tell you it +will not do,” declared Du Lhut.</p> + +<p>“Let the man keep his distance, then!”</p> + +<p>“Why, you hot-blooded fellow! why do you take these Frenchmen so +seriously?”</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle is my friend. I will strike any man who denounces +him.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_36" title="36"></a></p> + +<p>“Oh, come out toward the mountain. Let us make a little pilgrimage,” +laughed Du Lhut. “We must cool thee, Tonty, we must cool thee; or La +Salle’s enemies will lie in one heap the length of Montreal, mowed by +this iron hand!”</p> + +<p>As Jacques le Ber carried forward his bale, Father Hennepin walked +beside him dealing forth good-natured remonstrance with fat hands and +out-turned lips.</p> + +<p>“My son, God save me from the man who doth nurse a grievance. Your case +is simply this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and it is now +called Fort Frontenac. He put you and associates of yours in charge, and +you had profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recommendation to the +king, Sieur de la Salle was made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands +thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly chewed to the poisoning +of thy immortal soul.”</p> + +<p>“You churchmen all,—Jesuits, Sulpitians, or Récollets,—are over +zealous to domineer in this colony,” spoke Jacques le Ber, through the +effort of carrying his bale.</p> + +<p>“My son,” said Father Hennepin, swelling his stomach and inflating his +throat, “why should<a class="pagenum" name="Page_37" title="37"></a> I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and +live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue, if I felt no +zeal for saving souls?”</p> + +<p>“I spoke of domineering,” repeated the angry merchant.</p> + +<p>“And touching Monsieur de la Salle,” said Father Hennepin, “I exhort +thee not to love him; for who could love him,—but to rid thyself of +hatred of any one.”</p> + +<p>“Father Hennepin has not then attached himself to La Salle’s new +enterprise?”</p> + +<p>“I have a grand plan of discovery of my own,” said the friar, deeply, +rolling his shaven head, “an enterprise which would terrify anybody but +me. The Sieur de la Salle merely opens my path. I will confess to thee, +my son, that in youth I often hid myself behind the doors of +taverns,—which were no fit haunts for men of holy life,—to hearken +unto sailors’ tales of strange lands. And thus would I willingly do +without eating or drinking, such burning desire I had to explore new +countries.”</p> + +<p>The Father did not observe that Jacques le Ber had reached his own booth +and was there arranging his goods regardless of explorations in strange +lands, but walked on, talking to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_38" title="38"></a> air, his out-thrust lips rounding +every word, until some derisive savage pointed out this solo.</p> + +<p>Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place in the governor’s council, +thinking wrathfully of his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all do, +upon the affronts and hindrances of the present, rather than on his +prospect of founding a strong and worthy family in the colony.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_39" title="39"></a></p> + + + + + +<h2><a name="I_IV" id="I_IV">IV.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">A COUNCIL.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">The North American savage, with an unerring instinct which republics +might well study, sent his wisest men to the front to represent him.</p> + +<p>A great circle of Indians, ranged according to their tribes, sat around +Frontenac when the stone windmill trod its noon shadow underfoot. Te +Deum had been sung in the chapel, and thanks offered for his safe +arrival. The principal men of Montreal, with the governor’s white and +gold officers, sat now within the circle behind his chair.</p> + +<p>But Frontenac faced every individual of his Indian children, moving +before them, their natural leader, as he made his address of greeting, +admonition, and approval, through Du Lhut as interpreter. The old +courtier loved Indians. They appealed to that same element in him which +the coureurs de bois knew how to reach.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_40" title="40"></a> The Frenchman has a wild strain +of blood. He takes kindly and easily to the woods. He makes himself an +appropriate and even graceful figure against any wilderness background, +and goes straight to Nature’s heart, carrying all the refinements of +civilization with him.</p> + +<p>The smoke of the peace pipe went up hour after hour. By strictest rules +of precedence each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe’s +reply to Onontio.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> An Indian never hurried eloquence. The sun might +tip toward Mount Royal, and the steam of his own deferred feast reach +his nose in delicious suggestion. He had to raise the breeze of +prosperity, to clear the sun, to wipe away tears for friends slain +during past misunderstandings with Onontio’s other children, and to open +the path of peace between their lodges and the lodges of his tribe. +Ottawa, Huron, Cree, Nipissing, Ojibwa, or Pottawatamie, it was +necessary for him to bury the hatchet in pantomime, to build a great +council-fire whose smoke should rise to heaven in view of all the +nations, and gather the tribes of the lakes in one family council with +the French around this fire forever.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_41" title="41"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_42" title="42"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z047.jpg" width="600" height="328" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“Each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe’s +reply.”—<i>Page 40.</i></p> +</div> + +<p><a class="pagenum" id="Page_43" title="43"></a></p> + +<p>Children played along the river’s brink, and squaws kept fire under the +kettles. A few men guarded the booths along the palisades from +pilferers, though scarce a possible pilferer roamed from the centre of +interest.</p> + +<p>Crowds of spectators pressed around the great circle; traders who had +brought packs of skins skilfully intercepted by them at some station +above Montreal; interpreters, hired by merchants to serve them during +the fair; coureurs de bois stretching up their neck sinews until these +knotted with intense and prolonged effort. In this standing wall the +habitant was crowded by converted Iroquois from the Mountain mission, +who, having learned their rights as Christians, yielded no inch of room.</p> + +<p>The sun descended out of sight behind Mount Royal, though his presence +lingered with sky and river in abundant crimsons. Still the smoke of the +peace pipe rose above the council ring, and eloquence rolled its periods +on. That misty scarf around the horizon, which high noon drove<a class="pagenum" name="Page_44" title="44"></a> out of +sight, floated into view again, becoming denser and denser. The pipings +of out-door insects came sharpened through twilight, and all the +camp-fires were deepening their hue, before a solemn uprising of +Frenchmen and Indians proclaimed the council over.</p> + +<p>La Salle had sat through it at the governor’s right hand, watching those +bronze faces and restless eyes with sympathy as great as Frontenac’s. +He, also, was a lord of the wilderness. He could more easily open his +shy nature to such red brethren and eloquently command, denounce, or +persuade them, than stand before dames and speak one word,—which he was +forced to attempt when candles were lighted in the candelabra of the +fort.</p> + +<p>There was not such pageantry at Montreal as in the more courtly society +of Quebec. The appearance of the governor with his train of young nobles +drew out those gentler inhabitants who took no part in the bartering of +the beaver fair.</p> + +<p>Perrot, the sub-governor, had known his period of bitter disagreement +with Frontenac. Having made peace with a superior he once defied, he was +anxious to pay Frontenac every<a class="pagenum" name="Page_45" title="45"></a> honor, and the two governors were united +in their policy of amusing and keeping busy so varied an assemblage as +that which thronged the beaver fair. Festivity as grand as colonial +circumstances permitted was therefore held in the governor’s apartments. +The guarded fortress gates stood open; torches burned within the walls, +and blanketed savages stalked in and out.</p> + +<p>Yet that colonial drawing-room lacked the rude elements which go to +making most pioneer societies. Human intercourse in frontier towns +exposed to danger and hardship, though it may be hearty and innocent, is +rarely graceful.</p> + +<p>But here was a small Versailles transplanted to the wilderness. +Fragments of a great court met Indian-wedded nobles and women with +generations of good ancestors behind them. Here were even the fashions +of the times in gowns, and the youths of Louis’ salon bowed and paid +compliments to powdered locks. These French colonial nobles were poor; +but with pioneer instinct they decorated themselves with the best +garments their scanty money would buy. Here thronged Dumays, Le Moynes, +Mousniers, Desroches, Fleurys, Baudrys, Migeons, Vigers, Gautiers, all +chattering and animated. Here stood<a class="pagenum" name="Page_46" title="46"></a> the Baroness de Saint-Castin like a +statue of bronze. Here were those illustrious Le Moynes, father and +sons, whose deeds may be traced in our day from the St. Lawrence to the +Gulf of Mexico. Here Frontenac, with the graciously winning manner which +belonged to his pleasant hours, drew to himself and soothed disaffected +magnates of his colonial kingdom.</p> + +<p>All these figures, and the spectacles swarming around the beaver fair, +like combinations in a kaleidoscope to be seen once and seen no more, +gave Tonty such condensed knowledge of the New World as no ordinary days +could offer.</p> + +<p>La Salle alone, though fresh from audiences at court and distinguished +by royal favor, stood abashed and annoyed by the part he must play +toward civilized people.</p> + +<p>“Look at the Sieur de la Salle,” observed Du Lhut to Tonty. “There is a +man who stands and fights off the approach of every other creature.”</p> + +<p>“There never was a man better formed for friendship,” retorted Tonty. +“Touching his reserve, I call that no blemish, though he has said of it +himself, it is a defect he can never be<a class="pagenum" name="Page_47" title="47"></a> rid of as long as he lives, and +often it spites him against himself.”</p> + +<p>La Salle turned his shoulder on these associates, uneasily conscious +that his weakness was observed, and put many moving figures between +himself and them. He had the free gait of a woodsman tempered by the air +of a courtier. More than one Montreal girl accusing gold-embroidered +young soldiers of finding the Quebec women charming, turned her eyes to +follow La Salle. Possible lord of the vast and unknown west, in the +flower of his years, he was next to Frontenac the most considerable +figure in the colony.</p> + +<p>Severe study in early youth and ambition in early manhood had crowded +the lover out of La Salle. His practical gaze was oppressed by so many +dames. It dwelt upon the floor, until, travelling accidentally to a +corner, it rose and encountered Jacques le Ber’s daughter sitting beside +her mother.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_48" title="48"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="I_V" id="I_V">V.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">SAINTE JEANNE.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">When La Salle was seignior of Lachine, before the king and Frontenac +helped his ambition to its present foothold, he had been in the habit of +stopping at Jacques le Ber’s house when he came to Montreal.</p> + +<p>The first day of the beaver fair greatly tasked Madame le Ber. She sat +drowsily beside the eldest child of her large absent flock, and was not +displeased to have her husband’s distinguished enemy approach Jeanne.</p> + +<p>The wife of Le Ber had been called madame since her husband bought his +patent of nobility; but she held no strict right to the title, even +wives of the lesser nobles being then addressed as demoiselles. In that +simple colonial life Jacques le Ber, or his wife in his absence, served +goods to customers over his own counter. Madame le Ber was an excellent +woman, who said her prayers and approached the sacraments at<a class="pagenum" name="Page_49" title="49"></a> proper +seasons. She had abundant flesh covered with dark red skin, and she +often pondered why a spirit of a daughter with passionate longings after +heaven had been sent to her. If Sieur de la Salle could draw the child’s +mind from extreme devotion, her husband must feel indebted to him.</p> + +<p>La Salle’s face relaxed and softened as he sat down beside this +sixteen-year-old maid in her colonial gown. She held her crucifix in her +hands, and waited for him to talk. Jeanne made melody of his silences. +As a child she had never rubbed against him for caresses, but looked +into his eyes with sincere meditation. Having no idea of the explorer’s +aim, Jeanne le Ber was yet in harmony with him across their separating +years. She also could stake her life on one supreme idea. La Salle was +formed to subdue the wilderness; she was dimly and ignorantly, but with +her childish might, undertaking that stranger region, the human soul. +She looked younger than other girls of her age; yet La Salle was moved +to say, using the name he had given her,—</p> + +<p>“You have changed much since last year, Sainte Jeanne.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_50" title="50"></a></p> + +<p>“Am I worse, Sieur de la Salle?” she anxiously inquired.</p> + +<p>“No. Better. Except I fear you have prayed yourself to a greater +distance from me.”</p> + +<p>“I name you in my prayers, Sieur de la Salle. Ever since my father +ceased to be your friend I have asked to have your haughty spirit +humbled.”</p> + +<p>La Salle laughed.</p> + +<p>“If you name me at all, Sainte Jeanne, pray rather for the humbling of +my enemies.”</p> + +<p>“No, Sieur de la Salle. You need your enemies. I could ill do without +mine.”</p> + +<p>“Who could be an enemy to thee?”</p> + +<p>“There are many enemies of my soul. One is my great, my very great +love.”</p> + +<p>La Salle’s face whitened and flushed. He cast a quick glance upon the +dozing matron, the backs of people whose conversation buzzed about his +ears, and returned to Jeanne’s childlike white eyelids and +crucifix-folding hands.</p> + +<p>“Whom do you love, Sainte Jeanne?”</p> + +<p>“I love my father so much, and my mother; and the children are too dear +to me. Sometimes when I rise in the night to pray, and think of living +apart from my dear father, the cold sweat<a class="pagenum" name="Page_51" title="51"></a> stands on my forehead. Too +many dear people throng between the soul and heaven. Even you, Sieur de +la Salle,—I have to pray against thoughts of you.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z057.jpg" width="500" height="367" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“Do not pray against me, Sainte Jeanne,” said the explorer, with a +wistful tremor of the lower lip. “Consider how few there be that love me +well.”</p> + +<p>Her eyes rested on him with divining gaze. Jeanne le Ber’s eyes had the +singular function of sending innumerable points of light swimming +through the iris, as if the soul were in motion and shaking off +sparkles.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_52" title="52"></a></p> + +<p>“If you lack love and suffer thereby,” she instructed him, “it will +profit your soul.”</p> + +<p>La Salle interlaced his fingers, resting his hands upon his knees, and +gave her a look which was both amused and tender.</p> + +<p>“And what other enemies has Sainte Jeanne?”</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle, have I not often told you what a sinner I am? It +ridicules me to call me saint.”</p> + +<p>“Since you have grown to be a young demoiselle I ought to call you +Mademoiselle le Ber.”</p> + +<p>“Call me Sainte Jeanne rather than that. I do not want to be a young +demoiselle, or in this glittering company. It is my father who insists.”</p> + +<p>“Nor do I want to be in this glittering company, Sainte Jeanne.”</p> + +<p>“The worst of all the other enemies, Sieur de la Salle, are vanity and a +dread of enduring pain. I am very fond of dress.” The young creature +drew a deep regretful breath.</p> + +<p>“But you mortify this fondness?” said La Salle, accompanying with +whimsical sympathy every confession of Jeanne le Ber’s.</p> + +<p>“Indeed I have to humiliate myself often—often. When this evil desire +takes strong hold,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_53" title="53"></a> I put on the meanest rag I can find. But my father +and mother will never let me go thus humbled to Mass.”</p> + +<p>“Therein do I commend your father and mother,” said La Salle; “though +the outside we bear toward men is of little account. But tell me how do +you school yourself to pain, Sainte Jeanne? I have not learned to bear +pain well in all my years.”</p> + +<p>Jeanne again met his face with swarming lights in her eyes. Seeing that +no one observed them she bent her head toward La Salle and parted the +hair over her crown. The straight fine growth was very thick and of a +brown color. It reminded him of midwinter swamp grasses springing out of +a bed of snow. A mat of burrs was pressed to this white scalp. Some of +the hair roots showed red stains.</p> + +<p>“These hurt me all the time,” said Jeanne. “And it is excellent torture +to comb them out.”</p> + +<p>She covered the burrs with a swift pressure, tightly closing her mouth +and eyes with the spasm of pain this caused, and once more took and +folded the crucifix within her hands.</p> + +<p>The explorer made no remonstrance against<a class="pagenum" name="Page_54" title="54"></a> such self-torture, though his +practical gaze remained on her youthful brier-crowned head. He heard a +girl in front of him laugh to a courtier who was flattering her.</p> + +<p>“Hé, monsieur, I have myself seen Quebec women who dressed with odious +taste.”</p> + +<p>But Jeanne, wrapped in her own relation, continued with a tone which +slighted mere physical pain,—</p> + +<p>“There is a better way to suffer, Sieur de la Salle, and that is from +ill-treatment. Such anguish can be dealt out by the hands we love; but I +have no friend willing to discipline me thus. My father’s servant +Jolycœur is the only person who makes me as wretched as I ought to +be.”</p> + +<p>“Discipline through Jolycœur,” said La Salle, laughing, “is what my +proud stomach could never endure.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps you have not such need, Sieur de la Salle. My father has many +times turned him off, but I plead until he is brought back. He hath this +whole year been a means of grace to me by his great impudence. If I say +to him, ‘Jolycœur, do this or that,’ he never fails to reply, ‘Do it +yourself, Mademoiselle Jeanne,’ and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_55" title="55"></a> adds profanity to make Heaven +blush. Whenever he can approach near enough, he whispers contemptuous +names at me, so that I cannot keep back the tears. Yet how little I +endure, when Saint Lawrence perished on a gridiron, and all the other +holy martyrs shame me!”</p> + +<p>“Your father does not suffer these things to be done to you?”</p> + +<p>“No, Sieur de la Salle. My father knows naught of it except my pity. He +did once kick Jolycœur, who left our house three days, so that I was +in danger of sinking in slothful comfort. But I got him brought back, +and he lay drunk in our garden with his mouth open, so that my soul +shuddered to look at him. It was excellent discipline,”<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> said Jeanne, +with a long breath.</p> + +<p>“Jolycœur will better adorn the woods and risk his worthless neck on +water for my uses, than longer chafe your tender nature,” said La Salle. +“He has been in my service before, and craved to-day that I would enlist +him again.”</p> + +<p>“Had my father turned him off?” asked Jeanne, with consternation.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_56" title="56"></a></p> + +<p>“He said Jacques le Ber had lifted a hand against him for innocently +neglecting to carry bales of merchandise to a booth.”</p> + +<p>“I did miss the smell of rum downstairs before we came away,” said the +girl, sadly. “And will you take my scourge from me, Sieur de la Salle?”</p> + +<p>“I will give him a turn at suffering himself,” answered La Salle. “The +fellow shall be whipped on some pretext when I get him within Fort +Frontenac, for every pang he hath laid upon you. He is no stupid. He +knew what he was doing.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Sieur de la Salle, Jolycœur was only the instrument of Heaven. +He is not to blame.”</p> + +<p>“If I punish him not, it will be on your promise to seek no more +torments, Sainte Jeanne.”