Fort Amity

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It was Menehwehna who dragged the salmon across the gunwale; for John
had fainted. And when he recovered, Menehwehna was coolly gutting
the monster--if a fish of eighteen pounds can be called a monster; as
surely he can when taken in such fashion.

After this, John being out of action, Sergeant Barboux must take a
turn with the rod. He did not (he protested) count on landing a
fish; but the hooking of one had been so ridiculously prompt and easy
that it was hard to see how he could fail.

But he did. He flogged the water till nightfall, confidently at
first though clumsily, at length with the air of a Xerxes casting
chains into the flood; but never a bite rewarded him. He gave over
the rod in a huff, but began again at dawn, to lay it down after
an hour and swear viciously. As he retired Muskingon took the pole;
he had watched John's one and only cast and began to imitate it
patiently, while the sergeant jeered and the canoe drifted.
Towards noon he felt a bite, struck, and missed; but half an hour
later he struck again and Menehwehna shouted and pointed as John's
fly was sucked under in a noble swirl of water. Muskingon dragged
back his rod and stretched out a hand for the line; but Barboux had
already run forward and clutched it, at the same moment roughly
thrusting him down on his seat; and then in a moment the mischief was
done. The line parted, and the sergeant floundered back with a lurch
that sent the canoe down to her gunwale.

McQuarters laughed aloud and grimly. Menehwehna's dark eyes shone.
Even John, though the lurch obliged him to fling out both hands to
balance the boat, and the sudden movement sent a dart of pain through
his wound, could not hold back a smile. Barboux was furious.

"Eh? So you are pleased to laugh at me, master Englishman!
Wait then, and we'll see who laughs last. And you, dog of an Indian,
at what are you rubbing your hands?"

"Your exploit, O illustrious warrior," answered Menehwehna with
gravity, "set me in mind of Manabozho; and when one thinks upon
Manabozho it is permitted and even customary to rub the hands."

"Who the devil was Manabozho?"

"He was a very Great One--even another such Great One as yourself.
It was he who made the earth once on a time, by accident.
And another time he went fishing."

"Have a care, Menehwehna. I bid you beware if you are poking fun at
me."

"I am telling of Manabozho. He went fishing in the lake and let down
a line. 'King Fish,' said he, 'take hold of my bait,' and he kept
saying this until the King Fish felt annoyed and said, 'This
Manabozho is a nuisance. Here, trout, take hold of his line.'
The trout obeyed, and Manabozho shouted, 'Wa-i-he! Wa-i-he! I have
him!' while the canoe rocked to and fro. But when he saw the trout
he called, 'Esa, esa! Shame upon you, trout; I fish for your
betters.' So the trout let go; and again Manabozho sank his line,
saying, 'O King Fish, take hold of my bait.' 'I shall lose my temper
soon with this fellow,' said the King Fish; 'here, sunfish, take hold
of his line.' The sunfish did so, and Manabozho's canoe spun round
and round; but when he saw what he had caught, he cried out,
'Esa, esa! Shame upon you, sunfish; I am come for your betters.'
So the sunfish let go, and again Manabozho--"

"Joli amphigouri!" yawned the sergeant. "Pardon, M. Menehwehna, but
this story of yours seems likely to last."

"Not so, O chief; for this time the King Fish took the bait and
swallowed Manabozho, canoe and all."

John laughed aloud; but enough sense remained in Barboux to cover his
irritation. "Well, that was the last of him, and the Lord be
praised!"

"There is much more of the story," said Menehwehna, "and all full of
instruction."

"We will postpone it, anyhow. Take up your paddle, if you have not
forgotten how to work."

So Menehwehna and the hunchback paddled anew, while the great Barboux
sat and sulked--a sufficiently childish figure. Night fell, the
canoe was brought to shore, and the Indians as usual lifted out the
wounded men and laid them on beds of moss strewn with pine-boughs and
cedar. While Menehwehna lit the camp-fire, Muskingon prepared John's
salmon for supper, and began to grill it deftly as soon as the smoke
died down on a pile of clear embers.

John sleepily watched these preparations, and was fairly dozing when
he heard Barboux announce with an oath that for his impudence
the dog of an Englishman should go without his share of the fish.
The announcement scarcely awoke him--the revenge was so petty.
Barboux in certain moods could be such a baby that John had ceased to
regard him except as an object of silent mirth. So he smiled and
answered sweetly that Sergeant Barboux was entirely welcome; for
himself a scrap of biscuit would suffice. And with that he closed
his eyes again.

