Chapter II: Part 2

Then he noticed it was Blackbird, a Sac girl, who had been pointed out to his critical eye the previous summer as a beauty. Owen admitted she was not bad-looking for a squaw. Her burnished hair, which had got her the name, was drawn down to cheeks where copper and vermilion infused the skin with a wonderful sunset tint. She was neatly and precisely dressed in the woman's skirt and jacket of her tribe, even her moccasins showing no trace of the scramble she must have had down some secret cliff descent in order to approach the cobbler unseen.

He greeted her with the contemptuous affability which an Irishman bestows upon a heathen. Blackbird was probably a good communicant of some wilderness mission, but this brought her no nearer to a son of Ireland.

“Good-day to the quane! And what may she be wanting the day?”

Blackbird's eyes, without the snake-restlessness of her race, dwelt unmoving upon him. Owen surmised she could not understand his or any other kind of English, being accustomed to no tongue but her own, except the French which the engagés talked in their winter camps. She stood upright as a pine without answering.

It flashed through him that there might be trouble in the village; and Blackbird, having regard for him, as we think it possible any human being may have for us, was there to bid him escape. With coldness around the roots of his hair, he remembered the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac—a spot almost in sight across the strait, where south shore approaches north shore at the mouth of Lake Michigan. He laid down his boot. His lips dropped apart, and with a hush of the sound—if such a sound can be hushed—he imitated the Indian war-whoop.

Blackbird did not smile at the uncanny screech, but she relaxed her face in stoic amusement, relieving Owen's tense breathing. There was no plot. The tribes merely intended to draw their money, get as drunk as possible, and depart in peace at the end of the month with various outfits to winter posts.

“Begorra, but that was a narrow escape!” sighed Owen, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He was able to detect the deference that Blackbird paid him by this visit. He sat on his bench in the Kitchen, a sunny idol in a shrine, indifferent to the effect his background gave him.

His mouth puckered. He put up his leather stained hand coyly, and motioned her unmoving figure back.

“Ah, go 'way! Wasn't it to escape you and the likes of you that I made me retrate to the shore? Nayther white, full haythen, half, nor quarther nade apply. To come makin' the big eyes at me, and the post swarmin' wid thim that do be ready to marry on any woman at the droppin' of the hat!”

Mobile blue water with ripple and wash made a background for the Indian girl's dense repose. She could by lifting her eyes see the pock-marked front of Owen's Kitchen, and gnarled roots like exposed ribs in the shaggy heights above. But she kept her eyes lowered; and Owen stuck his feet under his bench, sensitive to defects in his foot-wear, which an artist skilled in making and mending moccasins could detect.

Blackbird moved forward and laid a shining dot on the stone he used as his table; then, without a word, she turned and disappeared the way she came, over the moss of the spring rivulet.

Owen left his bench and craned after her. He did not hear a pebble roll on the stony beach or a twig snap among foliage.

“Begorra, it's the wings of a say-gull!” said Owen, and he took up her offering. It was a tiny gold coin. Mackinac was full of gold the month the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from Washington, under the escort of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed out to each red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due proportion, and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants, for a little pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin with a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear; the precious trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the outline of a bird.

“Begorra!” said Owen. He hid it in one of the rock pockets, a trust in a savings-bank, and sat down again to work, trying to discover Blackbird's object in offering tribute to him.

About sunset he lighted a fire in his low grate to cook his supper, and put the finished boots in a remote corner of the cave until he should get his pay. As he expected, Léon Baudette appeared, picking a barefooted way along the beach, with many complimentary greetings. The wary cobbler stood between the boots and his client, and responded with open cordiality. A voyageur who gave flesh and bone and sometimes life itself for a hundred dollars a year, and drank that hundred dollars up during his month of semi-civilization on Mackinac, seldom had much about him with which to pay for his necessary mending.

Léon Baudette swore at the price, being a discontented engagé. But the foot-wear he was obliged to have, being secretly determined to desert to Canada before the boats went out. You may see his name marked as a deserter in the Fur Company's books at Mackinac Island. So, reluctantly counting out the money, he put on his shoes and crossed his legs to smoke and chat, occupying the visitor's seat. Owen put his kettle to boil, and sat down also to enjoy society; for why should man be hurried?

He learned how many fights had been fought that day; how many bales of furs were packed in the Company's yard; that Étienne St. Martin was trying to ship with the Northern instead of the Illinois Brigade, on account of a grudge against Charle' Charette. He learned that the Indians were having snake and medicine dances to cure a consumptive chief. And, to his surprise, he learned that he was considered a medicine-man among the tribes, on account of his living unmolested in the Devil's Kitchen.

“O oui,” declared Léon. “You de wizard. You only play you mend de shoe; but, by gar, you make de poor voyageur pay de same like it was work! I hear dey call you Big Medicine of de Cuisine Diable.”

Owen was compelled to smile with pleasure at his importance, his long upper lip lifting its unshaven bristles in a white curd.

“Do ye moind, Leen me boy, a haythen Injun lady by the name of Blackbird?”

