Book III.

FORT ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.

1687 A. D.

I.

IN AN EAGLE'S NEST.

"Fort Lewis is in the country of the Illinois and seated on a steep Rock about two hundred Foot high, the River running at the Bottom of it. It is only fortified with Stakes and Palisades, and some Houses advancing to the Edge of the Rock. It has a very spacious Esplanade, or Place of Arms. The Place is naturally strong, and might be made so by Art, with little expence. Several of the Natives live in it, in their Huts. I cannot give an Account of the Latitude it stands in, for want of proper Instruments to take an Observation, but Nothing can be pleasanter; and it may be truly affirmed that the Country of the Illinois enjoys all that can make it accomplished, not only as to Ornament, but also for its plentiful Production of all Things requisite for the Support of human Life.

"The Plain, which is watered by the River, is beautified by two small Hills about half a League distant from the Fort, and those Hills are cover'd with groves of Oaks, Walnut-Trees, and other Sorts I have named elsewhere. The Fields are full of Grass, growing up very high. On the Sides of the Hills is found a gravelly Sort of Stone, very fit to make Lime for Building. There are also many Clay Pits, fit for making of Earthen Ware, Bricks, and Tiles, and along the River there are Coal Pits, the Coal whereof has been try'd and found very good."[17]

The young man lifted his pen from the paper and stood up beside a box in the storehouse which had served him as table, at the demand of a priestly voice.

"Joutel, what are you writing there?"

"Monsieur the Abbé, I was merely setting down a few words about this Fort St. Louis of the Illinois in which we are sheltered. But my candle is so nearly burned out I will put the leaves aside."

"You were writing nothing else?" insisted La Salle's brother, setting his shoulders against the storehouse door.

"Not a word, monsieur."

The Abbé's ragged cassock scarcely showed such wear as his face, which the years that had handled him could by no means have cut into such deep grooves or moulded into such ghastly hillocks of features.

"I cannot sleep to-night, Joutel," said the Abbé Cavelier.

"I thought you were made very comfortable in the house," remarked Joutel.

"What can make me comfortable now?"

They stood still, saying nothing, while a candle waved its feeble plume with uncertainty over its marsh of tallow, making their huge shadows stagger over log-wall or floor or across piled merchandise. One side of the room was filled with stacked buffalo hides, on which Joutel, nightly, took the complete rest he had earned by long tramping in southern woods.

He rested his knuckles on the box and looked down. A Norman follower of the Caveliers, he had done La Salle good service, but between the Abbé and him lay a reason for silence.

"Tonty may reach the Rock at any time,"[18] complained the Abbé to the floor, though his voice must reach Joutel's ears. "There is nothing I dread more than meeting Tonty."

"We can leave the Rock before Monsieur de Tonty arrives," said Joutel, repeating a suggestion he had made many times.

"Certainly, without the goods my brother would have him deliver to me, without a canoe or any provision whatever for our journey!"

"They say here that Monsieur de Tonty led only two hundred Indians and fifty Frenchmen to aid the new governor in his war against the Iroquois," observed Joutel. "He may not come back at all."

"I have thought of that," the Abbé mused. "If Tonty be dead we are indeed wasting our time here, when we ought to be well on our way to Quebec, to say naught of the voyage to France. But this fellow in charge of the Rock refuses to honor my demands without more authority."

"He received us most kindly, and we have been his guests a month," said Joutel.

"I would be his guest no longer than this passing night if my difficulties were solved," said the Abbé. "For there is even Colin's sister to torment me. I know not where she is,--whether in Montreal or in the wilderness between Montreal and this fort. If I had taken her back with Colin to France, she would now be safe with my mother. There was another evidence of my poor brother's madness! He was determined Mademoiselle Cavelier should be sent out to Fort St. Louis. When he sailed on that last great voyage, he sat in one of the ships the king furnished him and in the last lines he wrote his mother refused to tell her his destination! And at the same time he wrote instructions to the nuns of St. Joseph concerning the niece whose guardian he never was. She must be sent to Fort St. Louis at the first safe opportunity! She was to have a grant in this country to replace her fortune which he had used. And this he only told me during his fever at St. Domingo on the voyage."

Joutel folded and put away his notes. The Abbé's often repeated complaints seldom stirred a reply from him. Though on this occasion he thought of saying,--

"Monsieur de Tonty may bring news of her from Montreal."

"You understand, Joutel," exclaimed the Abbé, approaching the candle, "that it is best,--that it is necessary not to tell Tonty what we know?"

"I have understood what you said, Monsieur the Abbé."

"You are the only man who gives me anxiety. All the rest are willing to keep silence. Is it not my affair? I wish you would cease writing your scraps. It irritates me to come into this storehouse and find you writing your scraps." He looked severely at the young man, who leaned against the box making no further promise or reply. Then seizing the candle, the Abbé stepped to a bed made of bales, where, wrapped in skins and blankets, young Colin Cavelier lay uttering the acknowledgement of peaceful sleep. Another boy lay similarly wrapped on the floor beside him.

The priest's look at these two was brief. He went on to the remaining man in the room, a hairy fellow, lying coiled among hides and pressed quite into a corner. The man appeared unconscious, emitting his breath in short puffs.

