The Road to Frontenac
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“Yes, yes,” Menard broke in. “We have only one fact to remember; there must be no delay in carrying out the Governor’s orders. We cannot change our plans because of this maid.”
“We must not let her understand, M’sieu.”
Menard had been standing, with a shoulder against the tree, alternately puffing at his pipe and lowering it, scowling meanwhile at the ground. Now he suddenly raised his head and chuckled.
“It will be many a year since I have played the beau, Father. It may be that I have forgotten the rôle.” He spread out his hands and looked at the twisted fingers. “But I can try, like a soldier. And there are three of us, Father Claude, there are three of us.”
He turned to go back to the camp, but the priest touched him.
“My son,–perhaps, before you return, you would look again at my unworthy portrait. I–about the matter of the canoe–”
“Oh,” said Menard, “you’ve taken it out.”
“Yes; it seemed best, considering the danger that others might feel the same doubts which troubled you.”
“I wouldn’t do that. The canoe was all right, once the direction were decided on.”
“Above all else, the true portrait should convey to the mind of the observer the impression that a single, an unmistakable purpose underlies the work. When one considers–”
“Very true, Father, very true,” said Menard abruptly, looking about at the beginning of the twilight. “And now we had better get back. The supper will be ready.”
Menard strode away toward the camp. Father Claude watched him for a time through the trees, then turned again to the picture. Finally he got together his materials, and carrying them in a fold of his gown, with the picture in his left hand, he followed Menard.
The maid was leaning back against the tree, looking up at the sky, where the first red of the afterglow was spreading. She did not hear Menard; and he paused, a few yards away, to look at the clear whiteness of her skin and the full curve of her throat. Her figure and air, her habits of gesture and step, and carriage of the head, were those of the free-hearted maid of the seignory. They told of an outdoor life, of a good horse, and a light canoe, and the inbred love of trees and sky and running water. Here was none of the stiffness, the more than Parisian manner, of the maidens of Quebec. To stand there and look at her, unconscious as she was, pleased Menard.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, coming nearer, “will you join us at supper?”
The maid looked at him with a slow blush (she was not yet accustomed to the right of these men to enter into the routine of her life). Menard reached to help her, but she rose easily.
“Lieutenant Danton is not here?”
“No, M’sieu, he walked away.”
They sat about a log. Danton had not strayed far, for he joined them shortly, wearing a sulky expression. Menard looked about the group. The maid was silent. Father Claude was beginning at once on the food before him. The twilight was growing deeper, and Guerin dragged a log to the fire, throwing it on the pile with a shower of sparks, and half a hundred shooting tongues of flame. The Captain looked again at Danton, and saw that the boy’s glance shifted uneasily about the group. Altogether it was an unfortunate start for his plan. But it was clear that no other would break the ice, so he drew a long breath, and plunged doggedly into the story of his first fight on the St. Lawrence.
It was a brave story of ambuscade and battle; and it was full of the dark of night and the red flash of muskets and the stealth and treachery of the Iroquois soul. When he reached the tale of the captured Mohawk, who sat against a tree with a ball in his lungs, to the last refusing the sacrament, and dying like a chief with the death song on his lips, Danton was leaning forward, breathless and eager, hanging on his words. The maid’s eyes, too, were moist. Then they talked on, Danton asking boyish questions, and Father Claude starting over and again on a narrative of the wonderful conversion of the Huron drunkard, Heroukiki, who, in his zeal,–and here Menard always swept in with a new story, which left the priest adrift in the eddies of the conversation. At last, when they rose, and the dusk was settling over the trees, the maid was laughing with gentle good fellowship.
While they were eating, the voyageurs had brought the canoe a short way up the bank, resting it, bottom up, on large stones brought from the shore. Underneath was a soft cot of balsam; over the canoe were blankets, hanging on both sides to the ground. Then Mademoiselle said good-night, with a moment’s lingering on the word, and a wistful note in her voice that brought perhaps more sympathy than had the sad eyes of the morning. For after all she was only a girl, and hers was a brave little heart.
