The Story of Tonty Part 13

The Iroquois next took out his peace pipe and pouch of tobacco. While he filled the bowl and stooped for an ember, Tonty stripped the copper hand of its glove. He held it up before Sanomp as he received the calumet in the other. An aboriginal grunt of strong satisfaction echoed in the chapel.

"Hand of yellow metal," said Sanomp.

Tonty gravely smoked the pipe and handed it back to Sanomp. Sanomp smoked it, shook the ashes out and put it away.

Thus was the ceremony of adoption finished. Without more talk, the red friend and brother turned from his white friend and brother and went back to his own world.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Sanomp was suggested to the romancer by La Salle's faithful Shawanoe follower, Nika, and an Indian friend and brother in "Pontiac."

[15] Guardian Manitou. See Introduction to "Jesuits in North America."

VIII.

TEGAHKOUITA.

Barbe ran breathless up the stairway, glad to catch sight of her uncle the Abbe so occupied at the lower hearth that he took no heed of her return.

She had counted herself the only woman in Fort Frontenac, yet she found a covered figure standing in front of the chamber door next her own.

Though Barbe had never seen Catharine Tegahkouita[16] she knew this must be the Iroquois virgin who lived a hermit life of devotion in a cabin at Lachine, revered by French and Indians alike. How this saint had reached Fort Frontenac or in whose behalf she was exerting herself Barbe could not conjecture. Tegahkouita had interceded for many afflicted people and her prayers were much sought after.

The Indian girl kept her face entirely covered. No man knew that it was comely or even what its features were like. The chronicler tells us when she was a young orphan beside her uncle's lodge-fire her eyes were too weak to bear the light of the sun, and in this darkness began the devotion which distinguished her life. What was first a necessity, became finally her choice, and she shut herself from the world.

To Barbe, Tegahkouita was an object of religious awe tempered by that criticism in which all young creatures secretly indulge. She sat on the bench as if in meditation, but her eyes crept up and down that straight and motionless and blanket-eclipsed presence. She knew that Tegahkouita was good; was it not told of the Indian girl that she rolled three days in a bed of thorns, and that she often walked barefooted in ice and snow, to discipline her body? She was not afraid of Tegahkouita. But she wished somebody else would come into the room who could break the saint's death-like silence. Sainthood was a very safe condition, but Barbe found it impossible to admire the outward appearance of a living saint.

La Salle had stopped at the barracks to order out his men, and Colin who had taken to that part of the fort for amus.e.m.e.nt, watched their transfer with much interest.

Wind was conquering rain. It blew keenly from the southwest, and sung at the corners of Frontenac, whirling dead leaves like fugitive birds into the area of the fort. La Salle's men turned out of their quarters with reluctance to exchange safety and comfort for exposure and a leaky camp.

The explorer stood and saw them pa.s.s before him bearing their various burdens, excepting one man who slouched by the door of the bakehouse as if he had stationed himself there to see that they pa.s.sed in order out of the gate.

"Come here, you Jolycoeur," called La Salle, lifting his finger.

Jolycoeur, savagely hairy, approached with that look of sulky menace La Salle never appeared to see in his servants.

"Where is your load of goods?" inquired the explorer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Come here, you Jolycoeur,' called La Salle."--_Page 138._]

Jolycoeur lifted a quick look, and dropping it again, replied, "Sieur de la Salle, I was waiting for the cook to hand me out the dishes you ordered against you came back."

La Salle examined him through half-shut eyes. It was this man's constant duty to prepare his food. Tonty and his brother Jean had so occupied his morning that he had found no time for eating. A man inured to hardships can fast with very little thought about the matter, but he decided if Jolycoeur had not yet handled this meal he might hazard some last service from a man who had missed so many opportunities.

"Did you cook my breakfast?" he inquired.

"Sieur de la Salle, I dared not put my nose in the bakehouse. This cook is the worst man in Fort Frontenac."

The cook appearing with full hands in his door, La Salle said to Jolycoeur, "Carry those platters into the lodge," and he watched the minutest action of the man's elbows, walking behind him into the lower apartment of the dwelling. A table stood there on which Jolycoeur began to arrange the dishes with surly carelessness.

The explorer forgot him the moment they entered, for two people occupied this room in close talk. Challenging whatever ill Jacques le Ber and the Abbe Cavelier had prepared, La Salle advanced beyond the table with the chill and defiant bearing natural to him.

"Monsieur le Ber and I have been discussing this alliance you are so anxious to make with his family," spoke the Abbe.

The explorer met Le Ber's face full of that triumphant contempt which men strangely feel for other men who have fallen and become stepping-stones of fortune to themselves. He turned away without answer, and began to eat indifferently from the dishes Jolycoeur had left ready, standing beside the table while he ate.

"If Jacques le Ber were as anxious for the marriage as yourself,--but I told you this morning, my brother La Salle, what madness it must seem to all sane men,--it could not be arranged. His daughter hath refused to see you."

"My thanks are due to my brother the Abbe for his nice management of all my affairs," sneered La Salle. "I comprehend there is nothing which he will not endeavor to mar for me. It surely is madness which induces a man against all experience to confide in his brother."

Jean Cavelier replied with a shrug and a spread of the hands which said, "In such coin of grat.i.tude am I always paid."

"Sieur de la Salle," volunteered Le Ber, rising and coming forward with natural candor, "it is not so long ago that your proposal would have made me proud, and the Abbe hath not ill managed it now. Monsieur, I wish my girl to marry. I have been ready for any marriage she would accept. She has indeed shown more liking for you than for any other man in New France. Monsieur, I would far rather have her married than bound to the life she leads. But if you were in a position to marry, Jeanne refuses your hand."

"Has she said this to you?" inquired La Salle.

"I have not seen her to-day," replied Le Ber. "She has the Iroquois virgin Tegahkouita with her. I brought Tegahkouita here because she was besought for some healing in our Iroquois lodges near the fort."

Jacques le Ber stopped. But La Salle calmly heard him thus claim everything pertaining to Fort Frontenac.

"We must do what we can to hold these unstable Indians," continued Le Ber. "Monsieur, before I could carry your proposal to Jeanne, she sends me Tegahkouita, as if they had some holy contrivance for reading people's minds. Your brother will confirm to you the words Tegahkouita brought."

"Mademoiselle le Ber will pray for you always, my brother La Salle. But she refuses even to see you."

"It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her prayers," remarked the discontented father, "she hath room enough there for all New France."

The man who had more than once sprung into the midst of hostile savages and carried their admiration by a word, now stood silent and musing. But his face expressed nothing except determination.

"You shall see her yourself," Jacques le Ber exclaimed, with the shrewdness of a man holding present advantage, yet gauging fully his antagonist's force. "You and I were once friends, Sieur de la Salle. I might obtain a worse match for my girl."

"I will see her," said La Salle, more in the manner of affirming his own wish than of accepting a concession.

He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind him, the Abbe Cavelier following Le Ber.

As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood as a bar in front of Jeanne's chamber door. Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian girl of peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously in a voice tuned by much low-spoken prayer, "Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, 'Tell Sieur de la Salle I will pray for him always, but I must never see his face again.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The romancer differs from the historian--Charlevoix, tome 2--who records that Catharine Tegahkouita died in 1678.

IX.