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[Illustration: “THAT WAS THE MOMENT OF LIFE”]
MACKINAC AND
LAKE STORIES
By
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
TO
My Dear Daughter
HAZEL
THE COMPANION OF ALL MY JOURNEYS
CONTENTS
PAGE
MARIANSON 1
THE BLACK FEATHER 20
THE COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN 34
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND 54
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE 69
THE KING OF BEAVER 89
BEAVER LIGHTS 118
A BRITISH ISLANDER 137
THE CURSED PATOIS 151
THE MOTHERS OF HONORÉ 170
THE BLUE MAN 187
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL 202
ILLUSTRATIONS
“THAT WAS THE MOMENT OF LIFE” _Frontispiece_
“SHE LAY BREATHING LIKE AN INFANT” 4
THE TRAIN-AU-GALISE 56
“‘I THINK THE CAMP GO AROUND AND AROUND ME’” 60
“‘I HAVE ALWAYS PRAYED THIS PRAYER ALONE’” 102
“IT'S BROTHER STRANG SERENADING” 104
“‘YOU WILL GIVE YOURSELF TO ME NOW?’” 111
“‘LET ME LOOSE!’ STRUGGLED EMELINE” 115
I WAS STARTLED TO SEE HER RUSH AT THE
CAPTAIN 140
THE QUARTERS 144
“HE APPEARED AT THE DOOR, AND IT WAS HONORÉ” 186
MARIANSON
When the British landed on the west side of Mackinac Island at three
o'clock in the morning of July 17, 1812, Canadians were ordered to
transport the cannon. They had only a pair of six-pounders, but these
had to be dragged across the long alluvial stretch to heights which
would command the fortress, and sand, rock, bushes, trees, and fallen
logs made it a dreadful portage. Voyageurs, however, were men to
accomplish what regulars and Indians shirked.
All but one of the hundred and sixty Canadians hauled with a good will
on the cannon ropes. The dawn was glimmering. Paradise hid in the
untamed island, breathing dew and spice. The spell worked instantly
upon that one young voyageur whose mind was set against the secret
attack. All night his rage had been swelling. He despised the British
regulars—forty-two lords of them only being in this expedition—as they
in turn despised his class. They were his conquerors. He had no desire
to be used as means of pushing their conquest further. These islanders
he knew to be of his own race, perhaps crossed with Chippewa blood.
Seven hundred Indians, painted and horned for war, skulked along as
allies in the dim morning twilight. He thought of sleeping children
roused by tomahawk and scalping-knife in case the surprised fort did
not immediately surrender. Even then, how were a few hundred white men
to restrain nearly a thousand savages?
The young Canadian, as a rush was made with the ropes, stumbled over a
log and dropped behind a bush. His nearest companions scarcely noticed
the desertion in their strain, but the officer instantly detailed an
Indian.
“One of you Sioux bring that fellow back or bring his scalp.”
A Sioux stretched forward and leaped eagerly into the woods. All the
boy's years of wilderness training were concentrated on an escape. The
English officer meant to make him a lesson to the other voyageurs. And
he smiled as he thought of the race he could give the Sioux. All his
arms except his knife were left behind the bush; for fleetness was to
count in this venture. The game of life or death was a pretty one, to
be enjoyed as he shot from tree to tree, or like a noiseless-hoofed
deer made a long stretch of covert. He was alive through every blood
drop. The dewy glory of dawn had never seemed so great. Cool as the
Sioux whom he dodged, his woodsman's eye gathered all aspects of the
strange forest. A detached rock, tall as a tree, raised its colossal
altar, surprising the eye like a single remaining temple pillar. Old
logs, scaled as in a coat of mail, testified to the humidity of this
lush place. The boy trod on sweet white violets smelling of incense.
The wooded deeps unfolded in thinning dusk and revealed a line of high
verdant cliffs walling his course. He dashed through hollows where
millions of ferns bathed him to the knees. As daylight grew—though
it never was quite daylight there—so did his danger. He expected to
hear the humming of an arrow, and perhaps to feel a shock and sting
and cleaving of the bolt, and turned in recklessly to climb for the
uplands, where after miles of jutting spurs the ridge stooped and
pushed out in front of itself a round-topped rock. As the Canadian
passed this rock a yellow flare like candle-light came through a crack
at its base.
He dropped on all-fours. The Indian was not in sight. He squirmed
within a low battlement of serrated stone guarding the crack, and let
himself down into what appeared to be the mouth of a cave. The opening
was so low as to be invisible just outside the serrated breastwork.
He found himself in a room of rock, irregularly hollow above, with a
candle burning on the stone floor. As he sat upright and stretched
forth a hand to pinch off the flame, the image of a sleeping woman was
printed on his eyeballs so that he saw every careless ring of fair
hair around her head and every curve of her body for hours afterwards
in the dusk.
His first thought was to place himself where his person would
intercept any attack at the mouth of the cave. Knife in hand, he
waited for a horned, glittering-eyed face to stoop or an arrow or
hatchet to glance under that low rim, the horizon of his darkness.
His chagrin at having taken to a trap and drawn danger on a woman was
poignant; the candle had caught him like a moth, and a Sioux would
keenly follow. Still, no lightest step betrayed the Sioux's knowledge
of his whereabouts. A long time passed before he relaxed to an easy
posture and turned to the interior of the cave.
