The Road to Frontenac

“You cared–when you made the speech–”

“Yes.”

She looked at the stalwart, bowed figure. She was beginning to understand what he had done, that in his pledge to the chiefs he had triumphed over a love greater than she had supposed a man could bear for a woman.

“A soldier cannot always choose his way,” he was saying. “I have never chosen mine. It was the orders of my superior that brought us here, that brought this suffering to you. If it were not for these orders, the Onondagas would be my friends, and because of that, your friends. It has always been like this; I have built up that others might tear down. I thought for a few hours that something else was to come to me. I should have known better. It was when you took the daisy–” she raised her hand and touched the withered flower. “I did not reason. I knew I was breaking my trust, and I did not care. After all, perhaps even that was the best thing. It gave me strength and hope to carry on the fight. It was you, then,–not New France. Now the dream is over, and again it is New France. It must be that.”

“Yes,” she said, “it must be.”

“I have had wild thoughts. I have meant to ask you to let me hope, once this is over and you safe at Frontenac. I could not believe that what comes so easily to other men is never to come to me. I cannot ask that now.”

She looked at him, and a sudden glow came into her eyes.

“Why not?” she whispered, as if frightened.

“Why not,” he repeated, for an instant meeting her gaze. Then he rose and stood before her. “Because I have given an oath to bring Captain la Grange to punishment. You heard me. But you did not hear what I promised to Father Claude. I have sworn that what the Governor may refuse to do, I shall do myself. I have set my hand against your family.”

“You could not help it, M’sieu,–you could not help it,” she said. But the light was going out of her eyes. It had been a moment of weakness for both of them. She looked up at him, standing erect in the faint light, and the sight of his square, broad shoulders seemed to give her strength. He was the strong one; he had always been the strong one. She rose and leaned back against the logs. She found that she could face him bravely.

“He is your cousin,” he had just said in a dry voice.

“Yes, he is my cousin.”

Menard was steadily recovering himself.

“We will not give all up. You know that I love you,–I hope that you love me.” He hesitated for an instant, but she gave no sign. “We will keep the two flowers. We will always think of this day, and yesterday. I have no duty now but to get you safe to Frontenac; until you are there I must not speak again. As for the rest of it, we can only wait, and trust that some day there may be some light.”

She looked at him sadly.

“You do not know? Father Claude has not told you?”

Something in her voice brought him a step nearer.

“You know that Captain la Grange is my cousin?”

“Yes.”

“You did not know that I am to be his wife?”

They stood face to face, looking deep into each other’s eyes, while a long minute dragged by, and the rustling night sounds and the call of the crickets came to their ears.

“No,” he said, “I did not know. May I keep the flower, Mademoiselle?”

She bowed her head. She could not speak.

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He walked away. She saw him stop at the knoll where the priest lay asleep on a bed of boughs, and stand for a moment gazing down at him. Then he went into the shadows. From the crackling of the twigs she knew that he was walking about among the trees. She sank to the ground and listened to the crickets. A frog bellowed in the valley; perhaps he had been calling before–she did not know.

She fell asleep, with her cheek resting against a mossy log. She did not know when Menard came back and stood for a long time looking at her. He did not awaken Father Claude until long after the time for changing the watch.

When he did, he walked up and down on the path, holding the priest’s arm, and trying to speak. They had rounded the large maple three times before he said:–

“You did not tell me, Father.”

“What, my son?”

The Captain stopped, and drawing the priest around, pointed toward the maid as she slept.

“You did not tell me–why we are taking her to Frontenac.”

“No. She asked it. We spoke of it only once, that night on the river. She was confused, and she asked me not to speak. She does not know him. She has not seen him since she was a child.”

Menard said nothing. He was gripping the priest’s arm, and gazing at the sleeping maid.

“It was her father,” added Father Claude.

Menard’s hand relaxed.

“Good-night, Father.” He walked slowly toward the bed on the knoll. And Father Claude called softly after him:–

“Good-night, M’sieu. Good-night.”