“Me, I know Blackbird,” responded Léon Baudette.

“Is the consoompted chafe that they're makin' the snake shindy for married on her?”

“No, no. Blackbird she wife of Jean Magliss in de winter camps.”

“John McGillis? Is it for marryin' on a haythen wife he is?”

“O oui. Two wives. One good Cat'olique. Jean Magliss, he dance every night now with Amable Morin's girl. The more weddings, the more dancing. Me,” Léon shrugged, “I no want a woman eating my wages in Mackinac. A squaw in the winter camps—'t assez.”

“Two wives, the bog-trotter!” gulped Owen. “John McGillis is a blayguard!”

“Oui, what you call Irish,” assented Léon; and he dodged, but the cobbler threw nothing at him. Owen marked with the awl on his own leather apron.

“First a haythen and then a quarther-brade,” he tallied against his countryman. “He will be takin' his quarther-brade to the praste before the boats go out?”

Léon raised fat eyebrows. “Amable Morin, he no fool. It is six daughters he has. O oui; the marriage is soon made.”

“And the poor haythen, what does she do now?”

“Blackbird? She watch Jean Magliss dance. Then she leave her lodge and take to de pine wood. Blackbird ver fond of what you call de Irish.”

Owen was little richer in the gift of expression than the Indian woman, but he could feel the tragedy of her unconfirmed marriage. A squaw was taken to her lord's wigwam, and remained as long as she pleased him. He could divorce her with a gift, proportioned to his means and her worth.

When Léon Baudette departed, Owen prepared and ate his supper, brewing himself some herb tea and seasoning it with a drop of whiskey.

The evening beauty of the lake, of coasts melting in general dimness, and that iridescent stony hook stretched out from Round Island to grapple passing craft, was lost on Owen. Humid air did not soften the glower which grew and hardened on his visage as he made his preparations for night. These were very simple. The coals of drift-wood soon died to white ashes in his grate. To close the shop was to stand upon the shoemaker's bench and reach for the ladder in his attic—a short ladder that just performed its office and could be hidden aloft.

Drawing his stairway after him when he had ascended, Owen spread and arranged his blankets. The ghosts that rose from tortured bodies in the Kitchen below never worked any terror in his imagination when he went to bed. Rather, he lay stretched in his hard cradle gloating over the stars, his wild security, the thousand night aspects of nature which he could make part of himself without expressing. For him the moon cast gorgeous bridges on the water; the breathing of the woods was the breathing of a colossal brother; and when that awful chill which precedes the resurrection of day rose from the earth and started from the rock, he turned comfortably in his thick bedding and taxed sleepy eyes to catch the wanness coming over the lake.

But instead of lying down in his usual peace when the nest was made to suit him, Owen wheeled and hung undecided legs over the edge of his loft. Then he again put down the ladder and descended. He had trod the three-quarters of a mile of beach to the village but once since the boats came in. Now that his mind was fixed he took to it again with a loping step, bending his body forward and grasping his cap to butt through trailing foliage.

As he passed the point and neared the post, its blare and hubbub burst on him, and its torch-light and many twinkling candles. He proceeded beside the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge, evening fires were built, throwing streamers of crimson flicker on the lake. Naked pappooses gathered around these at play. But on an open flat betwixt encampment and village rose a lighted tabernacle of blankets stretched on poles and uprights; and within this the adult Indians were crowded, celebrating the orgy of the medicine-dance. Their noise kept a continuous roll of echoes moving across the islands.

Owen made haste to pass this carnival of invocation and plunge into the swarming main street of Mackinac, where a thousand voyageurs roved, ready to embrace any man and call him brother and press him to drink with them. Broad low houses with huge chimney-stacks and dormer-windows stood open and hospitable; for Mackinac was en fête while the fur season lasted. One huge storage-room, a wing of the Fur Company's building, was lighted with candles around the sides for the nightly ball. Squared dark joists of timber showed overhead. The fiddlers sat on a raised platform, playing in ecstasy. The dark, shining floor was thronged with dancers, who, before primrose-color entirely withdrew from evening twilight, had rushed to their usual amusement. Half-breeds, quarter-breeds, sixteenth-breeds, Canadian French, Americans, in finery that the Northwest was able to command from marts of the world, crossed, joined hands, and whirled, the rhythmic tread of feet sounding like the beating of a great pulse. The doors of double timber stood open. From where he paused outside, Owen could see mighty hinges stretching across the whole width of these doors.

And he could see John McGillis moving among the most agile dancers. When at last the music stopped, and John led Amable Morin's girl to one of the benches along the wall, Owen was conscious that an Indian woman crossed the lighted space behind him, and he turned and looked full at Blackbird, and she looked full at him. But she did not stay to be included in the greeting of John McGillis, though English might be better known to her than Owen had supposed.

John came heartily to the door and endeavored to pull his countryman in. He was a much younger man than Owen, a handsome, light-haired voyageur, with thick eyelids and cajoling blue eyes. John was the only Irish engagé in the brigades. The sweet gift of blarney dwelt on his broad red lips. He looked too amiable and easily entreated, too much in love with life, indeed, to quarrel with any one. Yet as Owen answered his invitation by a quick pass that struck his cheek, his color mounted with zest, and he stepped out, turning up his sleeves.