Abbé Cavelier gazed upon him with shudders.

The over-taxed candle flame stooped and expired, the scent of its funeral pile rising from a small red point in darkness.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Joutel. English Translation "from the edition just published at Paris, 1714 A. D."

[18] "Le Rocher," this natural fortress was commonly called by the French. See Charlevoix.

II.

THE FRIEND AND BROTHER

While Abbé Cavelier stood in the storehouse, Tonty, a few miles away, was setting his camp around a spring of sulphur water well known to the hunters of St. Louis. The spring boiled its white sand from unmeasured depths at the root of an oak, and spread a pool which slipped over its barrier in a thin stream to the Illinois.

Though so near his fortress, Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut, fresh from their victorious campaign with the governor of New France against the Iroquois, thought it not best to expose their long array of canoes in darkness on the river. They had with them[19] women and children,--fragments of families, going under their escort to join the colony at Fort St. Louis.

Du Lhut's army of Indians from the upper lakes had returned directly to their own villages to celebrate the victory; but that unwearied rover himself, with a few followers, had dragged his gouty limbs across portages to the Illinois, to sojourn longer with Tonty.

Their camp was some distance from the river, up an alluvial slope of the north shore. Opposite, a line of cliffs, against which the Illinois washes for miles, caught the eye through darkness by its sandy glint; and not far away, on the north side of the river, that long ridge known as Buffalo Rock made a mass of gloom.

Dependent and unarmed colonists were placed in the centre of the camp. Tonty himself, with his usual care on this journey, had helped to pitch a tent of blankets and freshly cut poles for Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier and the officer's wife, who clung to her in the character of guardian. The other immigrants understood and took pleasure in this small temporary home, built nightly for a girl whose proud silence among them they forgave as the caprice of beauty. The wife of the officer Bellefontaine, on her part, rewarded Tonty by attaching her ceaseless presence to Barbe. She was a timid woman, very small-eyed and silent, who took refuge in Barbe's larger shadow, and found it convenient for an under-sized duenna whose husband was so far in the wilds.

Mademoiselle Cavelier was going to Fort St. Louis at the first opportunity since her uncle La Salle's request, made three years before.

At this time it was not known whether La Salle had succeeded or failed in his last enterprise. He had again convinced the king. His seigniories and forts were restored to him, and governor's agents and associates driven out of his possessions. He had sailed from France with a fleet of ships, carrying a large colony to plant at the Mississippi's mouth. His brother the Abbé Cavelier, two nephews, priests, artisans, young men, and families were in his company, which altogether numbered over four hundred people.

Fogs or storms, or dogged navigators disagreeing with and disobeying him, had robbed him of his destination; for news came back to France, by a returning ship, of loss and disaster and a colony dropped like castaways on some inlet of the Gulf.

The evening meal was eaten and sentinels were posted. Even petulant children had ceased to fret within the various enclosures. Indians and Frenchmen lay asleep under their canoes which they had carried from the river, and by propping with stones or stakes at one side, converted into low-roofed shelters.

Barbe's tent was beside the spring near the camp-fire. She could, by parting overlapped blanket edges, look out of her cloth house into those living depths of bubbling white sand, so like the thoughts of young maids. Two or three fallen leaves, curled into quaint craft, slid across the pool's surface, hung at its barrier, and one after the other slipped over and disappeared along the thread of water. A hollow of light was scooped above the camp-fire, outside of which darkness stood an impenetrable rind, for the sky had all day been thickened by clouds.

The Demoiselle Bellefontaine, tucked neatly as a mole under her ridge, rested from her fears in sleep; and Barbe made ready to lie down also, sweeping once more the visible world with a lingering eye. She saw an Indian creeping on hands and knees toward Tonty's lodge. He entered darkness the moment she saw him. The girl arose trembling and put on her clothes. She had caught no impression of his tribe; but if he were a warrior of the camp, his crawling so secretly must threaten harm to Tonty. She did not distinctly know what she ought to do, except warn Monsieur de Tonty.

But on a sudden the iron-handed commandant ran past her tent, shouting to his men. There was a sound like the rushing of bees through the air, and horrible faces smeared with paint, tattooed bodies, and hands brandishing weapons closed in from darkness; the men of the camp rose up with answering yells, and the flash and roar of muskets surrounded Barbe as if she were standing in some nightmare world of lightning and thunder. She heard the screams of children and frightened mothers. She saw Tonty in meteor rushes rallying men, and striking down, with nothing but his iron hand, a foe who had come to quarters too close for fire-arms. Indian after Indian fell under that sledge, and a cry of terror in Iroquois French, which she could understand, rose through the whoop of invasion,--

"The Great-Medicine-Hand! The Great-Medicine-Hand!"

Brands were caught from the fire and thrown like bolts, sparks hissing as they flew. Her tent was overturned and she fell under it with the Demoiselle Bellefontaine, who uttered muffled squeals.

When Barbe dragged her companion out of the midst of poles, all the hurricane of action had passed by. Its rush could be heard down the slope, then the splashing of bodies and tumultuous paddling in the river. Guns yet flashed. She heard Frenchmen and Illinois running with their canoes down to the water to give chase. Farther and farther away sounded the retreat, and though women and children continued to make outcry, Barbe could hear no groans.