</p> + +<p>“There are no more for me to seek; for who in our house will now be +unkind to me? But, Sieur de la Salle, I feel sure that during my +lifetime I shall be permitted to suffer as much as Heaven could +require.”</p> + +<p>Man and child, each surrounded by his peculiar world, sat awhile longer +together in silence, and then La Salle joined the governor.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" title="57"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="I_VI" id="I_VI">VI.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">THE PROPHECY OF JOLYCŒUR.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">By next mid-day the beaver fair was at its height, and humming above the +monotone of the St. Lawrence.</p> + +<p>Montreal, founded by religious enthusiasts and having the Sulpitian +priests for its seigniors, was a quiet town when left to itself,—when +the factions of Quebec did not meet its own factions in the street with +clubs; or coureurs de bois roar along the house sides in drunken joy; or +sudden glares on the night landscape with attendant screeching proclaim +an Iroquois raid; or this annual dissipation in beaver skins crowd it +for two days with strangers.</p> + +<p>Among colonists who had thronged out to meet the bearers of colonial +riches as soon as the first Indian canoe was beached, were the coureurs +de bois. They still swarmed about, making or renewing acquaintances, +here acting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" title="58"></a> as interpreters and there trading on their own account.</p> + +<p>Before some booths Indians pressed in rows, demanding as much as the +English gave for their furs, though the price was set by law. French +merchants poked their fingers into the satin pliancy of skins to search +for flaws. Dealers who had no booths pressed with their interpreters +from tribe to tribe,—small merchants picking the crumbs of profit from +under their brethren’s tables. There was greedy demand for the first +quality of skins; for beaver came to market in three grades: “Castor +gras, castor demi-gras, et castor sec.”</p> + +<p>The booths were hung with finery, upon which squaws stood gazing with a +stoical eye to be envied by civilized woman.</p> + +<p>The cassocks of Sulpitians and gray capotes of Récollet +Fathers—favorites of Frontenac who hated Jesuits—penetrated in +constant supervision every recess of the beaver fair. Yet in spite of +this religious care rum was sold, its effects increasing as the day +moved on.</p> + +<p>A hazy rosy atmosphere had shorn the sun so that he hung a large red +globe in the sky. The land basked in melting tints. Scarcely any wind<a class="pagenum" name="Page_59" title="59"></a> +flowed on the river. Ste. Helen’s Island and even Mount Royal, the +seminary and stone windmill, the row of wooden houses and palisade tips, +all had their edges blurred by hazy light.</p> + +<p>Amusement could hardly be lacking in any gathering of French people not +assembled for ceremonies of religion. In Quebec the governor’s court +were inclined to entertain themselves with their own performance of +spectacles. But Montreal had beheld too many spectacles of a tragic +sort, had grasped too much the gun and spade, to have any facility in +mimic play.</p> + +<p>Still the beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols. +Through all the ever opening and closing avenues a pageant went up and +down, at which no colonist of New France could restrain his shouts of +laughter,—a Dutchman with enormous stomach, long pipe, and short +breeches, walking beside a lank and solemn Bostonnais. The two youths +who had attired themselves for this masking were of Saint-Castin’s +train. That one who acted Puritan had drawn austere seams in his face +with charcoal. His plain collar was severely turned down over a black +doublet, which, with the sombre breeches and hose, had perhaps been +stripped from some<a class="pagenum" name="Page_60" title="60"></a> enemy that troubled Saint-Castin’s border. The +Bostonnais sung high shrill airs from a book he carried in one hand, +only looking up to shake his head with cadaverous warning at his roaring +spectators. One arm was linked in the Dutchman’s, who took his pipe out +of his mouth to say good-humoredly, “Ya-ya, ya-ya,” to every sort of +taunt.</p> + +<p>These types of rival colonies were such an exhilaration to the traders +of New France that they pointed out the show to each other and pelted it +with epithets all day.</p> + +<p>La Salle came out of the palisade gate of the town, leading by the hand +a frisking little girl. He restrained her from farther progress into the +moving swarm, although she dragged his arm.</p> + +<p>“Thou canst here see all there is of it, Barbe. The nuns did well to +oppose your looking on this roaring commerce. You should be housed +within the Hôtel Dieu all this day, had I not spoken a careless word +yesterday. You saw the governor’s procession. To-morrow he will start on +his return. And I with my men go to Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<div> + <img src="images/z067_0.jpg" alt="" class="split" /> + <img src="images/z067_1.jpg" alt="" class="split" /> +<p class="caption">“The beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols.”—<i>Page 59.</i></p> +</div> + +<p class="p2">“And at day dawn naught of the Indians can be found,” added Barbe, +“except their ashes <a class="pagenum" name="Page_63" title="63"></a>and litter and the broken flasks they leave. The +trader’s booths will also be empty and dirty.”</p> + +<p>“Come then, tiger-cat, return to thy cage.”</p> + +<p>“My uncle La Salle, let me look a moment longer. See that fat man and +his lean brother the people are pointing at! Even the Indians jump and +jeer. I would strike them for such insolence! There, my uncle La Salle, +there is Monsieur Iron-hand talking to the ugly servant of Jeanne le +Ber’s father.”</p> + +<p>La Salle easily found Tonty. He was instructing and giving orders to +several men collected for the explorer’s service. Jolycœur,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> his +cap set on sidewise, was yet abashed in his impudence by the mastery of +Tonty. He wore a new suit of buckskin, with the coureur de bois’ red +sash knotted around his waist.</p> + +<p>“My uncle La Salle,” inquired Barbe, turning over a disturbance in her +mind, “must I live in the convent until I wed a man?”</p> + +<p>“The convent is held a necessary discipline for young maids.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_64" title="64"></a></p> + +<p>“I will then choose Monsieur Iron-hand directly. He would make a good +husband.”</p> + +<p>“I think you are right,” agreed La Salle.</p> + +<p>“Because he would have but one hand to catch me with when I wished to +run away,” explained Barbe. “If he had also lost his feet it would be +more convenient.”</p> + +<p>“The marriage between Monsieur de Tonty and Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier +may then be arranged?”</p> + +<p>She looked at her uncle, answering his smile of amusement. But curving +her neck from side to side, she still examined the Italian soldier.</p> + +<p>“I can outrun most people,” suggested Barbe; “but Monsieur de Tonty +looks very tall and strong.”</p> + +<p>“Your intention is to take to the woods as soon as marriage sets you +free?”</p> + +<p>“My uncle La Salle, I do have such a desire to be free in the woods!”</p> + +<p>“Have you, my child? If the wilderness thus draws you, you will sometime +embrace it. Cavelier blood is wild juice.”</p> + +<p>“And could I take my fortune with me? If it cumbered I would leave it +behind with Monsieur de Tonty or my brother.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_65" title="65"></a></p> + +<p>“You will need all your fortune for ventures in the wilderness.”</p> + +<p>“And the fortunes of all your relatives and of as many as will give you +credit besides,” said a priest wearing the Sulpitian dress. He stopped +before them and looked sternly at Barbe.</p> + +<p>The Abbé Jean Cavelier had not such robust manhood as his brother. In +him the Cavelier round lower lip and chin protruded, and the eyebrows +hung forward.</p> + +<p>La Salle had often felt that he stooped in conciliating Jean, when Jean +held the family purse and doled out loans to an explorer always kept +needy by great plans.</p> + +<p>Jean had strongly the instinct of accumulation. He gauged the discovery +and settlement of a continent by its promise of wealth to himself. His +adherence to La Salle was therefore delicately adjusted by La Salle’s +varying fortunes; though at all times he gratified himself by handling +with tyranny this younger and distinguished brother. Generous admiration +of another’s genius flowering from his stock with the perfect expression +denied him, was scarcely possible in Jean Cavelier.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_66" title="66"></a></p> + +<p>“The Sisters said I might come hither with my uncle La Salle,” replied +Barbe, to his unspoken rebuke.</p> + +<p>“Into whose charge were your brother and yourself put when your parents +died?”</p> + +<p>“Into the charge of my uncle the Abbé Cavelier.”</p> + +<p>“Who brought your brother and you to this colony that he might watch +over your nurture?”</p> + +<p>“My uncle the Abbé Cavelier.”</p> + +<p>“It is therefore your uncle the Abbé Cavelier who will decide when to +turn you out among Indians and traders.”</p> + +<p>“You carry too bitter a tongue, my brother Jean,” observed La Salle. +“The child has caught no harm. My own youth was cramped within religious +walls.”</p> + +<p>“You carry too arrogant a mind now, my brother La Salle. I heard it +noted of you to-day that you last night sat apart and deigned no word +to them that have been of use to you in Montreal.”</p> + +<p>La Salle’s face owned the sting. Shy natures have always been made to +pay a tax on pride. But next to the slanderer we detest the bearer of +his slander to our ears.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_67" title="67"></a></p> + +<p>“It is too much for any man to expect in this world,—a brother who will +defend him against his enemies.”</p> + +<p>As soon as this regret had burst from the explorer, he rested his look +again on Tonty.</p> + +<p>“I do defend you,” asserted Abbé Cavelier; “and more than that I +impoverish myself for you. But now that you come riding back from France +on a high tide of the king’s favor, I may not lay a correcting word on +your haughty spirit. Neither yesterday nor to-day could I bring you to +any reasonable state of humility. And all New France in full cry against +you!”</p> + +<p>Extreme impatience darkened La Salle’s face; but without further reply +he drew Barbe’s hand and turned back with her toward the Hôtel Dieu. She +had watched her uncle the Abbé wrathfully during his attack upon La +Salle, but as he dropped his eyes no more to her level she was obliged +to carry away her undischarged anger. This she did with a haughty +bearing so like La Salle’s that the Abbé grinned at it through his +fretfulness.</p> + +<p>He grew conscious of alien hair bristling against his neck as a voice +mocked in undertone directly below his ear,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_68" title="68"></a>—</p> + +<p>“Yonder struts a great Bashaw that will sometime be laid low!”</p> + +<p>The Abbé turned severely upon a person who presumed to tickle a priest’s +neck with his coarse mustache and astound a priest’s ear with threats.</p> + +<p>He recognized the man known as Jolycœur, who had been pushed against +him in the throng. Jolycœur, by having his eyes fixed on the +disappearing figure of La Salle, had missed the ear of the person he +intended to reach. He recoiled from encountering the Abbé, whose wrath +with sudden ebb ran back from a brother upon a brother’s foes.</p> + +<p>“You are the fellow I saw whining yesterday at Sieur de la Salle’s +heels. What hath the Sieur de la Salle done to any of you worthless +woods-rangers, except give you labor and wages, when the bread you eat +is a waste of his substance?”</p> + +<p>Jolycœur, not daring to reply to a priest, slunk away in the crowd.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_69" title="69"></a></p> +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_70" title="70"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="Book_II" id="Book_II">Book II.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">FORT FRONTENAC.<br /> +1683 <span class="fakesc">A. D.</span></span></h2> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" title="71"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="II_I" id="II_I">I.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">RIVAL MASTERS.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">The gate of Fort Frontenac opened to admit several persons headed by a +man who had a closely wrapped girl by his side. Before wooden palisades +and walls of stone enclosed her, she turned her face to look across the +mouth of Cataraqui River and at Lake Ontario rippling full of submerged +moonlight. A magnified moon was rising. Farther than eye could reach it +softened that northern landscape and provoked mystery in the shadows of +the Thousand Islands.</p> + +<p>South of the fort were some huts set along the margin of Ontario +according to early French custom, which demanded a canoe highway in +front of every man’s door. West of these, half hid by forest, was an +Indian village; and distinct between the two rose the huge white cross +planted by Father Hennepin when he was first sent as missionary to Fort +Frontenac.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_72" title="72"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/z078.jpg" width="500" height="413" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>An officer appeared beside the sentinel at the gate, and took off his +hat before the muffled shape led first into his fortress. She bent her +head for this civility and held her father’s arm in silence. Canoemen +and followers with full knowledge of the place moved on toward barracks +or bakery. But the officer stopped their master, saying,—</p> + +<p>“Monsieur le Ber, I have news for you.”</p> + + + +<p>“I have none for you,” responded the merchant. “It is ever the same +story,—men lost in the rapids and voyagers drenched to the skin.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_73" title="73"></a> +However, we had but one man drowned this time, and are only half dead of +fatigue ourselves. Let us have some supper at once. What are your +reports?”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, the Sieur de la Salle arrived here a few hours ago from the +fort on the Illinois.”</p> + +<p>“The Sieur de la Salle?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>“Why did you let him in?” demanded Le Ber, fiercely. “He hath no rights +in this fortress now.”</p> + +<p>“His men were much exhausted, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>“He could have camped at the settlement.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, I wish to tell you at once that the last families have left +the settlement.”</p> + +<p>“The Indians are yet there?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur. But our settlers were afraid our Indians would join the +other Iroquois.”</p> + +<p>“How many men had La Salle with him?”</p> + +<p>“No more than half your party, monsieur. There was Jolycœur—”</p> + +<p>“I tell you La Salle has no rights in this fort,” interrupted Le Ber. +“If he meddles with his merchandise stored here which the government has +seized upon, I will arrest him.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur. The Father Louis Hennepin<a class="pagenum" name="Page_74" title="74"></a> has also arrived from the +wilderness after great peril and captivity.”</p> + +<p>“Tell me that La Salle’s man Tonty is here! Tell me that there is a full +muster of all the vagabonds from Michillimackinac! Tell me that Fort St. +Louis of the Illinois hath moved on Fort Frontenac!”</p> + +<p>The merchant’s voice ascended a pyramid of vexation.</p> + +<p>“No, monsieur. Monsieur de Tonty is not here. And the Father Louis +Hennepin<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> only rests a few days before the fatigue of descending the +rapids to Montreal. It was a grief to him to find his mission and the +settlement so decayed after only five years’ absence.”</p> + +<p>“Why do you fret me with the decay of the mission and breaking up of the +settlement? If I were here as commandant of this fort I might then be +blamed for its ruin. Perhaps my associates made a mistake in retaining +an officer who had served under La Salle.”</p> + +<p>The commandant made no retort, but said,—</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, I had almost forgotten to tell you we have another fair +demoiselle within our walls to the honor of Fort Frontenac. The Abbé<a class="pagenum" name="Page_75" title="75"></a> +Cavelier with men from Lachine, arrived this morning, his young niece +being with him. There are brave women in Montreal.”</p> + +<p>“That is right,—that is right!” exclaimed the irritable merchant. “Call +all the Cavelier family hither and give up the fortress. I heard the +Abbé had ventured ahead of me.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur le Ber, what can they do against the king and the governor? +Both king and governor have dispossessed La Salle. I admitted him as any +wayfarer. The Abbé Cavelier came with a grievance against his brother. +He hath lost money by him the same as others.”</p> + +<p>“Thou shalt not be kept longer in the night air,” said Le Ber, with +sudden tenderness to his daughter. “There is dampness within these walls +to remind us of our drenchings in the rapids.”</p> + +<p>“We have fire in both upper and lower rooms of the officers’ quarters,” +said the commandant.</p> + +<p>They walked toward the long dwelling, their shadows stretching and +blending over the ground.</p> + +<p>“Where have you lodged these men?” inquired Le Ber.</p> + +<p>The officer pointed to the barrack end of the structure made of hewed +timbers. The wider<a class="pagenum" name="Page_76" title="76"></a> portion intended for commandant’s headquarters was +built of stone, with Norman eaves and windows. Near the barracks stood a +guardhouse. The bakery was at the opposite side of the gateway, and +beyond it was the mill. La Salle had founded well this stronghold in the +wilderness. Walls of hewed stone enclosed three sides, nine small cannon +being mounted thereon.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> Palisades were the defence on the water side. +Fort Frontenac was built with four bastions. In two of these bastions +were vaulted towers which served as magazines for ammunition.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> A well +was dug within the walls.</p> + +<p>“Have you no empty rooms in the officers’ quarters?”</p> + +<p>The moon threw silhouette palisades on the ground, and made all these +buildings cut blocks of shadow. There was a stir of evening wind in the +forest all around.</p> + +<p>“The men are in the barracks. But Sieur de la Salle is in the officers’ +house.”</p> + +<p>“May I ask you, Commandant,” demanded Le Ber, “where you propose to +lodge my daughter whom I have brought through the perils of the rapids, +and cannot now return with?”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle le Ber is most welcome to my<a class="pagenum" name="Page_77" title="77"></a> own apartment, monsieur, and +I will myself come downstairs.”</p> + +<p>“One near mine for yourself, monsieur. But with the Abbé and his niece +and the boy and La Salle and Father Hennepin, to say no more, can we +have many empty rooms? Father Hennepin is lodged downstairs, but La +Salle hath his old room overlooking the river.”</p> + +<p>“How does he appear, Commandant?”</p> + +<p>“Worn in his garb and very thin visaged, but unmoved by his misfortunes +as a man of rock. Any one else would be prostrate and hopeless.”</p> + +<p>“A madman,” pronounced Le Ber.</p> + +<p>Careless laughter resounded from the barracks. Some water creature made +so distinct a splash and struggle in Cataraqui River that imagination +followed the widening circles spreading from its body until an island +broke their huge circumference.</p> + +<p>“See that something be sent us from the bakehouse,” said Le Ber to the +commandant, before leading his daughter into the quarters. “My men have +brought provisions from Montreal.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_78" title="78"></a></p> + +<p>“We can give you a good supper, monsieur. Two young deer were brought in +to-day. As for Monsieur de la Salle,” the commandant added, turning back +from the door of the barracks, “you will perhaps not meet him at all in +the officers’ quarters. He ate and threw himself down at once to sleep, +and he is in haste to set forward to Quebec.”</p> + +<p>The bakehouse was illuminated by its oven fire which shone with a dull +crimson through the open door, but failed to find out dusky corners +where bales, barrels, and cook’s tools were stored. The oven was built +in the wall, of stone and cement. The cook, a skipping little fellow +smocked in white and wearing a cap, said to himself as he raked out +coals and threw them in the fireplace,—</p> + +<p>“What a waste of good material is this, when they glow and breathe with +such ardor to roast some worthy martyr!”