The drip of a veiled water-vein at the rear made him conscious of
thirst, but the sleeping woman was in the way of his creeping to
take a drink. Wrapped in a fur robe, she lay breathing like an
infant, white-skinned, full-throated, and vigorous, a woman older
than himself. The consequences of her waking did not threaten him as
perilous. Without reasoning, he was convinced that a woman who lay
down to sleep beside a burning candle in this wild place would make
no outcry when she awoke and found the light had drawn instead of
kept away possible cave-inhabitants. Day grew beyond the low sill
and thinned obscurity around him; showing the swerve of the roof to
a sloping shelf. Perspiration cooled upon him and he shivered. A
fire and a breakfast would have been good things, which he had often
enjoyed in danger. Rowing all night, and landing cannon at the end of
it, and running a league or more for life, exhausted a man.
[Illustration: “SHE LAY BREATHING LIKE AN INFANT”]
The woman stirred, and the young voyageur thought of dropping his
knife back into its sheath. At the slight click she sat up, drawing in
her breath.
He whispered: “Do not be afraid. I have not come in here to hurt you.”
She was staring at him, probably taking him for some monster of the
dark.
“Have you anything here to eat?”
The woman resumed her suspended breath, and answered in the same
guarded way, and in French like his: “Yes. I come to this part of the
island so often that I have put bread and meat and candles in the
cave. How did you find it? No one but myself knew about it.”
“I saw the candle-light.”
“The candle was to keep off evil spirits. It has been blown out. Where
did you come from?”
“From St. Joseph Island last night with the English. They have taken
the island by surprise.”
She unexpectedly laughed in a repressed gurgle, as a faun or other
woods creature might have laughed at the predicaments of men.
“I am thinking of the stupid American soldiers—to lie asleep and let
the British creep in upon them. But have you seen my cow? I searched
everywhere, until the moon went down and I was tired to death, for my
cow.”
“No, I saw no cow. I had the Sioux to watch.”
“What Sioux?”
“The Indian our commandant sent after me. Speak low. He may be
listening outside.”
They themselves listened.
“If Indians have come on the island they will kill all the cattle.”
“There are the women and children and men—even poor voyageurs—for them
to kill first.”
She gasped, “Is it war?”
“Yes, it is war.”
“I never have seen war. Why did you come here?”
“I did not want to, mademoiselle, and I deserted. That is why the
Indian was sent after me.”
“Do not call me mademoiselle. I am Marianson Bruelle, the widow of
André Chenier. Our houses will be burned, and our gardens trampled,
and our boats stolen.”
“Not if the fort surrenders.”
Again they harkened to the outside world in suspense. The deserter
had expected to hear cannon before sunlight so slowly crept under
the cave's lip. It was as if they sat within a colossal skull, broad
between the ears but narrowing towards the top, with light coming
through the parted mouth. Accustomed to the soft twilight, the two
could see each other, and the woman covertly put her dress in order
while she talked.
More than fearlessness, even a kind of maternal passion, moved her.
She searched in the back of the cave and handed her strange guest
food, and gathered him a birch cup of water from the dripping rock.
The touch of his fingers sent a new vital thrill through her. Two may
talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really
meet; and two others at first speech are old friends. She did not know
this young voyageur, yet she began to claim him.
He was so tired that the tan of his cheek turned leaden in the cave
gloom. She rose from her bear-skin and spread it for him, when he
finished eating.
“You cannot go out now,” he whispered, when he saw her intention. “The
Sioux is somewhere in the woods watching for me. The Indians came on
this island for scalps. You will not be safe, even in the fort, until
the fight is over, or until night comes again.”
Marianson, standing convinced by what he said, was unable to take
her eyes off him. Mass seemed always irksome to her in spite of the
frequent changes of posture and her conviction that it was good for
her soul. She was at her happiest plunging through woods or panting
up cliffs which squaws dared not scale. Yet enforced hiding with a
stranger all day in the cave was assented to by this active sylvan
creature. She had not a word to say against it, and the danger of
going out was her last thought. The cavern's mouth was a very awkward
opening to crawl through, especially if an Indian should catch one in
the act. There was nothing to do but to sit down and wait.
A sigh of pleasure, as at inhaling the spirit of a flower, escaped her
lips. This lad, whose presence she knew she would feel without seeing
if he came into church behind her, innocent of the spell he was
casting, still sat guarding the entrance, though the droop of utter
weariness relaxed every posture. Marianson bade him lie down on the
fur robe, and imperiously arranged her lap to hold his head.
“I am maman to you. I say to you sleep, and you shall sleep.”
The appealing and thankful eyes of the boy were closed almost as soon
as he crept upon the robe and his head sunk in its comfortable pillow.
Marianson braced her back against the wall and dropped her hands at
her sides. Occasionally she glanced at the low rim of light. No Indian
could enter without lying flat. She had little dread of the Sioux.
Every globule which fell in darkness from the rock recorded, like the
sand grain of an hour-glass, some change in Marianson.