The brands of the fire were still scattered, but hands were busy collecting and bringing them back,--processions of gigantic glow-worms meeting by dumb appointment in a nest of hot ashes and trodden logs. All faces were drowned in the dark until these re-united embers fitfully brought them out. A crowd of frightened immigrants drew around the blaze, calling each other by name, and demanding to know who was scalped.

Barbe saw nothing better to do than to stand beside her wrecked tent, and the Demoiselle Bellefontaine burrowed closely to her, uttering distressed noises.

The pursuers presently returned and quieted the camp. Tonty had not lost a man, though a few were wounded. The attacking party carried off with them every trace of their repulse.

Overturned lodges were now set straight, and as soon as Bellefontaine's wife found hers inhabitable she hid herself within it. But Barbe waited to ask the busy commandant,--

"Monsieur de Tonty, have you any wound?"

"No, mademoiselle," he answered, pausing to breathe himself, and seize upon an interview so unusual. "I hope you have not been greatly disturbed. The Iroquois are now entirely driven off, and they will not venture to attack us again."

With excited voice Barbe assured him she had remained tranquil through the battle.

"We do not call this a battle," laughed Tonty. "These were a party of Senecas, who rallied after defeat and have followed us to our own country. They tried to take the camp by surprise, and nearly did it; but Sanomp crept between sentinels and waked me."

"Who is Sanomp, monsieur?"

"Do you remember the Iroquois Indian who came to Father Hennepin's chapel at Fort Frontenac?"

"Yes, monsieur; was he among these Senecas?"

"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 shore. 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 bumping 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 principality 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 breasts 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 passed 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 hoary 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 principal dwellings of the fort. There were besides, a storehouse, a block-house, and several Indian lodges. But the whole space--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 Récollet 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 Abbé!" Barbe gasped with surprise. "Is Colin with you? Is my uncle La Salle here?"

But Tonty, swifter than the Abbé's reply, laid hold of the Récollet Father and drew him beside Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Récollet 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?"

"Only six, monsieur. We have been made quite comfortable by your officer Bellefontaine."

"Monsieur the Abbé, where did Monsieur de la Salle land his colony?"

"On a western coast of the Gulf, monsieur. It was most unfortunate. Ever since he has been searching for the Mississippi."

"While I searched for him. Oh, Fathers!" Tonty's voice deepened and his swarthy joyful face set its contrast opposite two downcast churchmen, "nothing in Fort St. Louis is good enough for messengers from Monsieur de la Salle. What can I do for you? Did he send me no orders?"

"He did commit a paper to my hand, naming skins and merchandise that he would have delivered to me, as well as a canoe and provisions for our journey to New France."

"Come, let me see this paper," demanded Tonty. "Whatever Monsieur de la Salle orders shall be done at once; but the season is now so advanced you will not push on to New France until spring."

"That is the very reason, Monsieur de Tonty, why we should push on at once. We have waited a month for your return. I leave Fort St. Louis with my party to-morrow, if you will so forward my wishes."

"Monsieur the Abbé, it is impossible! You have yet told me nothing of all it is necessary for me to know touching Monsieur de la Salle."

"To-morrow," repeated the Abbé Cavelier, "I must set out at dawn, if you can honor my brother's paper."

Tonty, with a gesture of his left hand, led the way to his quarters across the esplanade. As Barbe walked behind the Récollet Father, she wondered why he had given no answer to any of Tonty's questions.

Her brother advanced to meet her, and she ran and gave him her hands and her cheek to kiss. They had been apart four years, and looked at each other with scrutinizing gaze. He overtopped her by a head. Barbe expected to find him tall and rudely masculine, but there was change in him for which she was not prepared.

"My sister has grown charming," pronounced Colin. "Not as large as the Caveliers usually are, but like a bird exquisite in make and graceful motion."

"Oh, Colin, what is the matter?" demanded Barbe, with direct dart. "I see concealment in your face!"

"What do you see concealed? Perhaps you will tell me that." He became mottled with those red and white spots which are the blood's protest against the will.

"The Récollet Father did not answer a word to Monsieur de Tonty's questions, Colin; and the voice of my uncle the Abbé sounded unnatural. Is there wicked power in those countries you have visited to make you all come back like men half asleep from some drug?"

"Yes, there is!" exclaimed the boy; "I hate that wilderness. When we are once in France I will never venture into such wilds again. They dull me until my tongue seems dead."

"And, Colin, you did leave my uncle La Salle quite well?"

"It was he who left us. He was in excellent health the last time we saw him." The boy spoke these words with precision, and Barbe sighed her relief.

"For myself," she said, "I love this wild world. I shall stay here until my uncle La Salle arrives."

"Our uncle the Abbé will decide that," replied Colin. "It is unfortunate that you left Montreal. Your only hope of staying here rests on the hard journey before us, and the risks we run of meeting winter on the way. I wish you had been sent to France. I wish we were all in France now." Colin's face relaxed wistfully.