But it seemed that, for some reason, the two Indians were angry, not
to say outraged. By denying him his share Barboux had--no doubt
ignorantly--broken some sacred law in the etiquette of hunting.
Muskingon growled; the firelight showed his lips drawn back, like a
dog's, from his white teeth. Menehwehna remonstrated. Even le
Chameau seemed to be perturbed.

Barboux, however, did not understand; and as nobody would share in
John's portion, ate it himself with relish amid an angry silence,
which at length impressed him.

"Eh? What the devil's wrong with you all?" he demanded, looking
about him.

Menehwehna broke into a queer growl, and began to rub his hands.
"Manabozho--" he began.

"Fichtre! It appears we have not heard the end of him, then?"

"It is usual," Menehwehna explained, "to rub one's hands at the
mention of Manabozho. In my tribe it is even necessary."

"Farceur de Manabozho! the habit has not extended to mine," growled
Barboux. "Is this the same story?"

"O slayer of heads, it is an entirely different one." The sergeant
winced, and John cast himself back on his leafy bed to smile up at
the branches. _Tueur de tetes_ may be a high compliment from an
Indian warrior, but a vocalist may be excused for looking twice at
it.

"This Manabozho," Menehwehna continued tranquilly, "was so big and
strong that he began to think himself everybody's master. One day he
walked in the forest, cuffing the ears of the pine-trees for sport,
and knocking them flat if they took it ill; and at length he came on
a clearing. In the clearing was a lodge, and in the lodge was no one
but a small child, curled up asleep with its toe in its mouth.
Manabozho gazed at the child for a long while, and said he, 'I have
never seen anyone before who could lie with his toe in his mouth.
But I can do it, to be sure.' Whereupon he lay down in much the same
posture as the child, and took his right foot in his hand. But it
would not reach by a long way. 'How stupid I am,' cried Manabozho,
'when it was the left foot all the time!' So he tried the left foot,
but this also would not reach. He rolled on his back, and twisted
and bent himself, and strained and struggled until the tears ran down
his face. Then he sat up in despair; and behold! he had awakened the
child, and the child was laughing at him. 'Oh, oh!' cried Manabozho
in a passion, 'am I then to be mocked by a babe!' And with that he
drew a great breath and blew the child away over the mountains, and
afterwards walked across and across the lodge, trampling it down
until not a trace of it remained. 'After all,' said Manabozho,
'I can do something. And I see nobody hereabouts to deny that I can
put my toe in my mouth!'"

As Menehwehna concluded, John waited for an explosion of wrath.
None came. He raised his head after a minute and looked about him.
Barboux sat smoking and staring into the camp-fire. The Indian had
laid himself down to slumber, with his blanket drawn up to his ears.

CHAPTER VI.

BATEESE.

Next morning Barboux and Menehwehna held a long colloquy aft, but in
tones so low that John could not catch a word. By and by Muskingon
was called into council, and lastly le Chameau.

The two Indians were arguing against some proposal of the sergeant's,
which by the way they pointed and traced imaginary maps with their
fingers, spreading their palms apart to indicate distances, plainly
turned on a point of geography. Le Chameau's opinion seemed to
settle the dispute in the sergeant's favour. Coming that afternoon
to the mouth of a tributary stream on the left bank he headed the
canoe for it without a word, and at once the paddles were busy,
forcing her against the rapid current.

Then followed days during which, though reason might prove that in
the river he held an infallible clue, John's senses lost themselves
in the forest maze. It overlapped and closed upon him, folding him
deeper and illimitably deeper. On the Richelieu he had played with
thoughts of escape, noting how the canoe lagged behind its convoy,
and speculating on the Indians' goodwill--faint speculations, since
(without reckoning his own raw wound) McQuarters was almost too weak
to stir as yet, and to abandon him would be a scurvy trick. So he
had put aside his unformed plans, which at the best had been little
better than hopes; and now the wilderness oppressed and smothered and
buried them out of recollection.

The _voyageurs_ made tedious progress; for almost at once they came
to a chain of rapids around which the canoe had to be ported.
The Indians toiled steadily, and le Chameau too, stripped to the
waist and sweating; and by the end of the day each man carried a dark
red weal on one shoulder, sunk in the flesh by the canoe's weight.
John could walk, but was powerless to help, and McQuarters had to be
lifted and carried with the baggage. Barboux confined himself to
swearing and jeering at le Chameau's naked back--_diable de torse_,
as he proclaimed it. The man was getting past endurance.