“I not care for anybody, me,” had been her boast when she tantalized
soldiers on the village street. Her gurgle of laughter, and the
hair blowing on her temples from under the blanket she drew around
her face, worked havoc in Mackinac. To her men were merely useful
objects, like cows, or houses, or gardens, or boats. She hugged the
social liberty of a woman who had safely passed through matrimony
and widowhood. Married to old André Chenier by her parents, that he
might guard her after their death, she loathed the thought of another
wearisome tie, and called it veneration of his departed spirit. He
left her a house, a cow, and a boat. Accustomed to work for him,
she found it much easier to work for herself when he was gone, and
resented having young men hang around desiring to settle in her house.
She laughed at every proposal a father or mother made her. No family
on the island could get her, and all united in pointing her out as a
bad pattern for young women.
A bloom like the rose flushing of early maidenhood came over Marianson
with her freedom. Isolated and daring and passionless, she had no
conception of the scandal she caused in the minds of those who carried
the burdens of the community, but lived like a bird of the air. Wives
who bore children and kept the pot boiling found it hard to see her
tiptoeing over cares which swallowed them. She did not realize that
maids desired to marry and she took their lovers from them.
But knowledge grew in her as she sat holding the stranger's head in
her lap, though it was not a day on which to trouble one's self with
knowledge. There was only the forest's voice outside, that ceaseless
majestic hymn of the trees, accompanied by the shore ripple, which was
such a little way off. Languors like the sweet languors of spring came
over her. She was happier than she had ever been before in her life.
“It is delicious,” she thought. “I have been in the cave many times,
but it will never be like this again.”
And it was a strange joy to find the touch of a human being something
to delight in. There was sweet wickedness in it; penance might have
to follow. What would the curé say if he saw her? To amuse one's self
with soldiers and islanders was one thing; to sit tranced all day in a
cave with a stranger must be another.
There was a rough innocence in his relaxed body—beautiful as the
virgin softness of a girl. Under the spell of his unconscious
domination, she did not care about his past. Her own past was nothing.
She had arrived in the present. Time stood still. His face was turned
towards her, and she studied all its curves, yet knew if he had other
features he would still be the one person in the world who could so
draw her. What was the power? Had women elsewhere felt it? At that
thought she had a pang of anguish and rage altogether new to her.
Marianson was tender even in her amusements; her benevolence extended
to dumb cattle; but in the hidden darkness of her consciousness she
found herself choosing the Sioux for him, rather than a woman.
Once he half raised his head, but again let it sink to its rest.
Marianson grew faint; and as the light waned at the cave mouth she
remembered she had not eaten anything that day. The fast made her seem
fit to say prayers, and she said all she knew over his head, like a
mother brooding.
He startled her by sitting up, without warning, fully roused and alert.
“What time is it?” inquired the boy.
“Look at the door. The sun has long been behind the trees.”
“Have I slept all day?”
“Perhaps.”
“And have you heard no sound of battle?”
“It has been still as the village street during mass.”
“What, then, have they done, those English? They must have taken the
fort without firing a gun. And the Sioux—you have not seen him?”
“Nothing has passed the cave door, not even a chipmunk.”
He stretched his arms upward into the hollow, standing tall and well
made, his buckskin shirt turned back from his neck.
“I am again hungry.”
“I also,” said Marianson. “I have not eaten anything to-day.”
Her companion dropped on his knees before her and took out of her
hands the food she had ready. His face expressed shame and compunction
as he fed her himself, offering bites to her mouth with gentle
persistence. She laughed the laugh peculiar to herself, and pushed his
hand back to his own lips. So they ate together, and afterwards drank
from the same cup. Marianson showed him where the drops came down,
and he gathered them, smiling at her from the depths of the cave.
They heard the evening cawing of crows, and the waters rushing with a
wilder wash on the beach.
“I will bring more bread and meat when I come back,” promised
Marianson—“unless the English have burned the house.”
“No. When it is dark I will leave the cave myself,” said the voyageur.
“Is there any boat near by that I can take to escape in from the
island?”
“There is my boat. But it is at the post.”
“How far are we from the post?”
“It is not so far if one might cross the island; but to go by the west
shore, which would be safest, perhaps, in time of war, that is the
greater part of the island's girth.”
They drew near together as they murmured, and at intervals he held the
cup to her lips, making up for his forgetfulness when benumbed with
sleep.
“One has but to follow the shore, however,” said the boy. “And where
can I find the boat?”
“You cannot find it at all.”
“But,” he added, with sudden recollection, “I could never return it
again.”
Marianson saw on the cave's rough wall a vision of her boat carrying
him away. Her own little craft, the sail of which she knew how to
trim—her bird, her flier, her food-winner—was to become her robber.
“When the war is over,” she ventured, “then you might come back.”
He began to explain difficulties like an honest lad, and she stopped
him. “I do not want to know anything. I want you to take my boat.”
He put the cup down and seized her hands and kissed them. She crouched
against the cave's side, her eyes closed. If he was only grateful to
her for bread and shelter and means of escape, it was little enough
she received, but his warm touch and his lips on her palms—for he
kissed her palms—made her none the less dizzy.
“Listen to me,” said Marianson. “If I give you my boat, you must do
exactly as I bid you.”
“I promise.”
“You must stay here until I bring it to you. I am going at once.”
“But you cannot go alone in the dark. You are a woman—you will be
afraid.”
“Never in my life have I been afraid.”
“But there are Indians on the war-path now.”
