Part 9

“If it were not for you, madame,” spoke Massawippa, “I would put this canoe to soak in the water to-night. We must lose time to do it to-morrow. It has lain so long out of water it will scarcely be safe for us to venture across in.”

“Massawippa, I thought we could take this boat and go directly up the Ottawa in it.”

“Madame, you know nothing about the current. And at Carillon, above Two Mountains Lake, there is a place so swift that I could not paddle against it. We should have to carry around hard places. And there is the danger of meeting the Iroquois or being overtaken by some.”

“For Dollard said there were hundreds coming up from the south,” whispered Claire. “We must, indeed, hide ourselves from all canoes passing on the river. I took no thought of that.”

“It will be best to go direct to the walking woman and get a boat of her. We have only to keep the river in sight to find the expedition. If they camp on the other shore, either below or above Carillon, we will have to go to Carillon for a boat. The Chaudière rapids will be hard for them to pass, madame.”

“Who is this walking woman you speak of, Massawippa?”

“I do not know, madame. The Hurons say she is an Indian woman, and some French have claimed her for a saint of the Holy Church. She makes good birch canoes, which are prized by those who can get them. She is under a vow never to sit or lie down, and they say she goes constantly from Mount Calvary to Carillon, for at Carillon she lives or walks about working at her boats. On Mount Calvary are seven holy chapels built of stone, and the walking woman tends these chapels, but she is too humble to live near them. And even the Iroquois dare not touch her.”

“Did you ever see her?”

“I saw her walking along the side of the mountain, bent over upon a stick like a very old woman. How tired she must be! for last summer it was told along the Ottawa that she had been years upon her feet.”

“Were you afraid of her?”

“No, madame. I am not afraid of any holy person who lives in the woods.”

“But did you ever see her face, Massawippa? What did she cover herself with?” inquired Claire, uncomfortably thinking of the recluse on St. Bernard.

“Far up the mountain I saw her face like a dot. She was covered, head and all, in a blanket the color of gray rock. And that is all I know about her, madame.”

“Yet you count on getting a boat from her?”

“If she be a holy woman, madame, and sees us in trouble, will she not help us?”

The rosiness of glowing embers tinted the walls of Jouaneaux’s house, and perfectly the smoke sought its flue.

Lying quite still in weariness, and holding each other for warmth and comfort, the two young creatures felt such thoughts rise and rush to speech as semi-darkness fosters when we are on the edge of great perils.

“Madame,” said Massawippa, “do you understand how it will seem to be dead?”

“I was just thinking of it, Massawippa, and that we shall soon know. There is no imagining such a change; yet it may be no stranger than stripping off a glove of kid-skin and leaving the naked hand, which is, after all, the natural hand. Do you think it possible that anything has happened to the expedition yet? They are three days out from Montreal.”

“They cannot be far up the Ottawa, madame. No, I think they have not met the Iroquois.”

After such sleep as makes the whole night but a pause between two sentences, they opened their eyes to behold a hint of daylight glimmering down their stump chimney, and Claire exclaimed:

“Child, did you bear the weight of my head all night?”

“I don’t know, madame,” replied Massawippa, laughing. “This canoe floated us wondrously in sleep. If it but carry us on the Ottawa as well, we shall pass over without trouble.”

They drew it up the steps of Jouaneaux’s house before eating their breakfast, and carried it between them to the river. Massawippa fastened one of her ropes to it and knotted the other end around a tree. She crept down to the water’s edge pushing the canoe, filled it with small rocks, and sunk it. They left their craft thus until late afternoon, while they staid cautiously underground, feeding the little fire with slab chips from Jouaneaux’s barn, and exchanging low-voiced chat.

Such close contact in a common peril and endeavor was not without its effect on both of them. Claire from superior had changed to pupil, and seemed developing hardihood without losing her soft refinements. Massawippa, mature for her years, and exactly nice, as became a princess, in all her personal habits, had from the moment of meeting this European dropped her taciturn Indian speech. She unconsciously imitated while she protected a creature so much finer than herself.

