The Story of Tonty Part 17

"The Senecas are his tribe of the Iroquois, mademoiselle. He was among them; but he has left his people for my sake. These Indians have visions and obey them. He said the time had come for him to follow me."

"Sanomp was then the Indian I saw creeping toward your tent. Did he fight against his own people?"

"No, mademoiselle. While Du Lhut and I flew to rouse the camp, he sat doggedly down where he found me. This was a last chance for the Senecas.

We are so near Fort St. Louis, and almost within shouting distance of our Miamis on Buffalo Rock. Such security makes sentinels careless.

Sanomp crept ahead of the others and whispered in my ear, taking his chance of being brained before I understood him. He has proved himself my friend and brother, mademoiselle, to do this for me, and moreover to bear the shame of sitting crouched like a squaw through a fray."

"Everybody loves and fears Monsieur de Tonty,"[20] observed Barbe, with sedate accent.

Tonty breathed deeply.

"Am I an object of fear to you, mademoiselle? Doubtless I have grown like a buffalo," he ruminated. "Perhaps you feel a natural aversion toward a man bearing a hand of iron."

"On the contrary, it seemed a great convenience among the Indians,"

murmured Barbe, and Tonty laughed and stood silent.

The camp was again settling to rest, and fewer swarming figures peopled the darkness. Winding and aspiring through new fuel the camp-fire once more began to lift its impalpable pavilion, and groups sat around it beneath that canopy of tremulous light, with rapid talk and gesture repeating to each other their impressions of the Senecas' attack.

"Mademoiselle," said Tonty, lifting his left hand to his bare head, for he had rushed hatless into action, "good-night. The guards are doubled. You are more secure than when you lay down before."

"Good-night, monsieur," replied Barbe, and he opened her tent for her, when she turned back.

"Monsieur de Tonty," she whispered swiftly, "I have had no chance during this long journey,--for with you alone would I speak of it,--to demand if you believe that saying against yourself which they are wickedly charging to my uncle La Salle?"

"Mademoiselle, how could I believe that Monsieur de la Salle said in France he wished to be rid of me? One laughs at a rumor like that."

"The tales lately told about his madness are more than I can bear."

"Mademoiselle, Monsieur de la Salle's enemies always called his great enterprises madness."

"Can you imagine where he now is, Monsieur de Tonty?"

"Oh, heavens!" Tonty groaned. "Often have I said to myself,--Has Monsieur de la Salle been two years in America, and I have not joined him, or even spoken with him? It is not my fault! As soon as I believed he had reached the Gulf of Mexico I descended the Mississippi. I searched all those countries, every cape and every sh.o.r.e. I demanded of all the natives where he was, and not one could tell me a word. Judge of my pain and my dolor."[21]

They stood in such silence as could result from two people's ceasing to murmur in the midst of high-pitched voices.

"Monsieur de Tonty," resumed Barbe, "do you remember Jeanne le Ber?"

"Mademoiselle, I never saw her."

"She refused my uncle La Salle at Fort Frontenac, and I detested her for it. In the new church at Montreal she has had a cell made behind the altar. There she prays day and night. She wears only a blanket, but the nun who feeds her says her face is like an angel's. Monsieur, Jeanne le Ber fell with her head b.u.mping the floor,--and I understood her. She had a spirit fit to match with my uncle La Salle's. She thought she was right. I forgave her then, for I know, monsieur, she loved my uncle La Salle."

When Barbe had spoken such daring words she stepped inside her tent and dropped its curtain.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] "On his return he brought back with him the families of a number of French immigrants, soldiers, and traders. This arrival of the wives, sisters, children, and sweethearts of some of the colonists, after years of separation, was the occasion of great rejoicing."--John Moses' History of Illinois.

[20] "He was loved and feared by all," says St. Cosme.

[21] Tonty's words in "Dernieres Decouvertes dans L'Amerique Septentrional."

III.

HALF-SILENCE.

The October of the Mississippi valley--full of mild nights and mellow days and the shine of ripened corn--next morning floated all the region around Fort St. Louis in silver vapor. The two small cannon on the Rock began to roar salutes as soon as Tonty's line of canoes appeared moving down the river.

