Montlivet Part 1

Montlivet.

by Alice Prescott Smith.

CHAPTER I

THE KEY

The May sun was s.h.i.+ning on Michillimackinac, and I, Armand de Montlivet, was walking the strip of beach in front of the French garrison.

I did not belong to Michillimackinac. I had come in only the day before with two canoes and four men, and I was bound for the beaver lands further west. A halt was necessary, for the trip had been severe, and remembering that it was necessity, and not idleness, that held me, I was enjoying the respite. My heart was light, and since the heart is mistress of the heels, I walked somewhat trippingly. I was on good terms with myself at the moment. My venture was going well, and I was glad to be alone, and breathe deep of the sweet spring air, and let my soul grow big with the consciousness of what it would like to do.

So content was I, that I was annoyed to see La Mothe-Cadillac approach.

Yet Cadillac was important to me then. He was commandant at Michillimackinac,--the year was 1695,--and so was in control of the strategic point of western New France. The significance of all that he stood for, and all that he might accomplish, filled my thought as he swaggered toward me now, and I said to myself, somewhat complacently, that, with all his air of importance, I had a fuller conception than he of what lay in his palm.

He hailed me without preface. "Where do you find food for your laughter in this forsaken country, Montlivet? I have watched you swagger up and down with a smile on your face for the last hour. What is the jest?"

In truth, there was no jest in me by the time he finished. My own thought had just called him a swaggerer, and now he clapped the same phrase back at me.

"There are more swaggerers upon this beach than I," I cried hotly, and I felt my blood rise.

My tone was more insulting than my words, and Cadillac, too, grew red.

I saw the veins upon his neck begin to swell, and all my childish irritation vanished.

"Come, monsieur," I hastened; "I was wrong. But I meant no harm, and surely here is a jest fit for your laughter, that two grown men should stand and swell at each other like turkeyc.o.c.ks, all because they are drunk with the air of a May day. Come, here is my hand."

"But you said that I"--

"And what if I did?" I interrupted. I had fallen into step, and was pacing by his side. "What is there in the term that we should hold it in slight esteem? I swagger. What does that mean, after all, but my acknowledgment of the presence of Dame Opportunity, and my admission that I would like to impress her; to draw her eye in my direction.

Surely that is laudable, monsieur."

Cadillac laughed. His tempers were the ruffle of a pa.s.sing breeze upon deep water. "So you think that I swagger to meet opportunity? Well, if I do, I get but little out of it. Sometimes I push myself near enough to pluck at the sleeve of the dame; oftener she pa.s.ses me by."

"Yet she gave you this key to an empire," I suggested. I had been rude, and I repented it, and more than that, there was something in the man that tempted me to offer him flattery even as I desire to give sweets to an engaging child.

But this cajolery he swept away with a fling of his heavy arm. "The key to an empire!" he echoed contemptuously. "They are fine words, and the mischief is that they are true. Yet food in my stomach, and money in my pocket, would mean more to me just now. I must speak to this Indian. Will you wait for me, monsieur? I have business with you."

I bowed, and resumed my walk. "The key to an empire!" I said my own words over, and could have blushed for their tone of bombast. They were true, but they sounded false, I looked at my surroundings, and marveled that a situation that was of real dignity could wear so mean a garb. The sandy cove where I stood was on the mainland, and sheltered four settlements. Behind lay the forest; in front stretched Lake Huron, a waterway that was our only link with the men and nations we had left behind. The settlements were contiguous in body, but even my twenty-four hours' acquaintance had shown me that they were leagues apart in mind. There were a French fort, a Jesuit convent, a village of Ottawas, and, barred by the aristocracy of a palisade, a village of Hurons. The scale of precedence was plain to read. The huts of the savages were wattled, interlaced of poles and bark; the French buildings were of wood, but roofed with rough cedar; the only houses with board roofs were those of the Jesuits. In later times when I found Father Carheil hard to understand, I used to say to myself that he was not to be held too strictly to account for his contradictions, for though one learns to think great thoughts in the wilderness, it is not done easily when there is sawed lumber to shut away the sky.

Cadillac came back to me in a few moments. He had lost his swelling port, and was frowning with thought. "I saw you in the Huron camp, Montlivet," he said. "Do you understand their speech?"

Now this was a question that I thought it as well to put by. "Would you call it speech?" I demurred. "It sounded more like snarling."

"Then you do understand it?"

I kicked at the dogs at my feet. "Frowns are a common language. I could understand them, at least. The camp is restless. Are they hungry?"

Cadillac shrugged his shoulders. "Possibly. But it is not hunger that sagamite or maize cakes can reach. Would a taste of Iroquois broth put them in better condition, do you think?"

I turned away somewhat sickened. "It is a savage remedy," I broke out.

"And a good cook will catch his hare before he talks of putting it in the pot. Where is your Iroquois hare, Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac?"

The commandant shook his head. "My hare is still at large," he confessed. "Though just now---- Come, Monsieur de Montlivet, let us to plain speech. We are talking as slantingly as savages. I have a Huron messenger at my quarters. Come with me, and interpret."

