Read Ebook: Montlivet by Smith Alice Prescott

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Ebook has 533 lines and 25179 words, and 11 pages

bor to preserve it; I have watered it; I have killed the insects and small pests that would have nibbled at its branches. Now that I see its roots threatened, my heart is heavy and the sun looks dim. Can my brother brighten the world for me? Can he tell me that my fears are light as mist?"

Longuant looked at the ground. In repose his face was very sad, as are the faces of most savage leaders.

"I have only two eyes, two ears," he crooned monotonously. "My brother has as many. Let him use them."

"And you will not lift your hatchet to save the tree?"

Longuant raised his eyes. "The hatchet of the Ottawas is always bright. My brethren will hold it in readiness. If the tree looks strong and worth saving, they will raise the hatchet and defend it. If the tree is unsound, they will put the hatchet at its roots."

Well, I had my answer. And, to be just, I could not blame them. The Ottawas were never a commanding people. Their chief was wise to throw his vote with the winning side. But I turned away saddened.

Longuant followed. "There is always a bed in the lodges of the Ottawas for my brother of the red heart. Will he sleep in it?"

I turned. "Would my head be safer if I did, O brother of the wise tongue?"

"My brother has said it."

I took a Flemish knife from my pocket and handed it to him.

"Take it, my brother, for my gratitude. It shall not cut the friendship between us. It shall cut any stranger that would come between your heart and mine. Longuant, I have a wife. She is fair, and stars shine in her eyes. She has loved a daughter of your people. I cannot hide in your lodge,--a man who carries a sword must use it,--but will you take my wife and keep her? Will you keep her with Singing Arrow for a few days?"

Longuant thought a moment. He looked at the knife as if it were a talisman to teach him how much he could trust me; he tried its edge, put it in his pouch, and made up his mind.

"My brother is keen and true as the blade of the knife. I will tell him a story, a story that the birds sang. The eagle once married. He married one of the family of the hawk. But the hawk found the eagle's nest too high, so she flew lower to a nest near her own kin. Listen. So long as the hawk stays near the hawk and is not seen with the eagle, the wolf will spare her. But when she comes back to the eagle's nest in the high tree, then let her beware. I have spoken. Now let my brother go on his way and see what his eyes and ears can teach him."

But I went my way with thought busier than eyes. So I must keep away from the woman. I went to my room, found paper and a quill, and wrote to her. It was the first time I had written her name. It seemed foreign to me, almost a sad jest, as it flowed out under my hand.

"I cannot come to you to-day," I wrote; "perhaps not for some days to come. I shall be watching you, guarding you. I think I can assure you that you are in no danger. For the rest, I must beg of you to wait for me and to trust me. The women of the name you bear have often had the same burden laid on them and have carried it nobly. Yet I know that your courage will match and overreach anything they have shown. I salute you, madame, in homage. I shall come to you the moment that I may."

I subscribed myself her husband. Yet even the Indians gossiped that the eagle's nest was empty. Well, I had work on hand.

So I found Cadillac. I told him in five minutes what it had taken me five hours to learn.

"We must give our strength now to winning the Hurons," I said. "I will work with them this afternoon. If we can get through this one night safely I think we can carry the council."

Cadillac shrugged, but sped me on my way. "Be careful of to-night. Be careful of to-night," he repeated monotonously. His eyes were growing bloodshot from anxiety and loss of sleep.

The afternoon slipped away from me like running water, yet I wasted no word or look. I dropped my old custom of letting my tongue win the way for my ears, and I dealt out blunt questions like a man at a forge. At one point I was foiled. I could not discover whether Starling--whom personally I had not seen--was in communication with the Hurons.

The sun set, the sky purpled, and the moon rose. It rose white and beautiful, and it shone on a peaceful settlement. I went to my room and found a Huron squatting on my threshold. He gave me a handful of maize.

"Our chief, whom you call the Baron, sends this to you," he said. "He bids you eat the corn, and swallow with it the suspicion that you feel. You have sat all day with other chiefs, but your brother the Baron has not seen you. His lodge cries out with emptiness. He bids you come to him now."