The three men lay on the slope with hardly a word, looking at the river, now shining like silver through the trees. This new turn in the life of the party was not as yet to be taken familiarly. Father Claude withdrew early to his meditations. Menard stretched out on his back, his hands behind his head, gazing lazily at the leaves overhead, now hanging motionless from the twigs.
Danton was sitting up, looking about, and running the young reeds through his fingers.
“Danton,” Menard said, after a long silence, “I suppose you know that we have something of a problem on our hands.”
Danton looked over the river.
“What have you thought about Mademoiselle?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Father Claude and I have been talking this evening about her. I have thought that she does not look any too strong for a hard journey of a hundred and more leagues.”
“She has little colour,” said Danton, cautiously.
“It seems to me, Danton, that you can help us.”
“How?”
“What seems to you the cause of the trouble?”
“With Mademoiselle? She takes little impression from the kindness of those about her.”
“Oh, come, Danton. You know better. Even a boy of your age should see deeper than that. You think she slights you; very likely she does. What of that? You are not here to be drawn into a boy-and-girl quarrel with a maid who chances to share our canoe. You are here as my aid, to make the shortest time possible between Quebec and Frontenac. If she were to fall sick, we should be delayed. Therefore she must not fall sick.”
Danton had plucked a weed, and now was pulling it to pieces, bit by bit.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stop this moping, this hanging about. Take hold of the matter. Devise talks, diversions; fill her idle moments; I care not what you do,–within limits, my boy, within limits.”
“Oh,” said Danton, “then you really want me to?”
“Certainly. I am too old myself.”
Danton rose, and walked a few steps away and back.
“But she will have none of me, Menard. It is, ‘No, with thanks,’ or, worse, a shake of the head. If I offer to help, if I try to talk, if I–oh, it is always the same. I am tired of it.”
Menard smiled in the dark.
“Is that your reply to an order from your superior officer, Danton?”
The boy stood silent for a moment, then he said, “I beg your pardon, Captain.” And with a curious effort at stiffness he wandered off among the trees, and was soon out of Menard’s sight.
Menard walked slowly down to the fire, opened his pack, and spreading out his blanket, rolled himself in it with his feet close to the red embers. For a long time he lay awake. This episode took him back nearly a decade, to a time when he, like Danton, would have lost his poise at a glance from the nearest pair of eyes. That the maid should so interest him was in itself amusing. Had she been older or younger, had she been any but the timid, honest little woman that she was, he would have left her, without a second thought, in the care of the Commandant at Montreal, to be escorted through the rapids by some later party. But he had fixed his mind on getting her to Frontenac, and the question was settled. His last thought that night was of her quiet laughter and her friendly, hesitating “good-night.”
He was awakened in the half light before the sunrise by a step on the twigs. At a little distance through the trees was the maid, walking down toward the water. She slipped easily between the briers, holding her skirt close. From a spring, not a hundred yards up the hillside, a brook came tumbling to the river, picking its way under and over the stones and the fallen trees, and trickling over the bank with a low murmur. The maid stopped by a pool, and kneeling on a flat rock, dipped her hands.
The others were asleep. A rod away lay Danton, a sprawling heap in his blanket. Menard rose, tossed his blanket upon his bundle, and walked slowly down toward the maid.
“Mademoiselle, you rise with the birds.”
She looked around, and laughed gently. He saw that she had frankly accepted the first little change in their relations.
“I like to be with the birds, M’sieu.”
Menard had no small talk. He was thinking of her evident lack of sleep.
“It is the best hour for the river, Mademoiselle.” The colours of the dawn were beginning to creep up beyond the eastern bank, sending a lance of red and gold into a low cloud bank, and a spread of soft crimson close after. “Perhaps you are fond of the fish?”
The maid was kneeling to pick a cluster of yellow flower cups. She looked up and nodded, with a smile.
“We fished at home, M’sieu.”
“We will go,” said Menard, abruptly. “I will bring down the canoe.”
He threw the blankets to one side, and stooping under the long canoe, carried it on his shoulders to the water. A line and hook were in his bundle; the bait was ready at a turn of the grass and weeds.
“We are two adventurers,” he said lightly, as he tossed the line into the canoe, and held out one of the paddles. “You should do your share of the morning’s work, Mademoiselle.”
