The Road to Frontenac Part 18

The priest was pained by the boy's rough words.

"I am sorry for this, my son,--for this strange disorder. Did you not receive a message from your Captain?"

Danton hesitated. "Yes," he said at last. "I received a message,--an order to lie quiet, and let these red beasts burn me to death. Menard is a fool. Does he not know that they will kill him? Does he not know that this is his only chance to escape? He is a fool, I say."

"You forget, my son."

"Well, if I do? Must I stay here for the torture because my Captain commands? Why do you hold me here? Let me go. They will be after me."

"Wait, Danton. What have you said to Mademoiselle?"

The boy looked at him, and for a moment could not speak.

"Do you, too, throw that at me, Father? It was all I could do. I thought she cared for her life more than for--for Menard. No, let me go on. I have risked everything to come for her, and she--she--I did not know it would be like this."

"But what do you plan?" The priest's voice was more gentle. "Where are you going? You cannot get to Frontenac alone."

"I don't know," replied Danton wearily, turning away. "I don't care now. I may as well go to the devil."

Without a word of farewell he walked boldly off through the trees, drawing his blanket about his shoulders. Father Claude stood watching him, half in mind to call Menard, then hesitating. Already the boy was committed: he had broken his bonds, and to make any effort to hold him meant certain death for him. Perhaps it was better that he should take the only chance left to him. The hut was silent. He looked within, and saw the maid still standing by the wall. Her eyes were on him, but she said nothing, and he turned away. He walked slowly up and down under the great elms that arched far up over his head. At last he looked about for the Captain, and finding him some little way back in the woods, told him the story.

Menard's face had aged during the day. His eyes had a dull firmness in place of the old flash. He heard the account without a word, and, at the close, when the priest looked at him questioningly for a reply, he shook his head sadly. His experiment with Danton had failed.

"He didn't tell you who had helped him?"

"No, M'sieu. It is very strange."

"Yes," said Menard, "it is."

The night pa.s.sed without further incident. Early in the morning, Father Claude went out to find Tegakwita, and learn what news had come in during the night of the French column. Runners were employed in pa.s.sing daily between the different villages, keeping each tribe fully informed.

Menard sat before the hut. The clearing showed more life than on the preceding day. Bands of warriors, hunting and scouting parties, were coming in at short intervals, scattering to their shelters or hurrying to the long building in the centre of the village. The growing boys and younger warriors ran about, calling to one another in eager, excited voices. As the morning wore along, grave chiefs and braves, wrapped in their blankets, walked by on their way to the council house.

The maid, after Father Claude had gone, watched the Captain for a long time through the open door. The conversation with the Long Arrow, on the night of their capture, had been burned into her memory; and now, as she looked at Menard's drawn face and weary eyes, the picture came to her again of the Long Arrow sitting by the river in the dim light of the stars,--and of the white man who had fought for her, lying before him, gazing upward and speaking with a calm voice to the stern chief who wished to kill him. Then, in spite of the excitement, the danger, and exhaustion of the fight, it had seemed that the Captain could not long be held by this savage. His stern manner, his command, had given her a confidence which had, until this moment, strengthened her. But now, of a sudden, she saw in his eyes the look of a man who sees no way ahead. This quarrel with the Long Arrow was no matter of open warfare, even of race against race; it was an eye for an eye, the demand of a crazed father for the life of the slayer of his son. That she could do nothing, that she must sit feebly while he went to his death, came to her with a dead sense of pain.

With a restless spirit she went out of doors, pa.s.sing him with a little smile; but he did not look up. A group of pa.s.sing youths stopped and jeered at him, but he did not give them a glance. She shrank back against the building until they had gone on.

"Do not mind them, Mademoiselle," said Menard, quietly. "They will not harm you."