I thought a moment. "Go in front of me," I told the Huron.

I whistled as I went. A sheep that goes to the shambles of its own accord deserves to be butchered, and I was walking into ambush. But still I whistled. I whistled the same tune again and again, and I did it with great lung power. My progress was noisy.

And so we went through the Huron camp. The lodges of the Baron's followers were massed to one side, and as I whistled and swaggered my way past their great bark parallelograms, I saw preparations for war. The braves carried quivers, and were elaborately painted. Fires were burning, though the night was warm, and women nearly naked, and swinging kettles of red-hot coals, danced heavily around the blaze. They leered at me when they heard my whistle, but they made no attempt to hide from me. Evidently I was not important; I was not to be allowed to go back to the French camp alive, so I could do no harm. I whistled the louder.

I reached the Baron's lodge, and looked within. Two fires blazed in the centre, and some fifty Indians sat in council. I would not enter. The smoke and fire were in my eyes, but I recognized several of the younger chiefs, and called them by name.

"Come out here to me," I commanded. "I will show you something."

There was a grunting demur, and no one rose. I whistled again and stopped to laugh. The laugh pricked their curiosity, and the chiefs straggled out. They stood in an uncertain group and looked at me. It was dark; the moon was still low, and the shadows black and sprawling. The open doors of the lodges sent out as much smoke as fireshine.

I let them look for a moment, then I took the handful of maize and threw it in their faces. "Listen!" I cried. "Chiefs, you are traitors. You eat the bread of the French, yet you would betray them. You plan an uprising to-night. Well, you will find us ready. I whistled as I came to you. That was a signal. You think you can overpower us. Try it. Seize me, if you like. If you do, I shall give one more whistle, and my troops--the loyal Indians--will go to work. You can see them gathering. Look."

I waved my hand at the murk around us. My words were brave but my flesh was cold. I had told them to look, but what would they see? Would my men be loyal? Then the signal,--it had been hastily agreed upon,--would they understand it? I had to push myself around like a dead body to face what I might find.

For a moment I thought that I had found nothing. But I looked again, and saw that my eyes had been made blank by fear. For my men were massed to east and west. They pressed nearer and nearer, and the moon picked out points of light that marked knives and arquebuses. Some wore uniforms, and some were naked and vermilion-dyed, but all were watching me. I could not see their eyes, but I was conscious of them.

I pointed the chiefs to the prospect. "You see. I have only to whistle, and we shall settle this question of who is master here. Seize me, and I shall whistle. But I shall do nothing till you move first. If we are to have war, you must begin it. Are you ready?"

Silence followed. It was a hard silence to me to get through calmly, for I knew that my men were not so numerous as they appeared, and I feared to be taken at my word. Pemaou glided up and spoke to his father. I had not seen him since the night in the Seneca camp, and I argued with myself to keep my head cool so that I should not spring on him. His body was blackened with charcoal, and he wore a girdle of otter skin with the body of a crow hanging from it. I had sometimes been called the crow because of my many tongues, and I understood his meaning. But I could only stand waiting, and the moments went on and on.

It was a small thing that determined the issue. In the distance Pierre began to whistle,--Pierre, the bridegroom of the morrow, the merry bully of the night. He had a whistle in keeping with his breadth of shoulder, and he used it like a mating cock. He whistled my tune, the signal. It was not accident, I think, neither was it design. It was his unconscious, blundering black art, his intuition that was witchcraft.

The Baron drew himself up. He put out a protesting hand, and his dignity of gesture would have shamed an Israelitish patriarch.

"We called our brother to council. What does our brother mean? He is moon-mad when he talks of war in the house of his friends, the Hurons."

I yawned in his face. "You called me to council? But the council is to-morrow night. The commandant calls it. Save your fair words for him."

I turned on my heel to leave, but the Baron held me. He eyed me above his blanket.