</p> + +<p>“The beginning of a martyr is a saint,” observed a soldier of the +garrison, putting his fur-covered head between door and door-post in the +little space he opened. “We have a saint just landed at Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>He stepped in and shut the door, to lounge<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" title="79"></a> with the cook while the +order he brought was obeyed.</p> + +<p>“Some of the best you have, with a tender cut of venison, for Jacques le +Ber and his daughter. And some salt meat for his men in the barracks.”</p> + +<p>The cook made light skips across the floor and returned with venison.</p> + +<p>“Well-timed, my child; for the coals are ready, and so are my cakes for +the oven. Le Ber is soon served. Get upon your knees by the hearth and +watch this cut broil, while I slice the larding for the sore sides of +these fellows that labored through the rapids.”</p> + +<p>When you are housed in a garrison the cook becomes a potentate; the +soldier went willingly down as assistant.</p> + +<p>“Are all the demoiselles of Montreal coming to Fort Frontenac?” inquired +the cook, skipping around a great block on which lay a slab of cured +meat, and nicely poising his knife-tip over it.</p> + +<p>“That I cannot tell you,” replied the soldier, beginning to perspire +before the coals. “Le Ber’s men have been talking in the barracks about +this daughter of his. He brought her<a class="pagenum" name="Page_80" title="80"></a> almost by force out of his house, +where she has taken to shutting herself in her own room.”</p> + +<p>“I have heard of this demoiselle,” said the cook. “May the saints +incline more women to shut themselves up at home!”</p> + +<p>“She is his favorite child. He brought her on this dangerous voyage to +wean her from too much praying.”</p> + +<p>“Too much praying!” exclaimed the cook.</p> + +<p>“He desires to have her look more on the world, lest she should die of +holiness,” explained the soldier.</p> + +<p>“Turn that venison,” shouted the cook. “Was there ever a saint who liked +burnt meat? I could lift this Jacques le Ber on a hot fork for dragging +out a woman who inclined to stay praying in the house. Some men are +stone blind to the blessings of Heaven!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_81" title="81"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="II_II" id="II_II">II.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">A TRAVELLED FRIAR.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">The lower room of the officers’ lodging was filled with the light of a +fire. To the hearth was drawn a half-circle of men, their central figure +being a Récollet friar, so ragged and weather-stained that he seemed +some ecclesiastical scarecrow placed there to excite laughter and tears +in his beholders.</p> + +<p>This group arose as Jacques le Ber entered with his daughter, and were +eager to be of service to her.</p> + +<p>“There is a fire lighted in the hall upstairs by which mademoiselle can +sit,” said the sergeant of the fort.</p> + +<p>Le Ber conducted her to the top of a staircase which ascended the side +of the room before he formally greeted any one present. He returned, +unwinding his saturated wool wrappings and pulling off his cap of beaver +skin. He was a swarthy man with anxious and calculating wrinkles between +his eyebrows.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_82" title="82"></a></p> + +<p>“Do I see Father Hennepin?” exclaimed Le Ber, squaring his mouth, “or is +this a false image of him set before me?”</p> + +<p>“You see Father Hennepin,” the friar responded with dignity,—”explorer, +missionary among the Sioux, and sufferer in the cause of religion.”</p> + +<p>“How about that hunger for adventure,—hast thou appeased it?” inquired +Le Ber with freedom of manner he never assumed toward any other priest.</p> + +<p>The merchant stood upon the hearth steaming in front of the tattered +Récollet, who from his seat regarded his half-enemy with a rebuking eye +impressive to the other men.</p> + +<p>“Jacques le Ber, my son, while your greedy hands have been gathering +money, the poor Franciscan has baptized heathen, discovered and explored +rivers; he has lived the famished life of a captive, and come nigh death +in many ways. I have seen a great waterfall five hundred feet high, +whereunder four carriages might pass abreast without being wet. I have +depended for food on what Heaven sent. Vast fish are to be found in the +waters of that western land, and there also you may see beasts<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" title="83"></a> having +manes and hoofs and horns, to frighten a Christian.”</p> + +<p>“And what profit doth La Salle get out of all this?” inquired Le Ber, +spreading his legs before the fire as he looked down at Father Hennepin.</p> + +<p>“What I have accomplished has been done for the spread of the faith, and +not for the glory of Monsieur de la Salle, who has treated me badly.”</p> + +<p>“Does he ever treat any one well?” exclaimed Le Ber. “Does not every man +in his service want to shoot him?”</p> + +<p>“He has an over-haughty spirit, which breaks out into envy of men like +me,” admitted the good Fleming, whose weather-seamed face and plump lips +glowed with conscious greatness before the fire. “I have decided to +avoid further encounter with Monsieur de la Salle while we both remain +at Fort Frontenac, for my mind is set on peace, and it is true where +Monsieur de la Salle appears there can be no peace.”</p> + +<p>Jacques le Ber turned himself to face the chimney.</p> + +<p>“Thou hast no doubt accomplished a great work, Father Hennepin,” he +said, with the im<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" title="84"></a>mediate benevolence a man feels toward one who has +reached his point of view. “When I have had supper with my daughter I +will sit down here and beg you to tell me all that befell your +wanderings, and what savages they were who received the faith at your +hands, and how the Sieur de la Salle hath turned even a Récollet Father +against himself.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps Father Hennepin will tell about his buffalo hunt,” suggested +the sergeant of the fortress, “and how he headed a wounded buffalo from +flight and drove it back to be shot.”<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<p>Father Hennepin looked down at patches of buffalo hide which covered +holes in his habit. He remembered the trampling of a furious beast’s +hoofs and the twitch of its short sharp horn in his folds of flesh as it +lifted him. He remembered his wounds and the soreness of his bones which +lasted for months, yet his lips parted over happy teeth and he roared +with laughter.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_85" title="85"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z091.jpg" width="600" height="442" alt="" /> +</div> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_87" title="87"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="II_III" id="II_III">III.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">HEAVEN AND EARTH.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">Jeanne le Ber sat down upon a high-backed bench before the fire in the +upper room. This apartment was furnished and decorated only by abundant +firelight, which danced on stone walls and hard dark rafters, on rough +floor and high enclosure, of the stairway. At opposite sides of the room +were doors which Jeanne did not know opened into chambers scarcely +larger than the sleepers who might lodge therein.</p> + +<p>She sat in strained thought, without unwrapping herself, though shudders +were sent through her by damp raiment. When her father came up with the +sergeant who carried their supper, he took off her cloak, smoothed her +hair, and tenderly reproved her. He set the dishes on the bench between +them, and persuaded Jeanne to eat what he carved for her,—a swarthy +nurse whose solicitude astounded the soldier.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_88" title="88"></a></p> + +<p>Another man came up and opened the door nearest the chimney, on that +side which overlooked the fortress enclosure. He paused in descending, +loaded with the commandant’s possessions, to say that this bedroom was +designed for mademoiselle, and was now ready.</p> + +<p>“And thou must get to it as soon as the river’s chill is warmed out of +thy bones,” said Le Ber. “I will sit and hear the worthy friar +downstairs tell his strange adventures. The sound of your voice can +reach me with no effort whatever. My bedroom will be next yours, or near +by, and no harm can befall you in Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>Jeanne kissed his cheek before he returned to the lower room, and when +the supper was removed she sat drying herself by the fire.</p> + +<p>The eager piety of her early girlhood, which was almost fantastic in its +expression, had yet worked out a nobly spiritual face. She was a +beautiful saint.</p> + +<p>For several years Jeanne le Ber had refused the ordinary clothing of +women. Her visible garment was made of a soft fine blanket of white +wool, with long sleeves falling nearly to her feet. It was girded to her +waist by a cord from which hung her rosary. Her neck stood slim and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_89" title="89"></a> +white above the top of this robe, without ornament except the peaked +monk’s hood which hung behind it.</p> + +<p>This creature like a flame of living white fire stood up and turned her +back to the ruddier logs, and clasped her hands across the top of her +head. Her eyes wasted scintillations on rafters while she waited for +heavenly peace to calm the strong excitement driving her.</p> + +<p>The door of Jeanne’s chamber stood open as the soldier had left it. At +the opposite side of the room a similar door opened, and La Salle came +out. He moved a step, toward the hearth, but stopped, and the pallor of +a swoon filled his face.</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle,” said Jeanne in a whisper. She let her arms slip +down by her sides. The eccentric robe with its background of firelight +cast her up tall and white before his eyes.</p> + +<p>In the explorer’s most successful moments he had never appeared so +majestic. Though his dress was tarnished by the wilderness, he had it +carefully arranged; for he liked to feel it fitting him with an +exactness which would not annoy his thoughts.</p> + +<p>No formal greeting preluded the crash of this encounter between La Salle +and Jeanne le Ber.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_90" title="90"></a> What had lain repressed by prayer and penance, or +had been trodden down league by league in the wilds, leaped out with +strength made mighty by such repression.</p> + +<p>Voices in loud and merry conversation below and occasional laughter came +up the open stairway and made accompaniment to this half-hushed duet.</p> + +<p>“Jeanne,” stammered La Salle.</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle, I was just going to my room.”</p> + +<p>She moved away from him to the side of the hearth, as he advanced and +sat down upon the bench. Unconscious that she stood while he was +sitting, as if overcome by sudden blindness he reached toward her with a +groping gesture.</p> + +<p>“Take hold of my hand, Sainte Jeanne.”</p> + +<p>“And if I take hold of your hand, Sieur de la Salle,” murmured the girl, +bending toward him though she held her arms at her sides, “what profit +will it be to either of us?”</p> + +<p>“I beg that you will take hold of my hand.”</p> + +<p>Her hand, quivering to each finger tip, moved out and met and was +clasped in his. La Salle’s head dropped on his breast.</p> + +<p>Jeanne turned away her face. Voices and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_91" title="91"></a> laughter jangled in the room +below. In this silent room pulse answered pulse, and with slow encounter +eyes answered the adoration of eyes. In terror of herself Jeanne uttered +the whispered cry,—</p> + +<p>“I am afraid!”</p> + +<p>She veiled herself with the long sleeve of her robe.</p> + +<p>“And of what should you be afraid when we are thus near together?” said +La Salle. “The thing to be afraid of is losing this. Such gladness has +been long coming; for I was a man when you were born, Sainte Jeanne.”</p> + +<p>“Let go my hand, Sieur de la Salle.”</p> + +<p>“Do you want me to let it go, Sainte Jeanne?”</p> + +<p>“No, Sieur de la Salle.”</p> + +<p>Dropping her sleeve Jeanne faced heaven through the rafters. Tears +stormed down her face, and her white throat swelled with strong +repressed sobs. Like some angel caught in a snare, she whispered her +up-directed wail,—</p> + +<p>“All my enormity must now be confessed! Whenever Sieur de la Salle has +been assailed my soul rose up in arms for him. Oh, my poor father! So +dear has Sieur de la Salle been to me that I hated the hatred of my +father. What<a class="pagenum" name="Page_92" title="92"></a> shall I do to tear out this awful love? I have fought it +through midnights and solitary days of ceaseless prayer. Oh, Sieur de la +Salle, why art thou such a man? Pray to God and invoke the saints for +me, and help me to go free from this love!”</p> + +<p>“Jeanne,” said La Salle, “you are so holy I dare touch no more than this +sweet hand. It fills me with life. Ask me not to pray to God that he +will take the life from me. Oh, Jeanne, if you could reach out of your +eternity of devotion and hold me always by the hand, what a man I might +be!”</p> + +<p>She dropped her eyes to his face, saying like a soothing mother,—</p> + +<p>“Thou greatest and dearest, there is a gulf between us which we cannot +pass. I am vowed to Heaven. Thou art vowed to great enterprises. The +life of the family is not for us. If God showed me my way by thy side I +would go through any wilderness. But Jeanne was made to listen in prayer +and silence and secrecy and anguish for the word of Heaven. The worst +is,”—her stormy sob again shook her from head to foot,—”you will be at +court, and beautiful women will love the great explorer. And one<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" title="93"></a> will +shine; she will be set like a star as high as the height of being your +wife. And Jeanne,—oh, Jeanne! here in this rough, new world,—she must +eternally learn to be nothing!”</p> + +<p>“My wife!” said La Salle, turning her hand in his clasp, and laying his +cheek in her palm. “You are my wife. There is no court. There is no +world to discover. There is only the sweet, the rose-tender palm of my +wife where I can lay my tired cheek and rest.”</p> + +<p>Jeanne’s fingers moved with involuntary caressing along the lowest curve +of his face.</p> + +<p>An ember fell on the hearth beside them, and Father Hennepin emphasized +some point in his relation with a stamp of his foot.</p> + +<p>“You left a glove at my father’s house, Sieur de la Salle, and I hid it; +I put my face to it. And when I burned it, my own blood seemed to ooze +out of that crisping glove.”</p> + +<p>La Salle trembled. The dumb and solitary man was dumb and solitary in +his love.</p> + +<p>“Now we must part,” breathed Jeanne. “Heaven is strangely merciful to +sinners. I never could name you to my confessor or show him this +formless anguish; but now that it has been owned and cast out, my heart +is glad.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_94" title="94"></a></p> + +<p>La Salle rose up and stood by the hearth. As she drew her hand from his +continued hold he opened his arms. Jeanne stepped backward, her eyes +swarming with motes of light. She turned and reached her chamber door; +but as the saint receded from temptation the woman rose in strength. She +ran to La Salle, and with a tremor and a sob in his arms, met his mouth +with the one kiss of her life. As suddenly she ran from him and left +him.</p> + +<p>La Salle had had his sublime moment of standing at the centre of the +universe and seeing all things swing around him, which comes to every +one successful in embodying a vast idea. But from this height he looked +down at that experience.</p> + +<p>He stood still after Jeanne’s door closed until he felt his own +intrusion. This drove him downstairs and out of the house, regardless of +Jacques le Ber, Father Hennepin, and the officers of the fortress, who +turned to gaze at his transit.</p> + +<p>Proud satisfaction, strange in a ruined man, appeared on the explorer’s +face. He felt his reverses as cobwebs to be brushed away. He was loved. +The king had been turned against him. His enemies had procured Count +Fronte<a class="pagenum" name="Page_95" title="95"></a>nac’s removal, and La Barre the new governor, conspiring to seize +his estate, had ruined his credit. But he was loved. Even on this +homeward journey an officer had passed him with authority to take +possession of his new post on the Illinois River. His discoveries were +doubted and sneered at, as well as half claimed by boasting +subordinates, who knew nothing about his greater views. Yet the only +softener of this man of noble granite was a spirit-like girl, who +regarded the love of her womanhood as sin.</p> + +<p>La Salle stood in the midst of enemies. He stood considering merely how +his will should break down the religious walls Jeanne built around +herself, and how Jacques le Ber might be conciliated by shares in the +profits of the West. Behind stretched his shadowed life, full of +misfortune; good was held out to him to be withdrawn at the touch of his +fingers. But this good he determined to have; and thinking of her, La +Salle walked the stiffened frost-crisp ground of the fortress half the +night.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_96" title="96"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="II_IV" id="II_IV">IV.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">When Barbe Cavelier awoke next morning and saw around her the stone +walls of Fort Frontenac instead of a familiar convent enclosure, she sat +up in her bed and laughed aloud. The tiny cell echoed. Never before had +laughter of young girl been heard there. And when she placed her feet +upon the floor perhaps their neat and exact pressure was a surprise to +battered planks used to the smiting tread of men.</p> + +<p>Barbe proceeded to dress herself, with those many curvings of neck and +figure, which, in any age, seem necessary to the fit sitting of a young +maid in her garments. Her aquiline face glowed, full of ardent life.</p> + +<p>Some raindrops struck the roof-window and ran down its panes like tears. +When Barbe had considered her astounding position as the only woman in +Fort Frontenac, and felt well com<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" title="97"></a>pacted for farther adventures, she +sprung upon the bunk, and stood with her head near the roof, looking out +into the fortress and its adjacent world. Among moving figures she could +not discern her uncle La Salle, or her uncle the Abbé, or even her +brother. These three must be yet in the officers’ house. Dull clouds +were scudding. As Barbe opened the sash and put her head out the morning +air met her with a chill. Fort Frontenac’s great walls half hid an +autumn forest, crowding the lake’s distant border in measureless expanse +of sad foliage. Eastward, she caught ghostly hints of islands on misty +water. The day was full of depression. Ontario stood up against the sky, +a pale greenish fleece, raked at intervals by long wires of rain.</p> + +<p>But such influences had no effect on a healthy warm young creature, +freed unaccountably from her convent, and brought on a perilous, +delightful journey to so strange a part of her world.</p> + +<p>She noticed a parley going forward at the gate. Some outsider demanded +entrance, for the sentry disappeared between the towers and returned for +orders. He approached the commandant who stood talking with Jacques le<a class="pagenum" name="Page_98" title="98"></a> +Ber, the merchant of Montreal. Barbe could see Le Ber’s face darken. +With shrugs and negative gestures he decided against the newcomer, and +the sentinel again disappeared to refuse admission. She wondered if a +band of Iroquois waited outside. Among Abbé Cavelier’s complaints of La +Salle was Governor la Barre’s accusation that La Salle stirred enmity in +the Iroquois by protecting the Illinois tribe they wished to +exterminate.</p> + +<p>“Even these Indians on the lake shore,” meditated Barbe, “who settled +there out of friendship to my uncle La Salle, may turn against him and +try to harm him as every one does now that his fortunes are low. I would +be a man faithful to my friend, if I were a man at all.”</p> + +<p>She watched for a sight of the withdrawing party on the lake, and +presently a large canoe holding three men shot out beyond the walls. One +stood erect, gazing back at the fort with evident anxiety. Neither the +smearing medium of damp weather nor increasing distance could rob Barbe +of that man’s identity. His large presence, his singular carriage of the +right arm, even his features sinking back to space, stamped him Henri de +Tonty.