Montlivet Part 20

But we were to travel no more toward the southwest that night. My plan was to turn back, paddle due east, and reach the peninsula before the late moonrise. This doubling on my track was to cheat Pemaou if he were indeed pursuing. Then I was planning to make the peninsula my headquarters for a time. I had left word at the islands that I was on my way to confer with the Malhominis, but I had not committed myself as to where I should make my permanent camp. I hoped, in this game of hide and seek, to shake off the Huron, and leave the woman in safe hiding, while I went on my mission from tribe to tribe.

And so I told the men to work with m.u.f.fled paddles. I thought the precaution somewhat unnecessary, but took it as a matter of form. Now that I was in action again, I felt in command of the situation. And then, from some shadowy distance, I heard the splash of a pursuing oar.

I commanded silence, and we craned into the darkness, and listened. We all heard it. The sound came as regularly as a heart-beat, and it was no m.u.f.fled stroke. The oarsman was using his paddle openly and fast.

The sound came from behind us, a little to the north, and, judging from its growing distinctness, it was following hard in our track. There was nothing for it but a race. I gave orders.

The men worked well, and we sped through foaming water for perhaps a quarter hour. Then land rose in front of us. It shot up, all in an instant, out of the murk, and we had quick work to keep from grounding our canoes. I could see no sh.o.r.e line to north or south. We had found either the end of a promontory or a small island. We landed on a shelving beach, and lifted the canoes out of danger.

"Lie down," I commanded; and we dropped on the sand, and strained our ears for sound of pursuit.

For a time we heard nothing. Our burst of speed had carried us some distance, and I had begun to think that we had shaken off our pursuer, when again came the beat, beat, beat of the distant oar. We lay close as alligators on a bank, and waited. The strokes came nearer, and at last we saw a sliding shape. As well as we could make out, there was but one canoe, and it was pa.s.sing us a little to the northward. It would miss the jut of land where we were hiding, and land on the main sh.o.r.e of the peninsula. We could hear but one paddle, so judged that there was but one person in the canoe. Still we did not know.

It was growing near moonrise, and there was nothing to be done. I told the men to lie near together, and sleep till I called them. Then I cut boughs and laid a couple of blankets on them for the woman's couch.

She had sat quiet all these hours, and now, as I bade her good-night, she asked her first question.

"Are you willing to tell me why you fear pursuit, monsieur?"

I hesitated. "We grow like animals in the wilderness," I parried, "and so suspect every sound as coming from a foe."

"Then you do not know who it is in the canoe?"

I could have answered "no," but I would not.

"Yes, I think that I know," I replied. "I think that it is Pemaou, a Huron. An Indian whom you have never seen."

She read the hate in my voice. "Do you know what he wants, monsieur?"

And now I could answer truthfully, and with a laugh. "I suspect that he wants, or has been sent to get, something that I have determined to keep,--at least for the present," I told her. "Good-night, madame."

I told my inner self that I must sleep soundly, and wake just before dawn; and so that was what happened. The horizon was flus.h.i.+ng when I rose and looked around. My company was asleep. The woman lay on her bright blankets, and I looked at her a moment to make sure that all was well. She was smiling as if her dreams were pleasant, and her face wore such a look of peace, that I turned to the east, ready to begin the day, and to thank G.o.d that I had not done everything entirely wrong. I took the lighter of the canoes, carried it to the water, and dipping a cautious paddle, crept off along the sh.o.r.e.

If I wake in the woods every dawn for a year, I can never grow stale to the miracle of it. I was on no pleasant errand, yet I could not help tingling at the cleanness of the air and at the smell of the mint that our canoes had crushed. I hugged the sh.o.r.e like a shadow, and rounded a little bend. It was as I had thought. We had landed on the western side of a small island, and before me, not a quarter hour's paddling away, stretched the sh.o.r.e line of the peninsula.

Here was my risk. I paddled softly across the open stretch, but that availed me little, for I was an unprotected target. I slanted my course northward, and strained my gaze along the sh.o.r.e. Yet I hardly expected to find anything. It came like a surprise when I saw in advance of me a light canoe drawn up on the sand.

I landed, drew my own canoe to shelter, and reconnoitred. I had both knife and musket ready, and I pulled myself over logs as silent as a snake. Yet, cautious as I was, little furtive rustlings preceded me.

The wood folks had seen me and were spreading the warning. Unless Pemaou were asleep I had little chance of surprising him. Yet I crept on till I saw through the leaves the outlines of a brown figure on the ground.

I stopped. I had been trying for a good many hours to balance the right and wrong of this matter in my mind, and my reason had insisted to my inclination that, if I had opportunity, I must kill Pemaou without warning. We respect no code in dealing with a rattlesnake, and I must use this Huron like the vermin that he was. So I had taught myself.

But now I could not do it. The blanket-wrapped shape was as unconscious as a child in its cradle, and though the wilderness may breed hardness of purpose it need not teach butchery. I crept out determined to scuttle the Indian's canoe and go away. If the man waked, my knife was ready to try conclusions with him in a fair field.

I suppose that I really desired him to wake, and that made me careless, for just as I bent to the canoe, I let my foot blunder on a twig, and it cracked like shattering gla.s.s. I grasped my knife and whirled. The figure on the ground jerked, threw off its shrouding blanket, and stretched up. It was not Pemaou. It was the Ottawa girl Singing Arrow.