Two crows were scolding in the trees below them. Barbe felt ready to weep; as if the tender spirit of autumn had stolen through her, as mists steal along the hills. She sat down on the grassy earthwork, and Colin picked some pine needles from a branch and stood silent beside her, chewing them.

But those vague moods which haunt girlhood held always short dominion over Barbe. She was in close kinship with the world around, and the life of the fort began to occupy her.

The Rock was like a small fair with its additional inhabitants, who were still running about in a confusion of joyful noises. Children, delighted to be freed from canoes at so bright a time of day, raced across the centre, or hid behind wigwam or tree, calling to each other. An Indian stalked across to the front of the Rock, and Barbe watched him reach out through an opening in the low log palisade. A platform was there built on the trunks of two leaning cedars. The Indian unwound a windlass and let down a bucket to the river below. She heard its distant splash and some of its resounding drips on the way up. Living in Fort St. Louis was certainly like living on a cloud.

"I will go into the officers' house," suggested Colin, "and see how the Abbé's demands are met by Monsieur de Tonty. We shall then know if we are to set out for Quebec to-morrow."

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Parkman states its actual height to be only a hundred and twenty-five feet.

IV.

A FÊTE ON THE ROCK.[23]

Barbe did not object or assent. Youth shoves off any evil day by ignoring it, and Colin left her in lazy enjoyment of the populous place.

The Demoiselle Bellefontaine approached to ask if she desired to come to the apartment the commandant reserved for her; but Barbe replied that she wished to sit there and amuse herself awhile longer with the novelty of Fort St. Louis.

A child she had noticed on the journey brought her, as great treasure, a handful of flints and crumble-dust from the sandstone. They sorted the stuff on her knee,--fat-faced dark French child and young girl fine enough to be the sylvan spirit of the Rock.

Mademoiselle Cavelier's wardrobe was by no means equal to that gorgeous period in which she lived, being planned by her uncle the Abbé and executed by the frugal and exact hands of a self-denying sisterhood. But who can hide a girl's supple slimness in a gown plain as a nun's, or take the blossom-burnish off her face with colonial caps? Dark curls showed around her temples. Barbe's aquiline face had received scarcely a mark since Tonty saw it at Fort Frontenac. The gentle monotonous restraint of convent life had calmed her wild impulses, and she was in that trance of expecting great things to come, which is the beautiful birthright of youth.

While she was sorting arrow-head chips, her uncle came out of Tonty's quarters and cast his eye about the open space in search of her. At his approach Barbe's playmate slipped away, and the Abbé placed himself in front of her with his hands behind him.

Barbe gave him a scanty look, feeling sure he came to announce the next day's journey. This man, having many excellences, yet roused constant antagonism in his brother and the niece most like that brother. When he protruded his lower lip and looked determined, Barbe thought if the sin could be set aside a plunge in the river would be better than this journey.

"I have a proposal for you, my child," said the Abbé. "It comes from Monsieur de Tonty. He tells me my brother La Salle encouraged him to hope for this alliance, and I must declare I see no other object my brother La Salle had in view when he sent you to Fort St. Louis. Monsieur de Tonty understands the state of your fortune. On his part, he holds this seigniory jointly with my brother, and the traffic he is able to control brings no mean revenue. It is true he lacks a hand. But it hath been well replaced by the artificer, and he comes of an Italian family of rank."

Barbe's head was turned so entirely away that the mere back of a scarlet ear was left to the Abbé. One hand clutched her lap and the other pulled grass with destructive fingers.

"Having stated Monsieur de Tonty's case I will now state mine," proceeded her uncle. "I leave this fort before to-morrow dawn. I must take you with me or leave you here a bride. The journey is perilous for a small party and we may not reach France until next year. And an alliance like this will hardly be found in France for a girl of uncertain fortune. Therefore I have betrothed you to Monsieur de Tonty, and you will be married this evening at vespers."

"You have stated Monsieur de Tonty's case, and you have stated yours," said Barbe. "I will now state mine. I will not be married to any man at a day's notice."

"May I ask what it is you demand, mademoiselle?" inquired the Abbé, with irony, "if you propose to re-arrange any marriage your relatives make for you."

"I demand a week between the betrothal and the marriage."

"A week, mademoiselle!" her uncle laughed. "We who set out must give winter a week's start of us for such a whim! You will be married to-night or you will return with me to France. I will now send Monsieur de Tonty to you to be received as your future husband."

"I will scratch him!" exclaimed Barbe, with a flash of perverseness, at which her uncle's cassocked shoulders shook until he disappeared within doors.

She left the earthwork and went to the entrance side of the fort. There she stood, whispering with a frown,--"Oh, if you please, monsieur, keep your distance! Do not come here as any future husband of mine!"

She had, however, much time in which to prepare her mind before Tonty appeared.

All eyes on the Rock followed him. He shone through the trees, a splendid figure in the gold and white uniform of France, laid aside for years but resumed on this great occasion.

When he came up to Barbe he stopped and folded his arms, saying whimsically,--

"Mademoiselle, I have not the experience to know how one should approach his betrothed. I never was married before."

"It is my case, also, monsieur," replied Barbe.

"How do you like Fort St. Louis?" proceeded Tonty.

"I am enchanted with it."