“Is it a foight ye want, ye old wizard from the Divil's Kitchen?” laughed John, still good-natured.

“It's a foight I want,” responded Owen. “It's a foight I'm shpilin' for. Come out forninst the place, where the shlobberin' Frinch can lave a man be, and I'll shpake me moind.”

John walked bareheaded with him, and they passed around the building to a fence enclosing the Fur Company's silent yard. Stockades of sharp-pointed cedar posts outlined gardens near them. A smell of fur mingled with odors of sweet-brier and loam. Again the violins excited that throb of dancing feet, and John McGillis moved his arms in time to the music.

“Out wid it, Owen. I'm losin' me shport.”

“John McGillis, are ye not own cousin to me by raisin of marryin' on as fine a colleen as iver shtepped in Ireland?”

“I am, Owen, I am.”

“Did ye lave that same in sorrow, consatin' to fetch her out to Ameriky whin yer fortune was made?”

“I did, Owen, I did.”

“Whin ye got word of her death last year, was ye a broken-hearted widdy or was ye not?”

“I was, Owen, I was.”

“John McGillis, do ye call yerself a widdy now, or do ye not call yerself a widdy?”

“I do, Owen, I do.”

“Thin ye're the loire,” and Owen slapped his face.

For a minute there was danger of manslaughter as they dealt each other blows with sledge fists. Instead of clinching, they stood apart and cudgelled fiercely with the knuckled hand. The first round ended in blood, which John wiped from his face with a new bandanna, and Owen flung contemptuously from his nose with finger and thumb. The lax-muscled cobbler was no match for the fresh and vigorous voyageur, and he knew it, but went stubbornly to work again, saying, grimly:

“I've shpiled yer face for the gu'urls the night, bedad.”

They pounded each other without mercy, and again rested, Owen this time leaning against the fence to breathe.

“John McGillis, are ye a widdy or are ye not a widdy?” he challenged, as soon as he could speak.

“I am, Owen Cunnin', I am,” maintained John.

“Thin I repate ye're the loire!” And once more they came to the proof, until Owen lay upon the ground kicking to keep his opponent off.

“Will I bring ye the dhrop of whiskey, Owen?” suggested John, tenderly.

His cousin by marriage crawled to the fence and sat up, without replying.

“I've the flask in me pouch, Owen.”

“Kape it there.”

“But sure if ye foight wid me ye'll dhrink wid me?”

“I'll not dhrink a dhrop wid ye.”

The cobbler panted heavily. “The loikes of you that do be goin' to marry on a Frinch quarther-brade, desavin' her, and the father and the mother and the praste, that you do be a widdy.”

“I am a widdy, Owen.”

The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back, repeating, at the top of his breath, “Ye're the loire!”

“What do ye mane?” sternly demanded John. “Ye know I've had me throuble. Ye know I've lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year gone. Was the praste that wrote the letther a loire?”

“I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye think ye are.”

John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasping him by the collar. Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory and imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present of large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose up it took entire possession of him.

“Why didn't ye tell me this before?”

“I've not knowed it the long time meself.”

“What towken have ye got?”

“Towken enough for you and me.”

“Show it to me.”

“I will not.”

“Ye're desavin' me. Ye have no towken.”

“Thin marry on yer quarther-brade if ye dare!”

To be unsettled and uninterested in his surroundings was John McGillis's portion during the remaining weeks of his stay on the island. Half savage and half tender he sat in his barracks and smoked large pipes of tobacco.

He tramped out nearly every evening to the Devil's Kitchen, and had wordy battles, which a Frenchman would have called fights, with the cobbler, though the conferences always ended by his producing his ration and supping and smoking there. He coaxed his cousin to show him the token, vacillating between hope of impossible news from a wife he had every reason to believe dead, and indignation at being made the sport of Owen's stubbornness. Learning in the Fur Company's office that Owen had received news from the old country in the latest mail sent out of New York, he was beside himself, and Amable Morin's girl was forgotten. He began to believe he had never thought of her.

“Sure, the old man Morin and me had some words and a dhrink over it, was all. I did but dance wid her and pinch her cheek. A man niver knows what he does on Mackinac till he comes to himself in the winter camps wid a large family on his moind.”

“The blarney of your lip doesn't desave me, John McGillis,” responded his cousin the cobbler, with grimness.

“But whin will ye give me the word you've got, Owen?”

“I'll not give it to ye till the boats go out.”

“Will ye tell me, is the colleen alive, thin?”

“I've tould ye ye're not a widdy.”

“If the colleen is alive, the towken would be sint to me.”

“Thin ye've got it,” said Owen.

Poor John smoked, biting hard on his pipe-stem. Ignorance, and the helplessness of a limited man who is more a good animal than a discerning soul; time, the slow transmission of news, his fixed state as a voyageur—all these things were against him. He could not adjust himself to any facts, and his feelings sometimes approached the melting state. It was no use to war with Owen Cunning, whom he was ashamed of handling roughly. The cobbler sat with swollen and bandaged face, talking out of a slit, still bullying him.