“They will be in camp or drunk at the post. Your Sioux has left this
part of the island. He may come back by morning, but he would not camp
away from so much plunder. Sioux cannot be unlike our Chippewas. Do
you think,” demanded Marianson, “that you will be quite, quite safe in
the cave?”
Her companion laughed.
“If I find the cave unsafe I can leave it; but you in the dark
alone—you must let me go with you.”
“No; the risk is too great. It is better for me to go alone. I know
every rock, every bend of the shore. The pull back around the island
will be hardest, if there is not enough wind.”
“I go with you,” decided the boy.
“But you gave me your promise to do exactly as I bade you. I am older
than you,” said Marianson. “I know what is best, and that is that you
remain here until I come. Swear to me that you will.”
He was silent, beseeching her with his eyes to relent. Then, owning
her right to dominate, he pledged her by the name of his saint to do
as she required.
Their forced companionship, begun at daylight, was ending as darkness
crept through the cavern's mouth. They waited, and those last moments
of silence, while they leaned to look closely at each other with the
night growing between them, were a benediction on the day.
Marianson stooped to creep through the cavern's mouth, but once more
she turned and looked at him, and it was she herself who stretched
appealing arms. The boy's shyness and the woman's aversion to men
vanished as in fire. They stood together in the hollow of the cave in
one long embrace. He sought her mouth and kissed her, and, suffocating
with joy, she escaped through the low door.
Indifferent to the Indian who might be dogging her, she drew her strip
of homespun around her face and ran, moccasined and deft-footed,
over the stones, warm, palpitating, and laughing, full of physical
hardihood. In the woods, on her left, she knew there were rocks
splashed with stain black as ink and crusted with old lichens. On her
right white-caps were running before the west wind and diving like
ducks on the strait. She crossed the threads of a brook ravelling
themselves from density. For the forest was a mask. But Marianson
knew well the tricks of that brook—its pellucid shining on pebbles,
its cascades, its hidings underground of all but a voice and a crystal
pool. Wet to her knees, she had more than once followed it to its
source amid such greenery of moss and logs as seemed a conflagration
of verdure.
The many points and bays of the island sped behind her, and cliffs
crowded her to the water's edge or left her a dim moving object on a
lonesome beach. Sometimes she heard sounds in the woods and listened;
on the other hand, she had the companionship of stars and moving
water. On that glorified journey Marianson's natural fearlessness
carried her past the Devil's Kitchen and quite near the post before
she began to consider how it was best to approach a place which might
be in the hands of an enemy. Her boat was tied at the dock. She had
the half-ruined distillery yet to pass. It had stood under the cliff
her lifetime. As she drew nearer, cracks of light and a hum like
the droning of a beehive magically turned the old distillery into a
caravansary of spirits.
Nothing in her long tramp had startled her like this. It was a relief
to hear the click of metal and a strange-spoken word, and to find
herself face to face with an English soldier. He made no parley, but
marched her before him; and the grateful noise of squalling babies and
maternal protests and Maman Pelott's night lullaby also met her as
they proceeded towards the distillery.
The long dark shed had a chimney-stack and its many-coiled still in
one end. Beside that great bottle-shaped thing, at the base of the
chimney, was an open fireplace piled with flaming sticks, and this had
made the luminous crevices. All Mackinac village was gathered within
the walls, and Marianson beheld a camp supping, putting children to
bed on blankets in corners, sitting and shaking fingers at one another
in wrathful council, or running about in search of lost articles. The
curé was there, keeping a restraint on his people. Clothes hung on
spikes like rows of suicides in the weird light. Even fiddlers and
jollity were not lacking. A heavier race would have come to blows in
that strait enclosure, but these French and half-breeds, in danger
of scalping if the Indians proved turbulent, dried their eyes after
losses, and shook their legs ready for a dance at the scraping of a
violin.
Little Ignace Pelott was directly pulling at Marianson's petticoat to
get attention.
“De Ingins kill our 'effer,” he lamented, in the mongrel speech of the
quarter-breed. “Dey didn't need him; dey have plenty to eat. But dey
kill our 'effer and laugh.”
“My cow, is it also killed, Ignace?”
Marianson's neighbors closed around her, unsurprised at her late
arrival, filled only with the general calamity. Old men's pipe smoke
mingled with odors of food; and when the English soldier had satisfied
himself that she belonged to this caldron of humanity, he lifted the
corners of his nose and returned to open air and guard duty.
The fort had been surrendered without a shot, to save the lives of
the villagers, and they were all hurried to the distillery and put
under guard. They would be obliged to take the oath of allegiance to
England, or leave the island. Michael Dousman, yet held in the enemy's
camp, was fiercely accused of bringing the English upon them. No,
Marianson could not go to the village, or even to the dock.
Everybody offered her food. A boat she did not ask for. The high
cobwebby openings of the distillery looked on a blank night sky.
Marianson felt her happiness jarred as the wonderful day came to such
limits. The English had the island. It might be searched for that
young deserter waiting for her help, and if she failed to get a boat,
what must be his fate?
She had entered the west door of the distillery. She found opportunity
to slip out on the east side, for it was necessary to reach the dock
and get a boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at any cost
she would have, and one was sent her—as to the fearless and determined
all their desires are sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks,
bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of the void of the
lake a keel ran upon pebbles.