She laughed again, and took the paddle. They pushed off; the maid kneeling at the bow, Menard in the stern. He guided the canoe against the current. The water lay flat under the still air, reflecting the gloomy trees on the banks, and the deepening colours of the sky. He fell into a lazy, swinging stroke, watching the maid. Her arms and shoulders moved easily, with the grace of one who had tumbled about a canoe from early childhood.
“Ready, Mademoiselle?” He was heading for a deep pool near a line of rushes. The maid, laying down her paddle, reached back for the line, and put on the bait with her own fingers.
Menard held the canoe steady against the current, which was there but a slow movement, while she lowered the hook over the bow. They sat without a word for some minutes. Once he spoke, in a bantering voice, and she motioned to him to be quiet. Her brows were drawn down close together.
It was but a short time before she felt a jerk at the line. Her arms straightened out, and she pressed her lips tightly together. “Quick!” she said. “Go ahead!”
“Can you hold it?” he asked, as he dipped his paddle.
She nodded. “I wish the line were longer. It will be hard to give him any room.” She wound the cord around her wrist. “Will the line hold, M’sieu?”
“I think so. See if you can pull in.”
She leaned back, and pulled steadily, then shook her head. “Not very much. Perhaps, if you can get into the shallow water–”
Menard slowly worked the canoe through an opening in the rushes. There was a thrashing about and plunging not two rods away. Once the fish leaped clear of the water in a curve of clashing silver.
“It’s a salmon,” he said. “A small one.”
The maid held hard, but the colour had gone from her face. The canoe drew nearer to the shore.
“Hold fast,” said Menard. He gave a last sweep of the paddle, and crept forward to the bow. Kneeling behind the maid, he reached over her shoulder, and took the line below her hand.
“Careful, M’sieu; it may break.”
“We must risk it.” He pulled slowly in until the fish was close under the gunwale. “Now can you hold?”
“Yes.” She shook a straying lock of hair from her eyes, and took another turn of the cord around her wrist.
“Steady,” he said. He drew his knife, leaned over the gunwale, and stabbed at the fighting fish until his blade sank in just below the gills, and he could lift it aboard.
The maid laughed nervously, and rested her hands upon the two gunwales. Her breath was gone, and there was a red mark around her wrist where the cord had been. The canoe had drifted into the rushes, and Menard went back to his paddle, and worked out again into the channel.
“And now, Mademoiselle,” he said, “we shall have a breakfast of our own. You need not paddle. I will take her down.”
Her breath was coming back. She laughed, and sat comfortably in the bow, facing Menard, and letting her eyes follow the steady swing and catch of his paddle. When they reached the camp, the voyageurs were astir, but Danton and the priest still slept. The first red glare of the sun was levelled at them over the eastern trees.
Menard made a fire under an arch of flat stones, and trimming a strip of oak wood with his hatchet, he laid the cleaned fish upon it and kept it on the fire until it was brown and crisp. The maid sat by, her eyes alert and her cheeks flushed.
Danton was awake before the fish was cooked, and he stood about with a pretence of not observing them. The maid was fairly aroused. She drew him into the talk, and laughed and bantered with the two men as prettily as they could have wished from a Quebec belle.
All during the morning Danton was silent. At noon, when the halt was made for the midday lunch, he was still puzzling over the apparent understanding between Mademoiselle and the Captain. Before the journey was taken up, he stood for a moment near Menard, on the river bank.
“Captain,” he said, “you asked me last night to–”
“Well?”
“It may be that I have misunderstood you. Of course, if Mademoiselle–if you–” He caught himself.
Menard smiled; then he read the earnestness beneath the boy’s confusion, and sobered.
“Mademoiselle and I went fishing, Danton. Result,–Mademoiselle eats her first meal. If you can do as much you shall have my thanks. And now remember that you are a lieutenant in the King’s service.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE LONG ARROW
Menard allowed a halt of but a few hours at Three Rivers. The settlement held little of interest, for all the resident troops and most of the farmers and engagés had gone up the river to join the army which was assembling at Montreal. The close of the first week out of Quebec saw the party well on the second half of the journey to Montreal. As they went on, Menard’s thoughts were drawn more deeply into the work that lay ahead, and in spite of his efforts at lightness, the work of keeping up the maid’s spirits fell mostly to Danton (though Father Claude did what he could). As matters gradually became adjusted, Danton’s cheery, hearty manner began to tell; and now that there was little choice of company, the maid turned to him for her diversion.