On the second day he called a halt, left le Chameau in charge of the
camp and the prisoners, and went off with the Indians in search of a
moose, whose lowing call had twice echoed through the woods during
the night and been answered by Menehwehna on his birch-horn.
The forest swallowed them, and a blessed relief fell on the camp--no
more oaths and gibes for a while, but rest and green shade and the
murmur of the rapids below.

After the noon-day meal the hunchback stretched himself luxuriously
and began to converse. He was explaining the situation with the help
of three twigs, which he laid in the form of a triangle--two long
sides and a short base.

"_Voyons_, this long one will be the Richelieu and that other the
St. Lawrence; and here"--he put his finger near the base--"here is
Montreal. The sergeant knows what he is about. Those other boats,
look you, will go around so--" He traced their course around the
apex very slowly. "Whereas _we_--!" A quick stroke of the finger
across the base filled up the sentence, and the little man smiled
triumphantly.

"I see," said John, picking up the short twig and bending it into an
arch, "we are now climbing up this side of the slope, eh? And on the
other there will likewise be a river?"

The boatman nodded. "A hard way to find, m'sieur. But have no fear.
I have travelled it."

"Assuredly I have no fear with you, M.--"

"Guyon, m'sieur--Jean Bateese Guyon. This M. Barboux is a merry
fellow--il ne peut pas se passer de ses enjouements. But I was not
born like this." And here he touched his shoulder very simply and
gravely.

"It was an accident then, M. Guyon?"

"An accident--oh, yes, be assured it was an accident." A flush
showed on the little man's cheek, and his speech on a sudden became
very rapid. "But as we were saying, I know the trail across yonder;
and my brother Dominique he knows it even better. I wish we may see
Dominique, m'sieur; there is no such _voyageur_ from Quebec up to
Michilimackinac, aye or beyond! He has been down the Cascades by
night, himself only; it was when I had my--my accident, and he must
go to fetch a surgeon. All along the river it is talked of yet.
But it is nothing to boast of, for the hand of God must have been
upon him. And as good as he is brave!"

"And where is your brother Dominique just now?"

"He will be at home, m'sieur. Soon they will be carrying the harvest
at Boisveyrac, and he is now the seigneur's farmer. He will be
worrying himself over the harvest, for Dominique takes things to
heart, both of this world and the next; whereas--I am a good
Catholic, I hope--but these things do not trouble me. It seems there
is no time to be troubled." Bateese looked up shyly, with a blush
like a girl's. "M'sieur may be able to tell me--or, maybe, he will
think it foolish. This love of women, now?"

"Proceed, M. Guyon."

"Ah, you believe in it! When the sergeant begins his talk--c'est
bien sale, is it not? But that is not the sort I mean. Well,
Dominique is in love, and it brings him no happiness. He can never
have what he wants, nor would it be right, and he knows it; but
nevertheless he goes on craving for it and takes no pleasure in life
for the want of it. I look at him, wondering. Then I say to myself,
'Bateese, when le bon Dieu broke you in pieces He was not unkind.
Your heart is cracked and cannot hold love, like your brother's; but
what of that, while God is pouring love into it all day long and
never ceases? You are ugly, and no maid will ever want you for a
husband; therefore you are lucky who cannot store away desire for
this or that one, like poor Dominique, who goes about aching and fit
to burst. You go singing _a la claire fontaine_, which is full of
unhappiness and longing, but all the while you are happy enough.'
Indeed, that is the truth, monsieur. I study this love of
Dominique's, which makes him miserable; but I cannot judge it.
I see that it brings pain to men."

"But delight also, my friend."

"And delight also--that is understood. M'sieur is, perhaps, in love?
Or has been?"

"No, Bateese; not yet."

"But you will; with that face it is certain. Now shall I tell you?--
to my guessing this love of women is like an untried rapid.
Something smiles ahead for you, and you push for it and _voyez!_ in a
moment down you go, fifteen miles an hour and the world spinning; and
at the bottom of the fall, if the woman be good, sweet is the journey
and you wonder, looking back from smooth water, down what shelves you
were swept to her. That, I say, is what I suppose this love to be;
but for myself I shall never try it. Since le bon Dieu broke the
pitcher its pieces are scattered all over me, within; they hold
nothing, but there they lie shining in their useless fashion."

"Not useless, perhaps, Bateese."

