Part 16 (1/2)

”Certainly, without the goods my brother would have him deliver to me, without a canoe or any provision whatever for our journey!”

”They say here that Monsieur de Tonty led only two hundred Indians and fifty Frenchmen to aid the new governor in his war against the Iroquois,” observed Joutel. ”He may not come back at all.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Joutel, what are you writing there?”--_Page 169._]

”I have thought of that,” the Abbe mused. ”If Tonty be dead we are indeed wasting our time here, when we ought to be well on our 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.”

”He received us most kindly, and we have been his guests a month,” said Joutel.

”I would be his guest no longer than this pa.s.sing night if my difficulties were solved,” said the Abbe. ”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 s.h.i.+ps 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 this he only told me during his fever at St. Domingo on the voyage.”

Joutel folded and put away his notes. The Abbe's often repeated complaints seldom stirred a reply from him. Though on this occasion he thought of saying,--

”Monsieur de Tonty may bring news of her from Montreal.”

”You understand, Joutel,” exclaimed the Abbe, approaching the candle, ”that it is best,--that it is necessary not to tell Tonty what we know?”

”I have understood what you said, Monsieur the Abbe.”

”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 sc.r.a.ps. It irritates me to come into this storehouse and find you writing your sc.r.a.ps.” He looked severely at the young man, who leaned against the box making no further promise or reply. Then seizing the candle, the Abbe stepped to a bed made of bales, where, wrapped in skins and blankets, young Colin Cavelier lay uttering the acknowledgement of peaceful sleep. Another boy lay similarly wrapped on the floor beside him.

The priest's look at these two was brief. He went on to the remaining man in the room, a hairy fellow, lying coiled among hides and pressed quite into a corner. The man appeared unconscious, emitting his breath in short puffs.

Abbe Cavelier gazed upon him with shudders.

The over-taxed candle flame stooped and expired, the scent of its funeral pile rising from a small red point in darkness.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Joutel. English Translation ”from the edition just published at Paris, 1714 A. D.”

[18] ”Le Rocher,” this natural fortress was commonly called by the French. See Charlevoix.

II.

THE FRIEND AND BROTHER

While Abbe Cavelier stood in the storehouse, Tonty, a few miles away, was setting his camp around a spring of sulphur water well known to the hunters of St. Louis. The spring boiled its white sand from unmeasured depths at the root of an oak, and spread a pool which slipped over its barrier in a thin stream to the Illinois.

Though so near his fortress, Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut, fresh from their victorious campaign with the governor of New France against the Iroquois, thought it not best to expose their long array of canoes in darkness on the river. They had with them[19] women and children,--fragments of families, going under their escort to join the colony at Fort St. Louis.

Du Lhut's army of Indians from the upper lakes had returned directly to their own villages to celebrate the victory; but that unwearied rover himself, with a few followers, had dragged his gouty limbs across portages to the Illinois, to sojourn longer with Tonty.

Their camp was some distance from the river, up an alluvial slope of the north sh.o.r.e. 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 ma.s.s of gloom.

Dependent and unarmed colonists were placed in the centre of the camp.