To Barbe this was an enchanted land. She sat by the Demoiselle Bellefontaine and watched its populous beauty unfold. Blue lodge-smoke arose everywhere. Tonty pointed out the Shawnee settlement eastward, and the great town of the Illinois northwest of the Rock,--a city of high lodges shaped like the top of a modern emigrant wagon. He told where Piankishaws and Weas might be distinguished, how many Shawanoes were settled beyond the ravine back of the Rock, and how many thousand people, altogether, were collected in this princ.i.p.ality of Monsieur de la Salle.

A castellated cliff with turrets of glittering sandstone towered above the boats, but beyond that,--round, bold, and isolated, its rugged b.r.e.a.s.t.s decked with green, its base washed by the river,--the Rock[22]

of St. Louis waited whatever might be coming in its eternal leisure.

Frenchmen and Indians leaped upon earthworks at its top and waved a welcome side by side, the flag of France flying above their heads.

At Barbe's right hand lay an alluvial valley bordered by a ridge of hills a mile away. Along this ancient river-bed Indian women left off gathering maize from standing stalks, and ran joyfully crying out to receive their victorious warriors. Inmates poured from the settlement of French cabins opposite and around the Rock. With cannon booming overhead, Tonty pa.s.sed its base followed by the people who were to ascend with him, and landed west of it, on a sandy strip where the voyager could lay his hand on that rugged fern-tufted foundation. Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine followed him along a path cut through thickets, around moss-softened irregular heights of sandstone, girdled in below and bulging out above, so that no man could obtain foothold to scale them. Gnarled tree-roots, like folds of snakes caught between closing strata, hung, writhed in and out. The path, under pine needles and fallen leaves, was cushioned with sand white as powdered snow.

Behind the Rock, stretching toward a ravine, were expanses of this lily sand which looked fresh from the hands of the Maker, as if even a raindrop had never indented its whiteness.

Three or four foot-holes were cut in the southeast flank of rock wall.

An Indian ran down from above and flung a rope over to Tonty. He mounted these rocky stirrups first, helped by the rope, and knelt to reach back for Barbe and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine. The next ascent was up water-terraced rock to an angle as high as their waists. Here two more stirrups were cut in the rock. Ferns brushed their faces, and shrubs stooped over them. The heights were studded thick with gigantic trees half-stripped of leaves. Rust-colored lichens and lichens h.o.a.ry like blanched old men, spread their great seals on stone and soil.

Wide water-terraced steps, looking as if cut for a temple, ascended at last to the gate. Through this Tonty led his charge upon a dimpled sward, for care had been taken to keep turf alive in Fort St. Louis.

Recognition and joy were the first sensations of many immigrants entering, as the people they loved received them. But Barbe felt only delicious freedom in such a crag castle. There was a sound of the sea in pine trees all around. The top of the Rock was nearly an acre in extent.

It was fortified by earthworks, except the cliff above the river, which was set with palisades and the princ.i.p.al dwellings of the fort. There were besides, a storehouse, a block-house, and several Indian lodges.

But the whole s.p.a.ce--so shaded yet so sunny, reared high in air yet sheltered as a nest--was itself such a temple of security that any buildings within it seemed an impertinence. The centre, bearing its flagstaff, was left open.

Two priests, a Recollet and a Sulpitian, met Tonty and the girl he led in, the Sulpitian receiving her in his arms and bestowing a kiss on her forehead.

"Oh, my uncle Abbe!" Barbe gasped with surprise. "Is Colin with you? Is my uncle La Salle here?"

But Tonty, swifter than the Abbe's reply, laid hold of the Recollet Father and drew him beside Abbe Cavelier, demanding without greeting or pause for courteous compliment,--

"Is Monsieur de la Salle safe and well? You both come from Monsieur de la Salle!"

"He was well when we parted from him," replied the Abbe Cavelier, looking at a bunch of maiden-hair fern which Barbe had caught from a ledge and tucked in the bosom of her gown. "We left him on the north branch of the Trinity River, Monsieur de Tonty."

The Recollet said nothing, but kept his eyes fixed on his folded hands.

Tonty, too eager to mark well both bearers of such news, demanded again impartially,--

"And he was well?"

"He left us in excellent health, monsieur."

"How glad I am to find you in Fort St. Louis!" exclaimed Tonty. "This is the first direct message I have had from Monsieur de la Salle since he sailed from France. How many men are in your party? Have you been made comfortable?"