Menard lay awake. He could see the priest sitting by the door. He wondered if the maid were sleeping. A late breeze came across the valley, arousing the leaves and carrying a soft whisper from tree to tree, until all the forest voices were joined. Lying on his side he could see indistinctly the council-house. There were still the lighted cracks; the Long House was still in session. Their decision did not now seem so vital a matter. The thought of the maid–that he was taking her to be the wife of another, and that other La Grange–had taken the place of all other thoughts.

Later still came the buzz of many voices. Dark forms were moving about the council-house. Menard raised himself to his elbow, and waited until he saw a group approaching on the path, then he joined Father Claude.

The Big Throat led the little band of chiefs to the hut. They stood, half a score of them, in a semicircle, their blankets drawn close, their faces, so far as could be seen in the dim light, stern and impassive. Menard and the priest stood erect and waited.

“It has pleased the Great Mountain that his voice should be heard in the Long House of the Iroquois,” said the Big Throat, in a low, calm voice. “His voice is gentle as the breeze and yet as strong as the wind. The Great Mountain has before promised many things to the Iroquois. Some of the promises he has broken, some he has kept. But the Onondagas know that there is no man who keeps all his promises. They once thought they knew such a man, but they were mistaken. White men, Indians,–all speak at night with a strong voice, in the morning with a weak voice. Each draws his words sometimes off the top of his mind, where the truth and the strong words do not lie. The Onondagas are not children. They know the friend from the enemy. And they know, though he may sometimes fail them, that the Great Mountain is their friend, their father.”

Menard bowed slowly, facing the chief with self-control as firm as his own.

“They know,” the Big Throat continued, “that the Indian has not always kept the faith with the white man. And then it is that the Great Mountain has been a kind father. If he thinks it right that our brothers, the Senecas, should meet with punishment for breaking the peace promised to the white man by the Long House, the Onondagas are not the children to say to their father, ‘We care not if our brother has done wrong; we will cut off the hand that holds the whip of punishment.’ The Onondagas are men. They say to the father, ‘We care not who it is that has done wrong. Though he be our next of blood, let him be punished.’ This is the word of the council to the Big Buffalo who speaks with his father’s voice.”

Well as he knew the Iroquois temperament, Menard could not keep an expression of admiration from his eyes. He knew what this speech meant,–that the Big Throat alone saw far into the future, saw that in the conflict between red and white, the redman must inevitably lose unless he crept close under the arm that was raised to strike him. It was no sense of justice that prompted the Big Throat’s words; it was the vision of one of the shrewdest statesmen, white or red, who had yet played a part in the struggles for possession of the New World. Greatest of all, only a master could have convinced that hot-blooded council that peace was the safest course. The chief went on:–

“The Big Buffalo has spoken well to the council. He has told the chiefs that he has not been a traitor to the brothers who have for so long believed that his words were true words. The Big Buffalo is a pine tree that took root in the lands of the Onondagas many winters ago. From these lands and these waters, and the sun and winds that give life to the corn and the trees of the Onondagas, he drew his sap and his strength. Can we then believe that this pine tree which we planted and which has grown tall and mighty before our eyes, is not a pine tree at all? When a quick-tongued young brave, who has not known the young tree as we have, comes to the council and says that this Big Buffalo, this pine tree, is not a pine but an elm with slippery bark, are we to believe him? Are we to drop from our minds what our hearts and eyes have long known, to forget what we have believed? My brothers of the Long House say no. They know that the pine tree is a pine tree. It may be that in the haze of the distance pine and elm look alike to young eyes; but what a chief has seen, he has seen; what he has known, he has known. The Big Buffalo speaks the truth to his Onondaga brothers, and with another sun he shall be free to go to his white brothers.”

“The Big Throat has a faithful heart,” said Menard, quietly. “He knows that the voice of Onontio is the voice of right and strength.”

“The chiefs of the Onondagas and Cayugas will sit quietly before their houses with their eyes turned toward the lands beyond the great lake, waiting for the whisper that shall come with the speed of the winds over forests and waters to tell them that the white man has kept his promise. When the dog who robbed our villages of a hundred brave warriors has been slain, then shall they know that the Big Buffalo is what they have believed him to be, their brother.”

“And the maid and the holy Father?”

“They are free. The chiefs are sorry that a foolish brave has captured the white man’s squaw.”

Menard and Father Claude bowed again, and the chiefs turned and strode away. The priest smiled gently after them.