So easy had been the conquest of the island, the British regular found
his amusement in his duty, and a boat was taken from the dock to save
half a mile of easy marching. It stood empty and waiting during a lax
minute, while the responsibility of guarding was shifted; but perhaps
being carelessly beached, though there was no tide on the strait, it
drifted away.
Marianson, who had helped it drift, lay flat on the bottom and heard
the rueful oaths of her enemies, forced to march back to the post.
There was no sail. She steered by a trailing oar until lighted
distillery and black cliff receded and it was safe for her to fix her
sculls and row with all her might.
She was so tired her heart physically ached when she slipped
through dawn to a landing opposite the cave. There would be no more
yesterdays, and there would be no time for farewells. The wash which
drove her roughly to mooring drove with her the fact that she did not
know even the name of the man she was about to give up.
Marianson turned and looked at the water he must venture upon, without
a sail to help him. It was not all uncovered from the night, but a
long purple current ran out, as if God had made a sudden amethyst
bridge across the blue strait.
Reluctant as she was to call him from the cave, she dared not delay.
The breath of the virgin woods was overpoweringly sweet. Her hair
clung to her forehead in moist rings, and her cheeks were pallid and
wet with mist which rose and rose on all sides like clouds in a holy
picture.
He was asleep.
She crouched down on cold hands and saw that. He had waited in the
cave as he promised, and had fallen asleep. His back was towards her.
Instead of lying at ease, his body was flexed. Her enlarging pupils
caught a stain of red on the bear-skin, then the scarlet tonsure on
his crown. He was asleep, but the Sioux had been there.
The low song of wind along that wooded ridge, and the roar of dashing
lake water, repeated their monotone hour after hour. It proved as
fair a day as the island had ever seen, and when it was nearly spent,
Marianson Bruelle still sat on the cave floor holding the dead boy in
her arms. Heart-uprooting was a numbness, like rapture. At least he
could not leave her. She had his kiss, his love. She had his body,
to hide in a grave as secret as a flower's. The curé could some time
bless it, but the English who had slain him should never know it. As
she held him to her breast, so the sweet processes of the woods should
hold him, and make him part of the island.
THE BLACK FEATHER
Over a hundred voyageurs were sorting furs in the American Fur
Company's yard, under the supervision of the clerks. And though it
was hard labor, lasting from five in the morning until sunset, they
thought lightly of it as fatigue duty after their eleven months of
toil and privation in the wilderness. Fort Mackinac was glittering
white on the heights above them, and half-way up a paved ascent
leading to the sally-port sauntered 'Tite Laboise. All the voyageurs
saw her; and strict as was the discipline of the yard, they directly
expected trouble.
The packing, however, went on with vigor. Every beaver, marten, mink,
musk-rat, raccoon, lynx, wild-cat, fox, wolverine, otter, badger, or
other skin had to be beaten, graded, counted, tallied in the company's
book, put into press, and marked for shipment to John Jacob Astor in
New York. As there were twelve grades of sable, and eight even of
deer, the grading, which fell to the clerks, was no light task. Heads
of brigades that had brought these furs from the wilderness stood by
to challenge any mistake in the count. It was the height of the fur
season, and Mackinac Island was the front of the world to the two or
three thousand men gathered in for its brief summer.
Axe strokes reverberated from Bois Blanc, on the opposite side of the
strait, and passed echoes from island to island to the shutting down
of the horizon. Choppers detailed to cut wood were getting boat-loads
ready for the leachers, who had hulled corn to prepare for winter
rations. One pint of lyed corn with from two to four ounces of tallow
was the daily allowance of a voyageur, and the endurance which this
food gave him passes belief.
Étienne St. Martin grumbled at it when he came fresh from Canada and
pork eating. “Mange'-du-lard,” his companions called him, especially
Charle' Charette, who was the giant and the wearer of the black
feather in his brigade of a dozen boats. Huge and innocent primitive
man was Charle' Charette. He could sleep under snow-drifts like a
baby, carry double packs of furs, pull oars all day without tiring,
and dance all night after hardships which caused some men to desire
to lie down and die. The summer before, at nineteen years of age,
this light-haired, light-hearted voyageur had been married to 'Tite
Laboise. Their wedding festivities lasted the whole month of the
Mackinac season. His was the Wabash and Illinois River outfit, almost
the last to leave the island; for the Lake Superior, Upper and Lower
Mississippi, Lake of the Woods, and other outfits were obliged to seek
Indian hunting-grounds at the earliest breath of autumn.
When the Illinois brigade returned, his wife, who had stood weeping
in the cheering crowd while his companions made islands ring with
the boat-song at departure, refused to see him. He went to the house
of her aunt Laboise, where she lived. Mademoiselle Laboise, her
half-breed cousin, met him. This educated young lady, daughter of a
French father and Chippewa mother, was dignified as a nun in her dress
of blue broadcloth embroidered with porcupine quills. She was always
called Mademoiselle Laboise, while the French girl was called merely
'Tite. Because 'Tite was married, no one considered her name changed
to Madame Charette. To her husband himself she was 'Tite Laboise, the
most aggravating, delicious, unaccountable creature in the Northwest.
“She says she will not see you, Charle',” said Mademoiselle Laboise,
color like sunset vermilion showing in the delicate aboriginal face.
“What have I done?” gasped the voyageur.
