THE BEGINNING
I had not vaunted idly when I told the prisoner that our plans were
ready. I had scarcely dropped the latch of the commandant's door when
I saw Singing Arrow sauntering near.
She was graceful in her finery. Even a white man might commend. Her
skin garments looked soft and clean, and draped her cunningly. In the
dusk and the firelight with the bright blanket falling from her hair,
she looked so winning that I thought the guards could find excuse if
the prisoner loitered at the window.
And loiter he did. I sauntered and watched while the prisoner and
Singing Arrow threw glances that proved them no tyros in the game of
love and life. The comedy was pleasing, and I did not wonder that the
guards tilted their heads to one side, and looked on with grins.
Singing Arrow bridled, and drew away and then drew near. All was going
as we planned, till Pemaou and a band of his Hurons came around the
corner of the house.
I had done Pemaou the justice to hate him when I first saw him. And
one does not hate an inferior. He had as keen a mind as I have ever
known, and he was not hampered by any of the scruples and decencies
that interfere with a white man. So he was my superior in resource. I
knew, as I saw him look at me now, that my share in the game was over.
He had seen me listening to Longuant. Where had my wits been lagging
that I had not foreseen that he would have spies watching me, and would
trace some connection between the prisoner and myself? Well, there was
nothing left me but to stroll away. I did not dare go in the direction
of the canoes; it would be unwise to seek Cadillac; so I turned boldly
to the Ottawa camp. Hardly knowing what I planned, I asked for
Longuant.
Somewhat to my surprise, the Ottawas listened with respect. I had
apparently won some reputation among them, and without demur they took
me to the chief.
Longuant was squatting before his lodge. A piece of wood was laid
across his lap, and he was chopping rank tobacco with a scalping knife.
He smelled of oil, and smoke, and half-cured hides; yet he met me as a
ruler meets an ambassador. As I stumbled after him into his dark
lodge, I saw that he was preparing to greet me with all the silence and
circumlocution of a state messenger. I had no time for that,--though
it gratified me. I tramped my way through all ceremony and plunged at
my point.
"I am no envoy," I began, shaking my head in refusal of the proffered
seat upon the mat beside him. "I am only a voice. A bird that calls
'beware' from the branches, and then flits away. Why watch the old
wolf, and let the cub play free? Would you make yourself a
laughing-stock among your people, by letting the Englishman escape into
the Baron's hands? Pemaou, son of the Baron, stands with his followers
outside the Englishman's window. What does he seek? I am no Ottawa.
I am a free man, bound to no clan, and to no covenant, and friend to
the Ottawas and Hurons alike. But I do not like to see a wise man
tricked by a boy. I have spoken."
Longuant rose. "My brother's voice speaks the truth," he said,
gathering his robes to leave me. "My brother sent his words, even as
he flung his spear at Pemaou, straight at the mark. Only one word goes
astray. My brother is not the free man he vaunts himself. He is tied
by hate;" and pushing out his lip till his huge nose pendant stood at a
right angle, he went on his way to be my willing, but entirely
unhoodwinked agent.
I went to my canoes, stumbling a little, for I was tired. It was dark
now, and the fires glowed brazenly, so that the Indians showed like
dancing silhouettes. The sky was cloudless, and to the east lay a band
of uncertain light that meant the rising moon. This was the time that
I had planned to use in action, and the knowledge that I was powerless
to accomplish anything myself made me so irritable that I could not
bear to speak even to Pierre and the men. I sent them to a distance,
and sat down on the sand so torn and frayed by anxiety that I was like
a sick man.
And here, after long minutes, Singing Arrow found me. She came running
down the beach, slipping on the rolling pebbles, and careless either of
her grace, or of the noise she made.
"And you sit here doing nothing!" she cried, quite as a white girl
might have done.
I pushed her down on the sand. "Stop!" I said. "I knew you would seek
me here. Now answer briefly. Pemaou and his men would not let you get
near the window?"
"No."
"They had seen you with me," I explained. "I feared it. Did Longuant
and his men come?"
"Like bees," she answered, with a fling of her arms. "They are
everywhere. We can do nothing;" and she dropped her head in her arms
and cried.
Now what indeed could be her motive? "Never mind, Singing Arrow," I
said experimentally. "What is it to you, after all?"
She wriggled her head to throw me a wrathful look. "I always win at a
game," she mumbled.
She was as hard to read as a purring cat, but that did not matter.
"We've not lost yet," I said, as slowly and coolly as if I did not see
the disk of the moon looking at me. "I sent Longuant there. I was
sure that Pemaou would keep you away, and I am playing for time. So
long as the Ottawas and Hurons are squabbling with one another,
Cadillac will not deliver the prisoner. But we must get them farther
away. Singing Arrow, I have brandy in my cargo. I have drawn off two
large flasks. Could you carry them to the other end of the camp, and
send word among the braves?"