Venturing forth when shadows were stretching from the west across that angry mass of waters, they emptied their canoe from its wetting and wiped it out with the hempen sack. But Massawippa still shook her head at it.

“Madame, I am afraid this canoe will not carry us well. Can you swim?”

“No, Massawippa; I never learned to do anything useful,” replied Claire.

“We might make a raft of those barn timbers. But, madame, the canoe would take us swiftly, and the raft is clumsy in such swirls and cross-waters as these. You must take one of the cups in your hand and dip out the water while I paddle. Shall we wait until to-morrow?”

“Oh, no!” urged Claire. “We have lost one day for it. If the canoe will carry us at all, Massawippa, I believe it will carry us now.”

They accordingly put their supplies back into the bag, but Massawippa cautiously wound all the ropes around her waist and secured them like a girdle. She brought the paddle from Jouaneaux’s house, and perhaps with regret closed for the last time its trapdoor above it.

Woods, rocks, islands, and water were steeped in a wonderful amber light. The two girls sat down close by the river edge and ate a supper before embarking. Then Massawippa launched the canoe and carefully placed herself and Claire over the keel.

“Unfasten your cloak and let it fall from your shoulders, madame. You see my blanket lies on the sack. We must have nothing to drag us under in case of mischance.”

So, dipping with skillful rapidity, she ventured out across the current.

They fared well until far on in their undertaking. Immediately the little craft oozed as if its entire skin had grown leaky; but Claire bailed with desperate swiftness; the paddle dipped from side to side, flashing in the sun, which now lay level with the rivers.

Massawippa felt the canoe settling, turned it towards the nearest island, and tore the water with her speed.

“Madame!” she cried, her cry merging into one with Claire’s “O Massawippa, we are going down!”

They were close to the island’s ribbed side when a bubbling and roaring confusion overtook Claire’s ears, and she was drenched, strangled, and still gulping in her death until all sensation passed away.

Life returned through hearing; her head was filled with humming noises, she was giving back the water which had been forced upon her, and lying across a rock supported by Massawippa. In the midst of her chill misery she noted that shadow was settling on the river, and all the cheerful ruddiness of western light was gone.

“Madame, are you able to get up the rocks now?” anxiously spoke Massawippa. “We must hide on this island to-night.”

“How did we reach it?” Claire gasped.

“I swam, and dragged you.”

“Then here had been the end of my expedition but for you, Massawippa.”

“There was the end of our supplies. All gone, madame, except the ropes I put around my waist, and they would have drowned me with their weight if the island had not been almost under our feet. It is well we ate and filled ourselves, for the saints alone know where we shall get breakfast.”

Claire turned her face on the rock.

“My packet of linen and clean comforts, Massawippa!” she regretted.

“The cloak and the blanket were of more account, madame. The Frenchman’s boat played us a fine trick. But we are here. And we have still our knives and tinder.”

Before the long northern twilight had double-dyed itself into night, they crept up the island’s rocky side, explored its small circumference, and found near the western edge a dry hollow, the socket of an uprooted tree. Into this Massawippa piled all the loose leaves she could find, and cut some branches full of tender foliage from the trees to shelter them. Had her tinder been dry, she dared not make a light to be seen from the river.

Drenched and heavy through all their garments, they nestled closely down together and shivered in the chill breath of night. An emaciated moon lent them enough cadaverous light to make them apprehensive of noises on the rushing water. Sometimes they dozed, sometimes they whispered to each other, sometimes they startled each other by involuntary shivers. But measured by patient breath, by moments of endurance succeeding one another in what then seemed endless duration, this second night of their journey passed away, and nothing upon the island or upon the two rivers terrified them.

Just at the pearl-blue time of dawn canoes grew on the southward sweep of the St. Lawrence.

Claire touched Massawippa, and Massawippa nodded. They dared scarcely breathe, but watched along the level of the sward, careful not to rear a feature above the dull leaves.

Nearer and nearer came the canoes. A splash of unskillful paddling grew distinct; familiar outlines projected familiar faces.