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_99" title="99"></a></p> + +<p>“He has come here to see my uncle La Salle, and they have refused to let +him enter,” she exclaimed aloud.</p> + +<p>Stripping a coverlet from her berth she whipped the outside air with it +until the crackle brought up a challenge from below.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z105.jpg" width="450" height="472" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Fort Frontenac was a seignorial rather than a military post, and its +discipline had been lax since the governor’s Associates seized it, yet a +sentinel paced this morning before the officers’ quarters. When he saw +the signal withdrawn and a lovely face with dark eyelashes and a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_100" title="100"></a> +topknot of curls looking down at him, he could do nothing but salute it, +and Barbe shut her window.</p> + +<p>Dropping in excitement from the bunk, she ran across the upper room to +knock at La Salle’s door.</p> + +<p>A boy stood basking in solitude by the chimney.</p> + +<p>Her uncle La Salle’s apartment seemed filled with one strong indignant +voice, leaking through crevices and betraying its matter to the common +hall.</p> + +<p>“You may knock there until you faint of hunger,” remarked the lad at the +hearth. “I also want my breakfast, but these precious Associates will +let us starve in the fort they have stolen before they dole us out any +food. I would not mind going into the barracks and messing, but I have +you also to consider.”</p> + +<p>“It is not anything to eat, Colin—it is pressing need of my uncle La +Salle!”</p> + +<p>“The Abbé has pressing need of our uncle La Salle. It was great relief +to catch him here at Frontenac. I have heard every bit of the lecture: +what amounts our uncle the Abbé has ventured in western explorations; +and what a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_101" title="101"></a> fruitless journey he has made here to rescue for himself +some of the stores of this fortress; and what danger all we Caveliers +stand in of being poisoned on account of my uncle La Salle, so that the +Abbé can scarce trust us out of his sight, even with nuns guarding you.”</p> + +<p>To Barbe’s continued knocking her guardian made the curtest reply. He +opened the door, looked at her sternly, saying, “Go away, mademoiselle,” +and shut it tightly again.</p> + +<p>She ran back to her lookout and was able to discern the same canoe +moving off on the lake.</p> + +<p>“Colin,” demanded Barbe, wrapping herself, “You must run with me.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly, mademoiselle, and I trust you are making haste toward a +table.”</p> + +<p>“We must run outside the fortress.”</p> + +<p>Though the boy felt it a grievance that he should follow instead of lead +to any adventure, he dashed heartily out with her, intending to take his +place when he understood the action. Rain charged full in their faces. +The sentry was inclined to hold them at the fortress gate until he had +orders, and Barbe’s impatience darted from her eyes.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_102" title="102"></a></p> + +<p>“You will get me into trouble,” he said. “This gate has been swinging +over-much lately.”</p> + +<p>“Let us out,” persuaded Colin. “The Associates will not care what +becomes of a couple of Caveliers.”</p> + +<p>“Where are you going?”</p> + +<p>“My sister wishes to run to the Iroquois village,” responded Colin, “and +beg there for a little sagamite. We get nothing to eat in Fort +Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>The soldier laughed.</p> + +<p>“If you are going to the Iroquois village why don’t you say your errand +is to Catharine Tegahkouita? It is no sin to ask an Indian saint’s +prayers.”</p> + +<p>Barbe formed her lips to inquire, “Has Tegahkouita come to Fort +Frontenac?” But this impulse passed into discreet silence, and the man +let them out.</p> + +<p>They ran along the palisades southward, Barbe keeping abreast of Colin +though she made skimming dips as the swallow flies, and with a détour +quite to the lake’s verge, avoided the foundation of an outwork.</p> + +<p>Father Hennepin’s cross stood up, a huge<a class="pagenum" name="Page_103" title="103"></a> white landmark between +habitant settlement on the lake, and Indian village farther west but +visible through the clearing. Ontario seemed to rise higher and top the +world, its green curves breaking at their extremities into white +spatter, the one boat in sight making deep obeisance to heaving water.</p> + +<p>“Do you see a canoe riding yonder?” exclaimed Barbe to Colin, as they +ran along wet sand.</p> + +<p>“Any one may see a canoe riding yonder. Was it to race with that canoe +we came out, mademoiselle?”</p> + +<p>“Wave your arms and make signals to the men in it, Colin. They must be +stopped. I am sure that one is Monsieur de Tonty, and they were turned +away from the fortress gate. They have business with our uncle La Salle, +and see how far they have gone before we could get out ourselves!”</p> + +<p>“Why, then, did you follow?” demanded her brother, waving his arms and +flinging his cap in the rain. “They may have business with our uncle La +Salle, but they have no business with a girl. This was quite my affair, +Mademoiselle Cavelier.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_104" title="104"></a></p> + +<p>A maid whose feet were heavy with the mud of a once ploughed clearing +could say little in praise of such floundering. She paid no attention to +Colin’s rebuke, but watched for the canoe to turn landward. Satisfied +that it was heading toward them, Barbe withdrew from the border of the +lake. She would not shelter herself in any deserted hut of the habitant +village. Colin followed her in vexation to Father Hennepin’s mission +house, remonstrating as he skipped, and turning to watch the canoe with +rain beating his face.</p> + +<p>They found the door open. The floor was covered with sand blown there, +and small stones cast by the hands of irreverent passing Indian boys. +The chapel stood a few yards away, but this whole small settlement was +dominated by its cross.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> + +<p>Barbe and Colin were scarcely under this roof shelter before Tonty +strode up to the door. He took off his hat with the left hand, his dark +face bearing the rain like a hardy flower. Dangers, perpetual immersion +in Nature, and the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_105" title="105"></a> stimulus of vast undertakings had so matured Tonty +that Barbe felt more awe of his buckskin presence than her memory of the +fine young soldier in Montreal could warrant. She wanted to look at him +and say nothing. Colin, who knew this soldier only by reputation, was +eager to meet and urge him into Father Hennepin’s house.</p> + +<p>Tonty’s reluctant step crunched sand on the boards. He kept his gaze +upon Barbe and inquired,—</p> + +<p>“Have I the honor, mademoiselle, to address the niece of Monsieur de la +Salle?”</p> + +<p>“The niece and nephew of Monsieur de la Salle,” put forth Colin.</p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur. You may remember me as the young tiger-cat who sprung +upon my uncle La Salle when you arrived with him from France.”</p> + +<p>“I never forgot you, mademoiselle. You so much resemble Monsieur de la +Salle.”</p> + +<p>“It is on his account we have run out of the fort to stop you. He does +not know you are here. I saw the sentinel close the gate against some +one, and afterward your boat pushed out.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_106" title="106"></a></p> + +<p>“And did you shake a signal from an upper window in the fort?”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, I could not be sure that you saw it, though I could see your +boat.”</p> + +<p>“She made it very much her affair,” observed Colin, with the merciless +disapproval of a lad. “Monsieur de Tonty, there was no use in her +trampling through sand and rain like a Huron witch going to some herb +gathering. It was my business to do the errand of my uncle La Salle. +When she goes back she will get a lecture and a penance, for all her +sixteen years.”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “I am distressed if my withdrawal from Fort +Frontenac causes you trouble. I meant to camp here. I was determined to +see Monsieur de la Salle.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” courageously replied Barbe, “you cause me no trouble at all. +I thought you were returning to your fort on the Illinois. I did not +stop to tell my brother, but made him run with me. It is a shame that +the enemies of my uncle La Salle hold you out of Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>“But very little would you get to eat there,” consoled young Cavelier. +“We have had nothing to break our fast on this morning.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_107" title="107"></a></p> + +<p>“Then let us get ready some breakfast for you,” proposed Tonty, as his +men entered with the lading of the canoe. They had stopped at the +doorstep, but Father Hennepin’s hewed log house contained two rooms, and +he pointed them to the inner one. There they let down their loads, one +man, a surgeon, remaining, and the other, a canoeman, going out again in +search of fuel.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, it would be better for us to hurry back to the fortress and +call my uncle La Salle.”</p> + +<p>“Nothing will satisfy you, mademoiselle,” denounced Colin. “Out you must +come to stop Monsieur de Tonty. Now back you must go through weather +which is not fitting for any demoiselle to face.”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “if you return now it will be my duty to +escort you as far as the fortress gate.”</p> + +<p>Barbe drew her wrappings over her face, as he had seen a wild sensitive +plant fold its leaves and close its cups.</p> + +<p>“I will retire to the chapel and wait there until my uncle La Salle +comes,” she decided, “and my brother must run to call him.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_108" title="108"></a></p> + +<p>“You may take to sanctuary as soon as you please,” responded Colin, “and +I will attend to my uncle La Salle’s business. But the first call I make +shall be upon the cook in this camp.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_109" title="109"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_V" id="II_V">V.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">FATHER HENNEPIN’S CHAPEL.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">Tonty held a buffalo robe over Barbe during her quick transit from cabin +to church. Its tanned side was toward the weather, and its woolly side +continued to comfort her after she was under shelter. Tonty bestowed it +around her and closed the door again, leaving her in the dim place.</p> + +<p>Father Hennepin’s deserted chapel was of hewed logs like his dwelling. A +rude altar remained, but without any ornaments, for the Récollet had +carried these away to his western mission. Some unpainted benches stood +in a row. The roof could be seen through rafters, and drops of rain with +reiterating taps fell along the centre of the floor. A chimney of stones +and cement was built outside the chapel, of such a size that its top +yawned like an open cell for rain, snow, or summer sunshine. Within, it +spread a generous hearth and an expanse of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_110" title="110"></a> grayish fire-wall little +marked by the blue incense which rises from burning wood.</p> + +<p>Barbe looked briefly around the chapel. She laid the buffalo hide before +the altar and knelt upon it.</p> + +<p>Tonty returned with a load of fuel and busied himself at the fireplace. +The boom of the lake, and his careful stirring and adjusting in ancient +ashes, made a background to her silence. Yet she heard through her +devotions every movement he made, and the low whoop peculiar to flame +when it leaps to existence and seizes its prey.</p> + +<p>A torrent of fire soon poured up the flue. Tonty grasped a brush made of +wood shavings, remnant of Father Hennepin’s housekeeping, and whirled +dust and litter in the masculine fashion. When he left the chapel it +glowed with the resurrected welcome it had given many a primitive +congregation of Indians and French settlers, when the lake beat up icy +winter foam.</p> + +<div> + + <img src="images/z117_0.jpg" alt="" class="split" /> + <img src="images/z117_1.jpg" alt="" class="split" /> + +<p>Beside the fireplace was a window so high that its log sill met Barbe’s +chin as she looked out. Jutting roof and outer chimney wall made a snug +spot like a sentry-box without. She dried her feet, holding them one at +a time to the red hot<a class="pagenum" name="Page_111" title="111"></a> glow, and glanced through this window at the +mission house’s sodden logs and crumbled chinking. The excitement of her +sally out of Fort Frontenac died away. She felt distressed because she +had come, and faint for her early convent breakfast.</p> + +<p>She saw Tonty through the window carrying a dish carefully covered. He +approached the broken pane, and Barbe eagerly helped him to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_112" title="112"></a> unfasten +the sash and swing it out. In doing this, Tonty held her platter braced +by his iron-handed arm.</p> + +<p>The fare was passed in to her without apology, and she received it with +sincere gratitude, afterward drawing a bench near the fire and sitting +down in great privacy and comfort.</p> + +<p>The moccasins of a frontiersman could make no sound above flap of wind +and pat of water. Tonty paced from window to chapel front, believing +that he kept out of Barbe’s sight. But after an interval he was amused +to see, rising over the sill within, a topknot of curls, and eyes filled +with the alert, shy spirit of the deer whose flesh she had just eaten.</p> + +<p>For some reason this scrutiny of Barbe’s made him regret that he had +lain aside the gold and white uniform of France, and the extreme uses to +which his gauntlets had been put. Entrenched behind logs she +unconsciously poured the fires of her youth upon Tonty.</p> + +<p>Not only was one pane in the sash gone, but all were shattered, giving +easy access to his voice as he stood still and explained.</p> + +<p>“Frontenac is a lonely post, mademoiselle. It is necessary for you to +have a sentinel.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_113" title="113"></a></p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur; you are very good.” Barbe accepted the fact with lowered +eyelids. “Has my brother yet gone to call my uncle La Salle?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, mademoiselle. As soon as we could give him some breakfast he set +out.”</p> + +</div> + +<p>“Colin is a gourmand. All very young people gormandize more or less,” +remarked Barbe, with a sense of emancipation from the class she +condemned.</p> + +<p>“I hope you could eat what I brought you?”</p> + +<p>“It was quite delicious, monsieur. I ate every bit of it.”</p> + +<p>The boom of the lake intruded between their voices. Barbe’s black +eyelashes flickered sensitively upon her cheeks, and Tonty, feeling that +he looked too steadily at her, dropped his eyes to his folded arms.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” inquired Barbe, appealing to experience, “do you +think sixteen years very young?”</p> + +<p>“It is the most charming age in the world, mademoiselle.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, I mean young for maturing one’s plan of life.”</p> + +<p>“That depends upon the person,” replied<a class="pagenum" name="Page_114" title="114"></a> Tonty. “At sixteen I was +revolting against the tyranny which choked Italy. And I was an exile +from my country before the age of twenty, mademoiselle.”</p> + +<p>Barbe gazed straight at Tonty, her gray eyes firing like opals with +enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>“And my uncle La Salle at sixteen was already planning his discoveries. +Monsieur, I also have my plans. Many missionaries must be needed among +the Indians.”</p> + +<p>“You do not propose going as a missionary among the Indians, +mademoiselle?”</p> + +<p>Barbe critically examined his smile. She evaded his query.</p> + +<p>“Are the Indian women beautiful, Monsieur de Tonty?”</p> + +<p>“They do not appear so to me, mademoiselle, though the Illinois are a +straight and well-made race.”</p> + +<p>“You must find it a grand thing to range that western country.”</p> + +<p>“But in the midst of our grandeur the Iroquois threaten us even there. +How would mademoiselle like to mediate between these invaders and the +timid Illinois, suspected by one tribe and threatened by the other; to +carry the wampum<a class="pagenum" name="Page_115" title="115"></a> belt of peace on the open field between two armies, +and for your pains get your scalp-lock around the fingers of a Seneca +chief and his dagger into your side?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, monsieur!” whispered Barbe, flushing with the wild pinkness of +roses on the plains, “what amusements you do have in the great west! And +is it a castle on a mountain, that Fort St. Louis of the Illinois?”</p> + +<p>“A stockade on a cliff, mademoiselle.”</p> + +<p>Tonty felt impelled to put himself nearer this delicate head set with +fine small ears and quartered by the angles of the window-frame. When +she meditated, her lashes and brows and aquiline curves and gray tones +flushing to rose were delightful to a wilderness-saturated man. But he +held to his strict position as sentinel.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” said Barbe, “there is something on my mind which I will tell +you. I was thinking of the new world my uncle La Salle discovered, even +before you came to Montreal. Now I think constantly of Fort St. Louis of +the Illinois. Monsieur, I dream of it,—I go in long journeys and never +arrive; I see it through clouds, and wide rivers flow between it and me; +and I am homesick. Yes, monsieur, that is the strangest<a class="pagenum" name="Page_116" title="116"></a> thing,—I have +cried of homesickness for Fort St. Louis of the Illinois!”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, his voice vibrating, “there is a stranger +thing. It is this,—that a man with a wretched hand of iron should +suddenly find within himself a heart of fire!”</p> + +<p>When this confession had burst from him he turned his back without +apology, and Barbe’s forehead sunk upon the window-sill.</p> + +<p>Within the chapel, drops from the cracked roof still fell in succession, +like invisible fingers playing scales along the boards. Outside was the +roar of the landlocked sea, and the higher music of falling rain. Barbe +let her furtive eyes creep up the sill and find Tonty’s large back on +which she looked with abashed but gratified smiles.</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle,” he begged without turning, “forgive what I have said.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly, monsieur,” she responded. “What was it that you said?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing, mademoiselle, nothing.”</p> + +<p>“Then, monsieur, I forgive you for saying nothing.”</p> + +<p>Tonty, in his larger perplexity at having made such a confession without +La Salle’s leave, missed her sting.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_117" title="117"></a></p> + +<p>Nothing more was said through the window. Barbe moved back, and the +stalwart soldier kept his stern posture; until La Salle, whose approach +had been hidden by chimney and mission house, burst abruptly into view. +As he came up, both he and Tonty opened their arms. Strong breast to +strong breast, cheek touching cheek, spare olive-hued man and dark +rich-blooded man hugged each other.</p> + +<p>Barbe’s convent lessons of embroidery and pious lore had included no +heathen tales of gods or heroes. Yet to her this sight was like a vision +of two great cloudy figures stalking across the world and meeting with +an embrace.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_118" title="118"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_VI" id="II_VI">VI.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">LA SALLE AND TONTY.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">When one of the men had been called from the mission house to stand +guard, they came directly into the chapel, preferring to talk there in +the presence of Barbe.</p> + +<p>La Salle kissed her hand and her cheek, and she sat down before the +fire, spreading the buffalo skin under her feet.</p> + +<p>As embers sunk and the talk of the two men went on, she crept as low as +this shaggy carpet, resting arms and head upon the bench. The dying fire +made exquisite color in this dismal chapel.</p> + +<p>“The governor’s man, when he arrived to seize Fort St. Louis, gave you +my letter of instructions, Tonty?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, Monsieur de la Salle.”</p> + +<p>“Then, my lad, why have you abandoned the post and followed me? You +should have stayed to be my representative. They have Frontenac.