"My brother has been called the man who steals the Indian's heart from his body," he purred at me. "He has stolen mine. The commandant is a fool; I cannot talk to him. But to you, my brother, I can open my heart. Come with me to my lodge and listen. You shall be safe. In token of my love I give you this calumet," and he took his great feathered pipe--the pipe that means honor to the lowest of savages--and would have thrust it in my hands.

I was too nonplussed to remember to laugh. An offer to buy me, and from the Indian who hated me most! They must indeed be afraid of me,--and with what little cause. Where had my reputation come? I knew my own weakness. Well, I must play on my fame while it lasted. So, without deigning to answer, I turned away. My troops hedged me like a wall as I went back to the French camp, but I did not speak to them. It was strange to see them melt before me. I did not wonder that the Hurons smelled witchcraft where, in fact, there was only bluster and a pleading tongue.

I stood for a moment and looked at the garrison. The moon had crept high and the place was very still. We were safe for the night. I lit my pipe, and the smoke that spiraled above me did not seem more filmy than the chance that had saved us. I suddenly shivered. But we were safe. I gave the troops the signal to disband.

I stopped for a moment at Cadillac's door. "Sleep well," I said, with my hand on his; "we have bridged to-night. Now for the council tomorrow."

IN COUNCIL

The next morning showed the face of War without her mask. The Indians sat in open council, and the tom-toms sounded from lodge to lodge. In the Huron camp there were council rings of the women; it was a tribal crisis and was met by a frenzy of speech-making. As a rival interest Singing Arrow's wedding made little stir.

I went to the wedding and saw Pierre the savage transformed into Pierre the citizen, the yoke-bearer. I feared the transformation was not final. Yet I could never read my giant. There were unexpected ridges of principle in the general slough of his makeup and perhaps the Indian girl was resting on one of them.

The woman came to the wedding, Starling with her. I bowed to them both, but I would do no more, for the Indians were watching. The woman looked pale and grave. I had seen her angry and I had seen her despairing, but I had never before seen her dispirited. She looked so now.

And then came the general council with Cadillac in the chair. It was held in a barrack room and the tribes had forty chiefs in waiting. There were Ottawas, Hurons, and the party of Senecas. Feathered and painted, they were as expressionless as the stone calumets in their hands; by contrast, our French faces were childishly open and expressive.

Cadillac looked them over and began his speech. Commonly his tongue ran trippingly, but with the opening words his speech halted. I knew he was moved. With all his volubility the man took responsibility heavily, and these strange bronze men with their cruel eyes and impassive faces were his wards. He spoke in French, and I translated first to the Hurons, then to the Ottawas. He called the tribes to aid him in brightening the covenant chain, and his rhetoric mounted with his theme till I felt my blood heat with admiration for him. He concluded with a plea for loyalty, and he gave each nation a belt to bind his words.

And then the chiefs rose in reply. The Hurons spoke first, and though they hedged their meaning by look and word I could feel the sentiment swaying toward our side. They brought up many minor points and gave belts in confirmation. Kondiaronk's clan were openly friendly, openly touched by Cadillac's speech, and when one of the Baron's band took the cue and gave a wampum necklace, "to deter the French brothers from unkind thoughts," I felt that the worst of the day was over, and welcomed the Ottawa speakers with a relaxation of the tension that had held me, for I had been upon the rack. Mind and ear had been taxed to miss no word or intonation, for a slighted syllable might lose our cause. The speeches had droned like flies at midday, but all the verbiage had been heavy with significance. I spoke French, Huron, and Ottawa in turn, and through it all I listened, listened for the opening of the door.

For Cadillac had told me that Madame de Montlivet had asked if she might come in for a moment and listen to the council, and he had referred the matter to me. It had seemed a strange request, but I could see no reason for refusing it. The woman had seen Indians in camp and field; it was perhaps no wonder that she wished to see the machinery of their politics. It was agreed that Dubisson should bring her in for a short time.

Yet when she did come in I could not look at her. Longuant had just finished speaking, and I had all my mind could handle to do him justice as I wished. He spoke as the moderate leader who desired that his people leave the hatchet unlifted if they could do so with safety. He gave a robe stained with red to show that his people remembered the French who had died for them.

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