Chapter III: Book II: Fort Frontenac (1)

1683 A. D.

I.

RIVAL MASTERS.

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.

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.

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,--

"Monsieur le Ber, I have news for you."

"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. 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?"

"Monsieur, the Sieur de la Salle arrived here a few hours ago from the fort on the Illinois."

"The Sieur de la Salle?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Why did you let him in?" demanded Le Ber, fiercely. "He hath no rights in this fortress now."

"His men were much exhausted, monsieur."

"He could have camped at the settlement."

"Monsieur, I wish to tell you at once that the last families have left the settlement."

"The Indians are yet there?"

"Yes, monsieur. But our settlers were afraid our Indians would join the other Iroquois."

"How many men had La Salle with him?"

"No more than half your party, monsieur. There was Jolycoeur--"

"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."

"Yes, monsieur. The Father Louis Hennepin has also arrived from the wilderness after great peril and captivity."

"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!"

The merchant's voice ascended a pyramid of vexation.

"No, monsieur. Monsieur de Tonty is not here. And the Father Louis Hennepin[7] 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."

"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."

The commandant made no retort, but said,--

"Monsieur, I had almost forgotten to tell you we have another fair demoiselle within our walls to the honor of Fort Frontenac. The Abbé Cavelier with men from Lachine, arrived this morning, his young niece being with him. There are brave women in Montreal."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We have fire in both upper and lower rooms of the officers' quarters," said the commandant.

They walked toward the long dwelling, their shadows stretching and blending over the ground.

"Where have you lodged these men?" inquired Le Ber.

The officer pointed to the barrack end of the structure made of hewed timbers. The wider 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.[8] 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.[9] A well was dug within the walls.

"Have you no empty rooms in the officers' quarters?"

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.

"The men are in the barracks. But Sieur de la Salle is in the officers' house."

"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?"

"Mademoiselle le Ber is most welcome to my own apartment, monsieur, and I will myself come downstairs."

"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."

"How does he appear, Commandant?"

"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."

"A madman," pronounced Le Ber.

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.

"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."

"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."

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,--

"What a waste of good material is this, when they glow and breathe with such ardor to roast some worthy martyr!"

"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."

He stepped in and shut the door, to lounge with the cook while the order he brought was obeyed.

"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."

The cook made light skips across the floor and returned with venison.

"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."

When you are housed in a garrison the cook becomes a potentate; the soldier went willingly down as assistant.

"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.

"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 almost by force out of his house, where she has taken to shutting herself in her own room."

"I have heard of this demoiselle," said the cook. "May the saints incline more women to shut themselves up at home!"

"She is his favorite child. He brought her on this dangerous voyage to wean her from too much praying."

"Too much praying!" exclaimed the cook.

"He desires to have her look more on the world, lest she should die of holiness," explained the soldier.

"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!"

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Historians return Father Hennepin to France in 1681.

[8] Parkman.

[9] Manuscript relating to early history of Canada.

II.

A TRAVELLED FRIAR.

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.

This group arose as Jacques le Ber entered with his daughter, and were eager to be of service to her.

"There is a fire lighted in the hall upstairs by which mademoiselle can sit," said the sergeant of the fort.

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.

"Do I see Father Hennepin?" exclaimed Le Ber, squaring his mouth, "or is this a false image of him set before me?"

"You see Father Hennepin," the friar responded with dignity,--"explorer, missionary among the Sioux, and sufferer in the cause of religion."

"How about that hunger for adventure,--hast thou appeased it?" inquired Le Ber with freedom of manner he never assumed toward any other priest.

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.

"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 having manes and hoofs and horns, to frighten a Christian."

"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.

"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."

"Does he ever treat any one well?" exclaimed Le Ber. "Does not every man in his service want to shoot him?"

"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."

Jacques le Ber turned himself to face the chimney.

"Thou hast no doubt accomplished a great work, Father Hennepin," he said, with the immediate 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."

"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."[10]

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] In reality this was Father Membré's adventure.