"You delight me when you say that. During the last four years I have not made an improvement about the land or in any way strengthened this position without thinking, Mademoiselle Cavelier may sometime approve of this. We are finding a new way of heating our houses with underground flues made of stone and mortar."

"That must be agreeable, monsieur."

"We often have hunting parties from the Rock. This country is full of game."

"It is pleasant to amuse one's self, monsieur."

Tonty had many a time seen the silent courtship of the Illinois. He thought now of those motionless figures sitting side by side under a shelter of rushes or bark from morning till night without exchanging a word.

"Mademoiselle, I hope this marriage is agreeable to you?"

"Monsieur de Tonty," exclaimed Barbe, "I have simply been flung at your head to suit the convenience of my relatives."

"Was that distasteful to you?" he wistfully inquired.

"I am not fit for a bride. No preparation has been made for me."

"I thought of making some preparation myself," confessed Tonty. "I got a web of brocaded silk from France several years ago."

"To be clothed like a princess by one's bridegroom," said Barbe, wringing her gown skirt and twisting folds of it in her fingers. "That might be submitted to. But I could not wear the web of brocade around me like a blanket."

"There are fifty needlewomen on the Rock who can make it in a day, mademoiselle."

"And in short, monsieur, to be betrothed in the morning and married the same day is what no girl will submit to!"

Tonty, in the prime of his manhood and his might as a lover was too imposing a figure for her to face; she missed seeing his swarthy pallor as he answered,--

"I understand from all this, mademoiselle, that you care nothing for me. I have felt betrothed to you ever since I declared myself to Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac. How your pretty dreaming of the Rock of St. Louis and your homesick cry for this place did pierce me! I said, 'She shall be my wife, and I will bring home everything that can be obtained for her. That small face shall be heart's treasure to me. Its eyes will watch for me over the Rock.' On our journey here, many a night I took my blanket and lay beside your tent, thanking the saints for the sweet privilege of bringing home my bride. Mademoiselle," said Tonty, trembling, "I will kill any other man who dares approach you. Yet, mademoiselle, I could not annoy you by the least grief! Oh, teach a frontiersman what to say to please a woman!"

"Monsieur de Tonty," panted Barbe. "You please me too well, indeed! It was necessary to come to an understanding. You should not make me say,--for I am ashamed to tell,--how long I have adored you!"

As Tonty's quick Italian blood mounted from extreme anguish to extreme rapture, he laughed with a sob.

Fifty needlewomen on the Rock made in a day a gown of the web of brocaded silk. The fortress was full of preparation for evening festivity. Hunters went out and brought in game, and Indians carried up fish, new corn, and honey from wild bee trees. All the tables which the dwellings afforded were ranged in two rows at opposite sides of the place of arms, and decorated with festoons of ferns and cedar, and such late flowers as exploring children could find.

Some urchins ascended the Rock with an offering of thick-lobed prickly cactus which grew plentifully in the sand. The Demoiselle Bellefontaine labored from place to place, helping her husband to make this the most celebrated fête ever attempted in Fort St. Louis.

As twilight settled--and it slowly settled--on the summit, roast venison, buffalo steaks, and the odor of innumerable dishes scented the air. Many candles pinned to the branches of trees like vast candelabra, glittered through the dusk. Crows sat on the rocks below and gabbled of the corn they had that day stolen from lazy Indian women.

There was no need of chapel or bell in a temple fortress. All the inhabitants of the Rock stood as witnesses. Colin brought Barbe from the dwelling with the greater part of the web of brocaded silk dragged in grandeur behind her. Tonty kissed her hand and led her before the priests. When the ceremony ended a salute was fired.

The Illinois town could hear singing on the Rock and see that stronghold glittering as if it had been carried by torches. Music of violin and horn, laughter, dancing, and gay voices in repartee sounded on there through half the hours of the night.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] "The joyous French held balls, gay suppers, and wine parties on the Rock."--Old History of Illinois.

V.

THE UNDESPAIRING NORMAN.

The morning star yet shone and the river valley was drenched with half frosty dew, and filled with silver mist when the Abbé Cavelier and his party descended to their canoes and set off up the river. They had made their farewells the night before, but Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut appeared, Tonty accompanying them down the descent. He came up with a bound before the boat was off, thundered at Bellefontaine's door, and pulled that sleepy officer into the open air, calling at his ear,--

"What fellow is this in the Abbé's party who kept out of my sight until he carried his load but now to the canoe?"

"You must mean Teissier, Monsieur de Tonty. He has lain ailing in the storehouse."

"Look,--yonder he goes."

Tonty made Bellefontaine lean over the eastern earthwork, but even the boat was blurred upon the river.

"That was Jolycoeur," declared Tonty, "whom Monsieur de la Salle promised me he would never take into his service again. That fellow tried to poison Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac."

"Monsieur de Tonty," remonstrated the subordinate, "I know him well. He was here a month. He told me he was enlisted at St. Domingo, while Monsieur de la Salle lay in a fever, to replace men who deserted. He is a pilot and his name is Teissier."

"Whatever his real name may be we had him here on the Rock before you came, and he was called Jolycoeur."

"At any rate," said Du Lhut, "his being of Abbé Cavelier's company argues that he hath done La Salle no late harm."