“Oh, it is Dollard!” Claire’s whisper was a strangled scream. “There are the men of the French expedition! There is my--”

“Hush!” whispered Massawippa. “Madame, do you want them to see us, and turn and send us back to Montreal?”

“O my Dollard!” Claire clasped her own hand over her mouth while she sobbed. “Drowned and wretched and homesick for you, must I see you pass me by, never turning a glance this way?”

“Hush, madame,” begged Massawippa, adding her hand to Claire’s. “Sound goes like a bird over water.”

“This is our one chance to reach him,” struggled Claire. “Oh, the woods, and the rivers, and the Iroquois--they are all coming between us again!”

“It is no chance at all, madame. I know what my father would do.”

“O my Dollard!” groaned Claire in the dead leaves. “Oh, do not let him go by! Must he flit and flit from me--must I follow him so through space forever when we are dead?”

Almost like dream-men, wreathed slowly about by mists, their alternating paddles making no sound which could be caught by the woman on the island living so keenly in her ears, the expedition passed into the mouth of the Ottawa. When they could be seen no more, Claire lay in dejection like death.

XVIII.

THE WALKING HERMIT.

“THEY have been these five[9] days getting past Ste. Anne,” remarked Massawippa. “I could not have paddled against that current with the best of canoes. My father will soon follow; we dare scarcely stir until my father passes. He would see us if we did more than breathe; the Huron knows all things around him. And if he finds us, he will put us back into safety, after all our trouble.”

Claire was weeping on her damp arms, and lay quite as still as the younger woman could wish, while daylight, sunlight, and winged life grew around them.

Hour after hour passed. Annahotaha’s canoes did not appear. Still the half-Huron stoic watched southward, lying with her cheek on the leaves, clasping her eyelids almost shut to protect her patient sight from the glare on the water.

“Madame, are you hungry?”

“In my heart I am,” said Claire.

“That is because we were so drenched. My father will soon pass; and when we have food and dry skins our courage will come up again. There is only one way to reach the north shore. If my father would go by, I could cut limbs for the raft.”

Claire gave listless attention.

“We must cut branches as large as we can with our knives, the hatchet being gone, and we shall be drenched again; but the river’s arm shall not hold us back.”

When the sun stood overhead without having brought Annahotaha, Claire could endure her stiff discomfort no longer.

“Lie still, madame,” begged Massawippa.

“My child,” returned Claire, fretfully, “I do not care if the Iroquois see me and scalp me.”

“And me also?”

“No, not you.”

“Have a little more patience, madame, for I do see specks like wild ducks riding yonder. They may be the Huron canoes.”

The little more patience, wrung like a last tax from exhaustion, was measured out, and not vainly.

The specks like wild ducks rode nearer, shaping themselves into Huron canoes.

In rigid calm the half-breed girl watched them approach, fly past with regular and beautiful motion of the paddles, and make their entrance into the Ottawa. Her eyes shone across the leaves, but Annahotaha, sweeping all the horizon with a sight formed and trained to keenest use, caught no sign of ambush or human life on the islands.

When the fleet was far off, his young daughter rose up and unsheathed her knife to cut raftwood.

“My father is a great man,” was the only weakness she allowed herself, and in this her gratified pride was restricted to a mere statement of fact.

The raft, made of many large branches bound securely together, occupied them some time. On this frail and uneasy flooring the half-breed placed her companion. Claire was instructed to hold to it though the water should rise around her waist.

The space betwixt island and north shore was a very dangerous passage for them. Massawippa swam and propelled the raft with the current, fighting for it midway, while Claire clung in desperation and begged the brown face turned up to her from the water to let her go and to swim out alone.

When they finally stood on the north bank, streams of water running down their persons, Massawippa’s black hair shining as it clung to her cheeks, and their raft escaping from their reach, they felt that a great gulf of experience divided them from the island and Jouaneaux’s house.

“This time we lose our ropes,” said the half-breed girl. “My hands were too numb. And now we have nothing left but our knives and tinder.”