But the time came for his brigade to go out, and then there was action, decision, positive life once more. It went far northward, and was first to depart, in order to reach winter-quarters before snow should fly.

At the log dock the boats waited, twelve of them in this outfit, each one a mighty Argo, rowed by a dozen pairs of oars, and with centre-piece for stepping a mast. Hundreds of pounds they could carry, and a crew of fifteen men. The tarpaulin used for a night covering and to shelter the trading-goods from storms was large as the roof of a house. Quiescent on lapping water they rested, their loads and each man's baggage of twenty or fewer pounds packed tightly to place.

The cobbler from the Devil's Kitchen was in the crowd thronging dock and shore. The villagers were there, saying farewells, and all the voyageurs who were soon to go out in other brigades snuffed as war-horses ready for the charge. The life of the woods, which was their true life, again drew them. They could scarcely wait. Dancing and love-making suddenly cloyed; for a man was made to conquer the wilderness and take the spoils of the earth. Woodsman's habits returned upon them. The frippery of the island was dropped like the withes which bound Samson. Their companions the Indians were also making ready the canoes. Blackbird stood erect behind the elbow of John McGillis as he took leave of his cousin the cobbler.

“Do ye moind, Owen,” exclaimed John, turning from the interests of active life to that which had disturbed his spirit, convinced unalterably of his own widowed state, yet harrowed unspeakably, “ye promised to show me that word from the old counthry before the boats wint out.”

“I niver promised to show ye any word from the old counthry,” responded Owen, having his mouth free of bandages and both eyes for the boats.

“Ye tould me ye had a towken from the old counthry.”

“I niver tould ye I had a towken from the old counthry.”

“Ye did tell me ye had a towken.”

“I have.”

“Ye said it proved I was not a widdy.”

“I did.”

“Show me that same, thin.”

“I will.”

Owen looked steadily past John's shoulder at Blackbird, and laid in John's hand a small gold coin with a hole in it, on one side of which was rudely scratched the outline of a bird.

John McGillis's face burned red, and many expressions besides laughter crossed it. Like a child detected in fault, he looked sheepishly at Owen and glanced behind his shoulder. The faithful sunset-tinted face of Blackbird, immovable as a fixed star, regarded the battered cobbler as it might have regarded a great manitou when the island was young.

“How did you come by this, Owen?”

“I come by it from one that had throuble. Has yerself iver seen it before, John McGillis?”

“I have.”

“Is it a towken that ye're not a widdy?”

“It is.”

The boats went out, and Blackbird sat in her Irish husband's boat, on his baggage. Oars flashed, and the commandant's boat led the way. Then the life of the Northwest rose like a great wave—the voyageurs' song chanted by a hundred and fifty throats, with a chorus of thousands on the shore:

[Music: Dans les chan-tiers nous hi-ver-ne-rons!

Dans les chan-tiers nous hi-ver-ne-rons!]

When Owen returned to his Kitchen he found a robe of the finest beaver folded and laid on his shoemaker's bench.

“Begorra!” observed the cobbler, shaking it out and rubbing it against his cheek, “she has paid me a beaver-shkin and the spalpeen wasn't worrth it. But she can kape him now till she has a moind to turn him out herself. Whin a man marries on a haythen, wid praste or widout praste, let him shtick to his haythen.”

THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND

_On the 15th day of March, 1897, Ignace Pelott died at Mackinac Island, aged ninety-three years._

_The old quarter-breed, son of a half-breed Chippewa mother and French father, took with him into silence much wilderness lore of the Northwest. He was full of stories when warmed to recital, though at the beginning of a talk his gentle eyes dwelt on the listener with anxiety, and he tapped his forehead—“So many things gone from there!” His habit of saying “Oh God, yes,” or “Oh God, no,” was not in the least irreverent, but simply his mild way of using island English._

_While water lapped the beach before his door and the sun smote sparkles on the strait, he told about this adventure across the ice, and his hearer has taken but few liberties with the recital._

I am to carry Mamselle Rosalin of Green Bay from Mackinac to Cheboygan that time, and it is the end of March, and the wind have turn from east to west in the morning. A man will go out with the wind in the east, to haul wood from Boblo, or cut a hole to fish, and by night he cannot get home—ice, it is rotten; it goes to pieces quick when the March wind turns.

I am not afraid for me—long, tall fellow then; eye that can see to Point aux Pins; I can lift more than any other man that goes in the boats to Green Bay or the Soo; can swim, run on snow-shoes, go without eating two, three days, and draw my belt in. Sometimes the ice-floes carry me miles, for they all go east down the lakes when they start, and I have landed the other side of Drummond. But when you have a woman with you—Oh God, yes, that is different.

