PARTNERS
To paddle by day, to work in sun and breeze, is a pastime, but to
paddle by night drains a man's endurance. For long hours our canoes
nosed their way around headland after headland and along wild shores
peopled by beasts and shadows. The black water was a threat and a
mystery, and the moonlight was chill, so that our limbs, which should
have bounded with red blood, were aching and leaden with the cold. I
stretched myself with relief when the red-streaked horizon told me it
was time to land and make camp.
I was prepared for pursuit, but knew that, with Pierre in one canoe and
Labarthe in the other, we must be well in advance of it. Now I
purposed to stop and hide. It is more to my taste to be hound than
hare, and I do not like an enemy snapping at my heels. So I prepared
to land. Once the pursuing canoes had passed us we could take up the
chase on our own part and follow at leisure.
I called the word to the other canoe, and then as we swung shoreward I
turned to look at the Englishman. All night I had heard no sound from
him, nor glanced his way. My thoughts of him had been bitter, for he
was a sore weight on my hands. Yet this I knew was unjust, and I was
shamed for my own bad temper. My surliness must have pricked him, as
he sat silent through the long hours of dark and cold; and now that the
approaching sun was putting me in a better humor, I could see that I
had been hard, and I determined to speak to him fairly.
And so I turned, puckering my lips to a smile that did not come easily,
for my face was stiff and my spirit sore. But I might have spared my
pains. The prisoner was asleep. He lay in a chrysalis of red blanket,
his head tipped back on a bundle of sailcloth, his face to the stars.
He was submerged in the deep slumber where the soul deserts the body
and travels unknown ways. Judged by his look of lax muscles and
surrender, he had lain that way for hours,--the hours when I had been
punishing him with my averted glance.
I woke him with a hand on his shoulder.
"You slept well," I accused.
He shivered under my hand and opened his eyes. It took him an instant
to recognize me, but when he did he smiled with relief. I could not
but see that there was something pleasant in his smile. I saw, too,
that sleep had wiped the lines from his face, and given him a touch of
color.
"Did I sleep? Did I really sleep?" he marveled. "Monsieur, you are
very good to me."
But I was in no holiday humor, so only shrugged, and told him to unload
the bales. He smiled again, nodding, and jumped to the shore with
buoyancy that was an affront to our numbed muscles. But once at work
he was as useless as a sailor in a hayfield. He could lift nothing,
and he was hopelessly under foot. I bade him stand aside, and I prayed
for patience. After all he was young, and had been through great
hardship. I would spare him what I could for a time.
It is depressing to work in a cold dawn on an empty stomach. Our
landing had been made at the mouth of a rivulet, and we followed it
till we found a place, some quarter mile inland, that was open enough
for a camp. Here bale by bale we brought the cargo, piling it under
trees and covering it with sailcloth. The canoes we put bottom up in
the open, that the sun might dry them. I left Pierre hidden at the
shore to watch the horizon for our pursuers, and the rest of us
proceeded to breakfast.
It was cheerless. When I say we made a camp it is misleading, for we
could not swing our kettles for fear of the betraying smoke. We sat
down stiffly, for the ground was still wet from the night dew, and we
passed our bags of dried maize and jerked meat from hand to hand. I
made some ado to eat cheerfully, for I saw that the men were surly from
this unnecessary hardship. The western Indians were friendly, and if
we had not had this incubus of an Englishman on our hands we should
have had fire and song, a boiling pot, and roasting maize cakes. There
was no muttering among the men, for I was there, but they looked
glowering, and drew away.
The Englishman ate in silence. I was too ruffled and crossgrained to
talk to him, but I could not keep myself from watching him. His eyes
were less sad than I had thought. I could imagine that they might
easily be merry. But they were watchful eyes. He saw the discontent
among the men, and finally he rose and went to them. I followed him
with some warning in my look, for I thought that he was vexed, and I
knew that his tongue was sharp, but I realized in a moment that his
brain was in control and that he was safe.
"I have brought you all discomfort," he said, with a shake of the head,
and his slow French gave his words more meaning than they perhaps
deserved. "I regret this. It is hard for me to bear, for it is new to
me to be a burden. But what can I do? I cannot go away. I am not
enamored of this voyage, for I do not like being thrust upon your
company, but you saved my life, and I have no right to throw away what
you went to such lengths to preserve. What would you have me do?"
The oafs exchanged glances. They spoke after a minute in a united,
disjointed grumble.
"You don't work."
The Englishman looked at them and at me. I realized that he was
curiously slight and young, and that we seemed hostile. That was
hardly just, and I was ready to go to his rescue. But he turned from
me to the men.
"It is true that I work very badly," he said. "I do not know how. But
men are born of women, and--well, what a man can do I can learn.