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_119" title="119"></a> +Crévecœur was ruined for us. If they get St. Louis of the Illinois +entirely into their hands they will claim the whole of Louisiana, these +precious Associates.”</p> + +<p>Tonty, laying his sound arm across his commandant’s shoulder, exclaimed, +“Monsieur, I have followed you five hundred leagues to drag that rascal +Jolycœur back with me. He told at Fort St. Louis that this should be +your last journey.”</p> + +<p>La Salle laughed.</p> + +<p>“Let me tie Jolycœur and fling him into my canoe, and I turn back at +once. I can hold your claims on the Illinois against any number of +governor’s agents. Take the surgeon Liotot in Jolycœur’s place. +Liotot came with me, anxious to return to France.”</p> + +<p>“Jolycœur is no worse than the others, my Tonty, and he has had many +opportunities. How often has my life been threatened!”</p> + +<p>“He intends mischief, monsieur. If I had heard it before you set out, +this journey need not have been made.”</p> + +<p>“Tonty,” declared the explorer, “I think sometimes I carry my own +destruction within myself. I will not chop nice phrases for these<a class="pagenum" name="Page_120" title="120"></a> +hounds who continually ruin my undertakings by their faithlessness. If a +man must keep patting the populace, he can do little else. But I am glad +you overtook me here. My Tonty, if I had a hundred men like you I could +spread out the unknown wilderness and possess it as that child possesses +that hide of buffalo.”</p> + +<p>Though their undertakings were united, and the Italian had staked his +fortune in the Norman’s ventures, La Salle always assumed, and Tonty +from the first granted him, entire mastery of the West. Both looked with +occupied eyes at Barbe, who felt her life enlarged by witnessing this +conference.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, what aspect have affairs taken since you reached Fort +Frontenac?”</p> + +<p>“Worse, Tonty, than I dreaded when I left the Illinois. You know how +this new governor stripped Fort Frontenac of men and made its +unprotected state an excuse for seizing it, saying I had not obeyed the +king’s order to maintain a garrison. And you know how he and the +merchants of Montreal have possessed themselves of my seigniory here. +They have sold and are still busy selling my goods from this post, +putting the money into their pockets. I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_121" title="121"></a> spent nearly thirty-five +thousand francs improving this grant of Frontenac. But worse than that, +Tonty, they have ruined my credit both here and in France. Even my +brother will no more lift a finger for me. The king is turned against +me. The fortunes of my family—even the fortune of that child—are +sucked down in my ruin.”</p> + +<p>Barbe noted her own bankruptcy with the unconcern of youth. Monsieur de +Tonty’s face, when you looked up at it from a rug beside the hearth, +showed well its full rounded chin, square jaws, and high temples, the +richness of its Italian coloring against the blackness of its Italian +hair.</p> + +<p>“They call me a dreamer and a madman, these fellows now in power, and +have persuaded the king that my discoveries are of no account.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “do you remember the mouth of the great +river?”<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> + +<p>Face glowed opposite face as they felt the log walls roll away from +environing their vision.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_122" title="122"></a> It was no longer the wash of the Ontario they +heard, but the voice of the Mexican gulf. The yellow flood of +Mississippi poured out between marsh borders. Again discharges of +musketry seemed to shake the morasses beside a naked water world, the Te +Deum to arise, and the explorer to be heard proclaiming,—</p> + +<p>“In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible, and victorious +Prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God king of France and of +Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I, this ninth day of April, one +thousand and six hundred and eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of +his Majesty, which I hold in my hand and which may be seen by all whom +it may concern, have taken and do now take, in the name of his Majesty +and of his successors to the crown, possession of this country of +Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the +nations, people, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, +fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, +from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio, +as also along the river Colbert or Mississippi, and the rivers which +discharge themselves thereinto, from its<a class="pagenum" name="Page_123" title="123"></a> source beyond the country of +the Nadouessioux, as far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf of +Mexico.”<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “the plunderers of your fortune cannot take +away that discovery or blot out the world you then opened. And what is +Europe compared to this vast country? At the height of his magnificence +Louis cannot picture to himself the grandeur of this western empire. +France is but the palm of his hand beside it. It stretches from endless +snow to endless heat; its breadth no man may guess. Nearly all the +native tribes affiliate readily with the French. We have to dispute us +only the English who hold a little strip by the ocean, the Dutch with +smaller holding inland, and a few Spaniards along the Gulf.”</p> + +<p>“And all may be driven out before the arms of France,” exclaimed La +Salle. “These crawling merchants and La Barre,—soldier, he calls +himself!—see nothing of this. Every man for his own purse among them. +But thou seest it, Tonty. I see it. And we are no knights on a crusade. +Nor are we unpractised courtiers shred<a class="pagenum" name="Page_124" title="124"></a>ding our finery away on the +briers of the wilderness. This western enterprise is based on +geographical facts. No mind can follow all the development of that rich +land. It is an empire,” declared La Salle, striding between hearth and +chancel-rail, unconscious that he lifted his voice to the rafters of a +sanctuary, “which Louis might drop France itself to grasp!”</p> + +<p>“The king will be convinced of this, Monsieur de la Salle, when you +again have his ear. When you have showed him what streams of commerce +must flow out through a post stationed at the mouth of the Mississippi. +France will then have a cord drawn half around this country.”</p> + +<p>“Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I build, navigator of +every ship I set afloat, if you could live in every man who labors for +me, if you could stand forever between those Iroquois wolves and the +tribes we try to band for mutual protection, and at the same time, if +you could always be at my side to ward off gun, knife, and poison,—you +would make me the most successful man on earth.”</p> + +<p>“I have travelled five hundred leagues to ward poison away from you, +monsieur. And you laugh at me.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" title="125"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" title="126"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/z131.jpg" width="600" height="414" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I +build,” etc.—<i>Page 124.</i></p> +</div> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_127" title="127"></a></p> + +<p>“For your pains, I will dismiss Jolycœur to-day, and take Liotot with +me.”</p> + +<p>“And will you come here as soon as you dismiss him and let my men +prepare your food?”</p> + +<p>“Willingly. Fort Frontenac, with my rights in it denied, is no halting +place for me. To-morrow I set out again to France, and you to the fort +on the Illinois. But, Tonty—”</p> + +<p>La Salle’s face relaxed into tenderness as he laid his hands upon his +friend’s shoulders. The Italian’s ardent temperament was the only agent +which ever fused and made facile of tongue and easy of confidence that +man of cold reserve known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what he had +to say. They both glanced at Barbe and flushed. But the nebulous thought +surrounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never condensed to spoken +word.</p> + +<p>Tonty’s sentinel opened the chapel door and broke up this council. He +said an Indian stood there with him demanding to be admitted.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_128" title="128"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_VII" id="II_VII">VII.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">AN ADOPTION.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">“What does he want?” inquired Tonty.</p> + +<p>“He is determined to speak with you, Monsieur de Tonty, from what I can +gather out of his words.”</p> + +<p>“Let him wait in the mission house, then,” said Tonty, “until Monsieur +de la Salle has ended his business.”</p> + +<p>“I have ended,” said La Salle. “It is time I ordered my men and baggage +and canoes out of Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, remain, and let an order from you be taken to the gate.”</p> + +<p>“Some of those sulky fellows need my hand over them, Tonty. Besides, +there are matters which must be definitely settled before I leave the +fort. I have need to go myself, besides the obligation to deliver this +runaway girl, on whom her uncle La Salle is always bringing penances.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_129" title="129"></a></p> + +<p>Barbe sprung up and put herself in the attitude of accompanying him.</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “the rain is still falling. If Monsieur de +la Salle can carry this hide over you, it will be some protection.”</p> + +<p>He took up the buffalo skin, and shook it to loosen any dust which might +be clinging to the shag.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur, you are very good,” she answered. “But it is not necessary +for me.”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle cares very little about a wetting,” said La Salle. “She +was born to be a princess of the backwoods. Call in your Indian before +we go, Tonty. He may have some news for us.”</p> + +<p>Tonty spoke to the sentinel, whose fingers visibly held the door, and he +let pass a tall Iroquois brave carrying such a bundle of rich furs as +one of that race above the condition of squaw rarely deigned to lift. +His errand was evidently peaceable. He paused and stood like a prince. +Neither La Salle nor Tonty remembered his face, though both felt sure he +came from the mission village of friendly Iroquois near Fort Frontenac.</p> + +<p>“What does my brother want?” inquired La<a class="pagenum" name="Page_130" title="130"></a> Salle, with sympathy he never +showed to his French subordinates.</p> + +<p>“He waits to speak to his white brother with the iron hand,” answered +the Iroquois.</p> + +<p>“Have you brought us bad news?” again inquired La Salle.</p> + +<p>“Good news.”</p> + +<p>“What is it?”</p> + +<p>“It is only to my brother with the iron hand.”</p> + +<p>“Can you not speak in the presence of Monsieur de la Salle?” demanded +Tonty.</p> + +<p>With exquisite reserve the Indian stood silent, waiting the conditions +he needed for the delivery of his message.</p> + +<p>“It is nothing which concerns me,” said La Salle to Tonty. He prepared +to stalk into the weather with Barbe.</p> + +<p>Tonty spoke a few words to the waiting savage, who heard without +returning any sign, and then followed Barbe, stretching the buffalo hide +above her head. When La Salle observed this he failed to ridicule his +lieutenant, but took one side of the shaggy canopy in his own hold. It +was impossible for the girl to go dry-shod, but Tonty directed her way +over the best and firmest ground. They made a solemn procession, for<a class="pagenum" name="Page_131" title="131"></a> +not a word was spoken. When they came to the fortress gate, Tonty again +bestowed the robe around her as he had done when she entered the chapel, +and stood bareheaded while Barbe—whispering “Adieu, monsieur”—passed +out of his sight.</p> + +<p>“I have thought of this, Tonty,” said La Salle as he entered; “when she +is a few years older she shall come to the fort on the Illinois, if I +again reap success.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de la Salle, I am bound to tell you it will be dangerous for +me ever to see mademoiselle again.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” responded the explorer with his close smile, “I am +bound to tell you I think it will be the safest imaginable arrangement +for her.”</p> + +<p>The gate closed behind him, and Tonty carried back an exhilarated face +to the waiting Iroquois.</p> + +<p>He entered Father Hennepin’s chapel again, and the Indian followed him +to the hearth.</p> + +<p>They stood there, ready for conference, the small black savage eye +examining Tonty’s face with open approval.</p> + +<p>“Now let me have your message,” said the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_132" title="132"></a> Italian. “Have I ever seen you +before? What is your name?”</p> + +<p>“Sanomp,” answered the Iroquois. “My white brother with the iron hand +has not seen me before.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/z138.jpg" width="450" height="310" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>He spread open on the bench Barbe had occupied a present of fine furs +and dried meat.</p> + +<p>“Why does my brother bring me these things?” inquired Tonty, realizing +as he looked at the gift how much of this barbarian’s wealth was +bestowed in such an offering.</p> + +<p>“Listen,” said Sanomp.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> He had a face of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_133" title="133"></a> benevolent gravity,—the +unhurried, sincere face of man living close to Nature. “It is a chief of +the Seneca tribe who speaks to my white brother.”</p> + +<p>“I have met a chief of the Seneca tribe before,” remarked Tonty, +smiling. “It was in the country of the Illinois, and he wrapped my +scalp-lock around his fingers.”</p> + +<p>Sanomp smiled, too, without haste, and continued his story.</p> + +<p>“I left my people to live near the fort of my French brothers because it +was told me the man with a hand of iron was here. When I came here the +man with a hand of iron was gone. So I waited for him. Our lives are +consumed in waiting for the best things. Five years have I stood by the +mouth of Cataraqui. And this morning the man with a hand of iron passed +before my face.”</p> + +<p>He spoke a mixture of French and Iroquois which enabled Tonty to catch +his entire meaning.</p> + +<p>“But this hand could not betray me from the lake, to eyes that had never +seen me before,” objected the Italian.</p> + +<p>Advancing one foot and folding his arms in the attitude of a narrator, +the Indian said,—</p> + +<p>“Listen. At that time of life when a young<a class="pagenum" name="Page_134" title="134"></a> Iroquois retires from his +tribe to hide in the woods and fast until his okie<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> is revealed to +him, four days and four nights the boy Sanomp lay on the ground, rain +and dew, moonlight and sunlight passing over him. The boy Sanomp looked +up, for an eagle dropped before his eyes. He then knew that the eagle +was his okie, and that he was to be a warrior, not a hunter or +medicine-man. But the eagle dropped before the feet of a soldier the +image of my white brother, and the soldier held up a hand of yellow +metal. The boy heard a voice coming from the vision that said to him, +‘Warrior, this is thy friend and brother. Be to him a friend and +brother. After thou hast seven times followed the war path go and wait +by the mouth of Cataraqui until he comes.’ So when I had seven times +followed the war path I came, and my brother being passed by, I waited.”</p> + +<p>Tonty’s square brown Italian face was no more sincere than the redder +aquiline visage fronting him and telling its vision.</p> + +<p>“My brother Sanomp comes in a good time,” he remarked.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_135" title="135"></a></p> + +<p>The Iroquois next took out his peace pipe and pouch of tobacco. While he +filled the bowl and stooped for an ember, Tonty stripped the copper hand +of its glove. He held it up before Sanomp as he received the calumet in +the other. An aboriginal grunt of strong satisfaction echoed in the +chapel.</p> + +<p>“Hand of yellow metal,” said Sanomp.</p> + +<p>Tonty gravely smoked the pipe and handed it back to Sanomp. Sanomp +smoked it, shook the ashes out and put it away.</p> + +<p>Thus was the ceremony of adoption finished. Without more talk, the red +friend and brother turned from his white friend and brother and went +back to his own world.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_136" title="136"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_VIII" id="II_VIII">VIII.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">TEGAHKOUITA.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">Barbe ran breathless up the stairway, glad to catch sight of her uncle +the Abbé so occupied at the lower hearth that he took no heed of her +return.</p> + +<p>She had counted herself the only woman in Fort Frontenac, yet she found +a covered figure standing in front of the chamber door next her own.</p> + +<p>Though Barbe had never seen Catharine Tegahkouita<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> she knew this must +be the Iroquois virgin who lived a hermit life of devotion in a cabin at +Lachine, revered by French and Indians alike. How this saint had reached +Fort Frontenac or in whose behalf she was exerting herself Barbe could +not conjecture. Tegahkouita<a class="pagenum" name="Page_137" title="137"></a> had interceded for many afflicted people +and her prayers were much sought after.</p> + +<p>The Indian girl kept her face entirely covered. No man knew that it was +comely or even what its features were like. The chronicler tells us when +she was a young orphan beside her uncle’s lodge-fire her eyes were too +weak to bear the light of the sun, and in this darkness began the +devotion which distinguished her life. What was first a necessity, +became finally her choice, and she shut herself from the world.</p> + +<p>To Barbe, Tegahkouita was an object of religious awe tempered by that +criticism in which all young creatures secretly indulge. She sat on the +bench as if in meditation, but her eyes crept up and down that straight +and motionless and blanket-eclipsed presence. She knew that Tegahkouita +was good; was it not told of the Indian girl that she rolled three days +in a bed of thorns, and that she often walked barefooted in ice and +snow, to discipline her body? She was not afraid of Tegahkouita. But she +wished somebody else would come into the room who could break the +saint’s death-like silence. Sainthood was a very safe condition,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_138" title="138"></a> but +Barbe found it impossible to admire the outward appearance of a living +saint.</p> + +<p>La Salle had stopped at the barracks to order out his men, and Colin who +had taken to that part of the fort for amusement, watched their transfer +with much interest.</p> + +<p>Wind was conquering rain. It blew keenly from the southwest, and sung at +the corners of Frontenac, whirling dead leaves like fugitive birds into +the area of the fort. La Salle’s men turned out of their quarters with +reluctance to exchange safety and comfort for exposure and a leaky camp. +The explorer stood and saw them pass before him bearing their various +burdens, excepting one man who slouched by the door of the bakehouse as +if he had stationed himself there to see that they passed in order out +of the gate.</p> + +<p>“Come here, you Jolycœur,” called La Salle, lifting his finger.</p> + +<p>Jolycœur, savagely hairy, approached with that look of sulky menace +La Salle never appeared to see in his servants.</p> + +<p>“Where is your load of goods?” inquired the explorer.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_139" title="139"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_140" title="140"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z145.jpg" width="600" height="391" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“‘Come here, you Jolycœur,’ called La Salle.”—<i>Page +138.</i></p> +</div> + +<p>Jolycœur lifted a quick look, and dropping it<a class="pagenum" name="Page_141" title="141"></a>again, replied, +“Sieur de la Salle, I was waiting for the cook to hand me out the dishes +you ordered against you came back.”</p> + +<p>La Salle examined him through half-shut eyes. It was this man’s constant +duty to prepare his food. Tonty and his brother Jean had so occupied his +morning that he had found no time for eating. A man inured to hardships +can fast with very little thought about the matter, but he decided if +Jolycœur had not yet handled this meal he might hazard some last +service from a man who had missed so many opportunities.</p> + +<p>“Did you cook my breakfast?” he inquired.