A Little Girl in Old Quebec Part 11

"Oh, no, no!" shivering.

"Nor burned. Then you go to ashes and only the bones are left."

"That is horrid, too. Burning hurts. I have burned my fingers with coals."

"But my people don't mind it. They are very brave. And you go to the great hunting grounds way over to the west, where the good Manitou has everything, and you don't have to work, and no one beats you."

"The white people have a heaven. That is above the sky. And when the stars come out it is light as day on the other side, and there are flowers and trees, and rivers and all manner of fruit such as you never see here."

"I'd rather hunt. When I get to be a man I shall go off and discover wonderful things. In some of the mountains there is gold. And out by the great oceans where the Hurons have encamped there are copper and silver.

The company talked about it. Some were for going there. And there were fur animals, all the same."

Rose had been considering another subject.

"Pani," she began, with great seriousness, "you are not any one's slave now."

"No"--rather hesitatingly. "The Dubrays will never come back, or if they should next summer, with furs, I will run away again up to the Saguenay, where they will not look. But there are Indian boys in plenty where the tribes fight and take prisoners."

"You shall be my slave."

The young Indian's cheek flushed.

"The slave of a girl!" he said, with a touch of disdain.

"Why not? I should not beat you."

"Oh, you couldn't"--triumphantly.

"But you might be miladi's slave," suggested Wanamee, "and then you could watch the little one and follow her about to see that nothing harmed her."

"There shouldn't anything hurt her." He sprang up. "You see I am growing tall, and presently I shall be a man. But I won't be a slave always."

"No, no," said the Indian woman.

"That was very good, excellent," pointing to the two empty birch-bark dishes, which he picked up and threw on the coals, a primitive way to escape dish washing. "I will find you a heap more. I will get fish or berries, and oh, I know where the bees have stored a lot of honey in a hollow tree."

"You let them alone for another month," commanded Wanamee. "Honey--that will be a treat indeed."

Miladi had missed the sweets of her native land, though there they had not been over-plentiful, since royalty must needs be served first. They bought maple sugar and a kind of crude syrup of the Abenaqui women, who were quite experts in making it. When the sun touched the trees in the morning when the h.o.a.rfrost had disappeared, they inserted tubes of bark, rolled tightly, and caught the sap in the troughs. Then they filled their kettles that swung over great fires, and the fragrance arising made the forests sweet with a peculiar spiciness. It was a grand time for the children, who s.n.a.t.c.hed some of the liquid out of the kettle on a birch-bark ladle, and ran into the woods for it to cool. Pani had often been with them.

"Let us go down to the old house," exclaimed Rose. "Do you know who is there?"

"Pierre Gaudrion. He gets stone for the new walls they are laying against the fort. And there are five or six little ones."

"It must be queer. Oh, let us go and see them."

She was off like a flash, but he followed as swiftly. Here was the garden where she had pulled weeds with a hot hatred in her heart that she would have liked to tear up the whole garden and throw it over in the river. She glanced around furtively--what if Mere Dubray should come suddenly in search of Pani.

Three little ones were tumbling about on the gra.s.s. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the other in one of the journeys up to Tadoussac and brought her home.

The Sieur did not discourage these marriages, for the children generally affiliated with the whites, and if the colony was to prosper there must be marriages and children.

Rose stopped suddenly, rather embarra.s.sed, for all her bravado.

"I used to live here," as if apologizing.

"Yes. But Mere Dubray was not your mother."

"No. Nor Catherine Arlac."

The woman shook her head. "I know not many people. We live on the other side. And the babies come so fast I have not much time. But Pierre say now we must have bigger s.p.a.ce and garden for the children to work in. So we are glad when Mere Dubray go up to the fur country with her man. You were ill, they said. But you do not look ill. Did you not want to go with her?"

"Oh, no, no. And I live clear up there," nodding to the higher alt.i.tude.

"M'sieu Hebert is there and Madame. And a beautiful lady, Madame Giffard. I did not love Mere Dubray."

"If I have a child that will not love me, it would break my heart. What else are little ones for until they grow up and marry in turn?"

"But--I was not her child."

"And your mother."

"I do not know. She was dead before I could remember. Then I was brought from France."

Suddenly she felt the loss of her mother. She belonged to no one in the world.

"Poor _pet.i.te_." She made a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h at her own baby and hugged it so tightly that it shrieked, at which she laughed.

"Some day a man will hug thee and thou wilt not scream," she said in good humor.

Pani came from round the corner and then darted back. The boy left his work and came forward.

"Who was that?" he asked. "My father said 'get an Indian boy to work in the garden.' I am making a chair for the little one. And I can't tell which are weeds. Yesterday I pulled up some onions and father was angry, but he could set them out again."

Rose laughed at that, and thought it remarkable that his father did not beat him.

"Pani might show you a little. He belongs to me now. We both used to work in the garden. Mere Dubray was always knitting and cooking."

Pani emerged again. "Yes, let us go," and Rose led the way, but she would have liked to throw herself down among the babies, who seemed all arms and legs.

"Can you read?" the boy said suddenly. "We have a book and I can read quite well. My father knows how. And I want to be a great man like the Sieur, and some of the soldiers. I want to know how to keep accounts, and to go to France some time in the big ships."

Rose colored. "I am going to learn to read this winter, when we have to stay in. But it is very difficult--tiresome. I'd rather climb the rocks and watch the birds. I had some once that would come for grains and bits of corn cake. And the geese were so tame down there by the end of the garden."

The rows of corn stood up finely, shaking out their silken heads, turning to a bronze red. Then there were potatoes. These were of the Dubrays' planting, as well as some of the smaller beds.

"M'sieu Hebert gave father some of these plants. He knows a great deal, and he can make all kinds of medicine. It is very fine to know a great deal, isn't it?"

"But it must be hard to study so much," returned Rose, with a sigh.