Now this was a contemptible thing to suggest; but any one who stoops,
as I was letting myself do, to use a cat's-paw to work out his ends
will surely soil his fingers. The sword is the clean weapon. I felt
that even this Indian would look at me with disdain, but she did not.
She thought a moment, then wagged her head in assent.
"But I promised Father Carheil not to drink any brandy myself," she
added defiantly, as if she feared I might protest, and I felt myself as
low as the hound that I had kicked that day because it would have
stolen a child's sagamité.
"Make haste!" I cried, in a fury with myself, and with the speeding
time. "Tell the prisoner to saunter away from the door, to pass the
largest fire, and then to go straight through the old maize field
toward the timber. I will be waiting there."
"I can do it," she vaunted, and she gathered the brandy under her
blanket, and ran like a quail, while I went to my red-topped giant.
"Pierre Boudin," I cried, with my hand on his collar, "if we get back
to this place alive, you are to marry that Ottawa girl; to marry her
fairly with priest and book. Remember that."
My man turned a complacent eye. "If the master wishes," he said
dutifully. Then he gave a fat chuckle. "I promised to marry her when
we came back if she would save the Englishman,--but then I thought that
we should go home the other way."
Why try to teach decency to a barnyard brood! I dusted my fingers free
from the soil of him. "I will marry her to you, if only to see her
flout you," I promised vengefully. "Now to the canoes, and have your
paddles ready." I had no smile for him, though he sought it, as I
walked away.
The moon had swung free of the horizon, and cabins and trees stood out
as if made of white cardboard. The night was chilly, and as I crept
along the edge of the maize field, I caught my numbed toes on the
stiffened clods of earth turned up by last year's plowing. Yet I moved
silently, and by keeping in the shadow of blackened stumps and withered
maize stalks, I reached bow-shot of the commandant's door.
Truly one part of my plan had succeeded. The house was the centre of
an ant-like swarm skurrying here and there, apparently without method,
but with a jerkiness of movement that suggested attack and recoil. I
could distinguish the nose pendants of the Ottawas and the bristling
crests of the Hurons. It was a crew with choice potentialities for
mischief. Cadillac was justified in feeling that his scalp sat but
unsteadily upon his head.
I had given Singing Arrow fifteen minutes to hide her brandy and send
word to the braves, and I counted off the time to myself, trying to
numb my anxiety. But among savages news runs underground as well as
over, and I had scarcely covered half the space that I had set for
myself before the crowd began to disappear. It slipped away like water
between the fingers, and in a moment there remained only the guards,
Pemaou, and a few Ottawas. The guards, relieved from immediate anxiety
of a riot, leaned listlessly on their muskets, the Ottawas would not
interfere with a girl of their own tribe, and Pemaou could not watch
all quarters at once. Now was certainly the time to act; but where was
Singing Arrow? My inaction pressed on me like a hideous weight. It
seemed days instead of hours that I had sat like a crone by her distaff
and let others do my work--or fail to do it. Why was Singing Arrow so
slow to come?
I thought that I had not shifted my gaze from the house for more than
an instant; but now, as I watched the door, I learned, and not for the
first time, that a white man should have a score of eyes instead of two
when it comes to watching an Indian. For the commandant's door
suddenly opened, and out came a blanket-draped, skin-clad figure. My
muscles stiffened. It was the Englishman. Singing Arrow had brought
him the clothing, and I had not seen.
So the moment had come. I gripped my sword as one turns instinctively
to the friend loved best. Would the prisoner act his part? So keen
was my anxiety, that I felt my spirit leap out to stand by his side,
and I shut my teeth upon the cry of encouragement that welled within me.
But he needed no help of mine. He made his way leisurely past the
great fire, walking with wonderful mimicry of a woman's gait, and he
kept his face well in the shelter of the blanket in a way that
suggested coquetry rather than disguise.
And in this manner he came straight to me. He came, unerringly as a
sleep-walker, past fires, past Indians, and through the gaunt rows of
maize. He looked neither to right nor left, and no one molested him.
He came to where I stood silent, and put out his hand to touch mine.
"It is done," he said quietly.
His fingers were warm, and his touch tingled. I marveled. "It is a
miracle," I said.
He looked at me in question. "Your hand is very cold. Monsieur,
monsieur, did you fear for me so much?"
I bowed. "Yes. I did not think it could be done. You are an able
man, monsieur."
He did not answer for a moment, and he followed me silently along the
edge of the maize field. Then he touched my shoulder.
"Monsieur, how strange the world looks to-night. The moon,--have you
ever seen it so remote and chill? Oh, we are puppets! No, it was not
my wit that carried me through. It was Fate. Life has been hard on
me. She is saving me now for some further trick she has to play. I
pray that it may not bring you ill, monsieur."