III.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

Jeanne kissed his cheek before he returned to the lower room, and when the supper was removed she sat drying herself by the fire.

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.

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 white above the top of this robe, without ornament except the peaked monk's hood which hung behind it.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

No formal greeting preluded the crash of this encounter between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber. 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.

Voices in loud and merry conversation below and occasional laughter came up the open stairway and made accompaniment to this half-hushed duet.

"Jeanne," stammered La Salle.

"Sieur de la Salle, I was just going to my room."

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.

"Take hold of my hand, Sainte Jeanne."

"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?"

"I beg that you will take hold of my hand."

Her hand, quivering to each finger tip, moved out and met and was clasped in his. La Salle's head dropped on his breast.

Jeanne turned away her face. Voices and 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,--

"I am afraid!"

She veiled herself with the long sleeve of her robe.

"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."

"Let go my hand, Sieur de la Salle."

"Do you want me to let it go, Sainte Jeanne?"

"No, Sieur de la Salle."

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,--

"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 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!"

"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!"

She dropped her eyes to his face, saying like a soothing mother,--

"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 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!"

"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."

Jeanne's fingers moved with involuntary caressing along the lowest curve of his face.

An ember fell on the hearth beside them, and Father Hennepin emphasized some point in his relation with a stamp of his foot.

"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."

La Salle trembled. The dumb and solitary man was dumb and solitary in his love.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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 Frontenac'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.

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.

IV.

A CANOE FROM THE ILLINOIS.

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.

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.

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 compacted 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.

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.

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 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.

"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."

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.

"He has come here to see my uncle La Salle, and they have refused to let him enter," she exclaimed aloud.

Stripping a coverlet from her berth she whipped the outside air with it until the crackle brought up a challenge from below.

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 topknot of curls looking down at him, he could do nothing but salute it, and Barbe shut her window.

Dropping in excitement from the bunk, she ran across the upper room to knock at La Salle's door.

A boy stood basking in solitude by the chimney.

Her uncle La Salle's apartment seemed filled with one strong indignant voice, leaking through crevices and betraying its matter to the common hall.

"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."

"It is not anything to eat, Colin--it is pressing need of my uncle La Salle!"

"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 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."

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.

She ran back to her lookout and was able to discern the same canoe moving off on the lake.

"Colin," demanded Barbe, wrapping herself, "You must run with me."

"Certainly, mademoiselle, and I trust you are making haste toward a table."

"We must run outside the fortress."

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.

"You will get me into trouble," he said. "This gate has been swinging over-much lately."

"Let us out," persuaded Colin. "The Associates will not care what becomes of a couple of Caveliers."

"Where are you going?"

"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."

The soldier laughed.

"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."

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.

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.

Father Hennepin's cross stood up, a huge 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.

"Do you see a canoe riding yonder?" exclaimed Barbe to Colin, as they ran along wet sand.

"Any one may see a canoe riding yonder. Was it to race with that canoe we came out, mademoiselle?"

"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!"

"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."

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.

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.[11]

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 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.

Tonty's reluctant step crunched sand on the boards. He kept his gaze upon Barbe and inquired,--

"Have I the honor, mademoiselle, to address the niece of Monsieur de la Salle?"

"The niece and nephew of Monsieur de la Salle," put forth Colin.

"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."

"I never forgot you, mademoiselle. You so much resemble Monsieur de la Salle."

"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."

"And did you shake a signal from an upper window in the fort?"

"Monsieur, I could not be sure that you saw it, though I could see your boat."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"But very little would you get to eat there," consoled young Cavelier. "We have had nothing to break our fast on this morning."

"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.

"Monsieur, it would be better for us to hurry back to the fortress and call my uncle La Salle."

"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."

"Mademoiselle," said Tonty, "if you return now it will be my duty to escort you as far as the fortress gate."

Barbe drew her wrappings over her face, as he had seen a wild sensitive plant fold its leaves and close its cups.

"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."

"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."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "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.

V.

FATHER HENNEPIN'S CHAPEL.

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.