Mademoiselle lifted French shoulders with her father's gesture. She
did not know.
“Did I expect to be treated this way?” shouted the injured husband.
“Who can ever tell what 'Tite will do next?”
That was the truth. No one could tell. Yet her flightiest moods were
her most alluring moods. If she had not been so pretty and so adroit
at dodging whippings when a child, 'Tite Laboise might not have set
Mackinac by the ears as often as she did. But her husband could not
comfort himself with this thought as he turned to the shop of madame
her aunt, who was also a trader.
It had surprised the Indian widow, who betrothed her own daughter to
the commandant of the fort, that her husband's niece would have nobody
but that big voyageur Charle' Charette. Though in those days of the
young century a man might become anything; for the West was before
him, an empire, and woodcraft was better than learning. Madame Laboise
accepted her niece's husband with kindness. Her house was among the
most hospitable in Mackinac, and she was chagrined at the reception
the young man had met.
He sat down on her counter, whirling his cap and caressing the black
feather in it. The gentle Chippewa woman could see that his childish
pride in this trophy was almost as great as his trouble. What had
'Tite lacked? he wanted to know. Had he not good credit at the stores?
Tonnerre!—if madame would pardon him—was not his entire year's wage at
the girl's service? Had he spent money on himself, except for tobacco
and necessary buckskins? Madame knew a voyageur was allowed to carry
scarce twenty pounds of baggage in the boats.
Did 'Tite want a better man? Let madame look at the black feather in
his cap. The crow did not fly that could furnish a quill he could not
take from any man in his brigade. Charle' threw out the arch of his
beautiful torso. And he loved her. Madame knew what tears he had shed,
what serenades he had played on his fiddle under 'Tite's window, and
how he had outdanced her other partners. He dropped his head on his
breast and picked at the crow's feather.
The widow Laboise pitied him. But who could account for 'Tite's
whims? “When she heard the boats were in sight she was frantic with
joy. I myself,” asserted madame, “saw her clapping her hands when we
could catch the song of the returning voyageurs. It was then 'Oh, my
Charle'! my Charle'!' But scarce have the men leaped on the dock when
off she goes and locks the door of her bedroom. It is 'Tite. I can say
no more.”
“What offended her?”
“I know of nothing. You have been as good a husband as a voyageur
could be. And Mackinac is so dull in winter she can amuse herself but
little. It was hard for her to wait your return. Now she will not look
at you. It is very silly.”
What would Madame Laboise advise him to do?
Madame would advise him to wait as if nothing had occurred. The
curé would admonish 'Tite if she continued her sulking. In the mean
time he must content himself with tenting or lodging among his
fellow-voyageurs.
Of the two or three thousand voyageurs and clerks, one hundred lived
in the agency house, five hundred were accommodated in barracks,
but the majority found shelter in tents and in the houses of the
villagers. Every night of the fur-trading month there was a ball in
Mackinac, given either by the householders or their guests; and it
often happened that a man spent in one month all he had earned by his
year of tremendous and far-reaching toil. But he had society, and
what was to him the cream of existence, while it lasted. He fitted
himself out with new shirts and buckskins, sashes, caps, neips, and
moccasins, and when he was not on duty showed himself like a hero,
knife in sheath, a weather-browned and sinewy figure. To dance, sing,
drink, and play the violin, and have the scant dozen white women,
the half-breeds, and squaws of Mackinac admire him, was a voyageur's
heaven—its brief duration being its charm. For he was a born woodsman
and loved his life.
Charle' Charette did not care where he lodged. Neither had he any
heart to dance, until he looked through the door of the house where
festivities began that season and saw 'Tite Laboise footing it with
Étienne St. Martin. Parbleu! With Étienne St. Martin, the squab
little lard-eater whose brother, Alexis St. Martin, had been put into
doctors' books on account of having his stomach partly shot away, and
a valve forming over the rent so that his digestion could be watched.
It was disgusting. 'Tite would not speak to her own husband, but she
would come out before all Mackinac and dance with any other voyageurs
who crowded about her. Charle' sprang into the house himself, and
without looking at his wife, hilariously led other women to the best
places, and danced with every sinuous and graceful curve of his body.
'Tite did not look at him. From the corner of his eye he noted how
perfect she was, the fiend! and how well she had dressed herself on
his money. All the brigades knew his trouble by that time, and an easy
breath was drawn by his entertainers when he left the house with knife
still sheathed. In the wilderness the will of a brigade commander
was law; but when the voyageur was out of the Fur Company's yard in
Mackinac his own will was law.
One of the cautious clerks suggested that Charle and Étienne be
separated in their work, since it was likely the husband might quarrel
with 'Tite Laboise's dancing partner.
“Turn 'em in together, man,” chuckled the Scotch agent, Robert Stuart,
who had charge of the outside work. “Let 'em fight. Man Gurdon, I
havena had any sport with these wild lads since the boats came in.”
But the combatants he hoped to see worked steadily until afternoon
without coming to the grip. They had no brute Anglo-Saxon antagonism,
and being occupied with different bales, did not face each other.
The triple row of Indian lodges basked on the incurved beach, where a
thousand Indians had gathered to celebrate that vivid month. Night and
day the thump of their drums and the monotonous chant of their dances
could be heard above the rush and whisper of blue water breaking on
pebbles.