The way of it is this: I have brought the mail from St. Ignace with my traino—you know the train-au-galise—the birch sledge with dogs. It is flat, and turn up at the front like a toboggan. And I have take the traino because it is not safe for a horse; the wind is in the west, and the strait bends and looks too sleek. Ice a couple of inches thick will bear up a man and dogs. But this old ice a foot thick, it is turning rotten. I have come from St. Ignace early in the afternoon, and the people crowd about to get their letters, and there is Mamselle Rosalin crying to go to Cheboygan, because her lady has arrive there sick, and has sent the letter a week ago. Her friends say:

“It is too late to go to-day, and the strait is dangerous.”

She say: “I make a bundle and walk. I must go when my lady is sick and her husband the lieutenant is away, and she has need of me.”

Mamselle's friends talk and she cry. She runs and makes a little bundle in the house and comes out ready to walk to Cheboygan. There is nobody can prevent her. Some island people are descend from noblesse of France. But none of them have travel like Mamselle Rosalin with the officer's wife to Indiana, to Chicago, to Detroit. She is like me, French.[1] The girls use to turn their heads to see me walk in to mass; but I never look grand as Mamselle Rosalin when she step out to that ice.

[Footnote 1: The old fellow would not own the Chippewa.]

I have not a bit of sense; I forget maman and my brothers and sisters that depend on me. I run to Mamselle Rosalin, take off my cap, and bow from my head to my heel, like you do in the dance. I will take her to Cheboygan with my traino—Oh God, yes! And I laugh at the wet track the sledge make, and pat my dogs and tell them they are not tired. I wrap her up in the fur, and she thank me and tremble, and look me through with her big black eyes so that I am ready to go down in the strait.

The people on the shore hurrah, though some of them cry out to warn us.

“The ice is cracked from Mission Point to the hook of Round Island, Ignace Pelott!”

“I know that,” I say. “Good-day, messieurs!”

The crack from Mission Point—under what you call Robinson's Folly—to the hook of Round Island always comes first in a breaking up; and I hold my breath in my teeth as I skurry the dogs across it. The ice grinds, the water follows the sledge. But the sun is so far down in the southwest, I think “The wind will grow colder. The real thaw will not come before to-morrow.”

I am to steer betwixt the east side of Round Island and Boblo. When we come into the shadow of Boblo we are chill with damp, far worse than the clear sharp air that blows from Canada. I lope beside the traino, and not take my eyes off the course to Cheboygan, except that I see the islands look blue, and darkness stretching before its time. The sweat drop off my face, yet I feel that wind through my wool clothes, and am glad of the shelter between Boblo and Round Island, for the strait outside will be the worst.

There is an Indian burying-ground on open land above the beach on that side of Round Island. I look up when the thick woods are pass, for the sunset ought to show there. But what I see is a skeleton like it is sliding down hill from the graveyard to the beach. It does not move. The earth is wash from it, and it hangs staring at me.

I cannot tell how that make me feel! I laugh, for it is funny; but I am ashame, like my father is expose and Mamselle Rosalin can see him. If I do not cover him again I am disgrace. I think I will wait till some other day when I can get back from Cheboygan; for what will she say if I stop the traino when we have such a long journey, and it is so near night, and the strait almost ready to move? So I crack the whip, but something pull, pull! I cannot go on! I say to myself, “The ground is froze; how can I cover up that skeleton without any shovel, or even a hatchet to break the earth?”

But something pull, pull, so I am oblige to stop, and the dogs turn in without one word and drag the sledge up the beach of Round Island.

“What is the matter?” says Mamselle Rosalin. She is out of the sledge as soon as it stops.

I not know what to answer, but tell her I have to cut a stick to mend my whip-handle. I think I will cut a stick and rake some earth over the skeleton to cover it, and come another day with a shovel and dig a new grave. The dogs lie down and pant, and she looks through me with her big eyes like she beg me to hurry.

But there is no danger she will see the skeleton. We both look back to Mackinac. The island have its hump up against the north, and the village in its lap around the bay, and the Mission eastward near the cliff; but all seem to be moving! We run along the beach of Round Island, and then we see the channel between that and Boblo is moving too, and the ice is like wet loaf-sugar, grinding as it floats.

We hear some roars away off, like cannon when the Americans come to the island. My head swims. I cross myself and know why something pull, pull, to make me bring the traino to the beach, and I am oblige to that skeleton who slide down hill to warn me.

When we have seen Mackinac, we walk to the other side and look south and southeast towards Cheboygan. All is the same. The ice is moving out of the strait.

“We are strand on this island!” says Mamselle Rosalin. “Oh, what shall we do?”

I tell her it is better to be prisoners on Round Island than on a cake of ice in the strait, for I have tried the cake of ice and know.

“We will camp and build a fire in the cove opposite Mackinac,” I say. “Maman and the children will see the light and feel sure we are safe.”

“I have done wrong,” says she. “If you lose your life on this journey, it is my fault.”

Oh God, no! I tell her. She is not to blame for anything, and there is no danger. I have float many a time when the strait breaks up, and not save my hide so dry as it is now. We only have to stay on Round Island till we can get off.

“And how long will that be?” she ask.

