The Trapper's Daughter Part 19

At this moment the strangers entered the clearing where the bandit lay.

The Indians and the other travellers remained some paces in the rear, while the priest, quickly approached Red Cedar, over whom he bent. At his daughter's words the bandit opened his eyes, and turned his head with an effort in the direction whence this unexpected help arrived.

Suddenly his face, before so pale, was covered with a cadaverous tinge; his eyes were enlarged and became haggard, a convulsive quiver agitated his limbs, and he fell heavily back, muttering with terror--

"Oh! Father Seraphin!"

It was really the missionary; without appearing to remark the squatter's emotion, he seized his arm in order to feel his pulse. Red Cedar had fainted, but Ellen had heard the words he uttered, and though she could not understand their meaning, she guessed that a terrible drama was concealed beneath this revelation.

"My father!" she exclaimed mournfully, as she fell at the priest's knees, "My father, have pity on him, do not desert him!"

The missionary smiled with an expression of ineffable goodness.

"Daughter," he answered gently, "I am a minister of G.o.d, and the dress I wear commands me to forget insults. Priests have no enemies, all men are their brothers; rea.s.sure yourself, your father has not only his body to be saved, but also, his soul. I will undertake this cure, and G.o.d, who permitted me to take this road, will give me the necessary strength to succeed."

"Oh, thanks, thanks, holy father," the girl murmured, as she burst into tears.

"Do not thank me, poor girl; address your thanks to G.o.d, for He alone has done all. Now leave me to attend to this unhappy man, who is suffering, and whose miserable state claims all my care."

And gently removing the maiden, Father Seraphin opened his medicine box, which he took from the pommel of his saddle, and prepared to dress his patient's wounds. In the meanwhile the Indians had gradually approached, and seeing the state of affairs, they dismounted to prepare the encampment, for they foresaw that, with Red Cedar in his present condition, the missionary would pa.s.s the night at this spot.

The person who accompanied Father Seraphin was a female of very advanced age, but whose features, enn.o.bled by years, had a far from common expression of kindness and grandeur. When she saw that the missionary was preparing to dress the wounds, she went up to him and said in a soft voice--

"Can I not help you in any way, holy father? You know that I am anxious to begin my apprenticeship in nursing."

These words were uttered with an accent of indescribable goodness. The priest looked at her with a sublime expression, and, taking her hand, he made her stoop over the wounded man.

"Heaven has decreed that what now happens should take place," he said to her; "you have hardly landed in this country, and entered the desert to seek your son, when the Omnipotent imposes on you a task which must rejoice your heart by bringing you face to face with this man."

"What do you mean, father?" she said with amazement.

"Mother of Valentine Guillois," he continued, with an accent full of supreme majesty, "look at this man well, so as to be able to recognise him hereafter; it is Red Cedar, the wretch of whom I have so often spoken to you, the implacable foe of your son."

At this terrible revelation the poor woman gave a start of fear; but surmounting with a superhuman effort the feeling of revulsion she had at first experienced, she answered in a calm voice--

"No matter, father, the man suffers, and I will nurse him."

"Good, Madam," the priest said, with emotion; "Heaven will give you credit for this evangelic abnegation."

CHAPTER XII.

THE MISSIONARY.

We will now briefly explain by what strange concourse of events Father Seraphin, whom we have for so long a period lost out of sight, and Valentine's mother, had arrived so providentially to help Red Cedar.

When the missionary left the Trail-hunter, he proceeded, as he expressed a wish, among the Comanches, with the intention of preaching the gospel to them, a holy duty which he had begun to put in execution long before.

Father Seraphin, through his character and piety of manner, had made friends of all these children of nature, and converted numerous proselytes in various tribes, especially in Unicorn's.

The journey was long and fatiguing to the Comanche village, and the means of transport were, in a desert country, only traversed by nomadic hordes, which wander without any settled purpose in these vast solitudes. The missionary, however, did not recoil; too weak to ride on account of the scarce cicatrised wound he had received a short time previously, he had, like the first Fathers of the Church, bravely undertaken this journey on foot, which it is almost impossible to accomplish on horseback.