"In their useless fashion," he persisted. "They will smile and be
gay at the sight of a pretty girl, or at the wild creatures in the
woods yonder, or at the thoughts in a song, or for no better reason
than that the day is bright and the air warm. But they can store
nothing. It is the same with religion, monsieur, and with affairs of
State; neither troubles my head. Dominique is devout, for example;
and Father Launoy comes to talk with him, which makes him gloomy.
The reverend Father just hears my sins and lets me go; he knows well
enough that Bateese does not count. And then he and Dominique sit
and talk politics by the hour. The Father declares that all the
English are devils, and that anyone who fights for the Holy Church
and is killed by them will rise again the third day."

John laughed aloud this time.

"I too think the reverend Father must be making some mistake," said
Bateese gravely. "No doubt he has been misinformed."

"No doubt. For suppose now that I were a devil?"

"Oh, m'sieur," Bateese expostulated. "_Ca serait bien dommage!_
But I hope, in any case, God would pardon me for talking with you,
seeing that to contain anything, even hatred, is beyond me."

"Shall I tell you what I think, Bateese? I think we are all pitchers
and perhaps made to be broken. Ten days ago I was brimful of
ambitions; someone--le bon Dieu, or General Abercromby--has toppled
me over and spilt them all; and here I lie on my side, not broken,
but full of emptiness."

"Heh, heh--'full of emptiness'!" chuckled Bateese, to whom the phrase
was new.

"It may be that in time someone will set me up again and pour into me
wine of another sort. I hope for this, because it is painful to lie
upset and empty; and I do not wish to be broken, for that must be
even more painful--at the time, eh?"

Bateese glanced up, with a twitch of remembered pain.

"Indeed, m'sieur, it hurt--at the time."

"But afterwards--when the pieces have no more trouble, being released
from pride--the pride of being a pitcher! Is it useless they are as
they lie upturned, reflecting--what? My friend, if we only knew this
we might discover that now, when it can no longer store up wine for
itself, the pitcher is at last serving an end it was made for."

The little hunchback glanced up again quickly. "You are talking for
my sake, monsieur, not for yourself! At your age I too could be
melancholy for amusement. Ah, pardon," for John had blushed hotly.
"Do I not know why you said it? Am I not grateful?"

He held out his hand. His eyes were shining.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WATCHER IN THE PASS.

Thenceforward, as the forest folded them deeper, John found a
wonderful solace in Bateese's company, although the two seldom
exchanged a word unless alone together, and after a day or two
Barboux took a whim to carry off the little boatman on his
expeditions and leave Muskingon in charge of the camp. He pretended
that John, as he mended of his wound, needed a stalwart fellow for
sentry; but the real reason was malice. For some reason he hated
Muskingon; and knowing Muskingon's delight in every form of the
chase, carefully thwarted it. On the other hand, it was fun to drag
off Bateese, who loved to sit by his boat and hated the killing of
animals.

"If I give him my parole," suggested John, "he will have no excuse,
and Muskingon can go in your place."

But to this Bateese would not listen. So the wounded were left, on
hunting days, in Muskingon's charge; and with him, too, John
contrived to make friends. The young Indian had a marvellous gift of
silence, and would sit brooding for hours. Perhaps he nursed his
hatred of Barboux; perhaps he distrusted the journey--for he and
Menehwehna, Ojibways both, were hundreds of miles from their own
country, which lay at the back of Lake Huron. Now and again,
however, he would unbend and teach John a few words of the Ojibway
language; or would allow him, as a fellow-sportsman, to sit by the
water's edge and study the Indian tricks of fishing.

There was one in particular which fairly amazed John. He had crawled
after Muskingon on his belly--though not understanding the need of
this caution--to the edge of a rock overhanging a deep pool.
The Indian peered over, unloosed his waist-belt, and drew off his
scarlet breeches as if for a bathe. But no, he did not intend this--
at least, not just yet. He wound the breeches about his right arm
and dipped it cautiously, bending over the ledge until his whole body
from the waist overhung the water, and it was a wonder how his thighs
kept their grip. Then, in a moment, up flew his heels and over he
soused. John, peering down as the swirl cleared, saw only a
red-brown back heaving below; and as the seconds dragged by, and the
back appeared to heave more and more faintly, was plucking off his
own clothes to dive and rescue Muskingon from the rocks, when a pair
of hands shot up, holding aloft an enormous, bleeding cat-fish, and
hitched him deftly on the gaff which John hurried to lower. But the
fish had scarcely a kick left in him, Muskingon having smashed his
head against the crevices of the rock.