On the morning of the second day after leaving Three Rivers, the two voyageurs were carrying the canoe to the water when Guerin slipped on a wet log, throwing the canoe to the ground, and tearing a wide rent in the bark. Menard was impatient at this carelessness. The knowledge that the Three Rivers detachment had already gone on to Montreal had decided him to move more rapidly, and he had given orders that they should start each day in the first light of the dawn. This was a chill morning. A low, heavy fog lay on the river, thinning, at a yard above the water, into a light mist which veiled what colour may have been in the east.
While Guerin and Perrot were patching the canoe under Menard’s eye, Danton found some dry logs under the brush, and built up the dying fire, which was in a rocky hollow, not visible from the river. Then he and the maid sat on the rocks above it, where they could get the warmth, and yet could see the river. Menard and his men, though only a few rods away, were but blurred forms as they moved about the canoe, gumming the new seams.
The maid, save for an occasional heavy hour in the late evenings, had settled into a cheerful frame of mind. The novelty, and the many exciting moments of the journey, as well as the kindness of the three men, kept her thoughts occupied. Danton, once he had shaken off his sulky fits, was good company. They sat side by side on the rock, looking down at the struggling fire, or at the figures moving about the canoe, or out into the white mystery of the river, talking easily in low tones of themselves and their lives and hopes.
The mist, instead of rising, seemed to settle closer to the water, as the broad daylight came across the upper air. The maid and Danton fell into silence as the picture brightened. Danton was less sensitive than she to the whims of nature, and tiring of the scene, he was gazing down into the fire when the maid, without a word, touched his arm. He looked up at her; then, seeing that her eyes were fixed on the river, followed her gaze. Not more than a score of yards from the shore, moving silently through the mist, were the heads of three Indians. Their profiles stood out clearly against the white background; their shoulders seemed to dissolve into the fog. They passed slowly on up the stream, looking straight ahead, without a twitch of the eyelids, like a vision from the happy hunting-ground.
Danton slipped down from the rock, and stepped lightly to Menard, pointing out the three heads just as they were fading into the whiteness about them. Menard motioned to Guerin and Perrot to get the newly patched canoe into the water, took three muskets, and in a moment pushed off, leaving Danton with the maid and the priest, who had retired a short distance for his morning prayers. For a minute the heads of the three white men were in sight above the fog, then they too were swallowed up.
“I wonder what Menard thinks about them?” said Danton, going back toward the maid.
She was still looking at the mist, and did not hear him, so he took a seat at the foot of the rock and rubbed the hammer of his musket, which had been rusted by the damp. After a time the maid looked toward him.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Danton replied. “They were going up-stream in a canoe, I suppose. Probably he thinks they can give us some information.”
In a few minutes, during which the mist was clearing under the rays of the sun, the two canoes together came around a wooded point and beached. The Indians walked silently to the fire. They appeared not to see Danton and the maid. Menard paused to look over his canoe. It was leaking badly, and before joining the group at the fire, he set the canoemen at work making a new patch.
“Danton,” he said, in a low tone, when he reached the fire, “find the Father.”
Danton hurried away, and Menard turned to the largest of the three Indians, who wore the brightest blanket, and had a peculiar wampum collar, decorated in mosaic-like beadwork.
“You are travellers, like ourselves,” he said, in the Iroquois tongue. “We cannot let you pass without a word of greeting. I see that you are of the Onondagas, my brothers. It may be that you are from the Mission at the Sault St. Francis Xavier?”
The Indian bowed. “We go from Three Rivers to Montreal.”
“I, too, am taking my party to Montreal.” Menard thought it wise to withhold the further facts of his journey. “Have you brothers at Three Rivers?”