Lake Michigan was a deep sapphire color, and from where she stood
below the sally-port 'Tite Laboise could see the mainland's rim of
beach and slopes of forest near and distinct in transparent light.
And she could hear the farthest shaking of echoes from island to
island like a throb of some sublime wind instrument. The whitewashed
block-house at the west angle of the fort shone a marble turret. There
was a low meadow between the Fur Company's yard and pine heights.
Though no salt tang came in the wind, it blew sweet, refreshing the
men at their dog-day labor. And all the spell of that island, which
since it rose from the water it has held, lay around them.
Étienne St. Martin picked up a beaver-skin, and in the sight of 'Tite
Laboise her husband laid hold of it.
“Release that, Mange'-du-lard,” he said.
“Eh bien!” responded Étienne, knowing that he was challenged and the
eyes of the whole yard were on him. “This fine crow he claims all
Mackinac because he carries a black feather in his cap. There are
black feathers in other brigades.”
“But you never wore one in any brigade.”
They dropped the skin and faced each other, feeling the fastenings of
their belts. Old Robert Stuart slipped up a window in the office and
grinned slyly out at the men surging towards that side of the yard. He
would not usually permit a breach of discipline. But the winter had
been so long!
“Myself I have no need of black feathers.” Étienne gave an insolent
cast of the eye to the height where 'Tite Laboise stood.
Charle', magnificent of inches, scorned his less-developed antagonist.
“Eh, man Gurdon,” softly called old Robert Stuart from his window,
“set them to it, will ye? The lads will be jawing till the morn's
morn.”
This equivocal order had little effect on the ordained course of a
voyageur's quarrel.
“These St. Martins without stomachs, how is a man to hit them?—pouf!”
said Charle', and Étienne felt on his tender spot the cruel allusion
to his brother Alexis, whose stomach had been made public property. He
began to shed tears of wrath.
“I will take your scalp for that! As for the black feather, I trample
it under my foot!”
“Let me see you trample it. And my head is not so easily scalped as
your brother's stomach.”
All the time they were dancing around each other in graceful and
menacing feints. But now they clinched, and Charle' Charette, when the
struggle had lasted two or three minutes, took his antagonist like a
puppy and flung him revolving to the ground. He hitched his belt and
glanced up towards the sally-port as he stood back laughing.
Étienne was on foot with a tiger's bound. He had no chance with the
wearer of the black feather, as everybody in the yard knew, and
usually a beaten antagonist was ready to shake hands after a few
trials of strength. But he seized one of the knives used in opening
packs and struck at the victor's side. As soon as he had struck
and the bloody knife came back in his hand he crouched and rolled
his eyes around in apology. No man was afraid of shedding blood in
those days, but he felt he had gone too far—that his quarrel was
not sufficiently grounded. He heard a woman's scream, and the sharp
checking exclamation of his master, and felt himself seized on each
side. There was much confusion in his mind and in the yard, but he
knew 'Tite Laboise flew through the gate and past him, and he tried to
propitiate her by a look.
“Pig!” she projected at him like a missile, and he sat down on the
ground between the guards who were trying to hold him up and wept
copiously.
“I didn't want to have trouble with that Charle' Charette and that
'Tite Laboise,” explained Étienne. “And I don't want any black
feather. It was my brother's stomach. On account of my brother's
stomach I have to fight. If they do not let my brother's stomach
alone, I will have to kill the whole brigade.”
But Charle' Charette walked into the Fur Company's building feeling
nothing but disdain for the puny stock of St. Martin, as he held out
his arm and let the blood drip from a little wound that stained his
calico shirt-sleeve. The very neips around his ankles seemed to tingle
with desire to kick poor Étienne.
It was not necessary to send for the surgeon of the fort. Robert
Stuart dressed the wound, salving it with the rebukes which he knew
discipline demanded, and making them as strong as his own enjoyment
had been. He promised to break the head of every voyageur in the yard
with a board if another quarrel occurred. And he pretended not to see
the culprit's trembling wife, that little besom whose caprices had set
the men by the ears ever since she was old enough to know the figures
of a dance, yet for whom he and Mrs. Stuart had a warm corner in their
hearts. She had caused the first fracas of the season, moreover. He
went out and slammed the office door, ordering the men away from it.
“Bring me yon Étienne St. Martin,” commanded Mr. Stuart, preparing his
arsenal of strong language. “I'll have a word with yon carl for this.”
The noise of the one-sided conflict could be heard in the office, but
'Tite remained as if she heard nothing, with her head and arms on the
desk. Her husband took up the cap with the black feather, which he had
thrown off in the presence of his superior. He rested it against his
side, his elbow pointing a triangle, and waited aggressively for her
to speak. The back of her pretty neck and fine tendrils of curly hair
ruffled above it were very moving; but his heart swelled indignantly.
“'Tite Laboise, why did you shut the door in my face when I came back
to you after a year's absence?”
She answered faintly, “Me, I don't know.”
“And dance with Étienne St. Martin until I am obliged to whip him?”
“Me, I don't know.”
“Yes, you do know. You have concealments,” he accused, and she made no
defence. “This is the case: you run to the dock to see the boats come
in; you are joyful until you watch me step ashore; I look for 'Tite;
her back is disappearing at the corner of the street. Eh bien! I say,
she would rather meet me in the house. I fly to the house. My wife
refuses to see me.”
'Tite made no answer.
“What have I done?” Charle' spread his hands. “My commandant has no
complaint to make of me. It is Charle' Charette who leads on the trail
or breaks a road where there is none, and carries the heaviest pack
of furs, and pulls men out of the water when they are drowning; it
is Charle' Charette who can best endure fasting when the rations run
low, and can hunt and bring in meat when other voyageurs lie exhausted
about the camp-fire. I am no little lard-eater from Canada, brother to
a man with a stomach having no lid. Look at that.” Charle' shook the
decorated cap at her. “I wear the black feather of my brigade. That
means that I am the best man in it.”
His wife reared her head. She was like the wild sweet-brier roses
which crowded alluvial strips of the island, fragrant and pink and
bristling. “Yes, monsieur, that black feather—regard it. Me, I am
sick of that black feather. You say I have concealments. I have. All
winter I go lonely. The ice is massed on the lake; the snow is so
deep, the wind is keener than a knife; I weep for my husband away
in the wilderness, believing he thinks of me. Eh bien! he comes back
to Mackinac. It is as you say: I fly to meet him, my breath chokes
me. But my husband, what does he do?” She looked him up and down with
wrathful eyes. “He does not see 'Tite. He sees nothing but that black
feather in his cap that he must take off and show to Monsieur Ramsay
Crooks and Monsieur Stuart—while his wife suffocates.”
Charle' shrunk from his height, and his mouth opened like a fish's.
“But I thought you would be proud of it.”
“Me, what do I care how many men you have thrown down? You do not
like me any better because you have thrown down all the men in your
brigade.”
“She is jealous—jealous of a feather!”
Humbled as he was by her tongue, the young voyageur felt delighted at
giving his wife so trivial a rival.
He settled his belt and approached her and bowed. “Madame, permit me
to offer you this black quill, which I have won for your sake, and
which I boasted of to my masters that they might know you have not
thrown yourself away on the poorest creature in Mackinac. Destroy it,
madame. It was only the poor token of my love for you.”
Graceful and polite as all the voyageurs were, Charle' Charette was
the prince of them with his big sweet presence as he bent. 'Tite flew
at him and flung her arms around his neck. After the manner of Latin
peoples, they instantly shed tears upon each other, and the black
feather was crushed between their breasts.
THE COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
Early in the Mackinac summer Owen Cunning took his shoemaker's bench
and all his belongings to that open cavern on the beach called the
Devil's Kitchen, which was said to derive its name from former
practices of the Indians. They roasted prisoners there. The inner rock
retained old smoke-stains.
Though appearing a mere hole in the cliff to passing canoe-men, the
Devil's Kitchen was really as large as a small cabin, rising at least
seven feet from a floor which sloped down towards the water. Overhead,
through an opening which admitted his body, Owen could reach a natural
attic, just large enough for his bed if he contented himself with
blankets. And an Irishman prided himself on being tough as any French
voyageur who slept blanketed on snow in the winter wilderness.
The rock was full of pockets, enclosing pebbles and fragments. By
knocking out the contents of these, Owen made cupboards for his food.
As for clothes, what Mackinac-Islander of the working-class, in
those days of the Fur Company's prosperity, needed more than he had
on? When his clothes wore out, Owen could go to the traders and buy
more. He washed his other shirt in the lake at his feet, and hung it
on the cedars to dry by his door. Warm evenings, when the sun had
soaked itself in limpid ripples until its crimson spread through them
afar, Owen stripped himself and went bathing, with strong snorts of
enjoyment as he rose from his plunge. The narrow lake rim was littered
with fragments which had once filled the cavern. Two large pieces
afforded him a table and a seat for his visitors.
Owen had a choice of water for his drinking. Not thirty feet away on
his right a spring burst from the cliff and gushed through its little
pool down the beach. It was cold and delicious.
In the east side of the Kitchen was a natural tiny fireplace a couple
of feet high, screened by cedar foliage from the lake wind. Here Owen
cooked his meals, and the smoke was generally carried out from his
flueless hearth. The straits were then full of fish, and he had not
far to throw his lines to reach deep water.
Dependent on the patronage of Mackinac village, the Irishman had
chosen the very shop which would draw notice upon himself. His
customers tramped out to him along a rough beach under the heights,
which helped to wear away the foot-gear Owen mended. They stood
grinning amiably at his snug quarters. It was told as far as Drummond
Island and the Sault that a cobbler lived in the Devil's Kitchen on
Mackinac.
He was a happy fellow, his clean Irish skin growing rosier in air pure
as the air of mid-ocean. The lake spread in variegated copper lights
almost at his feet. He did not like Mackinac village in summer, when
the engagés were all back, and Indians camped tribes strong on the
beach, to receive their money from the government. French and savages
shouldered one another, the multitude of them making a great hubbub
and a gay show of clothes like a fair. Every voyageur was sparring
with every other voyageur. A challenge by the poke of a fist, and lo!
a ring is formed and two are fighting. The whipped one gets up, shakes
hands with his conqueror, and off they go to drink together. Owen
despised such fighting. His way was to take a club and break heads,
and see some blood run on the ground. It was better for him to dwell
alone than to be stirred up and left unsatisfied.