Indeed Barboux had this excuse for leaving Muskingon in camp by the
river--that there was always a string of fish ready before nightfall
when he and Menehwehna returned. John, stupefied through the
daylight hours, always seemed to awake with the lighting of the
camp-fire. This at any rate was the one scene he afterwards saw most
clearly, in health and in the delirium of fever--the fire; the ring
of faces; beyond the faces a sapling strung with fish like short
broad-swords reflecting the flames' glint; a stouter sapling laid
across two forked boughs, and from it a dead deer suspended, with
white filmed eyes, and the firelight warm on its dun flank; behind,
the black deep of the forest, sounded, if at all, by the cry of a
lonely wolf. These sights he recalled, with the scent of green fir
burning and the smart of it on his lashes.

But by day he went with senses lulled, having forgotten all desire of
escape or return. These five companions were all his world. Was he
a prisoner? Was Barboux his enemy? The words had no meaning.
They were all in the same boat, and "France" and "England" had become
idle names. If he considered Barboux's gun, it was as a provider of
game, or a protector against any possible foe from the woods.
But the woods kept their sinister silence.

Once, indeed, at the head of a portage, they came upon a still reach
of water with a strip of clearing on its farther bank--_bois brule_
Bateese called it; but the fire, due to lightning no doubt, must have
happened many years before, for spruces of fair growth rose behind
the alders on the swampy shore, and tall wickup plants and tussocks
of the blueberry choked the interspaces. A cool breeze blew down the
waterway, as through a funnel, from the uplands ahead, and the falls
below sang deafeningly in the _voyageurs'_ ears as they launched
their boat.

Suddenly Menehwehna touched Barboux by the elbow. His ear had caught
the crackling of a twig amid the uproar. John, glancing up as the
sergeant lifted his piece, spied the antlers of a bull-moose
spreading above an alder-clump across the stream. The tall brute had
come down through the _bois brule_ to drink, or to browse on the
young spruce-buds, which there grew tenderer than in the thick
forest; and for a moment moose and men gazed full at each other in
equal astonishment.

Barboux would have fired at once had not Menehwehna checked him with
a few rapid words. With a snort of disgust the moose turned slowly,
presenting his flank, and crashed away through the undergrowth as the
shot rang after him. Bateese and Muskingon had the canoe launched in
a second, and the whole party clambered in and paddled across.
But before they reached the bank the beast's hoofs could be heard
drumming away on the ridge beyond the swamp and the branches snapping
as he parted them.

Barboux cursed his luck. The two Indians maintained that the moose
had been hit. At length Muskingon, who had crossed the swamp, found
a splash of blood among the mosses, and again another on the leaves
of a wickup plant a rod or two farther on the trail. The sergeant,
hurrying to inspect these traces, plunged into liquid mud up to his
knees, and was dragged out in the worst of tempers by John, who had
chosen to follow without leave. Bateese and McQuarters remained with
the canoe.

Each in his own fashion, then, the trackers crossed the swamp,
and soon were hunting among a network of moose-trails, which
criss-crossed one another through the burnt wood. John, aware of his
incompetence, contented himself with watching the Indians as they
picked up a new trail, followed it for a while, then patiently harked
back to the last spot of blood and worked off on a new line. Barboux
had theories of his own, which they received with a galling silence.
It galled him at length to fury, and he was lashing them with curses
which made John wonder at their forbearance, when a call from the
river silenced him.

It came from Bateese. Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had
paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there,
at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the
ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the
water like a snag.

From oaths Barboux now turned incontinently to boasting. This was
his first moose, but he--he, Joachim Barboux, was a sportsman from
his birth. He still contended, but complacently and without rancour,
that had the Indians taken up the trail he had advised from the first
it would have led them straight to the ford. They heard him and went
on skinning the moose, standing knee deep in the bloody water, for
the body was too heavy to be dragged ashore without infinite labour.
Menehwehna found and handed him the bullet, which had glanced across
and under the shoulder-blade, and flattened itself against one of the
ribs on the other side. Barboux pocketed it in high good humour; and
when their work was done--an ugly work, from which Bateese kept his
eyes averted--a steak or two cut out, with the tongue, and the
carcass left behind to rot in the stream--he praised them for brave
fellows. They listened as indifferently as they had listened to his
revilings.

This shot which slew the moose was the last fired on the upward
journey. They had followed the stream up to the hill ridges, where
rapid succeeded rapid; and two days of all but incessant portage
brought them out above the forest, close beneath the naked ridges
where but a few pines straggled.

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