“No,” replied the Indian. “We have been sent with a paper from the Superior at Sault St. Francis Xavier to the good fathers at Three Rivers. Now we are on our return to the Mission.”
“Have my brothers eaten?” Menard motioned toward the fire. “It is still early in the day.”
The three bowed. “We are travelling fast,” said the spokesman, “for the Superior awaits our return. We ate before the light. It will soon be time for us to go on our journey.”
Menard saw Father Claude and Danton approaching, and waited for them. The face of the large Indian seemed like some other face that had had a place in his memory. It was not unlikely that he had known this warrior during his captivity, when half a thousand braves had been to him as brothers. The Indian was apparently of middle age, and had lines of dignity and authority in his face that made it hard to accept him as a subdued resident at the Mission. But Menard knew that no sign of doubt or suspicion must appear in his face, so he waited for the priest. The Indians sat with their knees drawn up and their blankets wrapped about them, looking stolidly at the fire.
Father Claude came quietly into the group, and with a smile extended his hand to the smallest of the three, an older man, with a wrinkled face. “I did not look for you here, Teganouan. Have you gone back to the Mission?”
Teganouan returned the smile, and bowed.
“My brother has told the white man of our errand?”
“Yes,” said Menard, “they have been sent to Three Rivers by the Superior, and are now returning. I have told them that we, too, are going to Montreal.”
The priest took the hint. “We shall meet you and your brothers again, Teganouan. They are newcomers at the Mission, I believe. They had not come when I left.”
“No, Father. They have but last week become Christians. The Long Arrow” (inclining his head toward the large Indian) “has lost a son, and through his suffering was led to take the faith.”
The Long Arrow, who had seemed to lose interest in the conversation as soon as he had finished speaking, here rose.
“My brothers and the good Father will give us their blessing? The end of the journey is yet three days away. I had hoped that we might be permitted to accept the protection of the son of Onontio,”–he looked at Menard,–“but I see that his canoe will not be ready for the journey before the sun is high.” He looked gravely from Menard to the priest, then walked to the shore, followed by the others. They pushed off, and shortly disappeared around the point of land.
Menard gave them no attention, but as soon as they were gone from sight, he turned to the priest.
“Well, Father, what do you make of that?”
Father Claude shook his head.
“Nothing, as yet, M’sieu. Do you know who the large man is?”
“No; but I seem to remember him. And what is more to the point, he certainly remembers me.”
“Are you sure?”
“He recognized me on the river. He came back with me so willingly because he wanted to know more about us. That was plain. It would be well, Father, to enquire at the Mission. We should know more of them and their errand at Three Rivers.”
Menard called Danton, and walked with him a little way into the wood.
“Danton,” he said, “you are going through this journey with us, and I intend that you shall know about such matters as this meeting with the Onondagas.”
“Oh, they were Onondagas?”
“Yes. They claim to be Mission Indians, but neither the Father nor I altogether believe them.” In a few sentences Menard outlined the conversation. “Now, Danton, this may or may not be an important incident. I want you to know the necessity for keeping our own counsel in all such matters, dropping no careless words, and letting no emotions show. I wish you would make a point of learning the Iroquois language. Father Claude will help you. You are to act as my right-hand man, and you may as well begin now to learn to draw your own conclusions from an Indian’s words.”
Danton took eagerly to the lessons with Father Claude, for they seemed another definite step toward the excitement that surely, to his mind, lay in wait ahead. The studying began on that afternoon, while they were toiling up against the stream.
In the evening, when the dusk was coming down, and the little camp was ready for the night, Menard came up from the heap of stores, where the voyageurs had already stretched out, and found the maid sitting alone by the fire. Danton, in his rush of interest in the new study, had drawn Father Claude aside for another lesson.
“Mademoiselle is lonely?” asked Menard, sitting beside her.
“No, no, M’sieu. I have too many thoughts for that.”
“What interesting thoughts they must be.”
“They are, M’sieu. They are all about the Indians this morning. Tell me, M’sieu,–they called you Onontio. What does it mean?”
“They called me the son of Onontio, because of my uniform. Onontio, the Great Mountain, is their name for the Governor; and the Governor’s soldiers are to them his sons.”