Tonty thought about the matter while light grew in the sky, but dismissed it when the priest of Fort St. Louis summoned his great family to matins. On such pleasant mornings they were chanted in the open air.

The sun rose, drawing filaments from the mass of vapor like a spinner, and every shred disappeared while the eye watched it. Preparations went forward for breakfast, while children's and birds' voices already chirped above and below the steep ascent.

One urchin brought Tonty a paper, saying it was Monsieur Joutel's, the young man who slept in the storehouse and was that morning gone from the fort.

"Did he tell you to give it to me?" inquired Tonty.

"Monsieur," complained the lad, "he pinned it in the cap of my large brother and left order it was to be given to you after two days. But my large brother hath this morning pinned it in my cap, and it may work me harm. Besides, I desire to amuse myself by the river, and if I lost Monsieur Joutel's paper I should get whipped."

"I commend you," laughed Tonty, as he took the packet. "You must have no secrets from your commandant."

The child leaped, relieved, toward the gate, and this heavy communication shook between the iron and the natural hand. Tonty spread it open on his right gauntlet.

He read a few moments with darkening countenance. Then the busy people on the Rock were startled by a cry of awful anguish. Tonty rushed to the centre of the esplanade, flinging the paper from him, and shouted, "Du Lhut--men of Fort St. Louis! Monsieur de la Salle has been murdered in that southern wilderness! We have had one of the assassins hiding here in our storehouse! Get out the boats!"

Men and women paused in their various business, and children, like frightened sheep, gathered closely around their mothers. The clamorous cry which disaster wrings from excitable Latins burst out in every part of the fortress. Du Lhut grasped the paper and read it while he limped after Tonty.

With up-spread arms the Italian raved across the open space, this far-reaching calamity widening like an eternally expanding circle around him. His rage at the assassins of La Salle--among whom he had himself placed a man whom he thought fit to be trusted--and his sorrow broke bounds in such sobs as men utter.

"Oh, that I might brain them with this hand! Oh, wretched people on these plains! What hope remains to us? What will become of all these families, whose resource he was, whose sole consolation! It is despair for us! Thou wert one of the greatest men of this age,--so useful to France by thy great discoveries, so strong in thy virtues, so respected, so cherished by people even the most barbarous. That such a man should be massacred by wretches, and the earth did not engulf them or the lightning strike them dead!"[24]

Tonty's blood boiled in his face.

"Why do you all stand here like rocks instead of getting out the boats? Get out the boats! They stripped my master; they left his naked body to wolves and crows on Trinity River. Get ready the canoes. I will hunt those assassins, down to the last man, through every forest on this continent!"

"You did not finish this relation,"[25] shouted Du Lhut at his ear. "Can you get revenge on dead men? The men who actually put their hands in the blood of La Salle are all dead. Those who killed not each other the Indians killed."

Tonty turned with a furious push at Du Lhut which sent him staggering backward.

"Is Jolycoeur dead? I will run down this forgiving priest of a brother of Monsieur de la Salle's, and the assassin he harbored here under his protection he shall give up to justice!"

"Thou mad-blooded loyal-hearted Italian!" exclaimed Du Lhut, dragging him out of the throng and holding him against a tree, "dost thou think nobody can feel this wrong except thee? I would go with thee anywhere if it could be revenged. But hearken to me, Henri de Tonty; if you go after the Abbé it will appear that you wish to strip him of the goods he bore away."

"He brought an order from Monsieur de la Salle," retorted Tonty. "On that order I would give him the last skin in the storehouse. What I will strip him of is the wretch he carries in his forgiving bosom!"

"And you will put a scandal upon this young girl your bride, who has this sorrow also to bear. Are you determined to denounce her uncle and her brother before this fortress as unworthy to be the kinsmen of La Salle? She has now no consolation left except in you. Will you burn the wound of her sorrow with the brand of shame?"

Tonty leaned against the tree, pallor succeeding the pulsing of blood in his face. He looked at Du Lhut with piteous black eyes, like a stag brought down in full career.

"The Abbé Cavelier," Bellefontaine was whispering to one of the immigrants, "carried from this fortress above four thousand livres worth of furs, besides other goods!"

"And left mademoiselle married without fortune," muttered back the other. "He did well for himself by concealing the death of Sieur de la Salle."

Men and women looked mournfully at each other as Tonty walked across the fort and shut himself in his house. They wondered at hearing no crying within it such as a woman might utter upon the first shock of her grief. With La Salle's own instinct Barbe locked herself within her room. It was not known to the people of Fort St. Louis, it was not known even to Tonty, how she lay on the floor with her teeth set and faced this fact.

Tonty sat in his door overlooking the cliff all day.

Clouds sailed over the Rock. The lingering robins quarrelled with crows. That glittering pinnacled cliff across the ravine shone like white castle turrets. Smoke went up from the lodges on the plains as it had done during the six months La Salle's bones were bleaching on Trinity River; but now a whisper like the whisper of wind in September corn-leaves was rushing from lodge to lodge. Tonty heard tribe after tribe take up the lament for the dead.