“And now, M’sieu, we may rest quietly.”

“Yes. You lie down, Father; it will not be necessary to watch now, and anyway I am not likely to sleep much.” He walked back to the bed on the knoll, leaving the priest to stretch out across the doorway.

The elder bushes and briers crowded close to the little clearing behind the hut, and Menard, lying on his side with his face close to the ground, watched the clusters of leaves as they gently rustled. He rolled half over and stared up at the bits of sky that showed through the trees. It seemed as if the great world were a new thing, as if these trees and bushes and reaches of tufted grass were a part of a new life. Before, they had played their part in his rugged life without asking for recognition; but to-night they came into his thoughts with their sympathy, and he wondered that all this great world of summer green and winter white, and of blue and green and lead-coloured water could for so long have influenced him without consciousness on his part. But his life had left little time for such thoughts; to-night he was unstrung.

Over the noise of the leaves and the trickle of the spring sounded a rustle. It was not loud, but it was a new sound, and his eyes sought the bushes. The noise came, and stopped; came, and stopped. Evidently someone was creeping slowly toward the hut; but the sound was on the farther side of him, so that he could reach the maid’s side before whoever was approaching could cross the clearing.

For a time the noise died altogether. Then, after a space, his eyes, sweeping back and forth along the edge of the brush, rested on a bright bit of metal that for an instant caught the light of the sky, probably a weapon or a head ornament. Menard was motionless. Finally an Indian stepped softly out and stood beside a tree. When he began to move forward the Captain recognized Tegakwita, and he spoke his name.

The Indian came rapidly over the grass with his finger at his lips.

“Do not speak loud,” he whispered. “Do not wake the holy Father.”

“Why do you come creeping upon my house at night, like a robber?”

“Tegakwita is sad for his sister. His heart will not let him go among men about the village; it will not let his feet walk on the common path.”

“Why do you come?”

“Tegakwita seeks the Big Buffalo.”

“It cannot be for an honest reason. You lay behind the bush. You saw me here and thought me asleep, but you did not approach honestly. You crept through the shadows like a Huron.”

“Tegakwita’s night eyes are not his day eyes. He could not see who the sleeping man was. When he heard the voice, he came quickly.”

Menard looked at the musket that rested in the Indian’s hand, at the hatchet and knife that hung from his belt.

“You are heavily armed, Tegakwita. Is it for the war-path or the hunt? Do Onondaga warriors carry their weapons from house to house in their own village?”

The Indian made a little gesture of impatience.

“Tegakwita has no house. His house has been dishonoured. He lives under the trees, and carries his house with him. All that he has is in his hand or his belt. The Big Buffalo speaks strangely.”

Menard said nothing for a moment. He looked up, with a keen gaze, at the erect figure of the Indian. Finally he said:–

“Sit down, Tegakwita. Tell me why you came.”

“No. Tegakwita cannot rest himself until his sister has reached the Happy Hunting-Ground.”

“Very well, do as you like. But waste no more time. What is it?”

“The Big Buffalo has been an Onondaga. He knows the city in the valley where the dead sit in their graves. It is there that my sister lies, by an open grave, waiting for the farewell word of him who alone is left to say farewell to her. Tegakwita’s Onondaga brothers will not gather at the grave of a girl who has given up her nation for a white dog. But he can ask the Big Buffalo, who brought the white dog to our village, to come to the side of the grave.”

“Your memory is bad, Tegakwita. It was not I who brought the white brave. It was you who brought him, his two hands tied with thongs.”

The Indian stood, without replying, looking down at him with brilliant, staring eyes.

Menard spoke again.

“You want me to go with you. You slip through the bushes like a snake, with your musket and your knife and your hatchet, to ask me to go with you to the grave of your sister. Do I speak rightly, Tegakwita?”

“The Big Buffalo has understood.”

Menard slowly rose and looked into the Indian’s eyes.

“I have no weapons, Tegakwita. The chiefs who have set me free have not yet returned the musket which was taken from me. It is dangerous to go at night through the forest without a weapon. Give me your hatchet and I will go with you.”

Tegakwita’s lip curled almost imperceptibly.

“The White Chief is afraid of the night?”

Menard, too, looked scornful. He coolly waited.