I knew not how to answer, for I was moved. As he said, the moon made
the world strange. Great beauty is disturbing, and the night was like
enchantment. He had come to me like a dream spirit in his woman's
dress. I felt the need of a dash of cold water on my spirit.
"You must not put on woman's fancies with your petticoats, monsieur," I
cautioned over my shoulder. "Now we had best not talk till we are safe
afloat in the canoes."
The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice
under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with
panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound.
I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We
were silent as figures in a mirror. I tapped the Englishman on the
shoulder, and motioned where he should sit in the canoe.
And then, from the timber fringe behind us, came a call. "Singing
Arrow! Singing Arrow! Stop! Stop!"
Sword unsheathed, I dashed across the open space of moonlight toward
the trees. Who called, or why, I did not question. But I must smother
the noise. "Singing Arrow!" the call came again, and the roar of it in
the quiet night made my flesh crawl.
I had not taken two strides into the timber when I saw a man running
toward me. He was still calling. I leaped upon him, winding an arm
about his neck, and covering his mouth. He was a small armful; a
weazened body to have sheltered so great a power of lung.
"Hush! For the Virgin's sake, hush!" I stormed in noisy whispers.
"Father Carheil, is it you? Hush! Hush!" I dropped my hand from his
mouth. "Now speak in whispers," I implored.
The father shook his cassock free from my fingers. My embrace had been
fervid, and his cassock was rumpled, and his scant hair was stringing
wildly from under his skullcap. But shrunken and tumbled as he was, he
was impressive. With some men, if you disarrange their outer habit,
you lower their inner dignity as well. It was not so with Father
Carheil.
He looked at me closely, with a sober gentleness that became him well,
and that he did not often use. "Why should I go quietly?" he asked.
"My errand is righteous. It is only black work that needs the cover of
a silent tongue. My son, you are letting your men abduct Singing
Arrow. Did your promise to me count for so little in your mind?"
I bowed, and mumbled something meaningless to gain time. I was not
clear as to my course. "Why do you think that we have Singing Arrow?"
I blurted out finally.
"Pemaou told me."
Pemaou again! But we had tricked him. I grinned with joy to think of
him with his nose still rooted close to the deserted hole. I could
almost forgive him for the trouble he was causing now.
"Pemaou lied," I said cheerfully. "Singing Arrow is not with us,
Father Carheil. Will you go back now? My mission is urgent and
demands secrecy."
He looked at the ground. "You swear to this? You swear that Singing
Arrow is not with you?"
I laid my hand on my sword, and bared my head. "I swear."
He turned away. "You seem a gentleman," he said reluctantly. "I
regret that I troubled you. I wish you fair winds, monsieur."
Beshrew me, but the man could get close to my heart. "Thank you,
father," I cried earnestly. "I wish that I might requite your trust
with greater candor. But, in the end, I hope to justify my means. I
would that I might have your blessing on my mission and my cargo."
Blockhead that I was, not to have let well enough alone. For I was to
blame for what followed. I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical,
and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes. I do not know. I do
know that at the word "cargo" Father Carheil turned and looked toward
the shore. There, in my canoe, with gaze searching the timber where I
had disappeared, stood a figure,--a woman's figure in Singing Arrow's
dress and blanket.
Father Carheil looked at me. He did not speak; it was not necessary.
I endured his gaze for a moment, then sold my prudence to save my
honor. I laid my finger on the priest's arm.
"Come with me to the canoes," I demanded. "If you find yourself in the
wrong, it may teach you to trust a man's word against your own
eyesight."
He assented. We walked swiftly across the moon-lighted open, and I had
scant time for fear. Yet I was afraid. I could give the Englishman no
helping hand, no word of warning. Would he rise to the moment?
He did. He turned his back upon us, Indian-fashion, and squatted in
his blanket. He lost all suggestion of Singing Arrow's slim
elasticity, and sat in a shapeless huddle. I laughed with relief.
"Where is Singing Arrow now?" I twitted the priest. "Is this she?"
The old priest peered. "No," he meditated. "No, this is not Singing
Arrow." He wheeled on me with one of his flashes of temper. "I cannot
recognize this girl. Let her take off her blanket."
I motioned my men to take stations in the canoes. "Father Carheil, I
beg you to let me go at once," I implored. "You see you were wrong.
As to this Indian, you never saw her; she is a stranger here."
But the father was not pacified. "Let her take off her blanket," he
repeated, with all the aimless persistency of age.
Did I say that the man had grown close to my heart? Why, I could have
shaken him. But the Englishman cut the knot. He turned with a hunch
of the shoulder, and peered at us over the corner of his blanket.
Gesture, and roll of the head, he was an Indian. I was so pleased at
the mimicry, that I gave way to witless laughter.
