Montlivet Part 44

But she was out of my grasp. "We--we---- It was a compact. If we---- If we did that, we could not part. Good-by, monsieur. I beg you not to go with me. G.o.d be with you. G.o.d be with you, monsieur."

I followed to the door and held to its casing as I looked after her.

She had met Cadillac, and was walking with him. She, whom I had always seen erect, was leaning on his arm.

CHAPTER XXIX

I FOLLOW MY PATH

A full hour later I went to Cadillac. "I am leaving," I said. "I am taking Pierre. The Ottawa girl, his wife, says she is going with us.

It is foolish,--but Pierre wishes it. He is dough in her hands."

Cadillac shook my well shoulder. "Go to bed for a day. You are ash color."

"No, I must be on my way. The time is short enough as it is. Have the Senecas gone?"

"No, it will be some hours before they are ready. If you start now, you will be enough in advance to keep out of sight."

I could not forbear a shrug. "Three hours' start to collect an army!

Well, it shall serve. And you follow to-morrow?"

Cadillac gave a trumpeting laugh. "Yes, tomorrow. I shall take a hundred men and leave a hundred here for guard. I have made arrangements. Longuant leads the Ottawas, and old Kondiaronk the loyal Hurons. Where shall we meet you?"

"I cannot tell. Stop at the Pottawatamie Islands and Onanguisse will know. Keep watch of Pemaou. He will make trouble if he can."

Cadillac looked at the horizon. "Montlivet, I have bad news. Pemaou has gone."

"Gone! Where?"

"I don't know. To the Seneca camp, probably. His canoes have just left."

I tapped the ground. I was tired and angry. "You should have prevented such a possibility," I let myself say.

But he kept his temper. "What could I have done?" he asked quietly.

"I have no authority in my garrison."

I regretted my outburst. "You could not have done anything," I hastened. "And if Pemaou has indeed gone to the Senecas, it is good news for me. I am impatient for a meeting with him that I did not dare have here for fear of entangling myself and losing time. I shall hope for an encounter in the west. And now I am away, monsieur."

I wished to leave with as little stir as possible, so Pierre took the canoe around the point, and I joined him there. To reach the rendezvous I walked through the old maize field where I had met the English captive. It had been moonlight then. Now it was hot noon, and the waves of light made me faint. I had forgotten breakfast. I cursed myself at the omission, for I needed strength.

But I was not to leave quite unattended. When I reached the canoe, I found Father Carheil talking to Singing Arrow. I was glad to see him.

There was something that propped my pride and courage in his irritable, tender greeting.

He pressed a vial into my hands. "It is confection of Jacinth. It has great virtue. Take it with you, my son."

I knelt. "I would rather take your blessing, father."

He gave it to me, and his old hands trembled. "Come back, my son.

Come back safely. You will return this way?"

I looked off at the blue, beckoning west. "I do not know, father. I go without ties or responsibilities. I am not sure where I shall end.

I doubt that I return this way."

"But where, my son? Where do you go?"

I pointed, and his mystic glance followed my hand. "Out there in the blue, father,--somewhere. I don't know where. It has beckoned you thus far; can you resist its cry to you to come farther and force its secrets from it?"

He clutched his rosary, and I knew I had touched one of his temptations. He loved the wilderness as I have never seen it loved.

Even his fellow priests and the few soldiers and traders crowded him.

He wanted the land alone,--alone with his Indians. He would not look at the blue track.

"It is the path of ambition, and it is strewn with wrecks. Come back to us here, my son."

But I would not look away from the west. "Some day I shall come back.

Not now. Father, I married Ambition. She lives in the wilderness. I think I shall abide with her the next year."

He frowned at me. "Where has Madame de Montlivet gone?"

"She has started for her home in England, father."

He tapped his teeth with his forefinger. "You sent a curious guard with her. Take the advice of an old man who has lived among Indians.

It is usually unwise to mix tribes."

"What do you mean?"

"You should have sent a guard of Ottawas with your wife and Starling."

"They were all Ottawas."

"No, they were more than half Hurons. I counted."

I jammed my teeth together and tried to think. I had just said that the west was calling me, that I was untrammeled. Untrammeled! Why, I was enmeshed, choked by conflicting duties. I put my head back, and breathed hard.

"Father, are you sure? Cadillac himself saw to it that they were all Ottawas."

The priest stepped forward and wiped his handkerchief across my face.

It was wet. "My son, take this more calmly. Cadillac does not know one Indian from another. Does this mean harm?"

I shook the sweat from my fingers. "I do not know what it means. But I must go west. I must. Hundreds of men depend on me. Father Carheil?"

"Yes, my son."

"I bound you once on this very spot. May I bind you again?"

"With promises?"

"Yes. Will you see Cadillac at once, tell him what you know, and have a company of Ottawas sent in pursuit of Lord Starling? Will you yourself see that it is rightly done?"