“The Big Buffalo cannot face the dead without a hatchet in his hand?” said Tegakwita.

Menard suddenly sprang forward and snatched the hatchet from the Indian’s belt. It was a surprise, and the struggle was brief. Tegakwita was thrown a step backward. He hesitated between struggling for the hatchet and striking with the musket; before he had fully recovered and dropped the musket, Menard had leaped back and stood facing him with the hatchet in his right hand.

“Now I will go with you to the city of the dead, Tegakwita.”

The Indian’s breath was coming quickly, and he stood with clenched fists, taken aback by the Captain’s quickness.

“Come, I am ready. Pick up your musket.”

As Tegakwita stooped, Menard glanced toward the hut. The priest lay asleep before the door. It was better to get this madman away than to leave him free to prowl about the hut.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BAD DOCTOR

At the edge of the thicket they stopped and stood face to face, each waiting for the other to pass ahead. Tegakwita slightly bowed, with an unconscious imitation of the Frenchmen he had seen at Fort Frontenac and Montreal.

“Pass on,” said Menard, sternly. “You know the trail, Tegakwita; I do not. It is you who must lead the way.”

The Indian was sullen, but he yielded, plunging forward between the bushes, and now and then, in the shadow of some tree, glancing furtively over his shoulder. His manner, the suspicion that showed plainly in the nervous movements of his head, in every motion as he glided through thicket, glade, or strip of forest, told Menard that he had chosen well to take the second place. His fingers closed firmly about the handle of the hatchet. That he could throw at twenty paces to the centre of a sapling, no one knew better than Tegakwita.

The city of the dead lay in a hollow at ten minutes’ walk from the village. Generations ago the trees had been cleared, and no bush or sapling had been allowed a foothold on this ground. The elms and oaks and maples threw their shadows across the broad circle, and each breath of wind set them dancing over the mounds where many an hundred skeletons crouched side by side, under the grass-grown heaps of earth, their rusted knives and hatchets and their mouldy blankets by their sides. No man came here, save when a new heap of yellow earth lay fresh-turned in the sun, and a long line of dancing, wailing redmen, led by their howling doctors, followed some body that had come to claim its seat among the skeletons.

Tegakwita paused at the edge of the clearing, and looked around with that furtive quickness. Menard came slowly to his side.

“You will take your weapons to the grave?” asked Menard, very quietly, but with a suggestion that the other understood.

“Yes. Tegakwita has no place for his weapons. He must carry them where he goes.”

“We can leave them here. The leaves will hide them. I will put the hatchet under this log.” He made a motion of dropping the hatchet, closely watching the Indian; then he straightened, for Tegakwita’s right hand held the musket, and his left rested lightly on his belt, not a span from his long knife.

“The White Chief knows the danger of leaving weapons to tempt the young braves. He finds it easy to take the chance with Tegakwita’s hatchet.”

“Very well,” said Menard, sternly. “Lead the way.”

They walked slowly between the mounds. Menard looked carefully about, but in the uncertain light he could see no sign of a new opening in any of them. When they had passed the centre he stopped, and said quietly:–

“Tegakwita.”

The Indian turned.

“Where is the grave?”

“It is beyond, close to the great oak.”

“Ah!”

They went on. The great oak was in a dense, deep-shadowed place, at the edge of the circle. A little to one side, close to the crowding thicket, was a small, new mound. Looking now at Tegakwita, Menard could see that his front was stained with the soil. Probably he had spent the day working on the mound for his sister. While Menard stood at one side, he went to a bush that encroached a yard on the sacred ground and drew out a number of presents, with necessary articles and provisions to stay the soul on its long journey to the Happy Hunting-Ground. It was at the end of Menard’s tongue to repeat Tegakwita’s remark about hiding the weapons, but he held back and stood silently waiting.

“Come,” said the Indian.

He parted the bushes, drew away a heavy covering of boughs, and there, wrapped in Tegakwita’s finest blanket, lay the body of the Indian girl. Menard stood over it, looking down with a sense of pity he had never before felt for an Indian. He could not see her face, for it was pressed to the ground, but the clotted scalp showed indistinctly in the shadow. He suddenly raised, his eyes to Tegakwita, who stood opposite.