I shrug my shoulders. There is no telling. Sometimes the strait clears very soon, sometimes not. Maybe two, three days.

Rosalin sit down on a stone.

I tell her we can make camp, and show signals to Mackinac, and when the ice permit, a boat will be sent.

She is crying, and I say her lady will be well. No use to go to Cheboygan anyhow, for it is a week since her lady sent for her. But she cry on, and I think she wish I leave her alone, so I say I will get wood. And I unharness the dogs, and run along the beach to cover that skeleton before dark. I look and cannot find him at all. Then I go up to the graveyard and look down. There is no skeleton anywhere. I have seen his skull and his ribs and his arms and legs, all sliding down hill. But he is gone!

The dusk close in upon the islands, and I not know what to think—cross myself, two, three times; and wish we had land on Boblo instead of Round Island, though there are wild beasts on both.

But there is no time to be scare at skeletons that slide down and disappear, for Mamselle Rosalin must have her camp and her place to sleep. Every man use to the bateaux have always his tinder-box, his knife, his tobacco, but I have more than that; I have leave Mackinac so quick I forget to take out the storekeeper's bacon that line the bottom of the sledge, and Mamselle Rosalin sit on it in the furs! We have plenty meat, and I sing like a voyageur while I build the fire. Drift, so dry in summer you can light it with a coal from your pipe, lay on the beach, but is now winter-soaked, and I make a fireplace of logs, and cut pine branches to help it.

It is all thick woods on Round Island, so close it tear you to pieces if you try to break through; only four-footed things can crawl there. When the fire is blazing up I take my knife and cut a tunnel like a little room, and pile plenty evergreen branches. This is to shelter Mamselle Rosalin, for the night is so raw she shiver. Our tent is the sky, darkness, and clouds. But I am happy. I unload the sledge. The bacon is wet. On long sticks the slices sizzle and sing while I toast them, and the dogs come close and blink by the fire, and lick their chops. Rosalin laugh and I laugh, for it smell like a good kitchen; and we sit and eat nothing but toasted meat—better than lye corn and tallow that you have when you go out with the boats. Then I feed the dogs, and she walk with me to the water edge, and we drink with our hands.

It is my house, when we sit on the fur by the fire. I am so light I want my fiddle. I wish it last like a dream that Mamselle Rosalin and me keep house together on Round Island. You not want to go to heaven when the one you think about all the time stays close by you.

But pretty soon I want to go to heaven quick. I think I jump in the lake if maman and the children had anybody but me. When I light my pipe she smile. Then her great big eyes look off towards Mackinac, and I turn and see the little far-away lights.

“They know we are on Round Island together,” I say to cheer her, and she move to the edge of the fur. Then she say “Good-night,” and get up and go to her tunnel-house in the bushes, and I jump up too, and spread the fur there for her. And I not get back to the fire before she make a door of all the branches I have cut, and is hid like a squirrel. I feel I dance for joy because she is in my camp for me to guard. But what is that? It is a woman that cry out loud by herself! I understand now why she sit down so hopeless when we first land. I have not know much about women, but I understand how she feel. It is not her lady, or the dark, or the ice break up, or the cold. It is not Ignace Pelott. It is the name of being prison on Round Island with a man till the ice is out of the straits. She is so shame she want to die. I think I will kill myself. If Mamselle Rosalin cry out loud once more, I plunge in the lake—and then what become of maman and the children?

She is quieter; and I sit down and cannot smoke, and the dogs pity me. Old Sauvage lay his nose on my knee. I do not say a word to him, but I pat him, and we talk with our eyes, and the bright camp-fire shows each what the other is say.

“Old Sauvage,” I tell him, “I am not good man like the priest. I have been out with the boats, and in Indian camps, and I not had in my life a chance to marry, because there are maman and the children. But you know, old Sauvage, how I have feel about Mamselle Rosalin, it is three years.”

Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and answer he know.

“I have love her like a dog that not dare to lick her hand. And now she hate me because I am shut on Round Island with her while the ice goes out. I not good man, but it pretty tough to stand that.”

Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and say, “That so.” I hear the water on the gravel like it sound when we find a place to drink; then it is plenty company, but now it is lonesome. The water say to people on Mackinac, “Rosalin and Ignace Pelott, they are on Round Island.” What make you proud, maybe, when you turn it and look at it the other way, make you sick. But I cannot walk the broken ice, and if I could, she would be left alone with the dogs. I think I will build another camp.

But soon there is a shaking in the bushes, and Sauvage and his sledgemates bristle and stand up and show their teeth. Out comes Mamselle Rosalin with a scream to the other side of the fire.

I have nothing except my knife, and I take a chunk of burning wood and go into her house. Maybe I see some green eyes. I have handle vild-cat skin too much not to know that smell in the dark.

I take all the branches from Rosalin's house and pile them by the fire, and spread the fur robe on them. And I pull out red coals and put more logs on before I sit down away off between her and the spot where she hear that noise. If the graveyard was over us, I would expect to see that skeleton once more.

“What was it?” she whisper.

I tell her maybe a stray wolf.