To Claire the rest of the day was a heavy dream. Giddy from fasting and exposure, with swimming eyes she saw the landscape. Sometimes Massawippa walked with an arm around her waist, sometimes held low boughs out of her way, introducing her to the deeper depths of Canadian forest. They did not talk, but reserved their strength for plodding; and thus they edged along the curves and windings of the Ottawa. Claire took no thought of Massawippa’s destination for the night; they were making progress if they followed beside the track of the expedition.

Before dark she noticed that the land ascended, and afterwards they left the river below, for a glooming pile of mountain was to be climbed. Perhaps no wearier feet ever toiled up that steep during all the following years, though the mountain was piously named Calvary and its top held sacred as a shrine, to be visited by many a pilgrim.[10]

Sometimes the two girls hugged this rugged ascent, lying against it, and paused for breath. The rush and purr of the river went on below, and all the wilderness night sounds were magnified by their negations--the night silences.

At the summit of the mountain, starlight made indistinctly visible a number of low stone structures, each having a rough cross above its door. These were the seven chapels Massawippa had told about. Whether they stood in regular design or were dotted about on the plateau, Claire scarcely used her heavy eyes to discern. She was comforted by Massawippa’s whisper that they must sleep in the first chapel, and by the sound of heavy hinges grating, as if the door yielded unwillingly an entrance to such benighted pilgrims.

The tomb-like inclosure was quite as chill as the mountain air outside. They stood on uneven stone flooring, and listened for any breathing beside their own.

“Let me feel all around the walls and about the altar, madame,” whispered Massawippa.

“Let me continue with you, then,” whispered back Claire. “Have you been in this place before?”

“I have been in all the chapels, madame.”

Claire held to Massawippa’s beaver gown and stepped grotesquely in her tracks as the half-breed moved forward with stretched, exploring fingers. When this blind progress brought them to the diminutive altar, they failed not to kneel before it and whisper some tired orisons.

After one round of the chapel they groped back to the altar, assured that no foe lurked with them.

The chancel rail felt like the smooth rind of a tree. Within the rail Massawippa said a wooden platform was built, on which it could be no sin against Heaven for such forlorn beings to sleep.

Their clothes were now nearly dry; but footsore and weak with hunger, Claire sunk upon this refuge, disregarding dust which had settled there in silence and dimness all the days of the past winter. Exhaustion made her first posture the right one. Scarcely breathing, she would have sunk at once to stupor, but Massawippa hissed joyful whispers through the dark.

“Madame!”

“What is it?”

“Madame, I have been feeling the top of the altar.”

“Do no sacrilege, Massawippa.”

“But last summer the walking woman put bread and roasted birds on the altars for an offering. She has put some here to-day. Take this.”

Claire encountered a groping hand full of something which touch received as food. Without further parley she sat up and ate. The very gentle sounds of mastication which even dainty women may make when crisp morsels tempt the hound of starvation that is within them could be heard in the dark. Claire’s less active animal nature was first silenced, and in compunction she spoke.

“If the hermit put these things on the altar for an offering, we are robbing a shrine.”

“She was willing for any pilgrim to carry them away, madame. The coureurs de bois visit these chapels and eat her birds. She is alive, madame! She is not dead! We shall find her at Carillon and get our canoe of her; and the saints be praised for so helping us!”

They finished their meal and stretched themselves upon the platform. Not a delicious scrap which could be eaten was left, but Massawippa piously dropped the bones outside the chancel rail.

“We are in sanctuary,” said Claire, her eyes pressed by the weight of darkness. Venturing with checked voice, the sweeter for such suppression and necessity of utterance, she sung above their heads into the low arching hollow a vesper hymn in monk’s Latin; after which they slept as they had slept in Jouaneaux’s house, and awoke to find the walking woman gazing over the rail at them.

She was so old that her many wrinkles seemed carved in hard wood. Her features were unmistakably Indian; but from the gray blanket loosely draping her, and even from her inner wrappings of soft furs, came the smell of wholesome herbs. She held a long flask in one hand, evidently a bottle lost or thrown away by some passing ranger, and she extended it to Claire, her eyes twinkling pleasantly.