“What have you done with the white brave?” he said in fierce, low tones. “What have you done with him?”

Tegakwita raised one arm and swept it about in a quarter circle.

“Ask the vultures that come when a man falls, ask the beasts that wait for everyone, ask the dogs of the village. They can tell you, not I.”

Menard’s hands closed tightly, and a wild desire came to him to step across the body and choke the man who had killed Danton; but in a moment he was himself. He had nothing to gain by violence. And after all, the Indian had done no more than was, in his eyes, right. He bent down; and together they carried the body to the grave, close at hand. Tegakwita placed her sitting upright in the hole he had dug. By her side he placed the pots and dishes and knives which she had used in preparing the food they two had eaten. He set the provisions before her and in her lap; and drawing a twist of tobacco from his bosom, he laid it at her feet to win her the favour and kindness of his own Manitou on her journey. After each gift he stood erect, looking up at the sky with his arms stretched out above his head; and at these moments his simple dignity impressed Menard. But there were other moments, when, in stooping, Tegakwita would glance about with nervous, shifting eyes, as if fearing some interruption. His musket was always in his hand or by his side. Menard took it that he still feared the hatchet.

Then at last the ceremony was done, and the Indian with his bare hands threw the earth over the hole in the mound. Still looking nervously from bush to bush, his hands began to move more slowly; then he paused, and sat by the mound, looking up with a hesitancy that recognized the need of an explanation for the delay.

“Tegakwita’s arms are weary.”

“Are they?” said Menard, dryly.

“Tegakwita has not slept for many suns.”

“Neither have I.”

The Indian started as a rustle came from the forest. Menard watched him curiously. The whole proceeding was too unusual to be easily understood. Tegakwita’s nervous manner, his request that the Captain accompany him to the mound, the weapons that never left his side,–these might be the signs of a mind driven to madness by his sister’s act; but Menard did not recollect, from his own observation of the Iroquois character, that love for a sister was a marked trait among the able-bodied braves. Perhaps it was delay that he sought. At this thought Menard quietly moved farther from the undergrowth. Tegakwita’s quick eyes followed the movement.

“Come,” said the Captain, “the night is nearly gone. I cannot wait longer.”

“Tegakwita has worked hard. His heart is sick, his body lame. Will the Big Buffalo help his Onondaga brother?”

“Yes.”

The Indian rose with too prompt relief.

“Your muscles need only the promise of help to give them back their spring, Tegakwita.”

“The White Chief speaks with a biting tongue.”

“You have been speaking with a lying tongue. You think I do not know why you have brought me here; you think I do not understand the evil thoughts that fill your mind. You are a coward, Tegakwita. But you will not succeed to-night.”

The ill-concealed fright that came into the Indian’s face and manner told Menard that he was not wide of the mark. He began to understand. Tegakwita wished to get him at work and off his guard,–the rest would be simple. And as Menard well knew, more than one brave of the Onondagas, who had known him both as friend and enemy, would shrink when the moment came to attack the Big Buffalo single-handed, even though taking him at a disadvantage. Now Tegakwita was hesitating, and struggling to keep his eyes from the thicket.

“Yes, I will help you. We will close this matter now, and go back to the village where your cowardly hands will be tied by fear of your chiefs. Drop your musket.”

“The Big Buffalo speaks in anger. Does he think to disarm Tegakwita that he may kill him?”

“Lay your musket on the ground before us. Then I will drop the hatchet.”

Tegakwita stepped around the grave, and leaning the musket across a stone stood by it. Menard’s voice was full of contempt.

“You need not fear. The Big Buffalo keeps his word.” He tossed the hatchet over the grave, and stood unarmed. “Drop your knife.”

Tegakwita hesitated. Menard took a step forward, and the knife fell to the ground.

“Come. We will work side by side.” He was surprised at Tegakwita’s slinking manner. He wondered if this Indian could by some strange accident have been given a temperament so fine that sorrow could unman him. To the Iroquois, gifted as they were with reasoning power, life held little sentiment. Curiously enough, as Menard stood in the light of the young moon watching the warrior come slowly around the grave, which still showed above the earth the head and shoulders of the dead girl, he found himself calling up the rare instances he had known of a real affection between Indians.