Not only was it a lament for La Salle; but it was also for their own homes. He and Tonty had brought them back from exile, had banded them for strength and helped them ward off the Iroquois. His unstinted success meant their greatest prosperity. The undespairing Norman's death foreshadowed theirs, with all that silence and desolation which must fall on the Rock of St. Louis before another civilization possessed it.

Night came, and the leaves sifted down in its light breeze as if only half inclined to their descent. The children had been quieted all day. To them the revelry of the night before seemed a far remote occasion, so instantly are joy and trouble set asunder.

The rich valley of the Illinois grew dimmer and dimmer under the starlight. Tonty could no longer see the river's brown surface, but he could distinguish the little trail of foam down its centre churned by rapids above. Twisted pines, which had tangled their roots in everlasting rock, hung below him, children of the air. Some man of the garrison approached the windlass and let down the bucket with creak and rattle. He waited with the ear of custom for its clanking cry as it plunged, its gurgle and struggle in the water, and the many splashes with which it ascended.

His face showed as a pale spot in the dusk when he rose from the doorstep and came into the room to light a candle. Barbe must be brought out from her silent ordeal and comforted and fed.

Tonty set his lighted candle on a table and considered how he should approach her door. The furniture of the room had been hastily carried in that morning from its uses in the fête. The apartment was a rude frontier drawing-room, having furs, deer antlers, and shining canoe paddles for its ornaments.

While Tonty hesitated, the door on the fortress side opened, and La Salle stepped into the room.

Tonty's voice died in his throat. The joy and terror of this sight held him without power to move.

It was La Salle; a mere shred of his former person, girt like some skeleton apostle with a buffalo hide which left his arm bones naked as well as his journey roughened feet. Beard had started through his pallid skin, and this and his wild hair the wilderness had dressed with dead leaves. A piece of buffalo leather banded his forehead like a coarse crown, yet blood had escaped its pressure, for a dried track showed darkly down the side of his neck. Tonty gave no thought to the manitou of a waterfall from whose shrine La Salle had probably stripped that Indian offering of a buffalo robe. It did not seem to him incredible that Robert Cavelier should survive what other men called a death wound, and naked, bleeding, and starving, should make his way for six months through jungles of forest, to his friend.

Hoarse and strong from the depths of his breast Tonty brought out the cry,--

"O my master, my master!"

"Tonty," spoke La Salle, standing still, with the rapture of achievement in his eyes, "I have found the lost river!"

He moved across the room and went out of the cliff door. His gaunt limbs and shaggy robe were seen one instant against the palisades, as if his eye were passing that starlit valley in review, the picture in miniature of the great west. He was gone while Tonty looked at him.

The whisper of water at the base of the rock, and of the sea's sweet song in pines, took the place of the voice which had spoken.

A lad began to carol within the fortress, but hushed himself with sudden remembrance. That brooding body of darkness, which so overlies us all that its daily removal by sunlight is a continued miracle, pressed around this silent room resisted only by one feeble candle. And Tonty stood motionless in the room, blanched and exalted by what he had seen.

Barbe's opening her chamber door startled him and set in motion the arrested machinery of life.

"What has been here, monsieur?" she asked under her breath.

Tonty, without replying, moved to receive her, crushing under his foot a beech-nut which one of the children of the fortress had dropped upon the floor. Barbe's arms girded his great chest.

"Oh, monsieur," she said with a sob, "I thought I heard a voice in this room, and I know I would myself break through death to come back to you!"

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Translated from Tonty's lament over La Salle in "Dernieres Decouvertes dans L'Amerique Septentrional."

[25] Joutel's Journal gives a long and exact account of La Salle's assassination and the fate of all who were concerned in it. The murder, by the conspirators, of his nephew Moranget, his servant Saget, and his Indian hunter Nika--which preceded and led to his death--is not mentioned in this romance.

To this day it is not certainly known what became of La Salle's body. Father Anastase Douay, the Récollect priest who witnessed his death, told Joutel at the time that the conspirators stripped it and threw it in the bushes. But afterward he declared La Salle lived an hour, and he himself confessed the dying man, buried him when dead, and planted a cross on his grave. So excellent a historian as Garneau gives credit to this story.

In reality the Abbé Cavelier and his party treated Tonty with greater cruelty than the romancer describes. They lived over winter on his hospitality, departed loaded with his favors, and told him not a word of the tragedy.

Joutel's account of it, much condensed from the old English translation, reads thus:--

"The conspirators hearing the shot (fired by La Salle to attract their attention) concluded it was Monsieur de la Sale who was come to seek them. They made ready their arms and Duhaut passed the river with Larcheveque. The first of them spying Monsieur de la Sale at a Distance, as he was coming towards them, advanced and hid himself among the high weeds, to wait his passing by, so that Monsieur de la Sale suspected nothing, and having not so much as charged his Piece again, saw the aforesaid Larcheveque at a good distance from him, and immediately asked for his nephew Moranget, to which Larcheveque answered, That he was along the river. At the same time the Traitor Duhaut fired his Piece and shot Monsieur de la Sale thro' the head, so that he dropped down dead on the Spot, without speaking one word.