"A messenger from your own camp?"

"Is it my own camp?" he queried soberly. "I do not know. I have reason to think that many of my Hurons are ripe for English bribes,--or even for the Iroquois. It is a strange menagerie that I rule over here, and the Hurons are the foxes,--when they are not trying to be lions. You say that their camp is restless. I do not speak their language, but I can tell you more. They are in two factions. Those who follow old Kondiaronk, the Rat, are fairly loyal, but the faction under the Baron would sell us to the English for the price of a cask of rum. Truly our scalps sit lightly on our heads here in this garrison."

I hesitated. I did not like this situation, and prudence whispered that I had best cut the conversation here, and make my way as swiftly as possible to the west. But curiosity urged me to one more question.

I asked it with my lips pursing to a whistle, that I might seem indifferent. "Is the messenger from the Baron?"

Cadillac nodded contentedly. "So you have decided to help me," he said, with a smile that read my indecision perfectly, and I felt, with a rush of blood to my face, much less sure of myself, and more respect for him. "I wish that I had inducements to keep you here," he went on, "for I hear from Montreal that you have wonderful command of Indian dialects. But I will take what you are willing to give, and be thankful. As to this messenger,--this is the tale. Some months ago a small band of Hurons left here for the south. Hunting, or war, or diplomacy, how shall I say what was their errand? But I mistrust them, for they are followers of the Baron. They returned this morning, and are in camp on the island. Their sending a messenger in advance looks as if they had a prisoner, and so desired to be welcomed in state. If the prisoner should be an Iroquois"----

Now certain tales were fresh in my ears, and so I did not like the implication of the unfinished sentence, and hastened to cover it. "It is a favorable sign, monsieur, that the messenger came to you first."

"How do I know that he came to me first? He came to me--yes. But because a snake slips out of one hole, can you swear that he has not been in another? Will you go to him now?"

There was no door open for escape, and the matter was not important enough for me to be willing to force one. "If you wish," I agreed.

Cadillac looked relieved. "Good! You will find the messenger at my quarters. I shall let you go alone, for I can make nothing of the man's speech, and he smells somewhat rancid for a close acquaintance.

When you are through, you will find me here."

I bowed, and made my way to his quarters. I knew as I opened his door that I might be entering more than appeared upon the surface, but the excitement of the game was worth the hazard,--even the hazard of a possible delay,--and I pushed the door wide, and went in.

The Huron was sitting in the middle of the floor, handling his calumet with some ostentation. The Hurons were but the remnant of a race, for Iroquois butchery had reduced them in numbers and in spirit, but even in their exile they preserved a splendor of carriage that made the Ottawas, who camped beside them here, seem but a poor and shuffling people. This man was a comely specimen, and he was decked to do honor to the moment. His blanket was clean, and his head freshly shaved except for a bristling ridge that ran, like a c.o.c.k's comb, across his crown, and that dripped sunflower oil over his shoulders.

He handed me his calumet, and we smoked for the time required by ceremony, then he rose, and drew two beaver skins from the folds of his blanket.

"The sun has smiled upon us," he said, with a certain sedate pomposity which, like the black crest on his head, might be ludicrous in itself, but seemed fitting enough in him. "I speak for my people who are in camp upon the island. We have been upon strange rivers, and over mountains where the very name of Frenchman is unknown. Yet we have returned, and we come to you at once, as the partridge to her young.

We are glad to see a Frenchman's face again. We confirm what we have said by giving these beavers."

I smoked for a moment, then leaned over and kicked the skins into the corner. "Why these words?" I asked, with a slow shrug. "Does the leg thank the arm for its service? Does the mouth give flatteries and presents to the tongue? We of Michillimackinac are all of one body.

My brother must be drunk with the bad rum of the English traders, that he should come to me in this way. No, if my brother has anything to say, let him think it aloud without ceremony, as if speaking to his own heart. Let him save his beavers till he goes to treat with strangers."

There was a long silence. The Huron wrapped his blanket closer, and looked at me, while I stared back as unwinkingly. His face was a mask, but I thought--as I have thought before and since when at the council fire--that there was amus.e.m.e.nt in the very blankness of his gaze, and that my effort to outdo him at his own mummery somewhat taxed his gravity. When he spoke at last he told his story concisely.

A half hour later, I went in search of Cadillac. He heard my step on the crunching gravel, and when I was still rods away, he laid his finger on his lips for silence. I went to him rather resentfully, for I had had no mind to shout my news in the street of the settlement, and I thought that he was acting like a child. But he took no notice of my pique, and clapped me on the shoulder as if we were pot-companions.

"Hush, man," he whispered fretfully. "Your look is fairly shouting the news abroad. No need to keep your tongue sealed, when you carry such a tell-tale face. So they have an Iroquois?"

I dropped my shoulder away from under his hand. "If that is the news that you say I shouted, no harm is done,--save to my honor. No, they have no Iroquois."

Cadillac stopped. "No Iroquois!" he echoed heavily.

"No, monsieur. They have an Englishman."

It was as if I had struck him. He stepped back, and his face grew dull red.

"A spy?"