Suppose, now, that I go and relieve Pierre at the watch. If you will
show me what to do I think you will find me teachable. I shall try to
be as little of a burden as possible. Here is my hand on it." And he
held out his slim palm for their grasp.
Again they stared; but the hand won them. They touched it fumblingly
and were impressed. They were a slow lot, selected for various
purposes other than wit. Their minds moved too sluggishly for swift
reactions, and I dismissed anxiety about them from my mind.
The Englishman turned to me. "Will you conduct me to the shore? I
will take Pierre's place."
It was my turn to stare. "Suppose you conduct yourself," was on my
tongue, but I let it escape unsaid. "Come, then," I answered, with a
shrug.
I led the way over logs and under bushes, and the Englishman followed
silently; silently at least as to his tongue, but his feet were
garrulous. They stepped on twigs, stumbled on slippery lichen, and
shouted their passage for rods around.
"I would rather lead a buffalo in tether," I fretted, and just as I
said it he completed the sum of his blundering by catching his toe in a
root and plunging head foremost to the ground. I pulled him up by the
sleeve of his skin blouse and shook him free from loam and twigs.
"Now will you stop that?" I cried.
He looked at me gravely, unabashed, but curious. "I did not fall
purposely to irritate you. Gravity, which, I understand, operates
alike on the learned and the foolish, had some share in it. Why are
you angry?"
"Why are you reckless? You have crashed through here as careless of
noise as a stag with the hounds hot behind."
He dropped to the ground, and took one slim moccasined foot in his
hand. He looked at it soberly. "It seems a small thing, does it not,
to cause so much ill-will between us? It has neither weight nor mental
force above it, that it should make the earth tremble. No, monsieur,
you are searching for excuses for your annoyance with me. You are
annoyed all the time. I vex you by my silence, still more by my
speech. We are to be some time together, and I do not want to be a
constant canker. Is it not possible for you to forget me, to ignore
me?"
I saw he was in earnest. "And so you really do not know what irritated
me? Are you so little of a woodsman?"
"I have never traveled through the woods."
I gave him a dubious glance. "Yet you were weeks with the Hurons after
your capture."
I saw him set his teeth hard as if at a memory. "We traveled by water
ways. I was little on the shore except at night."
A sudden picture sickened me. The nightly camp and this slender lad
with his curious air of daintiness, and the great oily Hurons lounging
in the dirt and smoke.
"Were they cruel to you?" I broke out.
He shook his head. "No," he said, with the air of justice I had liked
in him heretofore; "no, they were not cruel. Indeed they were almost
kind, in that they left me a great deal alone. I feared from the
clemency they showed me that they were reserving me for torture."
I eyed him with some skepticism. "It was not the Hurons, but their
rivals, the Ottawas, who would have sent you to the stake," I explained
curtly. "The Hurons--those of the Baron's band--would have held you as
a hostage,--perhaps as a deputy."
He looked up with interested eyes. "You are playing some political
game, and these tribes are your counters. I should like to understand."
I examined his look, but could make nothing of it. "You will pardon
me, monsieur," I said with a shrug, "but these are troublous times, and
I find it hard to believe you as ignorant as you seem."
He still met my look. "And if I were not ignorant?" he asked. "Could
I, one Englishman, alone and unarmed, accomplish anything that would
hurt you? You see that I am harmless. Why not be friends?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"So you are determined that I am a secret ambassador," he meditated.
"Well, I must act my part with dignity. And you think we cannot be
comrades? I dislike to irritate you as I do."
I answered him soberly. "We will be partners," I agreed; "friends for
the night's bivouac, willing to help and to share."
"But you will not trust me?"
I looked away. "What would a truce between us mean? You are English,
I, French. Be assured that sooner or later the fox eats the hen."
He laughed. "Who is to be the fox?" He jumped to his feet.
"Partners, then, it shall be. A strange creed. A helping hand to-day
and a knife in the back to-morrow. But I shall follow you, monsieur."
"You will follow?"
"In this path as in others. If you refuse to admit even a truce
between us, I agree. I shall keep out of your way as much as possible.
Only--I would not have you think me ungrateful."
I could never forbear a smile when he was serious. "We shall probably
think very little about each other," I said comfortably. "Once settled
into routine we shall have work to fill our thought. You will learn to
do your share. I think you willing."
"Indeed I am willing, monsieur."
"Good. So we shall work hard, sleep early, and the months will pass
before we know. Let us not talk of trust or friendship, since our ways
are divided."
He bowed. "You are right, monsieur. And I meant only this,--I will
try not to be an irritation. You will try not to think of me as such.
You agree?"
I smiled again. "Yes. Partners for the night," I reminded him. "I am
gratified, Monsieur Starling, that you see the matter so reasonably.
There is a gulf between us, and we cannot change it." We did not speak
again till we reached Pierre at the shore.