But human strength has its limits, which it cannot go beyond. Father Seraphin, in spite of his courage, was obliged tacitly to allow that he had undertaken a task which he was too weak to carry out. One night he fell, exhausted by fever and fatigue, on the floor of some Indians, who nursed and brought him round. These Indians, who were half civilised, and had been Christians for a long time, would not allow the priest, in his present state of health, to continue his journey; on the contrary, taking advantage of the fever which kept him down and rendered it impossible for him to see what was done with him, they conveyed him back, by slow stages, to Texas.

When Father Seraphin, thanks to his youth and powerful const.i.tution, had at length conquered the malady which kept him confined to his bed for more than a month between life and death, his surprise was great to find himself at Galveston, in the house of the episcopal head of the Mission.

The worthy prelate, employing the spiritual powers given him by his character and his t.i.tle, had insisted on the missionary going on board of a vessel just starting for Havre, and which was only waiting for a favourable wind.

Father Seraphin obeyed with sorrow the commands of his superior; the Bishop was obliged to prove to him that his health was almost ruined, and that his native air could alone restore it, ere he would resign humbly to obedience, and, as he said bitterly, fly and abandon his post.

The missionary started then, but with the firm resolution of returning so soon as it was possible.

The voyage from Galveston to Havre was a pleasant one; two months after leaving Texas, Father Seraphin set foot on his native soil, with an emotion which only those who have wandered for a long time in foreign parts can comprehend. Since accident brought him back to France, the missionary profited by it to visit his family, whom he never expected to see again, and by whom he was received with transports of joy, the greater because his return was so unexpected.

The life of a missionary is very hard; those who have seen them at work in the great American desert can alone appreciate all the holy abnegation and true courage there is in the hearts of these simple and truly good men, who sacrifice their life, without the hope of possible reward; in preaching to the Indians. They nearly all fall in some obscure corner of the prairie, victims to their devotion, or if they resist for five or six years, they return to their country prematurely aged, almost blind, overwhelmed with infirmities, and forced to live a miserable life among men who misunderstand and too often calumniate them.

Father Seraphin's time was counted, every hour he pa.s.sed away from his beloved Indians he reproached himself with as a robbery he committed on them. He tore himself from his parent's arms, and hastened to Havre, to profit by the first chance that presented itself for returning to Texas.

One evening, while Father Seraphin was seated on the beach, contemplating the sea that separated him from the object of his life, and thinking of the proselytes he had left in America, and whom, deprived of his presence, he trembled to find again, plunged in their old errors--he heard sobs near him. He raised his head, and saw at some paces from him a woman kneeling on the sand and weeping; from time to time broken words escaped from her lips. Father Seraphin was affected by this sorrow; he approached, and heard the words: "My son, my poor son!

Oh, Heaven restore me my son!"

This woman's face was bathed in tears, her eyes were raised to Heaven, and an expression of profound despair was imprinted on her countenance.

Father Seraphin understood with the instinct of his heart that there was a great misfortune here that required unsolving, and addressed the stranger.

"Poor woman, what do you want here? Why do you weep?

"Alas! Father," she answered, "I have lost all hope of being happy in this world."

"Who knows, madam? Tell me your misfortunes. G.o.d is great; perhaps He will give me the power to console you."

"You are right, father; G.o.d never deserts the afflicted, and it is above all when hope fails them that He comes to their a.s.sistance."

"Speak then with confidence."

The strange woman began in a voice broken by the internal emotion which she suffered.

"For more than ten years," she said, "I have been separated from my son.

Alas! Since he went to America, in spite of all the steps I have taken, I have never received news of him, or learned what has become of him, whether he be dead or alive."

"Since the period of which you speak, then, no sign, no information however slight, has rea.s.sured you as to the fate of him you mourn?"

"No, my father, since my son, the brave lad, determined to accompany his foster-brother to Chili."

"Well," the priest interrupted, "you might enquire in Chili."

"I did so, father."

"And learned nothing?"

"Pardon me, my son's foster-brother is married, and possesses a large fortune in Chili. I applied to him. My son left him about a year after his departure from France, without telling him the motive that urged him to act thus, and he never heard of him again, in spite of all his efforts to find him; all that he discovered was that he had buried himself in the virgin forests of the Great Chaco, accompanied by two Indian chiefs."