</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle, I dared not put my nose in the bakehouse. This cook +is the worst man in Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>The cook appearing with full hands in his door, La Salle said to +Jolycœur, “Carry those platters into the lodge,” and he watched the +minutest action of the man’s elbows, walking behind him into the lower +apartment of the dwelling. A table stood there on which Jolycœur +began to arrange the dishes with surly carelessness.</p> + +<p>The explorer forgot him the moment they entered, for two people occupied +this room in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_142" title="142"></a> close talk. Challenging whatever ill Jacques le Ber and +the Abbé Cavelier had prepared, La Salle advanced beyond the table with +the chill and defiant bearing natural to him.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur le Ber and I have been discussing this alliance you are so +anxious to make with his family,” spoke the Abbé.</p> + +<p>The explorer met Le Ber’s face full of that triumphant contempt which +men strangely feel for other men who have fallen and become +stepping-stones of fortune to themselves. He turned away without answer, +and began to eat indifferently from the dishes Jolycœur had left +ready, standing beside the table while he ate.</p> + +<p>“If Jacques le Ber were as anxious for the marriage as yourself,—but I +told you this morning, my brother La Salle, what madness it must seem to +all sane men,—it could not be arranged. His daughter hath refused to +see you.”</p> + +<p>“My thanks are due to my brother the Abbé for his nice management of all +my affairs,” sneered La Salle. “I comprehend there is nothing which he +will not endeavor to mar for me. It surely is madness which induces a +man against all experience to confide in his brother.”</p> + +<p>Jean Cavelier replied with a shrug and a spread<a class="pagenum" name="Page_143" title="143"></a> of the hands which +said, “In such coin of gratitude am I always paid.”</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle,” volunteered Le Ber, rising and coming forward with +natural candor, “it is not so long ago that your proposal would have +made me proud, and the Abbé hath not ill managed it now. Monsieur, I +wish my girl to marry. I have been ready for any marriage she would +accept. She has indeed shown more liking for you than for any other man +in New France. Monsieur, I would far rather have her married than bound +to the life she leads. But if you were in a position to marry, Jeanne +refuses your hand.”</p> + +<p>“Has she said this to you?” inquired La Salle.</p> + +<p>“I have not seen her to-day,” replied Le Ber. “She has the Iroquois +virgin Tegahkouita with her. I brought Tegahkouita here because she was +besought for some healing in our Iroquois lodges near the fort.”</p> + +<p>Jacques le Ber stopped. But La Salle calmly heard him thus claim +everything pertaining to Fort Frontenac.</p> + +<p>“We must do what we can to hold these unstable Indians,” continued Le +Ber. “Monsieur, before I could carry your proposal to Jeanne,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_144" title="144"></a> she sends +me Tegahkouita, as if they had some holy contrivance for reading +people’s minds. Your brother will confirm to you the words Tegahkouita +brought.”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle le Ber will pray for you always, my brother La Salle. But +she refuses even to see you.”</p> + +<p>“It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her prayers,” remarked the +discontented father, “she hath room enough there for all New France.”</p> + +<p>The man who had more than once sprung into the midst of hostile savages +and carried their admiration by a word, now stood silent and musing. But +his face expressed nothing except determination.</p> + +<p>“You shall see her yourself,” Jacques le Ber exclaimed, with the +shrewdness of a man holding present advantage, yet gauging fully his +antagonist’s force. “You and I were once friends, Sieur de la Salle. I +might obtain a worse match for my girl.”</p> + +<p>“I will see her,” said La Salle, more in the manner of affirming his own +wish than of accepting a concession.</p> + +<p>He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind him, the Abbé Cavelier +following Le Ber.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_145" title="145"></a></p> + +<p>As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood as a bar in front of Jeanne’s +chamber door. Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian girl of +peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously in a voice tuned by much +low-spoken prayer, “Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, ‘Tell Sieur de la +Salle I will pray for him always, but I must never see his face again.’”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" title="146"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_IX" id="II_IX">IX.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">AN ORDEAL.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">“When I have seen Mademoiselle le Ber,” La Salle replied to the blanket +of Tegahkouita, “I shall understand from herself what her wishes are in +this matter.”</p> + +<p>“Sieur de la Salle cannot see her,” spoke Tegahkouita. “She hath no word +but this, and she will not see Sieur de la Salle again.”</p> + +<p>“I say he shall see her!” exclaimed the Montreal merchant, with asperity +created by so many influences working upon his daughter. “He may look +upon her this minute!”</p> + +<p>Jeanne le Ber’s presence in Fort Frontenac scarcely surprised Barbe, so +great was her amazement at the attitude of her uncle La Salle. That he +should be suing to Le Ber’s daughter seemed as impossible as any +rejection of his suit. She felt toward the saint she had pinched at +convent that jealous resentment peculiar to women who desire to have the +men of their<a class="pagenum" name="Page_147" title="147"></a> families married, yet are never satisfied with the choice +those men make. Even Barbe, however, considered it a sacrilegious act +when Le Ber shook his daughter’s door and demanded admittance.</p> + +<p>Jeanne’s complete silence, like a challenge, drew out his imperative +force. He broke through every fastening and threw the door wide open.</p> + +<p>The small, bare room, scarcely wider than its entrance, afforded no +hiding-places. There was little to catch the eye, from rude berth to +hooks in the ruder wall, from which the commandant’s clothing had so +lately been removed.</p> + +<p>Jeanne, the focus of this small cell, had flown to its extremity. As the +door burst from its fastenings, everybody in the outer room could see +her standing against the wall with noble instinct, facing the breakers +of her privacy, but without looking at them. Her eyes rested on her +beads, which she told with rapid lips and fingers. A dormer window +spread its background of light around her head.</p> + +<p>The recoil of inaction which followed Le Ber’s violence was not felt by +Tegahkouita. With the swift silence of an Indian and the intuition of a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_148" title="148"></a> +devotee, she at once put herself in the sleeping cell, and kneeled +holding up a crucifix before Jeanne. As this symbol of religion was +lifted, Jeanne fell upon her knees.</p> + +<p>Le Ber had not intended to enter, but indignation drove him on after +Tegahkouita. He stood aside and did not approach his child,—a jealous, +remorseful, anxious, irritated man.</p> + +<p>La Salle could see Jeanne, though with giddy and indistinct vision. Her +wool gown lay around her in carven folds, as she knelt like a victim +ready for the headsman’s axe.</p> + +<p>One of the proudest and most reticent men who ever trod the soil of the +New World was thus reduced to woo before his enemy and his kindred; to +argue against those unseen forces represented by the Indian girl, and to +fight death in his own body with every pleading respiration. For +blindness was growing over his eyes. His lungs were tightened. When his +back was turned in the room below, Jolycœur had mixed a dish for him.</p> + +<p>La Salle’s hardihood was the marvel of his followers. A body and will of +electric strength carried him thousands of miles through ways called +impassable. Defeat could not defeat him.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_149" title="149"></a> But this struggle with Jeanne +le Ber was harder than any struggle with an estranged king, harder than +again bringing up fortune from the depths of ruin, harder than tearing +his breath of life from the reluctant air. He reared himself against the +chimney-side, pressing with palms and stretched fingers for support, yet +maintaining a roused erectness.</p> + +<p>“Jeanne!” he spoke; and eyes less blind than his could detect a sinking +of her figure at the sound, “I have this to say.”</p> + +<p>With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by its unnaturalness, La +Salle attempted to place himself nearer the silent object he was to +move. As he passed through the doorway he caught at the sides, and then +stretched out and braced one palm against the wall. Thus propped he +proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful exactness.</p> + +<p>“Jeanne, when I have again brought success out of failure, I shall +demand you in marriage. Your father permits it.”</p> + +<p>Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave no token of having heard him, +except the tremor which shook even the folds of her gown.</p> + +<p>Too proud to confess his peril and make its<a class="pagenum" name="Page_150" title="150"></a> appeal to her, and +suppressing before so many witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he +labored on as La Salle the explorer with the statement of his case.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps I cannot see you again for some years. I do not ask words—of +acceptance now. It is enough—if you look at me.”</p> + +<p>La Salle leaned forward. His eyeballs appeared to swell and protrude as +he strained sight for the slightest lifting of the veil before that +self-restraining spirit.</p> + +<p>Barbe’s wailing suddenly broke all bounds in the outer room. “My uncle +the Abbé! Look at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe—he is going to +die! Somebody has poisoned or stabbed my uncle La Salle!”</p> + +<p>Jean Cavelier with lower outcry ran to help the explorer. But even a +brother and a priest has his limitations. La Salle pushed him off.</p> + +<p>When Barbe saw this, she threw herself to the floor and hid her face +upon the bench. Her kinsman and the hero of her childhood was held over +the abyss of death in the hand of Jeanne le Ber, while those who loved +him must set their teeth in silence.</p> + +<p>But neither this childish judge, nor the father<a class="pagenum" name="Page_151" title="151"></a> watching for any slight +motion of eyelids which might direct all his future hopes and plans, +knew what sickening moisture started from every pore of Jeanne le Ber. +Still she lifted her fainting eyes only as high as the crucifix +Tegahkouita held before her. Compared to her duty as she saw it, she +must count as nothing the life of the man she loved.</p> + +<p>The Indian girl’s weak sight had no plummet for the face of this greater +devotee. Passionately white, its lips praying fast, it stared at the +crucifix. Cold drops ran down from the dew which beaded temples and +upper lip. Sieur de la Salle—Sieur de la Salle was dying, and asking +her for a look! The lifting of her eyelids, the least wavering of her +sight, would sweep away the vows she had made to Heaven, and loosen her +soul for its swift rush to his breast. To be the wife of La Salle! Her +mutter became almost audible as she slid the beads between her fingers. +God would keep her from this deadly sin.</p> + +<p>The gigantic will of La Salle, become almost material and visible, fell +upon her with a cry which must have broken any other endurance.</p> + +<p>“Jeanne! look at me now—you <i>shall</i> look at me now!”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_152" title="152"></a></p> + +<p>Hoarse shouts of battle never tingled through blood as did the voice of +this isolated man.</p> + +<p>Jeanne’s lips twitched on; she twisted her hands in tense knots against +her neck, and her eyes maintained the level of the cross.</p> + +<p>Silence—that fragment of eternity—then filled up the room, submerging +strained ears. There were remote sounds, like the scream of wind cut by +the angles of Fort Frontenac; but no sound which pierced the silence +between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber.</p> + +<p>He turned around and cast himself through the doorway with a lofty tread +as if he were trying to mount skyward. The Abbé Cavelier extended both +arms and kept him from stumbling over the settle which Barbe was +baptizing with her anguish. She looked up with the distorted visage of +one who weeps terribly, and saw the groping explorer led to the +staircase. His feet plunged in the descent.</p> + +<p>To this noise was added a distinct thud from Jeanne le Ber’s room as her +head struck the floor. She lay relaxed and prostrate, and her father +lifted her up. Before rising to his feet with her he passed his hand +piteously across her bruised forehead.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_153" title="153"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_154" title="154"></a> +<img src="images/z159.jpg" width="600" height="364" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“She twisted her hands in tense knots against her +neck.”—<i>Page 152.</i></p> +</div> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_155" title="155"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="II_X" id="II_X">X.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">HEMLOCK.</span></h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/z161.jpg" width="400" height="239" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="p2">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.</p> + +<p>The wind was helpful to La Salle, but he only half met daylight and saw +Jolycœur taking strange shapes.</p> + +<p>“Go to Father Hennepin’s old mission house,” he slowly commanded, “and +send Monsieur de Tonty directly to me.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_156" title="156"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“What ails Sieur de la Salle?” inquired the cook, coming out of his +bakehouse to get this news of a sentinel.</p> + +<p>They both watched the Abbé Cavelier making vain efforts to get hold of +his misdirected brother.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Not yet,” gasped La Salle.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_157" title="157"></a></p> + +<p>“If you had ever taken my advice, this miserable end had not come upon +you.”</p> + +<p>“I am not ended,” gasped La Salle.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“There is more love in his iron hand,” La Salle’s paralyzing mouth flung +out, “than in any other living heart!”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_158" title="158"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Tonty’s iron hand brought out of Jolycœur immediate confession of the +poison he had used.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Noon stood in the sky, half shredding vapors, and lighting cool sparkles +upon the lake. Afternoon dragged its mute and heavy hours westward.</p> + +<p>Men left the mission house and entered it again, carrying wood or water.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_159" title="159"></a><br /> + <a class="pagenum" name="Page_160" title="160"></a> +<img src="images/z165.jpg" width="600" height="351" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“His rings of black hair flaring to a fierce +uprightness.”—<i>Page 158.</i></p> +</div> + +<p>The sun set in the lake, parting clouds before <a class="pagenum" name="Page_161" title="161"></a>his sinking visage and +stretching his rays like long arms of fire to smite the heaving water.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Within the silent mission house warmth and redness were diffused from +logs piled in the chimney.</p> + +<p>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 stood<a class="pagenum" name="Page_162" title="162"></a> guard outside in the shadow of the house, were +asleep in the next room.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Sleep,” urged La Salle.</p> + +<p>“I shall not sleep again,” said Tonty, “until I see you safely on your +way toward France.”</p> + +<p>“This has been worse than the dose of verdigris I once got.”</p> + +<p>“Jolycœur says he used hemlock,” responded Tonty. “He accused +everybody in New France of setting him on to the deed, but I silenced +that.”</p> + +<p>“I had not yet dismissed him, Tonty. The scoundrel hath claims on me for +two years’ wages.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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 rose<a class="pagenum" name="Page_163" title="163"></a> on 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.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_164" title="164"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_165" title="165"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_166" title="166"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="Book_III" id="Book_III">Book III.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.<br /> +1687 <span class="fakesc">A. D.</span></span></h2> + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_167" title="167"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="III_I" id="III_I">I.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">IN AN EAGLE’S NEST.</span></h2> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z173.jpg" width="400" height="252" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="p2">“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 their<a class="pagenum" name="Page_168" title="168"></a> Huts. 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.</p> + +<p>“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.”<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_169" title="169"></a></p> + +<p>“Joutel, what are you writing there?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“You were writing nothing else?” insisted La Salle’s brother, setting +his shoulders against the storehouse door.</p> + +<p>“Not a word, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“I cannot sleep to-night, Joutel,” said the Abbé Cavelier.</p> + +<p>“I thought you were made very comfortable in the house,” remarked +Joutel.</p> + +<p>“What can make me comfortable now?”</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_170" title="170"></a> +nightly, took the complete rest he had earned by long tramping in +southern woods.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_171" title="171"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_172" title="172"></a> +<img src="images/z177.jpg" width="600" height="386" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“Joutel, what are you writing there?”—<i>Page 169.</i></p> +</div> + +<p>“Tonty may reach the Rock at any time,”<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> complained the Abbé to the +floor, though his voice must reach Joutel’s ears. “There is nothing I +dread more than meeting Tonty.”</p> + +<p>“We can leave the Rock before Monsieur de Tonty arrives,” said Joutel, +repeating a suggestion he had made many times.</p> + +<p>“Certainly, without the goods my brother would have him deliver to me, +without a canoe or any provision whatever for our journey!”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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 our<a class="pagenum" name="Page_173" title="173"></a> way 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.”</p> + +<p>“He received us most kindly, and we have been his guests a month,” said +Joutel.</p> + +<p>“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. +And<a class="pagenum" name="Page_174" title="174"></a> this he only told me during his fever at St. Domingo on the +voyage.”</p> + +<p>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,—</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty may bring news of her from Montreal.”</p> + +<p>“You understand, Joutel,” exclaimed the Abbé, approaching the candle, +“that it is best,—that it is necessary not to tell Tonty what we know?”</p> + +<p>“I have understood what you said, Monsieur the Abbé.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_175" title="175"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Abbé Cavelier gazed upon him with shudders.</p> + +<p>The over-taxed candle flame stooped and expired, the scent of its +funeral pile rising from a small red point in darkness.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_176" title="176"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="III_II" id="III_II">II.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">THE FRIEND AND BROTHER</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">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.