"Father Anastase, who was then by his side, stood stock still in a Fright, expecting the same fate,... but the murderer Duhaut put him out of that Dread, bidding him not to fear, for no hurt was intended him; that it was Dispair that had prevailed with them to do what he saw....

"The shot which had killed Monsieur de la Sale was a signal ... for the assassins to draw near. They all repaired to the place where the wretched corpse lay, which they barbarously stripped to the shirt, and vented their malice in opprobrious language. The surgeon Liotot said several times in scorn and derision, There thou liest, Great Bassa, there thou liest. In conclusion they dragged it naked among the bushes and left it exposed to the ravenous wild Beasts.

"When they came to our camp ... Monsieur Cavelier the priest could not forbear telling them that if they would do the same by him he would forgive them his" (La Salle's) "murder.... They answered they had Nothing to say to him.

... "We were all obliged to stifle our Resentment that it might not appear, for our Lives depended upon it.... We dissembled so well that they were not suspicious of us, and that Temptation we were under of making them away in revenge for those they had murdered, would have easily prevailed and been put in execution, had not Monsieur

Cavelier, the Priest, always positively opposed it, alleging that we ought to leave vengeance to God."

The Récollet priest, who had seen La Salle's death, answered no questions at Fort St. Louis. Teissier, one of the conspirators, had obtained the Abbé's pardon. The others could truly say La Salle was well when they last saw him.

VI.

TO-DAY.

It is recorded that the Abbé Cavelier and his party arrived safely in France, and that he then concealed the death of La Salle for awhile that he might get possession of property which would have been seized by La Salle's creditors. He died "rich and very old" says the historian,[26] though he was unsuccessful in a petition which he made with his nephew to the king, to have all the explorer's seigniorial propriety in America put in his possession. Like Father Hennepin--who returned to France and wrote his entertaining book to prove himself a greater man than La Salle--the Abbé Cavelier was skilful in turning loss to profit.

It is also recorded that Henri de Tonty, at his own expense, made a long search with men, canoes, and provisions, for La Salle's Texan colony--left by the king to perish at the hands of Indians; that he was deserted by every follower except his Indian and one Frenchman, and nearly died in swamps and canebrakes before he again reached the fort on the Illinois.

* * * * *

To-day you may climb the Rock of St. Louis,--called now Starved Rock from the last stand which the Illinois made as a tribe on that fortress, a hundred years ago, when the Iroquois surrounded and starved them,--and you may look over the valley from which Tonty heard the death lament arise.

A later civilization has cleared it of Indian lodges and set it with villages and homesteads. A low ridge of the old earthwork yet remains on the east verge. Behind the Rock, slopes of milk-white sand still stretch toward a shallow ravine. Beyond that stands a farmhouse full of the relics of French days. The iron-handed commandant of the Rock has left some hint of his strong spirit thereabouts, for even the farmer's boy will speak his name with the respect boys have for heroic men.

Crosses, beads, old iron implements, and countless remains of La Salle's time, turn up everywhere in the valley soil.

Ferns spring, lush and vivid, from the lichened lips of that great sandstone body. The stunted cedars lean over its edge still singing the music of the sea. Sunshine and shade and nearness to the sky are yet there. You see depressions in the soil like grass-healed wounds, made by the tearing out of huge trees; but local tradition tells you these are the remains of pits dug down to the rock by Frenchmen searching for Tonty's money. At the same time, local tradition is positive that Tonty came back, poor, to the Rock to die, in 1718.

Death had stripped him of every tie. He had helped to build that city near the Mississippi's mouth which was La Salle's object, and had also helped found Mobile. The great west owes more to him than to any other man who labored to open it to the world. Yet historians say the date of his death is unknown, and tradition around the Rock says he crept up the stony path an old and broken man, helped by his Indian and a priest, died gazing from its summit, and was buried at its west side. The tribes, while they held the land, continued to cover his grave with wild roses. But men may tread over him now, for he lies lost in the earth as La Salle was lost in the wilderness of the south.

No justice ever was done to this man who gave to his friends with both hand of flesh and hand of iron, caring nothing for recompense; and whom historians, priests, tradition, savages, and his own deeds unite in praising. But as long as the friendship of man for man is beautiful, as long as the multitude with one impulse lift above themselves those men who best express the race, Henri de Tonty's memory must stand like the Rock of St. Louis.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Parkman.

[27] "In 1690 the proprietorship of Fort St. Louis was granted to Tonty jointly with La Forest.... In 1702 the governor of Canada, claiming that the charter of the fort had been violated, decided to discontinue it. Although thus officially abandoned it seems to have been occupied as a trading post until 1718. Deprived of his command and property, Tonty engaged with Le Moyne d'Iberville in various successful expeditions."--John Moses' History of Illinois.

THE END.

Transcriber's Note

The following errors are noted. The page numbers in this table refer to those of the original. The French 'Récollet' is spelled twice as 'Récollect'. The instance appearing in a footnote is left as is, but that in the text itself was changed to match all other occurrences.

56 | He is no stupid | _sic._ | | 73 | No more than half your party, monsieur[.] | Added period. | | 190 | flank of rock wall | _sic._ | | 197 | The Récolle[c]t Father did not answer | Removed 'c' for | | consistency.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Tonty, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood