traino—you know the train-au-galise—the birch sledge with dogs. It is
flat, and turn up at the front like a toboggan. And I have take the
traino because it is not safe for a horse; the wind is in the west,
and the strait bends and looks too sleek. Ice a couple of inches thick
will bear up a man and dogs. But this old ice a foot thick, it is
turning rotten. I have come from St. Ignace early in the afternoon,
and the people crowd about to get their letters, and there is Mamselle
Rosalin crying to go to Cheboygan, because her lady has arrive there
sick, and has sent the letter a week ago. Her friends say:
“It is too late to go to-day, and the strait is dangerous.”
She say: “I make a bundle and walk. I must go when my lady is sick and
her husband the lieutenant is away, and she has need of me.”
Mamselle's friends talk and she cry. She runs and makes a little
bundle in the house and comes out ready to walk to Cheboygan. There is
nobody can prevent her. Some island people are descend from noblesse
of France. But none of them have travel like Mamselle Rosalin with
the officer's wife to Indiana, to Chicago, to Detroit. She is like
me, French.[1] The girls use to turn their heads to see me walk in to
mass; but I never look grand as Mamselle Rosalin when she step out to
that ice.
[Footnote 1: The old fellow would not own the Chippewa.]
I have not a bit of sense; I forget maman and my brothers and sisters
that depend on me. I run to Mamselle Rosalin, take off my cap, and bow
from my head to my heel, like you do in the dance. I will take her to
Cheboygan with my traino—Oh God, yes! And I laugh at the wet track the
sledge make, and pat my dogs and tell them they are not tired. I wrap
her up in the fur, and she thank me and tremble, and look me through
with her big black eyes so that I am ready to go down in the strait.
The people on the shore hurrah, though some of them cry out to warn us.
“The ice is cracked from Mission Point to the hook of Round Island,
Ignace Pelott!”
“I know that,” I say. “Good-day, messieurs!”
The crack from Mission Point—under what you call Robinson's Folly—to
the hook of Round Island always comes first in a breaking up; and I
hold my breath in my teeth as I skurry the dogs across it. The ice
grinds, the water follows the sledge. But the sun is so far down in
the southwest, I think “The wind will grow colder. The real thaw will
not come before to-morrow.”
[Illustration: THE TRAIN-AU-GALISE]
I am to steer betwixt the east side of Round Island and Boblo. When we
come into the shadow of Boblo we are chill with damp, far worse than
the clear sharp air that blows from Canada. I lope beside the traino,
and not take my eyes off the course to Cheboygan, except that I see
the islands look blue, and darkness stretching before its time. The
sweat drop off my face, yet I feel that wind through my wool clothes,
and am glad of the shelter between Boblo and Round Island, for the
strait outside will be the worst.
There is an Indian burying-ground on open land above the beach on that
side of Round Island. I look up when the thick woods are pass, for the
sunset ought to show there. But what I see is a skeleton like it is
sliding down hill from the graveyard to the beach. It does not move.
The earth is wash from it, and it hangs staring at me.
I cannot tell how that make me feel! I laugh, for it is funny; but I
am ashame, like my father is expose and Mamselle Rosalin can see him.
If I do not cover him again I am disgrace. I think I will wait till
some other day when I can get back from Cheboygan; for what will she
say if I stop the traino when we have such a long journey, and it is
so near night, and the strait almost ready to move? So I crack the
whip, but something pull, pull! I cannot go on! I say to myself, “The
ground is froze; how can I cover up that skeleton without any shovel,
or even a hatchet to break the earth?”
But something pull, pull, so I am oblige to stop, and the dogs turn
in without one word and drag the sledge up the beach of Round Island.
“What is the matter?” says Mamselle Rosalin. She is out of the sledge
as soon as it stops.
I not know what to answer, but tell her I have to cut a stick to mend
my whip-handle. I think I will cut a stick and rake some earth over
the skeleton to cover it, and come another day with a shovel and dig a
new grave. The dogs lie down and pant, and she looks through me with
her big eyes like she beg me to hurry.
But there is no danger she will see the skeleton. We both look back
to Mackinac. The island have its hump up against the north, and the
village in its lap around the bay, and the Mission eastward near the
cliff; but all seem to be moving! We run along the beach of Round
Island, and then we see the channel between that and Boblo is moving
too, and the ice is like wet loaf-sugar, grinding as it floats.
We hear some roars away off, like cannon when the Americans come to
the island. My head swims. I cross myself and know why something pull,
pull, to make me bring the traino to the beach, and I am oblige to
that skeleton who slide down hill to warn me.
When we have seen Mackinac, we walk to the other side and look south
and southeast towards Cheboygan. All is the same. The ice is moving
out of the strait.
“We are strand on this island!” says Mamselle Rosalin. “Oh, what
shall we do?”
I tell her it is better to be prisoners on Round Island than on a cake
of ice in the strait, for I have tried the cake of ice and know.
“We will camp and build a fire in the cove opposite Mackinac,” I say.
“Maman and the children will see the light and feel sure we are safe.”
“I have done wrong,” says she. “If you lose your life on this journey,
it is my fault.”
Oh God, no! I tell her. She is not to blame for anything, and there is
no danger. I have float many a time when the strait breaks up, and not
save my hide so dry as it is now. We only have to stay on Round Island
till we can get off.
“And how long will that be?” she ask.
I shrug my shoulders. There is no telling. Sometimes the strait clears
very soon, sometimes not. Maybe two, three days.
Rosalin sit down on a stone.
I tell her we can make camp, and show signals to Mackinac, and when
the ice permit, a boat will be sent.
She is crying, and I say her lady will be well. No use to go to
Cheboygan anyhow, for it is a week since her lady sent for her. But
she cry on, and I think she wish I leave her alone, so I say I will
get wood. And I unharness the dogs, and run along the beach to cover
that skeleton before dark. I look and cannot find him at all. Then I
go up to the graveyard and look down. There is no skeleton anywhere. I
have seen his skull and his ribs and his arms and legs, all sliding
down hill. But he is gone!
The dusk close in upon the islands, and I not know what to think—cross
myself, two, three times; and wish we had land on Boblo instead of
Round Island, though there are wild beasts on both.
But there is no time to be scare at skeletons that slide down and
disappear, for Mamselle Rosalin must have her camp and her place to
sleep. Every man use to the bateaux have always his tinder-box, his
knife, his tobacco, but I have more than that; I have leave Mackinac
so quick I forget to take out the storekeeper's bacon that line the
bottom of the sledge, and Mamselle Rosalin sit on it in the furs! We
have plenty meat, and I sing like a voyageur while I build the fire.
Drift, so dry in summer you can light it with a coal from your pipe,
lay on the beach, but is now winter-soaked, and I make a fireplace of
logs, and cut pine branches to help it.
It is all thick woods on Round Island, so close it tear you to pieces
if you try to break through; only four-footed things can crawl there.
When the fire is blazing up I take my knife and cut a tunnel like a
little room, and pile plenty evergreen branches. This is to shelter
Mamselle Rosalin, for the night is so raw she shiver. Our tent is the
sky, darkness, and clouds. But I am happy. I unload the sledge. The
bacon is wet. On long sticks the slices sizzle and sing while I toast
them, and the dogs come close and blink by the fire, and lick their
chops. Rosalin laugh and I laugh, for it smell like a good kitchen;
and we sit and eat nothing but toasted meat—better than lye corn and
tallow that you have when you go out with the boats. Then I feed the
dogs, and she walk with me to the water edge, and we drink with our
hands.
It is my house, when we sit on the fur by the fire. I am so light I
want my fiddle. I wish it last like a dream that Mamselle Rosalin and
me keep house together on Round Island. You not want to go to heaven
when the one you think about all the time stays close by you.
But pretty soon I want to go to heaven quick. I think I jump in the
lake if maman and the children had anybody but me. When I light my
pipe she smile. Then her great big eyes look off towards Mackinac, and
I turn and see the little far-away lights.
“They know we are on Round Island together,” I say to cheer her, and
she move to the edge of the fur. Then she say “Good-night,” and get
up and go to her tunnel-house in the bushes, and I jump up too, and
spread the fur there for her. And I not get back to the fire before
she make a door of all the branches I have cut, and is hid like a
squirrel. I feel I dance for joy because she is in my camp for me to
guard. But what is that? It is a woman that cry out loud by herself!
I understand now why she sit down so hopeless when we first land. I
have not know much about women, but I understand how she feel. It is
not her lady, or the dark, or the ice break up, or the cold. It is not
Ignace Pelott. It is the name of being prison on Round Island with
a man till the ice is out of the straits. She is so shame she want
to die. I think I will kill myself. If Mamselle Rosalin cry out loud
once more, I plunge in the lake—and then what become of maman and the
children?
She is quieter; and I sit down and cannot smoke, and the dogs pity me.
Old Sauvage lay his nose on my knee. I do not say a word to him, but
I pat him, and we talk with our eyes, and the bright camp-fire shows
each what the other is say.
“Old Sauvage,” I tell him, “I am not good man like the priest. I have
been out with the boats, and in Indian camps, and I not had in my life
a chance to marry, because there are maman and the children. But you
know, old Sauvage, how I have feel about Mamselle Rosalin, it is three
years.”
Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and answer he know.
“I have love her like a dog that not dare to lick her hand. And now
she hate me because I am shut on Round Island with her while the ice
goes out. I not good man, but it pretty tough to stand that.”
Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and say, “That so.” I hear the
water on the gravel like it sound when we find a place to drink; then
it is plenty company, but now it is lonesome. The water say to people
on Mackinac, “Rosalin and Ignace Pelott, they are on Round Island.”
What make you proud, maybe, when you turn it and look at it the other
way, make you sick. But I cannot walk the broken ice, and if I could,
she would be left alone with the dogs. I think I will build another
camp.
But soon there is a shaking in the bushes, and Sauvage and his
sledgemates bristle and stand up and show their teeth. Out comes
Mamselle Rosalin with a scream to the other side of the fire.
I have nothing except my knife, and I take a chunk of burning wood and
go into her house. Maybe I see some green eyes. I have handle vild-cat
skin too much not to know that smell in the dark.
I take all the branches from Rosalin's house and pile them by the
fire, and spread the fur robe on them. And I pull out red coals and
put more logs on before I sit down away off between her and the spot
where she hear that noise. If the graveyard was over us, I would
expect to see that skeleton once more.
“What was it?” she whisper.
I tell her maybe a stray wolf.
“Wolves not eat people, mamselle, unless they hunt in a pack; and they
run from fire. You know what M'sieu' Cable tell about wolves that
chase him on the ice when he skate to Cheboygan? He come to great wide
crack in ice, he so scare he jump it and skate right on! Then he look
back, and see the wolves go in, head down, every wolf caught and drown
in the crack. It is two days before he come home, and the east wind
have blow to freeze that crack over—and there are all the wolf tails,
stick up, froze stiff in a row! He bring them home with him—but los
them on the way, though he show the knife that cut them off!”
“I have hear that,” says Rosalin. “I think he lie.”
“He say he take his oat on a book,” I tell her, but we both laugh,
and she is curl down so close to the fire her cheeks turn rosy. For a
camp-fire will heat the air all around until the world is like a big
dark room; and we are shelter from the wind. I am glad she is begin
to enjoy herself. And all the time I have a hand on my knife, and the
cold chills down my back where that hungry vild-cat will set his claws
if he jump on me; and I cannot turn around to face him because Rosalin
thinks it is nothing but a cowardly wolf that sneak away. Old Sauvage
is uneasy and come to me, his fangs all expose, but I drive him back
and listen to the bushes behind me.
“Sing, M'sieu' Pelott,” says Rosalin.
Oh God, yes! it is easy to sing with a vild-cat watch you on one side
and a woman on the other!
“But I not know anything except boat songs.”
“Sing boat songs.”
So I sing like a bateau full of voyageurs, and the dark echo, and that
vild-cat must be astonish. When you not care what become of you, and
your head is light and your heart like a stone on the beach, you not
mind vild-cats, but sing and laugh.
I cast my eye behin sometimes, and feel my knife. It make me smile to
think what kind of creature come to my house in the wilderness, and I
say to myself: “Hear my cat purr! This is the only time I will ever
have a home of my own, and the only time the woman I want sit beside
my fire.”
Then I ask Rosalin to sing to me, and she sing “Malbrouck,” like her
father learn it in Kebec. She watch me, and I know her eyes have more
danger for me than the vild-cat's. It ought to tear me to pieces if I
forget maman and the children. It ought to be scare out the bushes to
jump on a poor fool like me. But I not stop entertain it—Oh God, no!
I say things that I never intend to say, like they are pull out of my
mouth. When your heart has ache, sometimes it break up quick like the
ice.
“There is Paul Pepin,” I tell her. “He is a happy man; he not trouble
himself with anybody at all. His father die; he let his mother take
care of herself. He marry a wife, and get tired of her and turn her
off with two children. The priest not able to scare him; he smoke
and take his dram and enjoy life. If I was Paul Pepin I would not be
torment.”
“But you are not torment,” says Rosalin. “Everybody speak well of you.”