“Wolves not eat people, mamselle, unless they hunt in a pack; and they run from fire. You know what M'sieu' Cable tell about wolves that chase him on the ice when he skate to Cheboygan? He come to great wide crack in ice, he so scare he jump it and skate right on! Then he look back, and see the wolves go in, head down, every wolf caught and drown in the crack. It is two days before he come home, and the east wind have blow to freeze that crack over—and there are all the wolf tails, stick up, froze stiff in a row! He bring them home with him—but los them on the way, though he show the knife that cut them off!”

“I have hear that,” says Rosalin. “I think he lie.”

“He say he take his oat on a book,” I tell her, but we both laugh, and she is curl down so close to the fire her cheeks turn rosy. For a camp-fire will heat the air all around until the world is like a big dark room; and we are shelter from the wind. I am glad she is begin to enjoy herself. And all the time I have a hand on my knife, and the cold chills down my back where that hungry vild-cat will set his claws if he jump on me; and I cannot turn around to face him because Rosalin thinks it is nothing but a cowardly wolf that sneak away. Old Sauvage is uneasy and come to me, his fangs all expose, but I drive him back and listen to the bushes behind me.

“Sing, M'sieu' Pelott,” says Rosalin.

Oh God, yes! it is easy to sing with a vild-cat watch you on one side and a woman on the other!

“But I not know anything except boat songs.”

“Sing boat songs.”

So I sing like a bateau full of voyageurs, and the dark echo, and that vild-cat must be astonish. When you not care what become of you, and your head is light and your heart like a stone on the beach, you not mind vild-cats, but sing and laugh.

I cast my eye behin sometimes, and feel my knife. It make me smile to think what kind of creature come to my house in the wilderness, and I say to myself: “Hear my cat purr! This is the only time I will ever have a home of my own, and the only time the woman I want sit beside my fire.”

Then I ask Rosalin to sing to me, and she sing “Malbrouck,” like her father learn it in Kebec. She watch me, and I know her eyes have more danger for me than the vild-cat's. It ought to tear me to pieces if I forget maman and the children. It ought to be scare out the bushes to jump on a poor fool like me. But I not stop entertain it—Oh God, no! I say things that I never intend to say, like they are pull out of my mouth. When your heart has ache, sometimes it break up quick like the ice.

“There is Paul Pepin,” I tell her. “He is a happy man; he not trouble himself with anybody at all. His father die; he let his mother take care of herself. He marry a wife, and get tired of her and turn her off with two children. The priest not able to scare him; he smoke and take his dram and enjoy life. If I was Paul Pepin I would not be torment.”

“But you are not torment,” says Rosalin. “Everybody speak well of you.”

“Oh God, yes,” I tell her; “but a man not live on the breath of his neighbors. I am thirty years old, and I have take care of my mother and brothers and sisters since I am fifteen. I not made so I can leave them, like Paul Pepin. He marry when he please. I not able to marry at all. It is not far I can go from the island. I cannot get rich. My work must be always the same.”

“But why you want to marry?” says Rosalin, as if that surprise her. And I tell her it is because I have seen Rosalin of Green Bay; and she laugh. Then I think it is time for the vild-cat to jump. I am thirty years old, and have nothing but what I can make with the boats or my traino; the children are not grown; my mother depend on me; and I have propose to a woman, and she laugh at me!

But I not see, while we sing and talk, that the fire is burn lower, and old Sauvage has crept around the camp into the bushes.

That end all my courtship. I not use to it, and not have any business to court, anyhow. I drop my head on my breast, and it is like when I am little and the measle go in. Paul Pepin he take a woman by the chin and smack her on the lips. The women not laugh at him, he is so rough. I am as strong as he is, but I am afraid to hurt; I am oblige to take care of what need me. And I am tie to things I love—even the island—so that I cannot get away.

“I not want to marry,” says Rosalin, and I see her shake her head at me. “I not think about it at all.”

“Mamselle,” I say to her, “you have not any inducement like I have, that torment you three years.”

“How you know that?” she ask me. And then her face change from laughter, and she spring up from the blanket couch, and I think the camp go around and around me—all fur and eyes and claws and teeth—and I not know what I am doing, for the dogs are all over me—yell—yell—yell; and then I am stop stabbing, because the vild-cat has let go of Sauvage, and Sauvage has let go of the vild-cat, and I am looking at them and know they are both dead, and I cannot help him any more.

You are confuse by such things where there is noise, and howling creatures sit up and put their noses in the air, like they call their mate back out of the dark. I am sick for my old dog. Then I am proud he has kill it, and wipe my knife on its fur, but feel ashame that I have not check him driving it into camp. And then Rosalin throw her arms around my neck and kiss me.

It is many years I have tell Rosalin she did that. But a woman will deny what she know to be the trut. I have tell her the courtship had end, and she begin it again herself, and keep it up till the boats take us off Round Island. The ice not run out so quick any more now like it did then. My wife say it is a long time we waited, but when I look back it seem the shortest time I ever live—only two days.

Oh God, yes, it is three years before I marry the woman that not want to marry at all; then my brothers and sisters can take care of themselves, and she help me take care of maman.