</p> + +<p>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<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> women and +children,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_177" title="177"></a>—fragments of families, going under their escort to join the +colony at Fort St. Louis.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_178" title="178"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>Mademoiselle Cavelier was going to Fort St. Louis at the first +opportunity since her uncle La Salle’s request, made three years before.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_179" title="179"></a> disaster and a colony dropped like +castaways on some inlet of the Gulf.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 visible<a class="pagenum" name="Page_180" title="180"></a> world 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/z186.jpg" width="400" height="256" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_181" title="181"></a> 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,—</p> + +<p>“The Great-Medicine-Hand! The Great-Medicine-Hand!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +sounded<a class="pagenum" name="Page_182" title="182"></a> the retreat, and though women and children continued to make +outcry, Barbe could hear no groans.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Barbe saw nothing better to do than to stand beside her wrecked tent, +and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine burrowed closely to her, uttering +distressed noises.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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,—</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty, have you any wound?”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_183" title="183"></a></p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>With excited voice Barbe assured him she had remained tranquil through +the battle.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Who is Sanomp, monsieur?”</p> + +<p>“Do you remember the Iroquois Indian who came to Father Hennepin’s +chapel at Fort Frontenac?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, monsieur; was he among these Senecas?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Sanomp was then the Indian I saw creeping<a class="pagenum" name="Page_184" title="184"></a> toward your tent. Did he +fight against his own people?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Everybody loves and fears Monsieur de Tonty,”<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> observed Barbe, with +sedate accent.</p> + +<p>Tonty breathed deeply.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary, it seemed a great convenience among the Indians,” +murmured Barbe, and Tonty laughed and stood silent.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_185" title="185"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Good-night, monsieur,” replied Barbe, and he opened her tent for her, +when she turned back.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“The tales lately told about his madness are more than I can bear.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_186" title="186"></a></p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle, Monsieur de la Salle’s enemies always called his great +enterprises madness.”</p> + +<p>“Can you imagine where he now is, Monsieur de Tonty?”</p> + +<p>“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.”<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p> + +<p>They stood in such silence as could result from two people’s ceasing to +murmur in the midst of high-pitched voices.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” resumed Barbe, “do you remember Jeanne le Ber?”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle, I never saw her.”</p> + +<p>“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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_187" title="187"></a> 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.”</p> + +<p>When Barbe had spoken such daring words she stepped inside her tent and +dropped its curtain.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_188" title="188"></a></p> + + +<h2><a name="III_III" id="III_III">III.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">HALF-SILENCE.</span></h2> + +<p class="p2">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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_189" title="189"></a></p> + +<p>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<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> +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.</p> + +<p>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 below<a class="pagenum" name="Page_190" title="190"></a> and 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Wide water-terraced steps, looking as if cut for a temple, ascended at +last to the gate. Through<a class="pagenum" name="Page_191" title="191"></a> this Tonty led his charge upon a dimpled +sward, for care had been taken to keep turf alive in Fort St. Louis.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Oh, my uncle Abbé!” Barbe gasped with surprise. “Is Colin with you? Is +my uncle La Salle here?”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_192" title="192"></a></p> + +<p>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,—</p> + +<p>“Is Monsieur de la Salle safe and well? You both come from Monsieur de +la Salle!”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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,—</p> + +<p>“And he was well?”</p> + +<p>“He left us in excellent health, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Only six, monsieur. We have been made quite comfortable by your officer +Bellefontaine.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_193" title="193"></a><br /> +<a class="pagenum" name="Page_194" title="194"></a> +<img src="images/z199.jpg" width="600" height="348" alt="" /> +<p class="caption">“And he was well?”—<i>Page 192.</i></p> +</div> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_195" title="195"></a></p> + +<p>“Monsieur the Abbé, where did Monsieur de la Salle land his colony?”</p> + +<p>“On a western coast of the Gulf, monsieur. It was most unfortunate. Ever +since he has been searching for the Mississippi.”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_196" title="196"></a></p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“To-morrow,” repeated the Abbé Cavelier, “I must set out at dawn, if you +can honor my brother’s paper.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Colin, what is the matter?” demanded Barbe, with direct dart. “I +see concealment in your face!”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_197" title="197"></a></p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“And, Colin, you did leave my uncle La Salle quite well?”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“For myself,” she said, “I love this wild world. I shall stay here until +my uncle La Salle arrives.”</p> + +<p>“Our uncle the Abbé will decide that,” replied Colin. “It is unfortunate +that you left Montreal. Your only hope of staying here<a class="pagenum" name="Page_198" title="198"></a> rests 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_199" title="199"></a> 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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_200" title="200"></a></p> + + + +<h2><a name="III_IV" id="III_IV">IV.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">A FÊTE ON THE ROCK.</span><a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><span><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_201" title="201"></a></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +pro<a class="pagenum" name="Page_202" title="202"></a>truded 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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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 we<a class="pagenum" name="Page_203" title="203"></a> may 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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/z209.jpg" width="400" height="289" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“You have stated Monsieur de Tonty’s case, and you have stated yours,” +said Barbe. “I will now state mine. I will not be married to any man at +a day’s notice.”</p> + +<p>“May I ask what it is you demand, mademoiselle?” inquired the Abbé, with +irony, “if you propose to re-arrange any marriage your relatives make +for you.”</p> + +<p>“I demand a week between the betrothal and the marriage.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_204" title="204"></a></p> + +<p>“A week, mademoiselle!” her uncle laughed. “We who set out must give +winter a week’s start of us for such a whim! You will be married +to-night or you will return with me to France. I will now send Monsieur +de Tonty to you to be received as your future husband.”</p> + +<p>“I will scratch him!” exclaimed Barbe, with a flash of perverseness, at +which her uncle’s cassocked shoulders shook until he disappeared within +doors.</p> + +<p>She left the earthwork and went to the entrance side of the fort. There +she stood, whispering with a frown,—”Oh, if you please, monsieur, keep +your distance! Do not come here as any future husband of mine!”</p> + +<p>She had, however, much time in which to prepare her mind before Tonty +appeared.</p> + +<p>All eyes on the Rock followed him. He shone through the trees, a +splendid figure in the gold and white uniform of France, laid aside for +years but resumed on this great occasion.</p> + +<p>When he came up to Barbe he stopped and folded his arms, saying +whimsically,—</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle, I have not the experience to know how one should approach +his betrothed. I never was married before.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_205" title="205"></a></p> + +<p>“It is my case, also, monsieur,” replied Barbe.</p> + +<p>“How do you like Fort St. Louis?” proceeded Tonty.</p> + +<p>“I am enchanted with it.”</p> + +<p>“You delight me when you say that. During the last four years I have not +made an improvement about the land or in any way strengthened this +position without thinking, Mademoiselle Cavelier may sometime approve of +this. We are finding a new way of heating our houses with underground +flues made of stone and mortar.”</p> + +<p>“That must be agreeable, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>“We often have hunting parties from the Rock. This country is full of +game.”</p> + +<p>“It is pleasant to amuse one’s self, monsieur.”</p> + +<p>Tonty had many a time seen the silent courtship of the Illinois. He +thought now of those motionless figures sitting side by side under a +shelter of rushes or bark from morning till night without exchanging a +word.</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle, I hope this marriage is agreeable to you?”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” exclaimed Barbe, “I have simply been flung at your +head to suit the convenience of my relatives.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_206" title="206"></a></p> + +<p>“Was that distasteful to you?” he wistfully inquired.</p> + +<p>“I am not fit for a bride. No preparation has been made for me.”</p> + +<p>“I thought of making some preparation myself,” confessed Tonty. “I got a +web of brocaded silk from France several years ago.”</p> + +<p>“To be clothed like a princess by one’s bridegroom,” said Barbe, +wringing her gown skirt and twisting folds of it in her fingers. “That +might be submitted to. But I could not wear the web of brocade around me +like a blanket.”</p> + +<p>“There are fifty needlewomen on the Rock who can make it in a day, +mademoiselle.”</p> + +<p>“And in short, monsieur, to be betrothed in the morning and married the +same day is what no girl will submit to!”</p> + +<p>Tonty, in the prime of his manhood and his might as a lover was too +imposing a figure for her to face; she missed seeing his swarthy pallor +as he answered,—</p> + +<p>“I understand from all this, mademoiselle, that you care nothing for me. +I have felt betrothed to you ever since I declared myself to Monsieur de +la Salle at Fort Frontenac. How your pretty dreaming of the Rock of St. +Louis<a class="pagenum" name="Page_207" title="207"></a> and your homesick cry for this place did pierce me! I said, ‘She +shall be my wife, and I will bring home everything that can be obtained +for her. That small face shall be heart’s treasure to me. Its eyes will +watch for me over the Rock.’ On our journey here, many a night I took my +blanket and lay beside your tent, thanking the saints for the sweet +privilege of bringing home my bride. Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, +trembling, “I will kill any other man who dares approach you. Yet, +mademoiselle, I could not annoy you by the least grief! Oh, teach a +frontiersman what to say to please a woman!”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” panted Barbe. “You please me too well, indeed! It +was necessary to come to an understanding. You should not make me +say,—for I am ashamed to tell,—how long I have adored you!”</p> + +<p>As Tonty’s quick Italian blood mounted from extreme anguish to extreme +rapture, he laughed with a sob.</p> + +<p>Fifty needlewomen on the Rock made in a day a gown of the web of +brocaded silk. The fortress was full of preparation for evening +festivity. Hunters went out and brought in game,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_208" title="208"></a> and Indians carried up +fish, new corn, and honey from wild bee trees. All the tables which the +dwellings afforded were ranged in two rows at opposite sides of the +place of arms, and decorated with festoons of ferns and cedar, and such +late flowers as exploring children could find.</p> + +<p>Some urchins ascended the Rock with an offering of thick-lobed prickly +cactus which grew plentifully in the sand. The Demoiselle Bellefontaine +labored from place to place, helping her husband to make this the most +celebrated fête ever attempted in Fort St. Louis.</p> + +<p>As twilight settled—and it slowly settled—on the summit, roast +venison, buffalo steaks, and the odor of innumerable dishes scented the +air. Many candles pinned to the branches of trees like vast candelabra, +glittered through the dusk. Crows sat on the rocks below and gabbled of +the corn they had that day stolen from lazy Indian women.</p> + +<p>There was no need of chapel or bell in a temple fortress. All the +inhabitants of the Rock stood as witnesses. Colin brought Barbe from the +dwelling with the greater part of the web of brocaded silk dragged in +grandeur behind her. Tonty kissed her hand and led her before<a class="pagenum" name="Page_209" title="209"></a> the +priests. When the ceremony ended a salute was fired.</p> + +<p>The Illinois town could hear singing on the Rock and see that stronghold +glittering as if it had been carried by torches. Music of violin and +horn, laughter, dancing, and gay voices in repartee sounded on there +through half the hours of the night.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_210" title="210"></a></p> + + + + + +<h2><a name="III_V" id="III_V">V.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">The morning star yet shone and the river valley was drenched with half +frosty dew, and filled with silver mist when the Abbé Cavelier and his +party descended to their canoes and set off up the river. They had made +their farewells the night before, but Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut +appeared, Tonty accompanying them down the descent. He came up with a +bound before the boat was off, thundered at Bellefontaine’s door, and +pulled that sleepy officer into the open air, calling at his ear,—</p> + +<p>“What fellow is this in the Abbé’s party who kept out of my sight until +he carried his load but now to the canoe?”</p> + +<p>“You must mean Teissier, Monsieur de Tonty. He has lain ailing in the +storehouse.”</p> + +<p>“Look,—yonder he goes.”</p> + +<p>Tonty made Bellefontaine lean over the eastern earthwork, but even the +boat was blurred upon the river.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_211" title="211"></a></p> + +<p>“That was Jolycœur,” declared Tonty, “whom Monsieur de la Salle +promised me he would never take into his service again. That fellow +tried to poison Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac.”</p> + +<p>“Monsieur de Tonty,” remonstrated the subordinate, “I know him well. He +was here a month. He told me he was enlisted at St. Domingo, while +Monsieur de la Salle lay in a fever, to replace men who deserted. He is +a pilot and his name is Teissier.”</p> + +<p>“Whatever his real name may be we had him here on the Rock before you +came, and he was called Jolycœur.”</p> + +<p>“At any rate,” said Du Lhut, “his being of Abbé Cavelier’s company +argues that he hath done La Salle no late harm.”</p> + +<p>Tonty thought about the matter while light grew in the sky, but +dismissed it when the priest of Fort St. Louis summoned his great family +to matins. On such pleasant mornings they were chanted in the open air.</p> + +<p>The sun rose, drawing filaments from the mass of vapor like a spinner, +and every shred disappeared while the eye watched it. Preparations went +forward for breakfast, while children’s and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_212" title="212"></a> birds’ voices already +chirped above and below the steep ascent.</p> + +<p>One urchin brought Tonty a paper, saying it was Monsieur Joutel’s, the +young man who slept in the storehouse and was that morning gone from the +fort.</p> + +<p>“Did he tell you to give it to me?” inquired Tonty.</p> + +<p>“Monsieur,” complained the lad, “he pinned it in the cap of my large +brother and left order it was to be given to you after two days. But my +large brother hath this morning pinned it in my cap, and it may work me +harm. Besides, I desire to amuse myself by the river, and if I lost +Monsieur Joutel’s paper I should get whipped.”</p> + +<p>“I commend you,” laughed Tonty, as he took the packet. “You must have no +secrets from your commandant.”</p> + +<p>The child leaped, relieved, toward the gate, and this heavy +communication shook between the iron and the natural hand. Tonty spread +it open on his right gauntlet.</p> + +<p>He read a few moments with darkening countenance. Then the busy people +on the Rock were startled by a cry of awful anguish. Tonty<a class="pagenum" name="Page_213" title="213"></a> rushed to +the centre of the esplanade, flinging the paper from him, and shouted, +“Du Lhut—men of Fort St. Louis! Monsieur de la Salle has been murdered +in that southern wilderness! We have had one of the assassins hiding +here in our storehouse! Get out the boats!”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/z219.jpg" width="400" height="503" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Men and women paused in their various business, and children, like +frightened sheep,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_214" title="214"></a> gathered closely around their mothers. The clamorous +cry which disaster wrings from excitable Latins burst out in every part +of the fortress. Du Lhut grasped the paper and read it while he limped +after Tonty.</p> + +<p>With up-spread arms the Italian raved across the open space, this +far-reaching calamity widening like an eternally expanding circle around +him. His rage at the assassins of La Salle—among whom he had himself +placed a man whom he thought fit to be trusted—and his sorrow broke +bounds in such sobs as men utter.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that I might brain them with this hand! Oh, wretched people on +these plains! What hope remains to us? What will become of all these +families, whose resource he was, whose sole consolation! It is despair +for us! Thou wert one of the greatest men of this age,—so useful to +France by thy great discoveries, so strong in thy virtues, so respected, +so cherished by people even the most barbarous. That such a man should +be massacred by wretches, and the earth did not engulf them or the +lightning strike them dead!”<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_215" title="215"></a></p> + +<p>Tonty’s blood boiled in his face.</p> + +<p>“Why do you all stand here like rocks instead of getting out the boats? +Get out the boats! They stripped my master; they left his naked body to +wolves and crows on Trinity River. Get ready the canoes. I will hunt +those assassins, down to the last man, through every forest on this +continent!”</p> + +<p>“You did not finish this relation,”<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><a class="pagenum" name="Page_216" title="216"></a> shouted Du Lhut at his ear. “Can +you get revenge on dead men? The men who actually put their hands in the +blood of La Salle are all dead. Those who killed not each other the +Indians killed.”</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_217" title="217"></a></p> + +<p>Tonty turned with a furious push at Du Lhut which sent him staggering +backward.</p> + +<p>“Is Jolycœur dead? I will run down this forgiving priest of a brother +of Monsieur de la Salle’s, and the assassin he harbored here under his +protection he shall give up to justice!”