“Oh God, yes,” I tell her; “but a man not live on the breath of his
neighbors. I am thirty years old, and I have take care of my mother
and brothers and sisters since I am fifteen. I not made so I can leave
them, like Paul Pepin. He marry when he please. I not able to marry
at all. It is not far I can go from the island. I cannot get rich. My
work must be always the same.”
“But why you want to marry?” says Rosalin, as if that surprise her.
And I tell her it is because I have seen Rosalin of Green Bay; and
she laugh. Then I think it is time for the vild-cat to jump. I am
thirty years old, and have nothing but what I can make with the boats
or my traino; the children are not grown; my mother depend on me; and
I have propose to a woman, and she laugh at me!
But I not see, while we sing and talk, that the fire is burn lower,
and old Sauvage has crept around the camp into the bushes.
That end all my courtship. I not use to it, and not have any business
to court, anyhow. I drop my head on my breast, and it is like when I
am little and the measle go in. Paul Pepin he take a woman by the chin
and smack her on the lips. The women not laugh at him, he is so rough.
I am as strong as he is, but I am afraid to hurt; I am oblige to take
care of what need me. And I am tie to things I love—even the island—so
that I cannot get away.
“I not want to marry,” says Rosalin, and I see her shake her head at
me. “I not think about it at all.”
“Mamselle,” I say to her, “you have not any inducement like I have,
that torment you three years.”
“How you know that?” she ask me. And then her face change from
laughter, and she spring up from the blanket couch, and I think
the camp go around and around me—all fur and eyes and claws and
teeth—and I not know what I am doing, for the dogs are all over
me—yell—yell—yell; and then I am stop stabbing, because the vild-cat
has let go of Sauvage, and Sauvage has let go of the vild-cat, and I
am looking at them and know they are both dead, and I cannot help him
any more.
[Illustration: “‘I THINK THE CAMP GO AROUND AND AROUND ME’”]
You are confuse by such things where there is noise, and howling
creatures sit up and put their noses in the air, like they call their
mate back out of the dark. I am sick for my old dog. Then I am proud
he has kill it, and wipe my knife on its fur, but feel ashame that I
have not check him driving it into camp. And then Rosalin throw her
arms around my neck and kiss me.
It is many years I have tell Rosalin she did that. But a woman will
deny what she know to be the trut. I have tell her the courtship had
end, and she begin it again herself, and keep it up till the boats
take us off Round Island. The ice not run out so quick any more now
like it did then. My wife say it is a long time we waited, but when I
look back it seem the shortest time I ever live—only two days.
Oh God, yes, it is three years before I marry the woman that not
want to marry at all; then my brothers and sisters can take care of
themselves, and she help me take care of maman.
It is when my boy Gabriel come home from the war to die that I see the
skeleton on Round Island again. I am again sure it is wash out, and
I go ashore to bury it, and it disappear. Nobody but me see it. Then
before Rosalin die I am out on the ice-boat, and it give me warning.
I know what it mean; but you cannot always escape misfortune. I cross
myself when I see it; but I find good luck that first time I land; and
maybe I find good luck every time, after I have land.
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
The cross cast its shadow around its feet, so high noon stood over
Cross Village. It was behind the church, rising above the gable, of
silver-colored wood stained by weather to an almost phosphorescent
glint. Seen from the lake the cross towered the most conspicuous thing
on the bluff. A whitewashed fence stretched between it and the cliff,
and on this fence sat Moses Nazagebic, looking across Lake Michigan.
He heard a soft tap on the ground near him and knew that his wife's
grandmother had come out to walk there. She was the only villager,
except his wife, whose approach he could endure. His wife stood some
distance apart, protecting him, as Miriam protected the first Moses.
Other women, gathered in the grove along the bluff to spread the
festival mid-day meal, said to one another:
“Moses has now mourned a week for Frank Chibam and his shipwrecked
boat and the white men. We shall miss Lucy's fish-pie this year.”
“It was at last year's festival that Frank began to notice Catharine.
They were like one family, those four and the grandmother, especially
after Moses and Frank bought the sail-boat together. No wonder the
poor fellow sits on the fence and says nothing while the tribes are
racing horses.”
“But it is worst for poor Catharine, who was to have been a bride.
See her sit like a stone in the sun! It is little any one can say to
comfort Catharine.”
The women, who knew no English, used soft Chippewa or Ottawa
gutturals. The men who ventured on the conquerors' language used it
shorn and contracted, as white children do.
The annual festivities of the Cross Village were at their height.
Yells and the tumultuous patter of racing hoofs fell on Moses' ear. A
trial of horse speed was now in progress; and later in the day would
come a trial of agility and endurance in the Ottawa and Chippewa
dances. The race-course was the mile-long street, beginning at the
old chapel and ending at the monastery. Young Indians, vividly clad
in red calico shirts and fringed leggings, leaned over their horses'
necks, whipping and shouting. Dust rose behind the flying cavalcade,
and spectators were obliged to keep close to the small carved houses
or risk being run down. Young braves denied the war-path were obliged
to give themselves unbridled range of some sort.
The monastery brethren had closed their whitewashed gates, not
because they objected to the yearly fête, nor because custom made
the monastery the goal in horse-racing, but because there was in
the festivities an abandoned spirit to be dealt with only by the
parish priest. On ordinary days the brethren were glad to show
those beneficial death's heads with which their departed prior had
ornamented the inner walls of his tomb before he came to use it. The
village knew it had been that good prior's habit to sit in a coffin
meditating, while he painted skulls and cross-bones in that roofed
enclosure which was to be his body's last resting-place. Young squaws
and braves often peeped at the completed grave and its surrounding
symbols of mortality. It was as good as a Chippewa ghost-story.
The priest let himself be seen all the morning. Without speaking a
word, he was a check upon the riotous. Ottawa and Chippewa had a right
to commemorate some observances of their forefathers. He always winked
at their dances. And this day the one silent Indian on the fence
troubled him more than all the barbaric horsemen.
Moses' wife had been to him. Lucy was very indignant at her cousin
Catharine. Moses neither ate nor slept, and he groaned in the night
as if he had toothache. He would not talk to her. The good father
might not believe it, but Catharine was putting a spell on Moses, in
revenge for Frank Chibam. Catharine blamed Moses for everything—the
shipwreck, the drowning, perhaps even for the storm. She hounded him
out of the house and then she hounded him in again, by standing and
looking at him with fixed gaze. It was more than flesh could bear. The
father must see that Moses and Lucy would have to leave Cross Village
and go to the Cheneaux or Mackinac, taking the grandmother with them.
It would be hard for Moses to live without a boat. But then, Lucy
demanded triumphantly, what would Catharine do without a man or any
relation left in the house?
The priest looked from Catharine, motionless as a rock in the sun by
the church gable, to Moses on the fence with his back towards her. The
grandmother, oblivious to both, felt her way along the ground with a
stick, and Lucy watched, nearer the grove. These four had occupied
one of the small unpainted wooden houses as a united family. It was
a sorrow to the priest that they might now be divided, one of them
bearing an unconfessed trouble on his mind. For if Moses Nazagebic was
as innocent as his wife Lucy believed him to be of the catastrophe
which he said had happened on Lake Superior, he would not fly from
poor Catharine as from an avenger.
There were fences of silver flattened out on the water; farther
from shore flitted changeable bars of green and rose and pale-blue,
converging until they swept the surface like some colossal peacock's
tail. The grandmother stumping with her stick came quite near the
cliff edge and stopped there. She was not blind or deaf, but her mind
had long been turned inward and backward. She saw daily happenings as
symbols of what had been. She knew more tribal lore than any other
Indian of Cross Village; and repeated, as she had repeated a hundred
times before when scanning the log dock with its fleet of courtesying
boats, the steep road, and the strip of sand below:
“Down there was the first cross set up, many years ago, by a man who
came here in a large boat moved by wings like the wings of a gull.
The man had a white face and long hair the color of the sun. When he
first landed he fell on his knees and then began to count a string of
beads. Then he sang a song and called the other men, some of whom were
Indians, from the boat. They cut down trees, and he made them set up
a large cross at the foot of the bluff. Since then that strip of sand
has been sacred, though the cross is gone and a new one is set here by
our priest.”
The old squaw indicated with her stick the silver-colored relic behind
Moses Nazagebic. Her guttural chant affected none of her hearers,
except that Catharine frowned at a sight which could divert Moses.
The Ottawas and Chippewas are a hard-featured people. Catharine was,
perhaps, the handsomest product of an ill-favored village. Haggard
pallor now encroached on the vermilion of her cheek. She wore an old
hat of plaited bark pulled down to her eyes, and her strong black hair
hung in two neglected braids. The patience of aboriginal womanhood was
not stamped on her as it was on Lucy. A panther could look no fiercer
than this lithe young Indian girl, whose bridal finery was hid in the
house and whose banns had been published in the mission church.