She hesitated by his side, half in mind to speak to him, to tell him that she knew his trouble, and had faith in him, but his bowed head was forbidding in its solitude. All about the hut, under the spreading trees, was a stretch of coa.r.s.e green sod, dotted with tiny yellow flowers and black-centred daisies. She wandered over the gra.s.s, gathering them until her hands were full. Two red boys came by, and paused to cry at her, taunting her as if she, too, were to meet the fate of a war captive. The thought made her shudder, but then, on an impulse, she called to them in their own language. They looked at each other in surprise. She walked toward them, laying down the flowers, and holding out her hand. A little later, when Menard looked up, he saw her sitting beneath a gnarled oak, a boy on either side eagerly watching her. She was talking and laughing with them, and teaching them to make a screeching pipe with gra.s.s-blades held between the thumbs. He envied her her elastic spirits.

"You have made two friends," he called in French.

She looked up and nodded, laughing. "They are learning to make the music of the white brothers."

The boys' faces had sobered at the sound of his voice. They looked at him doubtfully, and then at each other. He got up and walked slowly toward them.

"I will make friends, too, Mademoiselle," he said, smiling. "We have none too many here."

Before he had taken a dozen steps, the boys arose. He held out his hands, saying, "Your father would be friends with his children." But they began to retreat, a step at a time.

"Come, my children," said the maid, smiling at the words as she uttered them. "The white father is good. He will not hurt you."

They kept stepping backward until he had reached the maid's side; then, with a shout of defiance, they scampered away. In the distance they stopped, and soon were the centre of a group of children whom they taught to blow on the gra.s.s-blades, with many a half-frightened glance toward Menard and the maid.

"There," he said, at length, "you may see the advantage of a reputation."

She looked at him, and, moved by the pathos underlying the words, could not, for the moment, reply.

"I once had a home in this village," he added. "It stood over there, in the bare spot near the beech tree." His eyes rested on the spot for a moment, then he turned back to the hut.

"M'sieu," she said shyly.

The little heap of flowers lay where she had dropped them; and, taking them up, she arranged them hastily and held them out. "Won't you take them?"

He looked at her, a little surprised, then held out his hand.

"Why,--thank you. I don't know what I can do with them."

They walked back together.

"You must wear some of the daisies, Mademoiselle. They will look well."

She looked down at her torn, stained dress, and laughed softly; but took the white cl.u.s.ter he gave her, and thrust the stems through a tattered bit of lace on her breast.

Menard was plainly relieved by the incident. He had been worn near to despair, facing a difficulty which seemed every moment farther from a solution; and now he turned to her fresh, light mood as to a refuge.

"We must put these in water, Mademoiselle, or they will soon lose their bloom."

"If we had a cup--?"

"A cup? A woodsman would laugh at your question. There is the spring, here is the birch; what more could you have?"

"You mean--?"

"We will make a cup,--if you will hold the flowers. They are beautiful, Mademoiselle. No nation has such hills and lakes and flowers as the Iroquois. The Hurons boast of their lake country,--and the Sacs and Foxes, too, though they have a duller eye for the picturesque. See--the valley yonder--" He pointed through a rift in the foliage to the league-long glimpse of green, bound in by the gentle hills that rose beyond--"even to the tired old soldier there is nothing more beautiful, more peaceful."

He peeled a long strip of bark from the birch tree, and rolled it into a cup. "Your needle and thread, Mademoiselle,--if they have not taken them."

"No; I have everything here."

She got her needle, and under his direction st.i.tched the edges of the bark.

"But it will leak, M'sieu."

He laughed. "The tree is the Indian's friend, Mademoiselle. Now it is a pine tree that we need. The guards will tell me of one."

He walked over to the little group of warriors still at their game of platter,--the one never-ceasing recreation of the Onondagas, at which they would one day gamble away blankets, furs, homes, even squaws, only to win them back on the next. They looked at him suspiciously when he questioned them; but he was now as light of heart as on the day, a few weeks earlier, when he had leaned on the balcony of the citadel at Quebec, idly watching the river. He smiled at them, and after a parley the maid saw one tall brave point to a tree a few yards farther in the wood. They followed him closely with their eyes until he was back within the s.p.a.ce allowed him.