"Now!" I cried triumphantly. "Now, are you satisfied?"
But the priest did not reply. He stared, and his eyes grew
ferret-sharp. Then he shifted his position, and stared again. It beat
into my brain that he had lived thirty years among the Indians, and
that his eyes were trained. He could see meanings, where I saw a blank
wall.
"This is no Indian woman," he said slowly, with a wagging forefinger
that beat off his words like the minute hand of Fate. "This is--this
is--why, this is the English prisoner!"
He brought out the last words in a crescendo, and again my hand clapped
tight against his mouth.
"Be still! Be still!" I spluttered wildly, and I threw a disordered
glance at the horizon, and at my astonished crew. I had not meant that
the men, except Pierre, should be taken into the secret until we were
well afloat. Here was another contretemps.
"Are you mad, Father Carheil!" I began, with a sorry show of dignity,
while my palm stuck like a leech against his lips. "This is not"----
"Not any one but the prisoner himself," interrupted the Englishman's
voice. He dropped his blanket, and sprang to the sand. "Do not lie
for me, monsieur," he went on in his indolent, drawling French that
already had come to have a pleasant quaintness in my ears. "Monsieur,
let me speak to the father."
If Nature had given me a third hand, I should have used it to throttle
the Englishman. "Get back in the canoe!" I stormed.
He motioned me away. Standing slim and tall in Singing Arrow's dress,
he put me--such creatures of outward seeming are we--absurdly in the
wrong, as if I had been rude to a woman.
"Father Carheil," he began, "your ears at least are not fettered.
Listen, if you will. This man is not to blame. I was thrown in his
way, and he took me from pity, to save my life. Now that I am
discovered, I will go back to prison with you. Let this man go west.
Whatever his business, it is pressing."
With two mad men on my hands, I had to choose between them. I dropped
the priest, and gripped the Englishman.
"If you go back, I go with you!" I raged in his ear. Then I turned to
Father Carheil. "Are you going to report this, father? It is as the
Englishman says. I take him as the only way to save him from torture.
May we go?"
The father thought a moment. "No," he said.
I gripped my sword. "You have seen torture, Father Carheil. Would you
hand this man over to it?"
The father looked at me as if I were print for his reading. "I am
piecing facts together," he said, with unmoved slowness. "Singing
Arrow is in league with you, for the prisoner is wearing her clothes.
The Indians are wild with brandy, which, it is rumored, Singing Arrow
furnished. The brandy must have come from you. Is that so? Answer
me. Answer, in the name of the Holy Church. Is that so?"
I bowed. "You are a logician," I said bitterly. "Father, I can hear
the tom-toms. It is a miracle that we have escaped undetected so long.
Our respite cannot last many minutes longer. May we go?"
My tone seemed to reach him, and he wavered a moment. "Perhaps," he
began haltingly; then he backed several paces. "No!" he cried, all his
small wiry figure suddenly tense. "No! You are a dangerous man. You
carry brandy, and no one knows your errand. If I let you go, I may
save one man from torture,--which, after all, is but an open door to
the blessed after life,--but I shall be letting you carry brandy and
perdition on to scores of souls. No." And he opened his mouth to call
for help.
But I was on him before his shout could frame itself to sound. I drew
my handkerchief, and tied it, bandage-firm, across his mouth. Then I
called to Pierre, and bidding him bring me thongs from our store in the
canoe, I proceeded to bind the priest firmly. He was slight as a woman
in my hands. I could feel the sharpness and brittleness of his old
bones through his wrinkled skin, and I was sick at myself. "I am
sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry," I heard myself repeating, explaining
to him, and to myself, and, mostly, to the God who judges us. I looked
at the wonderful mobile old face, with all its weakness, and all its
wonderful white goodness, and hated myself for laying hands of violence
on such a man. "I am sorry," I cried again. I looked at the spit of
land that separated us from the camp, and the light from the fires
glowed red above it. The din of dogs and men swelled high. Something
was happening. I glanced down at the priest, but turned away quickly,
for I had no stomach for what I had done.
"They will find you soon," I said, with my throat tightening. "God
knows I'm sorry."
Then I dashed to the canoes. "Quickly!" I cried, and I shoved the
Englishman down behind me, that I might not have to see even the glint
of his red blanket to anger me by thought of what I had sacrificed.
In a moment, our paddles were dipping. I looked back at the
settlement. "It is done!" I cried under my breath, and I could not
forbid a moment of exultation. I glanced at the Englishman.
But I met no exultation there. The man's strange eyes were still
grave. "No, monsieur, it is just begun," he corrected, and I thought,
as I saw his look at the retreating shore, that he shrunk from the
uncertainties ahead more than from the death behind. Was there a
coward streak in him, after all? I turned my back, and did not speak
again.