</p> + +<p>“Thou mad-blooded loyal-hearted Italian!” exclaimed Du Lhut, dragging +him out of the throng and holding him against a tree, “dost thou think +nobody can feel this wrong except thee? I would go with thee anywhere if +it could be revenged. But hearken to me, Henri de Tonty; if you go after +the Abbé it will appear that you wish to strip him of the goods he bore +away.”</p> + +<p>“He brought an order from Monsieur de la Salle,” retorted Tonty. “On +that order I would give him the last skin in the storehouse. What I will +strip him of is the wretch he carries in his forgiving bosom!”</p> + +<p>“And you will put a scandal upon this young<a class="pagenum" name="Page_218" title="218"></a> girl your bride, who has +this sorrow also to bear. Are you determined to denounce her uncle and +her brother before this fortress as unworthy to be the kinsmen of La +Salle? She has now no consolation left except in you. Will you burn the +wound of her sorrow with the brand of shame?”</p> + +<p>Tonty leaned against the tree, pallor succeeding the pulsing of blood in +his face. He looked at Du Lhut with piteous black eyes, like a stag +brought down in full career.</p> + +<p>“The Abbé Cavelier,” Bellefontaine was whispering to one of the +immigrants, “carried from this fortress above four thousand livres worth +of furs, besides other goods!”</p> + +<p>“And left mademoiselle married without fortune,” muttered back the +other. “He did well for himself by concealing the death of Sieur de la +Salle.”</p> + +<p>Men and women looked mournfully at each other as Tonty walked across the +fort and shut himself in his house. They wondered at hearing no crying +within it such as a woman might utter upon the first shock of her grief. +With La Salle’s own instinct Barbe locked herself within her room. It +was not known to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_219" title="219"></a> people of Fort St. Louis, it was not known even to +Tonty, how she lay on the floor with her teeth set and faced this fact.</p> + +<p>Tonty sat in his door overlooking the cliff all day.</p> + +<p>Clouds sailed over the Rock. The lingering robins quarrelled with crows. +That glittering pinnacled cliff across the ravine shone like white +castle turrets. Smoke went up from the lodges on the plains as it had +done during the six months La Salle’s bones were bleaching on Trinity +River; but now a whisper like the whisper of wind in September +corn-leaves was rushing from lodge to lodge. Tonty heard tribe after +tribe take up the lament for the dead.</p> + +<p>Not only was it a lament for La Salle; but it was also for their own +homes. He and Tonty had brought them back from exile, had banded them +for strength and helped them ward off the Iroquois. His unstinted +success meant their greatest prosperity. The undespairing Norman’s death +foreshadowed theirs, with all that silence and desolation which must +fall on the Rock of St. Louis before another civilization possessed it.</p> + +<p>Night came, and the leaves sifted down in its light breeze as if only +half inclined to their<a class="pagenum" name="Page_220" title="220"></a> descent. The children had been quieted all day. +To them the revelry of the night before seemed a far remote occasion, so +instantly are joy and trouble set asunder.</p> + +<p>The rich valley of the Illinois grew dimmer and dimmer under the +starlight. Tonty could no longer see the river’s brown surface, but he +could distinguish the little trail of foam down its centre churned by +rapids above. Twisted pines, which had tangled their roots in +everlasting rock, hung below him, children of the air. Some man of the +garrison approached the windlass and let down the bucket with creak and +rattle. He waited with the ear of custom for its clanking cry as it +plunged, its gurgle and struggle in the water, and the many splashes +with which it ascended.</p> + +<p>His face showed as a pale spot in the dusk when he rose from the +doorstep and came into the room to light a candle. Barbe must be brought +out from her silent ordeal and comforted and fed.</p> + +<p>Tonty set his lighted candle on a table and considered how he should +approach her door. The furniture of the room had been hastily carried in +that morning from its uses in the fête.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_221" title="221"></a> The apartment was a rude +frontier drawing-room, having furs, deer antlers, and shining canoe +paddles for its ornaments.</p> + +<p>While Tonty hesitated, the door on the fortress side opened, and La +Salle stepped into the room.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/z227.jpg" width="400" height="290" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Tonty’s voice died in his throat. The joy and terror of this sight held +him without power to move.</p> + +<p>It was La Salle; a mere shred of his former person, girt like some +skeleton apostle with a buffalo hide which left his arm bones naked as +well as his journey roughened feet. Beard had<a class="pagenum" name="Page_222" title="222"></a> started through his +pallid skin, and this and his wild hair the wilderness had dressed with +dead leaves. A piece of buffalo leather banded his forehead like a +coarse crown, yet blood had escaped its pressure, for a dried track +showed darkly down the side of his neck. Tonty gave no thought to the +manitou of a waterfall from whose shrine La Salle had probably stripped +that Indian offering of a buffalo robe. It did not seem to him +incredible that Robert Cavelier should survive what other men called a +death wound, and naked, bleeding, and starving, should make his way for +six months through jungles of forest, to his friend.</p> + +<p>Hoarse and strong from the depths of his breast Tonty brought out the +cry,—</p> + +<p>“O my master, my master!”</p> + +<p>“Tonty,” spoke La Salle, standing still, with the rapture of achievement +in his eyes, “I have found the lost river!”</p> + +<p>He moved across the room and went out of the cliff door. His gaunt limbs +and shaggy robe were seen one instant against the palisades, as if his +eye were passing that starlit valley in review, the picture in miniature +of the great west. He was gone while Tonty looked at him.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_223" title="223"></a></p> + +<p>The whisper of water at the base of the rock, and of the sea’s sweet +song in pines, took the place of the voice which had spoken.</p> + +<p>A lad began to carol within the fortress, but hushed himself with sudden +remembrance. That brooding body of darkness, which so overlies us all +that its daily removal by sunlight is a continued miracle, pressed +around this silent room resisted only by one feeble candle. And Tonty +stood motionless in the room, blanched and exalted by what he had seen.</p> + +<p>Barbe’s opening her chamber door startled him and set in motion the +arrested machinery of life.</p> + +<p>“What has been here, monsieur?” she asked under her breath.</p> + +<p>Tonty, without replying, moved to receive her, crushing under his foot a +beech-nut which one of the children of the fortress had dropped upon the +floor. Barbe’s arms girded his great chest.</p> + +<p>“Oh, monsieur,” she said with a sob, “I thought I heard a voice in this +room, and I know I would myself break through death to come back to +you!”</p> + +<hr class="chap" /> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_224" title="224"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="III_VI" id="III_VI">VI.</a><br /> +<span class="subtitle">TO-DAY.</span></h2> + + +<p class="p2">It is recorded that the Abbé Cavelier and his party arrived safely in +France, and that he then concealed the death of La Salle for awhile that +he might get possession of property which would have been seized by La +Salle’s creditors. He died “rich and very old” says the historian,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> +though he was unsuccessful in a petition which he made with his nephew +to the king, to have all the explorer’s seigniorial propriety in America +put in his possession. Like Father Hennepin—who returned to France and +wrote his entertaining book to prove himself a greater man than La +Salle—the Abbé Cavelier was skilful in turning loss to profit.</p> + +<p>It is also recorded that Henri de Tonty, at his own expense, made a long +search with men, canoes, and provisions, for La Salle’s Texan +colony—left by the king to perish at the hands of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_225" title="225"></a> Indians; that he was +deserted by every follower except his Indian and one Frenchman, and +nearly died in swamps and canebrakes before he again reached the fort on +the Illinois.</p> + +<hr class="tb" /> + +<p>To-day you may climb the Rock of St. Louis,—called now Starved Rock +from the last stand which the Illinois made as a tribe on that fortress, +a hundred years ago, when the Iroquois surrounded and starved them,—and +you may look over the valley from which Tonty heard the death lament +arise.</p> + +<p>A later civilization has cleared it of Indian lodges and set it with +villages and homesteads. A low ridge of the old earthwork yet remains on +the east verge. Behind the Rock, slopes of milk-white sand still stretch +toward a shallow ravine. Beyond that stands a farmhouse full of the +relics of French days. The iron-handed commandant of the Rock has left +some hint of his strong spirit thereabouts, for even the farmer’s boy +will speak his name with the respect boys have for heroic men.</p> + +<p>Crosses, beads, old iron implements, and countless remains of La Salle’s +time, turn up everywhere in the valley soil.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_226" title="226"></a></p> + +<p>Ferns spring, lush and vivid, from the lichened lips of that great +sandstone body. The stunted cedars lean over its edge still singing the +music of the sea. Sunshine and shade and nearness to the sky are yet +there. You see depressions in the soil like grass-healed wounds, made by +the tearing out of huge trees; but local tradition tells you these are +the remains of pits dug down to the rock by Frenchmen searching for +Tonty’s money. At the same time, local tradition is positive that Tonty +came back, poor, to the Rock to die, in 1718.</p> + +<p>Death had stripped him of every tie. He had helped to build that city +near the Mississippi’s mouth which was La Salle’s object, and had also +helped found Mobile. The great west owes more to him than to any other +man who labored to open it to the world. Yet historians say the date of +his death is unknown, and tradition around the Rock says he crept up the +stony path an old and broken man, helped by his Indian and a priest, +died gazing from its summit, and was buried at its west side. The +tribes, while they held the land, continued to cover his grave with wild +roses. But men may tread over him now, for he lies lost in the earth as +La Salle was lost in the wilderness of the south.</p> + +<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_227" title="227"></a></p> + +<p>No justice ever was done to this man who gave to his friends with both +hand of flesh and hand of iron, caring nothing for recompense; and whom +historians, priests, tradition, savages, and his own deeds unite in +praising. But as long as the friendship of man for man is beautiful, as +long as the multitude with one impulse lift above themselves those men +who best express the race, Henri de Tonty’s memory must stand like the +Rock of St. Louis.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE END.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Frontenac was the only man the Iroquois would ever allow to +call himself their father. All other governors, English or French, were +simply brothers.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> “Henri de Tonty, surnommé Main-de-fer.” Notes Sur Nouvelle +France.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The romancer here differs from the historian, who says +Father Hennepin met La Salle at Quebec.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> “This name was in Huron and Iroquois the translation of the +name of M. de Montmagny (Mons maguns, great mountain). The savages +continued calling the successors of Governor Montmagny by the same name, +and even to the French king they applied the title ‘Great Ononthio.’” +Translated from note on page 138, tome 1, Garneau’s Histoire du Canada.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The asceticism here attributed to Mademoiselle Jeanne le +Ber was really practised by the wife of an early colonial noble. See +Parkman’s Old Régime, p. 355.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Several historians identify Jolycœur with the noted +coureur de bois and writer, Nicolas Perrot. But considering the deed he +attempted, the romancer has seen fit to portray him as a very different +person.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Historians return Father Hennepin to France in 1681.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Parkman.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Manuscript relating to early history of Canada.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> In reality this was Father Membré’s adventure.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> “He (La Salle) gave us a piece of ground 15 arpents in +front by 20 deep, the donation being accepted by Monsieur de Frontenac, +syndic of our mission.” From Le Clerc.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Relation of Henri de Tonty (cited in Margry, I). +“Comme cette rivière se divise en trois chenaux, M. de la Salle fut +descouvrér celuy de la droite, je fus à celuy du mileu et le Sieur +d’Autray à celuy de la gauche.”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Abridged from Francis Parkman’s version of La Salle’s +proclamation. The Procès Verbal is a long document.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Sanomp was suggested to the romancer by La Salle’s +faithful Shawanoe follower, Nika, and an Indian friend and brother in +“Pontiac.”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Guardian Manitou. See Introduction to “Jesuits in North +America.”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> The romancer differs from the historian—Charlevoix, tome +2—who records that Catharine Tegahkouita died in 1678.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Joutel. English Translation “from the edition just +published at Paris, 1714 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span>”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> “Le Rocher,” this natural fortress was commonly called by +the French. See Charlevoix.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> “On his return he brought back with him the families of a +number of French immigrants, soldiers, and traders. This arrival of the +wives, sisters, children, and sweethearts of some of the colonists, +after years of separation, was the occasion of great rejoicing.”—John +Moses’ History of Illinois.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> “He was loved and feared by all,” says St.-Cosme.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Tonty’s words in “Dernieres Decouvertes dans L’Amerique +Septentrional.”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Parkman states its actual height to be only a hundred and +twenty-five feet.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> “The joyous French held balls, gay suppers, and wine +parties on the Rock.”—Old History of Illinois.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Translated from Tonty’s lament over La Salle in “Dernieres +Decouvertes dans L’Amerique Septentrional.”</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Joutel’s Journal gives a long and exact account of La +Salle’s assassination and the fate of all who were concerned in it. The +murder, by the conspirators, of his nephew Moranget, his servant Saget, +and his Indian hunter Nika—which preceded and led to his death—is not +mentioned in this romance.</p> + +<p>To this day it is not certainly known what became of La Salle’s body. +Father Anastase Douay, the Récollect priest who witnessed his death, +told Joutel at the time that the conspirators stripped it and threw it +in the bushes. But afterward he declared La Salle lived an hour, and he +himself confessed the dying man, buried him when dead, and planted a +cross on his grave. So excellent a historian as Garneau gives credit to +this story.</p> + +<p>In reality the Abbé Cavelier and his party treated Tonty with greater +cruelty than the romancer describes. They lived over winter on his +hospitality, departed loaded with his favors, and told him not a word of +the tragedy.</p> + +<p>Joutel’s account of it, much condensed from the old English translation, +reads thus:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>“The conspirators hearing the shot (fired by La Salle to attract +their attention) concluded it was Monsieur de la Sale who was come +to seek them. They made ready their arms and Duhaut passed the +river with Larcheveque. The first of them spying Monsieur de la +Sale at a Distance, as he was coming towards them, advanced and hid +himself among the high weeds, to wait his passing by, so that +Monsieur de la Sale suspected nothing, and having not so much as +charged his Piece again, saw the aforesaid Larcheveque at a good +distance from him, and immediately asked for his nephew Moranget, +to which Larcheveque answered, That he was along the river. At the +same time the Traitor Duhaut fired his Piece and shot Monsieur de +la Sale thro’ the head, so that he dropped down dead on the Spot, +without speaking one word.</p> + +<p>“Father Anastase, who was then by his side, stood stock still in a +Fright, expecting the same fate,... but the murderer Duhaut put +him out of that Dread, bidding him not to fear, for no hurt was +intended him; that it was Dispair that had prevailed with them to +do what he saw....</p> + +<p>“The shot which had killed Monsieur de la Sale was a signal ... for +the assassins to draw near. They all repaired to the place where +the wretched corpse lay, which they barbarously stripped to the +shirt, and vented their malice in opprobrious language. The surgeon +Liotot said several times in scorn and derision, There thou liest, +Great Bassa, there thou liest. In conclusion they dragged it naked +among the bushes and left it exposed to the ravenous wild Beasts.</p> + +<p>“When they came to our camp ... Monsieur Cavelier the priest could +not forbear telling them that if they would do the same by him he +would forgive them his” (La Salle’s) “murder.... They answered they +had Nothing to say to him.</p> + +<p>... “We were all obliged to stifle our Resentment that it might not +appear, for our Lives depended upon it.... We dissembled so well +that they were not suspicious of us, and that Temptation we were +under of making them away in revenge for those they had murdered, +would have easily prevailed and been put in execution, had not +Monsieur Cavelier, the Priest, always positively opposed it, +alleging that we ought to leave vengeance to God.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The Récollet priest, who had seen La Salle’s death, answered no +questions at Fort St. Louis. Teissier, one of the conspirators, had +obtained the Abbé’s pardon. The others could truly say La Salle was well +when they last saw him.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Parkman.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> “In 1690 the proprietorship of Fort St. Louis was granted +to Tonty jointly with La Forest.... In 1702 the governor of Canada, +claiming that the charter of the fort had been violated, decided to +discontinue it. Although thus officially abandoned it seems to have been +occupied as a trading post until 1718. Deprived of his command and +property, Tonty engaged with Le Moyne d’Iberville in various successful +expeditions.”—John Moses’ History of Illinois.</p> + +</div> +</div> + +<div class="transnote"> + +<p class="titlepage">Transcriber’s Note</p> + +The following errors are noted. The page numbers in this table refer to those of the original. +The French 'Récollet' is spelled twice as 'Récollect'. The instance appearing in a footnote +is left as is, but that in the text itself was changed to match all other occurrences. + +<table summary="TN" width="90%"> +<col width="15%" /> +<col width="50%" /> +<col width="35%" /> +<tr><td class="tdr">56</td><td class="pad2">He is no stupid</td><td><i>sic.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">73</td><td class="pad2">No more than half your party, monsieur[.]</td><td>Added period.</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">190</td><td class="pad2">flank of rock wall</td><td><i>sic.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdr">197</td><td class="pad2">The Récolle[c]t Father did not answer</td><td>Removed ‘c’ for consistency.</td></tr></table> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Tonty, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF TONTY *** + +***** This file should be named 41273-h.htm or 41273-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/2/7/41273/ + +Produced by David Edwards, KD Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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