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 grayish fire-wall little marked by the blue incense which rises from burning wood.

Barbe looked briefly around the chapel. She laid the buffalo hide before the altar and knelt upon it.

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.

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.

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 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.

She saw Tonty through the window carrying a dish carefully covered. He approached the broken pane, and Barbe eagerly helped him to unfasten the sash and swing it out. In doing this, Tonty held her platter braced by his iron-handed arm.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Frontenac is a lonely post, mademoiselle. It is necessary for you to have a sentinel."

"Yes, monsieur; you are very good." Barbe accepted the fact with lowered eyelids. "Has my brother yet gone to call my uncle La Salle?"

"Yes, mademoiselle. As soon as we could give him some breakfast he set out."

"Colin is a gourmand. All very young people gormandize more or less," remarked Barbe, with a sense of emancipation from the class she condemned.

"I hope you could eat what I brought you?"

"It was quite delicious, monsieur. I ate every bit of it."

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.

"Monsieur de Tonty," inquired Barbe, appealing to experience, "do you think sixteen years very young?"

"It is the most charming age in the world, mademoiselle."

"Monsieur, I mean young for maturing one's plan of life."

"That depends upon the person," replied 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."

Barbe gazed straight at Tonty, her gray eyes firing like opals with enthusiasm.

"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."

"You do not propose going as a missionary among the Indians, mademoiselle?"

Barbe critically examined his smile. She evaded his query.

"Are the Indian women beautiful, Monsieur de Tonty?"

"They do not appear so to me, mademoiselle, though the Illinois are a straight and well-made race."

"You must find it a grand thing to range that western country."

"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 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?"

"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?"

"A stockade on a cliff, mademoiselle."

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.

"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 thing,--I have cried of homesickness for Fort St. Louis of the Illinois!"

"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!"

When this confession had burst from him he turned his back without apology, and Barbe's forehead sunk upon the window-sill.

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.

"Mademoiselle," he begged without turning, "forgive what I have said."

"Certainly, monsieur," she responded. "What was it that you said?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle, nothing."

"Then, monsieur, I forgive you for saying nothing."

Tonty, in his larger perplexity at having made such a confession without La Salle's leave, missed her sting.

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.

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.

VI.

LA SALLE AND TONTY.

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.

La Salle kissed her hand and her cheek, and she sat down before the fire, spreading the buffalo skin under her feet.

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.

"The governor's man, when he arrived to seize Fort St. Louis, gave you my letter of instructions, Tonty?"

"Yes, Monsieur de la Salle."

"Then, my lad, why have you abandoned the post and followed me? You should have stayed to be my representative. They have Frontenac. Crévecoeur 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."

Tonty, laying his sound arm across his commandant's shoulder, exclaimed, "Monsieur, I have followed you five hundred leagues to drag that rascal Jolycoeur back with me. He told at Fort St. Louis that this should be your last journey."

La Salle laughed.

"Let me tie Jolycoeur 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 Jolycoeur's place. Liotot came with me, anxious to return to France."

"Jolycoeur is no worse than the others, my Tonty, and he has had many opportunities. How often has my life been threatened!"

"He intends mischief, monsieur. If I had heard it before you set out, this journey need not have been made."

"Tonty," declared the explorer, "I think sometimes I carry my own destruction within myself. I will not chop nice phrases for these 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."

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.

"Monsieur, what aspect have affairs taken since you reached Fort Frontenac?"

"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 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."

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.

"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."

"Monsieur," exclaimed Tonty, "do you remember the mouth of the great river?"[12]

Face glowed opposite face as they felt the log walls roll away from environing their vision. 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,--

"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 source beyond the country of the Nadouessioux, as far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf of Mexico."[13]

"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."

"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 shredding 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!"

"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."

"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."

"I have travelled five hundred leagues to ward poison away from you, monsieur. And you laugh at me."

"For your pains, I will dismiss Jolycoeur to-day, and take Liotot with me."

"And will you come here as soon as you dismiss him and let my men prepare your food?"

"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--"