Being relieved of it she turned and tapped with her staff--for her moccasins were silent--slowly around the chapel, mechanically keeping herself in motion. She was so different from fanatics who bind themselves in by walls that in watching her Claire forgot the flask.

Massawippa uncorked it.

“This is a drink she brews, madame. I have heard in my father’s camp that she brews it to keep herself strong and tireless.”

Claire tasted and Massawippa drank the liquid, with unwonted disregard of a common bottle mouth. It was too tepid to be refreshing, but left a wild and spicy tang, delicious as the cleansed sensation of returning health.

“Good mother,” said Claire as she gave the hermit’s flask back, “have you seen white men in canoes on the river?”

The walking woman leaned lower on her staff with keen attention. Massawippa repeated Claire’s words in Huron, and added much inquiry of her own. The walking woman moved back and forth beside the rail, making gestures with her staff and uttering gutturals, until she ended by beckoning to them and leading them out of the chapel.

Massawippa interpreted her as saying that she had seen the white men and the Hurons following them, and had heard a voice in the woods speak out, “Great deeds will now be done.” She would take care of all whom the saints sheltered behind their altar, but she chid Massawippa for prying into mysteries when the girl asked if she had foreseen their coming. They were to go with her to Carillon and get a canoe.

She had breakfast for them down the mountain north of the chapels.

The world is full of resurrections of the body. It was nothing for two young creatures to rise up from their hard bed and plunge heartily into the dew and gladness of morning--the first morning of May.

But the miracle of life is that coming of a person who instantly unlocks all our resources, among which we have groped forlorn and disinherited. Friend or lover, he enriches us with what was before our own, yet what we never should have gathered without the solvent of his touch.

In some degree the walking woman came like such a prophet to Claire. As she brushed down the mountain-side with Massawippa, followed by woman and clinking staff, all things seemed easy to do. The healing of the woods flowed over her anxiety, and like an urchin she pried under moss and within logs for an instant’s peep at life swarming there. Never before had she felt turned loose to Nature, with the bounds of her past fallen away, and the freedom which at first abashed her now became like the lifting of wings. Sweet smells of wood mold and damp greenery came from this ancient forest like the long-preserved essence of primeval gladness. It did not have its summer density of leafage, but the rocks were always there, heaving their placid backs from the soil in the majesty of everlasting quiet.

The walking woman lifted her stick and struck upon their rocky path, which answered with a hollow booming, as if drums were beaten underground. She gave Claire a wrinkled smile.

“The rocks do the same far to the eastward,” said Massawippa. “It is the earth’s heart which answers--we walk so close to it here. And, madame, I never saw any snakes in this fair land.”

XIX.

THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT.[11]

IT was morning by the Long Saut, that length of boiling rapids which had barred the French expedition’s farther progress up the Ottawa. The seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and forty Hurons were encamped together in an open space on the west bank of the river. Their kettles were slung for breakfast, the fires blinking pinkly in luminous morning air; their morning hymn had not long ceased to echo from the forest around the clearing. Three times the previous day these men had prayed their prayers together in three languages.

Their position at the foot of the rapids was well taken. The Iroquois must pass them. In the clearing stood a dilapidated fort, a mere stockade of sapling trunks, built the autumn before by an Algonquin war party; but Dollard’s party counted upon it as their pivot for action, though with strange disregard of their own defense they had not yet strengthened it by earthworks.

Dollard stood near the brink of the river watching the rapids. His scouts had already encountered some canoes full of Iroquois coming down the Ottawa, and in a skirmish two of the enemy escaped. The main body, hastened by these refugees, must soon reach the Long Saut, unless they were determined utterly to reject and avoid the encounter, which it was scarcely in the nature of Iroquois to do.

No canoes yet appeared on the rapids, but against the river’s southward sweep rode a new little craft holding two women. Having crossed the current below and hugged the western shore, this canoe shot out before Dollard’s eyes as suddenly as an electric lancet unsheathed by clouds.