I did not drop my knife. My thought was of decoy and ambush, which was no credit to me, for this girl had been faithful before. But we train ourselves not to trust an Indian except of necessity.

"Are you alone?" I demanded.

She nodded, pressing her lips together and dimpling. She feared me as little as a kitten might.

"I came to the Pottawatamie camp just after you left," she volunteered.

And then I laughed, laughed as I had not done in days. So this was the quarry that I had been stalking! I had been under a long tension, and it was suddenly comfortable to be ridiculous. I sat down and laughed again.

"Are you following Pierre?" I asked, sobering, and trying to be stern.

But she put her head sidewise and considered me. She looked like a squirrel about to crack a nut.

"A hare may track a stag," she announced judicially. "I have followed you. My back is bent like a worm with the aching of it, but I came faster than a man. I have this for you," and fumbling in her blouse she brought out a bulky packet addressed with my name.

I took it with the marvel that a child takes a sleight-of-hand toy and stared at the seal.

"From Cadillac! From the commandant!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

She nodded. It was her moment of triumph, but she pa.s.sed it without outward show.

"Read it. I am sleepy," she said, and yawning in my face she tumbled herself back into the blanket and closed her eyes.

The packet was well wrapped and secured, and I dug my way to the heart of it and found the written pages. The letter began abruptly.

"Monsieur," it said, "I send you strange tidings by a stranger messenger. It is new to me to trust petticoats in matters of secrecy, but it is rumored that you set me the example, and that you carried off the Englishman dressed in this Singing Arrow's clothes. The Indian herself will tell me nothing. That determined me to trust her.

"Briefly, you are followed. That fire-eating English lad that you have with you--I warrant that he has proved a porcupine to travel with--must be of some importance. At all events, an Englishman, who gives his name as Starling, has made his way here in pursuit. He tells a fair tale. He says that the lad, who is dear as a brother to him, is a cousin, who was captured in an Indian raid on the frontier. As soon as he, Starling, learned of the capture, he started after them, and he has spent months searching the wilderness, as you would sift the sand of the sea. He found the trail at last, and followed it here. He begs that I send him on to you with a convoy.

"Now this, as you see, sounds very fair, and part of it I know to be true. The man is certainly in earnest--about something,--and has spent great time and endeavor in this search. He has even been to Quebec, and worked on Frontenac's sympathies, for he bears from the governor a letter of safe conduct to me, and another, from the Jesuits, to Father Carheil. He comes--apparently--on no political mission; he is alone, and his tale is entirely plausible. There is but one course open to me. I must let him go on.

"But I do it with misgivings. The story is fair, but I can tell a fair story myself upon occasion, and there is no great originality in this one. I remember that you said after your first interview with your Englishman, that you were afraid he was a spy. There is always that danger,--a danger that Frontenac underestimates because he has not grasped the possibilities that we have here. If both these men should prove to be spies, and in collusion---- Well, they are brave men, and crafty; it will be the greater pleasure to outwit them. I cannot overlook the fact that the first Englishman was brought here by the Baron's band of Hurons, and that this man selects his messengers from the same dirty clan. I have reason to think he was in communication with them before he came,--which is no credit to a white man.

Dubisson, my lieutenant, tells me that a Huron told his Indian servant that pictures of the prisoner drawn on bark had been scattered among the Indians for a fortnight past. The story was roundabout, and I could not run it down. But it makes me watchful.

"So this is where we stand. I must give this man Starling a letter to you. The letter will be official, and will direct you to deliver your prisoner into Starling's hands. If he finds you, you have no choice but to obey; so, if you think from your further knowledge of your prisoner that it is unwise for these two men to meet, it is your cue not to be found. I leave it with you.

"There is, of course, great doubt whether this will find you. You asked me about Onanguissee so I infer that you will stop at the islands at the mouth of La Baye, and I shall send the Indian girl directly there. I shall suggest to Starling that he hug the coast line, and search each bay, and if he listens to me, the girl should reach you well in advance. But it is all guess-work. Starling may have spies among the Indians, and know exactly where you are. I wish he were out of the way. Granted that his errand is fair, he will still see too much. For all men, in whatever state they are born, lack neither vanity nor ambition, and this man is accustomed to command. It is a crack in the dike, and I do not like it.

"But enough. I hear that you trussed Father Blackgown like a pigeon for the spit the night that you went away. I would have given my best tobacco box to have seen it. There was some excitement here over the loss of the prisoner, but no talk of pursuit. Indeed, the Hurons seemed relieved to have him spirited out of the way. Which is odd, for they took great pains to obtain him. But I am wonted to the unexpected; it is the usual that finds me unprepared. Even Father Blackgown surprises me. He has not complained to me of you, though heretofore I have found him as ready to shout his wrongs as a crow in a cornfield. But again, enough.

"And I have the honor to be, with great respect, monsieur,

"Your very obedient servant,

"ANTOINE DE LA MOTHE-CADILLAC."

I read the letter through twice. Then I turned to Singing Arrow. I was glad she was a savage. If she had been white, man or woman, I should have been obliged to go through a long explanation, and I was not in the mood for it. Now savages are content to begin things in the middle, and omit questions. It may be indolence with them, and it may be philosophy. I have never decided to my satisfaction. But the fact serves.

"Do you think that you were followed?" I asked.

The girl sat up and shook her head. "Only by the stars and the clouds," she answered.