It is when my boy Gabriel come home from the war to die that I see the skeleton on Round Island again. I am again sure it is wash out, and I go ashore to bury it, and it disappear. Nobody but me see it. Then before Rosalin die I am out on the ice-boat, and it give me warning. I know what it mean; but you cannot always escape misfortune. I cross myself when I see it; but I find good luck that first time I land; and maybe I find good luck every time, after I have land.

THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE

The cross cast its shadow around its feet, so high noon stood over Cross Village. It was behind the church, rising above the gable, of silver-colored wood stained by weather to an almost phosphorescent glint. Seen from the lake the cross towered the most conspicuous thing on the bluff. A whitewashed fence stretched between it and the cliff, and on this fence sat Moses Nazagebic, looking across Lake Michigan.

He heard a soft tap on the ground near him and knew that his wife's grandmother had come out to walk there. She was the only villager, except his wife, whose approach he could endure. His wife stood some distance apart, protecting him, as Miriam protected the first Moses. Other women, gathered in the grove along the bluff to spread the festival mid-day meal, said to one another:

“Moses has now mourned a week for Frank Chibam and his shipwrecked boat and the white men. We shall miss Lucy's fish-pie this year.”

“It was at last year's festival that Frank began to notice Catharine. They were like one family, those four and the grandmother, especially after Moses and Frank bought the sail-boat together. No wonder the poor fellow sits on the fence and says nothing while the tribes are racing horses.”

“But it is worst for poor Catharine, who was to have been a bride. See her sit like a stone in the sun! It is little any one can say to comfort Catharine.”

The women, who knew no English, used soft Chippewa or Ottawa gutturals. The men who ventured on the conquerors' language used it shorn and contracted, as white children do.

The annual festivities of the Cross Village were at their height. Yells and the tumultuous patter of racing hoofs fell on Moses' ear. A trial of horse speed was now in progress; and later in the day would come a trial of agility and endurance in the Ottawa and Chippewa dances. The race-course was the mile-long street, beginning at the old chapel and ending at the monastery. Young Indians, vividly clad in red calico shirts and fringed leggings, leaned over their horses' necks, whipping and shouting. Dust rose behind the flying cavalcade, and spectators were obliged to keep close to the small carved houses or risk being run down. Young braves denied the war-path were obliged to give themselves unbridled range of some sort.

The monastery brethren had closed their whitewashed gates, not because they objected to the yearly fête, nor because custom made the monastery the goal in horse-racing, but because there was in the festivities an abandoned spirit to be dealt with only by the parish priest. On ordinary days the brethren were glad to show those beneficial death's heads with which their departed prior had ornamented the inner walls of his tomb before he came to use it. The village knew it had been that good prior's habit to sit in a coffin meditating, while he painted skulls and cross-bones in that roofed enclosure which was to be his body's last resting-place. Young squaws and braves often peeped at the completed grave and its surrounding symbols of mortality. It was as good as a Chippewa ghost-story.

The priest let himself be seen all the morning. Without speaking a word, he was a check upon the riotous. Ottawa and Chippewa had a right to commemorate some observances of their forefathers. He always winked at their dances. And this day the one silent Indian on the fence troubled him more than all the barbaric horsemen.

Moses' wife had been to him. Lucy was very indignant at her cousin Catharine. Moses neither ate nor slept, and he groaned in the night as if he had toothache. He would not talk to her. The good father might not believe it, but Catharine was putting a spell on Moses, in revenge for Frank Chibam. Catharine blamed Moses for everything—the shipwreck, the drowning, perhaps even for the storm. She hounded him out of the house and then she hounded him in again, by standing and looking at him with fixed gaze. It was more than flesh could bear. The father must see that Moses and Lucy would have to leave Cross Village and go to the Cheneaux or Mackinac, taking the grandmother with them. It would be hard for Moses to live without a boat. But then, Lucy demanded triumphantly, what would Catharine do without a man or any relation left in the house?

The priest looked from Catharine, motionless as a rock in the sun by the church gable, to Moses on the fence with his back towards her. The grandmother, oblivious to both, felt her way along the ground with a stick, and Lucy watched, nearer the grove. These four had occupied one of the small unpainted wooden houses as a united family. It was a sorrow to the priest that they might now be divided, one of them bearing an unconfessed trouble on his mind. For if Moses Nazagebic was as innocent as his wife Lucy believed him to be of the catastrophe which he said had happened on Lake Superior, he would not fly from poor Catharine as from an avenger.

There were fences of silver flattened out on the water; farther from shore flitted changeable bars of green and rose and pale-blue, converging until they swept the surface like some colossal peacock's tail. The grandmother stumping with her stick came quite near the cliff edge and stopped there. She was not blind or deaf, but her mind had long been turned inward and backward. She saw daily happenings as symbols of what had been. She knew more tribal lore than any other Indian of Cross Village; and repeated, as she had repeated a hundred times before when scanning the log dock with its fleet of courtesying boats, the steep road, and the strip of sand below: