The Story of Tonty Part 11

"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 G.o.ds 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 s.h.a.ggy 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.

Crevecoeur 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 a.s.sociates."

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 a.s.sumed, 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 mora.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I build," etc.--_Page 124._]

"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--"

La Salle's face relaxed into tenderness as he laid his hands upon his friend's shoulders. The Italian's ardent temperament was the only agent which ever fused and made facile of tongue and easy of confidence that man of cold reserve known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what he had to say. They both glanced at Barbe and flushed. But the nebulous thought surrounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never condensed to spoken word.

Tonty's sentinel opened the chapel door and broke up this council. He said an Indian stood there with him demanding to be admitted.

FOOTNOTES: