him as he sat stitching on a pair of deer-hide shoes for one Léon
Baudette, an engagé, who was homesick for Montreal. The lowering
sun smote an hour-glass of light across the strait which separated
him from St. Ignace on the north shore, the old Jesuit station.
Mother-of-pearl clouds hung over the southern mainland, and the wash
of the lake, which was as pleasant as silence itself, diverted his
mind from a distant thump of Indian drums. He knew how lazy, naked
warriors lay in their lodges, bumping a mallet on stretched deer-hide
and droning barbarous monotones while they kicked their heels in
air. If he despised anything more than the way the French diverted
themselves, it was the way the Indians diverted themselves.
Without a sound there came into Owen's view on the right an Indian
girl. He was at first taken by surprise at her coming over the moss of
the spring. The shaggy cliff, clothed, like the top of his cave, with
cedars, white birch, and pine, afforded no path to the beach in that
direction. All his clients approached by the lake margin at the left.
Then he noticed it was Blackbird, a Sac girl, who had been pointed out
to his critical eye the previous summer as a beauty. Owen admitted
she was not bad-looking for a squaw. Her burnished hair, which had
got her the name, was drawn down to cheeks where copper and vermilion
infused the skin with a wonderful sunset tint. She was neatly and
precisely dressed in the woman's skirt and jacket of her tribe, even
her moccasins showing no trace of the scramble she must have had down
some secret cliff descent in order to approach the cobbler unseen.
He greeted her with the contemptuous affability which an Irishman
bestows upon a heathen. Blackbird was probably a good communicant of
some wilderness mission, but this brought her no nearer to a son of
Ireland.
“Good-day to the quane! And what may she be wanting the day?”
Blackbird's eyes, without the snake-restlessness of her race, dwelt
unmoving upon him. Owen surmised she could not understand his or any
other kind of English, being accustomed to no tongue but her own,
except the French which the engagés talked in their winter camps. She
stood upright as a pine without answering.
It flashed through him that there might be trouble in the village; and
Blackbird, having regard for him, as we think it possible any human
being may have for us, was there to bid him escape. With coldness
around the roots of his hair, he remembered the massacre at Fort
Michilimackinac—a spot almost in sight across the strait, where south
shore approaches north shore at the mouth of Lake Michigan. He laid
down his boot. His lips dropped apart, and with a hush of the sound—if
such a sound can be hushed—he imitated the Indian war-whoop.
Blackbird did not smile at the uncanny screech, but she relaxed her
face in stoic amusement, relieving Owen's tense breathing. There was
no plot. The tribes merely intended to draw their money, get as drunk
as possible, and depart in peace at the end of the month with various
outfits to winter posts.
“Begorra, but that was a narrow escape!” sighed Owen, wiping his
forehead on his sleeve. He was able to detect the deference that
Blackbird paid him by this visit. He sat on his bench in the Kitchen,
a sunny idol in a shrine, indifferent to the effect his background
gave him.
His mouth puckered. He put up his leather stained hand coyly, and
motioned her unmoving figure back.
“Ah, go 'way! Wasn't it to escape you and the likes of you that I
made me retrate to the shore? Nayther white, full haythen, half,
nor quarther nade apply. To come makin' the big eyes at me, and the
post swarmin' wid thim that do be ready to marry on any woman at the
droppin' of the hat!”
Mobile blue water with ripple and wash made a background for the
Indian girl's dense repose. She could by lifting her eyes see the
pock-marked front of Owen's Kitchen, and gnarled roots like exposed
ribs in the shaggy heights above. But she kept her eyes lowered; and
Owen stuck his feet under his bench, sensitive to defects in his
foot-wear, which an artist skilled in making and mending moccasins
could detect.
Blackbird moved forward and laid a shining dot on the stone he used as
his table; then, without a word, she turned and disappeared the way
she came, over the moss of the spring rivulet.
Owen left his bench and craned after her. He did not hear a pebble
roll on the stony beach or a twig snap among foliage.
“Begorra, it's the wings of a say-gull!” said Owen, and he took up
her offering. It was a tiny gold coin. Mackinac was full of gold the
month the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from Washington, under
the escort of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed
out to each red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due
proportion, and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants,
for a little pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an
old coin with a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear;
the precious trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the
outline of a bird.
“Begorra!” said Owen. He hid it in one of the rock pockets, a trust
in a savings-bank, and sat down again to work, trying to discover
Blackbird's object in offering tribute to him.
About sunset he lighted a fire in his low grate to cook his supper,
and put the finished boots in a remote corner of the cave until he
should get his pay. As he expected, Léon Baudette appeared, picking
a barefooted way along the beach, with many complimentary greetings.
The wary cobbler stood between the boots and his client, and responded
with open cordiality. A voyageur who gave flesh and bone and sometimes
life itself for a hundred dollars a year, and drank that hundred
dollars up during his month of semi-civilization on Mackinac, seldom
had much about him with which to pay for his necessary mending.
Léon Baudette swore at the price, being a discontented engagé. But the
foot-wear he was obliged to have, being secretly determined to desert
to Canada before the boats went out. You may see his name marked
as a deserter in the Fur Company's books at Mackinac Island. So,
reluctantly counting out the money, he put on his shoes and crossed
his legs to smoke and chat, occupying the visitor's seat. Owen put his
kettle to boil, and sat down also to enjoy society; for why should man
be hurried?
He learned how many fights had been fought that day; how many bales
of furs were packed in the Company's yard; that Étienne St. Martin
was trying to ship with the Northern instead of the Illinois Brigade,
on account of a grudge against Charle' Charette. He learned that the
Indians were having snake and medicine dances to cure a consumptive
chief. And, to his surprise, he learned that he was considered a
medicine-man among the tribes, on account of his living unmolested in
the Devil's Kitchen.
“O oui,” declared Léon. “You de wizard. You only play you mend de
shoe; but, by gar, you make de poor voyageur pay de same like it was
work! I hear dey call you Big Medicine of de Cuisine Diable.”
Owen was compelled to smile with pleasure at his importance, his long
upper lip lifting its unshaven bristles in a white curd.
“Do ye moind, Leen me boy, a haythen Injun lady by the name of
Blackbird?”
“Me, I know Blackbird,” responded Léon Baudette.
“Is the consoompted chafe that they're makin' the snake shindy for
married on her?”
“No, no. Blackbird she wife of Jean Magliss in de winter camps.”
“John McGillis? Is it for marryin' on a haythen wife he is?”
“O oui. Two wives. One good Cat'olique. Jean Magliss, he dance every
night now with Amable Morin's girl. The more weddings, the more
dancing. Me,” Léon shrugged, “I no want a woman eating my wages in
Mackinac. A squaw in the winter camps—'t assez.”
“Two wives, the bog-trotter!” gulped Owen. “John McGillis is a
blayguard!”
“Oui, what you call Irish,” assented Léon; and he dodged, but the
cobbler threw nothing at him. Owen marked with the awl on his own
leather apron.
“First a haythen and then a quarther-brade,” he tallied against his
countryman. “He will be takin' his quarther-brade to the praste before
the boats go out?”
Léon raised fat eyebrows. “Amable Morin, he no fool. It is six
daughters he has. O oui; the marriage is soon made.”
“And the poor haythen, what does she do now?”
“Blackbird? She watch Jean Magliss dance. Then she leave her lodge and
take to de pine wood. Blackbird ver fond of what you call de Irish.”
Owen was little richer in the gift of expression than the Indian
woman, but he could feel the tragedy of her unconfirmed marriage. A
squaw was taken to her lord's wigwam, and remained as long as she
pleased him. He could divorce her with a gift, proportioned to his
means and her worth.
When Léon Baudette departed, Owen prepared and ate his supper, brewing
himself some herb tea and seasoning it with a drop of whiskey.
The evening beauty of the lake, of coasts melting in general
dimness, and that iridescent stony hook stretched out from Round
Island to grapple passing craft, was lost on Owen. Humid air did not
soften the glower which grew and hardened on his visage as he made
his preparations for night. These were very simple. The coals of
drift-wood soon died to white ashes in his grate. To close the shop
was to stand upon the shoemaker's bench and reach for the ladder in
his attic—a short ladder that just performed its office and could be
hidden aloft.
Drawing his stairway after him when he had ascended, Owen spread and
arranged his blankets. The ghosts that rose from tortured bodies in
the Kitchen below never worked any terror in his imagination when he
went to bed. Rather, he lay stretched in his hard cradle gloating over
the stars, his wild security, the thousand night aspects of nature
which he could make part of himself without expressing. For him the
moon cast gorgeous bridges on the water; the breathing of the woods
was the breathing of a colossal brother; and when that awful chill
which precedes the resurrection of day rose from the earth and started
from the rock, he turned comfortably in his thick bedding and taxed
sleepy eyes to catch the wanness coming over the lake.
But instead of lying down in his usual peace when the nest was made
to suit him, Owen wheeled and hung undecided legs over the edge of his
loft. Then he again put down the ladder and descended. He had trod the
three-quarters of a mile of beach to the village but once since the
boats came in. Now that his mind was fixed he took to it again with
a loping step, bending his body forward and grasping his cap to butt
through trailing foliage.
As he passed the point and neared the post, its blare and hubbub
burst on him, and its torch-light and many twinkling candles. He
proceeded beside the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the
entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge, evening fires
were built, throwing streamers of crimson flicker on the lake. Naked
pappooses gathered around these at play. But on an open flat betwixt
encampment and village rose a lighted tabernacle of blankets stretched
on poles and uprights; and within this the adult Indians were crowded,
celebrating the orgy of the medicine-dance. Their noise kept a
continuous roll of echoes moving across the islands.
Owen made haste to pass this carnival of invocation and plunge into
the swarming main street of Mackinac, where a thousand voyageurs
roved, ready to embrace any man and call him brother and press him
to drink with them. Broad low houses with huge chimney-stacks and
dormer-windows stood open and hospitable; for Mackinac was en fête
while the fur season lasted. One huge storage-room, a wing of the
Fur Company's building, was lighted with candles around the sides
for the nightly ball. Squared dark joists of timber showed overhead.
The fiddlers sat on a raised platform, playing in ecstasy. The dark,
shining floor was thronged with dancers, who, before primrose-color
entirely withdrew from evening twilight, had rushed to their usual
amusement. Half-breeds, quarter-breeds, sixteenth-breeds, Canadian
French, Americans, in finery that the Northwest was able to command
from marts of the world, crossed, joined hands, and whirled, the
rhythmic tread of feet sounding like the beating of a great pulse. The
doors of double timber stood open. From where he paused outside, Owen
could see mighty hinges stretching across the whole width of these
doors.
And he could see John McGillis moving among the most agile dancers.
When at last the music stopped, and John led Amable Morin's girl to
one of the benches along the wall, Owen was conscious that an Indian
woman crossed the lighted space behind him, and he turned and looked
full at Blackbird, and she looked full at him. But she did not stay to
be included in the greeting of John McGillis, though English might be
better known to her than Owen had supposed.
John came heartily to the door and endeavored to pull his countryman
in. He was a much younger man than Owen, a handsome, light-haired
voyageur, with thick eyelids and cajoling blue eyes. John was the
only Irish engagé in the brigades. The sweet gift of blarney dwelt on
his broad red lips. He looked too amiable and easily entreated, too
much in love with life, indeed, to quarrel with any one. Yet as Owen
answered his invitation by a quick pass that struck his cheek, his
color mounted with zest, and he stepped out, turning up his sleeves.
“Is it a foight ye want, ye old wizard from the Divil's Kitchen?”
laughed John, still good-natured.
“It's a foight I want,” responded Owen. “It's a foight I'm shpilin'
for. Come out forninst the place, where the shlobberin' Frinch can
lave a man be, and I'll shpake me moind.”
John walked bareheaded with him, and they passed around the building
to a fence enclosing the Fur Company's silent yard. Stockades of
sharp-pointed cedar posts outlined gardens near them. A smell of fur
mingled with odors of sweet-brier and loam. Again the violins excited
that throb of dancing feet, and John McGillis moved his arms in time
to the music.
“Out wid it, Owen. I'm losin' me shport.”
“John McGillis, are ye not own cousin to me by raisin of marryin' on
as fine a colleen as iver shtepped in Ireland?”
“I am, Owen, I am.”
“Did ye lave that same in sorrow, consatin' to fetch her out to
Ameriky whin yer fortune was made?”
“I did, Owen, I did.”
“Whin ye got word of her death last year, was ye a broken-hearted
widdy or was ye not?”
“I was, Owen, I was.”
“John McGillis, do ye call yerself a widdy now, or do ye not call
yerself a widdy?”
“I do, Owen, I do.”
“Thin ye're the loire,” and Owen slapped his face.
For a minute there was danger of manslaughter as they dealt each
other blows with sledge fists. Instead of clinching, they stood apart
and cudgelled fiercely with the knuckled hand. The first round ended
in blood, which John wiped from his face with a new bandanna, and
Owen flung contemptuously from his nose with finger and thumb. The
lax-muscled cobbler was no match for the fresh and vigorous voyageur,
and he knew it, but went stubbornly to work again, saying, grimly:
“I've shpiled yer face for the gu'urls the night, bedad.”
They pounded each other without mercy, and again rested, Owen this
time leaning against the fence to breathe.
“John McGillis, are ye a widdy or are ye not a widdy?” he challenged,
as soon as he could speak.
“I am, Owen Cunnin', I am,” maintained John.
“Thin I repate ye're the loire!” And once more they came to the proof,
until Owen lay upon the ground kicking to keep his opponent off.
“Will I bring ye the dhrop of whiskey, Owen?” suggested John, tenderly.
His cousin by marriage crawled to the fence and sat up, without
replying.
“I've the flask in me pouch, Owen.”
“Kape it there.”
“But sure if ye foight wid me ye'll dhrink wid me?”
“I'll not dhrink a dhrop wid ye.”
The cobbler panted heavily. “The loikes of you that do be goin' to
marry on a Frinch quarther-brade, desavin' her, and the father and the
mother and the praste, that you do be a widdy.”
“I am a widdy, Owen.”
The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back, repeating, at the top
of his breath, “Ye're the loire!”
“What do ye mane?” sternly demanded John. “Ye know I've had me
throuble. Ye know I've lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year
gone. Was the praste that wrote the letther a loire?”
“I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye think ye are.”
John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasping him by the collar.
Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not
reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome
of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory
and imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present
of large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose
up it took entire possession of him.
“Why didn't ye tell me this before?”
“I've not knowed it the long time meself.”
“What towken have ye got?”
“Towken enough for you and me.”
“Show it to me.”
“I will not.”
“Ye're desavin' me. Ye have no towken.”
“Thin marry on yer quarther-brade if ye dare!”
To be unsettled and uninterested in his surroundings was John
McGillis's portion during the remaining weeks of his stay on the
island. Half savage and half tender he sat in his barracks and smoked
large pipes of tobacco.
He tramped out nearly every evening to the Devil's Kitchen, and had
wordy battles, which a Frenchman would have called fights, with the
cobbler, though the conferences always ended by his producing his
ration and supping and smoking there. He coaxed his cousin to show him
the token, vacillating between hope of impossible news from a wife he
had every reason to believe dead, and indignation at being made the
sport of Owen's stubbornness. Learning in the Fur Company's office
that Owen had received news from the old country in the latest mail
sent out of New York, he was beside himself, and Amable Morin's girl
was forgotten. He began to believe he had never thought of her.
“Sure, the old man Morin and me had some words and a dhrink over it,
was all. I did but dance wid her and pinch her cheek. A man niver
knows what he does on Mackinac till he comes to himself in the winter
camps wid a large family on his moind.”
“The blarney of your lip doesn't desave me, John McGillis,” responded
his cousin the cobbler, with grimness.
“But whin will ye give me the word you've got, Owen?”
“I'll not give it to ye till the boats go out.”
“Will ye tell me, is the colleen alive, thin?”
“I've tould ye ye're not a widdy.”
“If the colleen is alive, the towken would be sint to me.”
“Thin ye've got it,” said Owen.
Poor John smoked, biting hard on his pipe-stem. Ignorance, and the
helplessness of a limited man who is more a good animal than a
discerning soul; time, the slow transmission of news, his fixed state
as a voyageur—all these things were against him. He could not adjust
himself to any facts, and his feelings sometimes approached the
melting state. It was no use to war with Owen Cunning, whom he was
ashamed of handling roughly. The cobbler sat with swollen and bandaged
face, talking out of a slit, still bullying him.
But the time came for his brigade to go out, and then there was
action, decision, positive life once more. It went far northward, and
was first to depart, in order to reach winter-quarters before snow
should fly.
At the log dock the boats waited, twelve of them in this outfit,
each one a mighty Argo, rowed by a dozen pairs of oars, and with
centre-piece for stepping a mast. Hundreds of pounds they could carry,
and a crew of fifteen men. The tarpaulin used for a night covering and
to shelter the trading-goods from storms was large as the roof of a
house. Quiescent on lapping water they rested, their loads and each
man's baggage of twenty or fewer pounds packed tightly to place.
The cobbler from the Devil's Kitchen was in the crowd thronging
dock and shore. The villagers were there, saying farewells, and all
the voyageurs who were soon to go out in other brigades snuffed as
war-horses ready for the charge. The life of the woods, which was
their true life, again drew them. They could scarcely wait. Dancing
and love-making suddenly cloyed; for a man was made to conquer the
wilderness and take the spoils of the earth. Woodsman's habits
returned upon them. The frippery of the island was dropped like the
withes which bound Samson. Their companions the Indians were also
making ready the canoes. Blackbird stood erect behind the elbow of
John McGillis as he took leave of his cousin the cobbler.
“Do ye moind, Owen,” exclaimed John, turning from the interests
of active life to that which had disturbed his spirit, convinced
unalterably of his own widowed state, yet harrowed unspeakably, “ye
promised to show me that word from the old counthry before the boats
wint out.”
“I niver promised to show ye any word from the old counthry,”
responded Owen, having his mouth free of bandages and both eyes for
the boats.
“Ye tould me ye had a towken from the old counthry.”
“I niver tould ye I had a towken from the old counthry.”
“Ye did tell me ye had a towken.”
“I have.”
“Ye said it proved I was not a widdy.”
“I did.”
“Show me that same, thin.”
“I will.”
Owen looked steadily past John's shoulder at Blackbird, and laid in
John's hand a small gold coin with a hole in it, on one side of which
was rudely scratched the outline of a bird.
John McGillis's face burned red, and many expressions besides laughter
crossed it. Like a child detected in fault, he looked sheepishly at
Owen and glanced behind his shoulder. The faithful sunset-tinted face
of Blackbird, immovable as a fixed star, regarded the battered cobbler
as it might have regarded a great manitou when the island was young.
“How did you come by this, Owen?”
“I come by it from one that had throuble. Has yerself iver seen it
before, John McGillis?”
“I have.”
“Is it a towken that ye're not a widdy?”
“It is.”
The boats went out, and Blackbird sat in her Irish husband's boat, on
his baggage. Oars flashed, and the commandant's boat led the way. Then
the life of the Northwest rose like a great wave—the voyageurs' song
chanted by a hundred and fifty throats, with a chorus of thousands on
the shore:
[Music: Dans les chan-tiers nous hi-ver-ne-rons!
Dans les chan-tiers nous hi-ver-ne-rons!]
When Owen returned to his Kitchen he found a robe of the finest beaver
folded and laid on his shoemaker's bench.
“Begorra!” observed the cobbler, shaking it out and rubbing it against
his cheek, “she has paid me a beaver-shkin and the spalpeen wasn't
worrth it. But she can kape him now till she has a moind to turn him
out herself. Whin a man marries on a haythen, wid praste or widout
praste, let him shtick to his haythen.”
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
_On the 15th day of March, 1897, Ignace Pelott died at Mackinac
Island, aged ninety-three years._
_The old quarter-breed, son of a half-breed Chippewa mother and
French father, took with him into silence much wilderness lore of the
Northwest. He was full of stories when warmed to recital, though at
the beginning of a talk his gentle eyes dwelt on the listener with
anxiety, and he tapped his forehead—“So many things gone from there!”
His habit of saying “Oh God, yes,” or “Oh God, no,” was not in the
least irreverent, but simply his mild way of using island English._
_While water lapped the beach before his door and the sun smote
sparkles on the strait, he told about this adventure across the ice,
and his hearer has taken but few liberties with the recital._
I am to carry Mamselle Rosalin of Green Bay from Mackinac to Cheboygan
that time, and it is the end of March, and the wind have turn from
east to west in the morning. A man will go out with the wind in the
east, to haul wood from Boblo, or cut a hole to fish, and by night he
cannot get home—ice, it is rotten; it goes to pieces quick when the
March wind turns.
I am not afraid for me—long, tall fellow then; eye that can see to
Point aux Pins; I can lift more than any other man that goes in the
boats to Green Bay or the Soo; can swim, run on snow-shoes, go without
eating two, three days, and draw my belt in. Sometimes the ice-floes
carry me miles, for they all go east down the lakes when they start,
and I have landed the other side of Drummond. But when you have a
woman with you—Oh God, yes, that is different.