the priest also stood gazing at the dock, where children usually
played, tumbling in to swim or be drawn out, only more roseate for
the bath. The children were now gathered in the grove or along the
race-course. Nothing moved below except lapping water. It was seldom
that these lake-going people left their landing-place so deserted.
Gliding down from the north where the cliff had screened it from view,
came a small schooner. The priest, shaded by his broad hat, watched
the passing craft with barely conscious recognition of it as an object
until handkerchiefs fluttered from the deck and startled him.
The tall silver-white cross was so conspicuous that any one standing
near it must be observed. The priest shook his handkerchief in reply.
He had many friends along the coast and among the islands. But his
long sight caught some familiar guise which made him directly signal
and entreat with wide peremptory sweeps of the arm.
“Moses,” commanded the priest, “you must unfasten a boat and go with
me. There are people on board yonder that I want to see.”
No other man being at hand, the request was a natural one, and Moses
had been used to responding to such needs of the priest. But he cast a
quick look at the black robe and sat sullenly until a stern repetition
compelled him.
The priest had continued his signals, and the schooner came about and
waited. It was not a long pull. Moses, rowing with his back towards
the schooner, watched the face of his spiritual father.
“That will do,” said the priest, and almost instantly some one on the
schooner deck hailed him:
“Good-day, your reverence! What can we do for you?”
And another voice that Moses knew well shouted:
“Hello, Moses, is that you? Where's Frank? Did you get back all right
with the sail-boat?”
The Indian cowered over his oars without answering or turning his head.
“I have come out,” answered the priest, “to satisfy myself that I
really see you here alive. We heard you were shipwrecked and drowned
in Lake Superior.”
“Shipwrecked, your reverence! What nonsense! We had a fine voyage
and dismissed the men at the Sault. But since then we decided to
make another cruise to the head of Lake Michigan, and hired another
skipper. There is Moses in the boat with you, and Frank came home with
him. They knew we were not shipwrecked.”
“Will you land at Cross Village?”
“No, your reverence. We only tacked in to salute the cross in passing.”
“But where shall I find you if I have urgent business with you?”
“At Little Traverse Bay. We cannot stop here.”
The schooner was drifting away broadside, and the voice of the speaker
came across a widening swell of water. Then she came up into her
course, cutting a breastwork of foam in front of her as she passed on
southward. With pantomime salutations the priest and the two men who
had hired Moses Nazagebic and Frank Chibam took leave of each other.
It had been a brief conference, but Moses rowed back a convicted
criminal. He did not look at his conscience-keeper in the end of the
boat. His high-cheeked face seemed to have had all individuality
blotted out of it. Dazed and blear-eyed, he shipped his oars and tied
the boat to its stake. A great noise of drumming and shouting came
from the grove above, for the dances were soon to begin.
The steep road was a Calvary height to Moses. He dragged his feet
as he climbed and stumbled in the deep sand; he who was so lithe of
limb and nimble in any action. He had felt Catharine's eyes on his
back like burning-glasses as he sat on the fence. They reflected on
him now in one glare all the knowledge that the priest had gained of
his crime. It was easier to follow to instant confession than to stay
outside longer where Catharine could watch him. His wife's grandmother
passed him, tapping along the fence and repeating again the legend of
the first cross in Cross Village. Even in that day men who had slain
their brothers were expected to give satisfaction to the tribe. It
was either a life for a life or the labor of long hunting to solace a
bereaved family.
He knelt down in the place where he had often confessed such little
sins as lying or convivial drunkenness. How slight and innocent these
offences seemed as the hopeless weight of this burden crushed him. The
stern yet compassionate face over him exacted every word.
The priest remembered that this had not been a bad Chippewa. He
had lived a steady, honest life in his humble station, keeping the
three women well provided with such comforts as they needed; he had
fished, he had labored at wood-chopping, and in the season helped
Lucy fill her birch-bark mococks with maple sugar for sale at the
larger settlements. The anguish of Cain was in the man's eyes. Natural
life and he had already parted company. The teeth showed between his
relaxed lips.
“Moses Nazagebic,” said the priest, disregarding formula and dealing
with the primitive sinner, “what have you done with Frank Chibam?”
“Father, I kill him.”
The brief English which the Indian men mastered and used in their
trading at the settlements was Moses' refuge in confession. To profane
his native language with his crime seemed the last enormity of all.
“It was a lie that there was a wreck in Lake Superior?”
“Yes, father.”
“It was a lie that you lost your sail-boat?”
“Yes, father.”
“Did you intend to kill Frank?”
Moses swallowed as if his throat were closing.
“No—no! We both drunk. We quarrel; Frank sitting on edge of boat. I
come up behind and hit him with oar. I knock him into the water.”
“This was after the white men left you?”
“Yes, father. We have our money. We get drunk at Sault.”
“Where is his body?”
“In St. Mary's River. Not far above Drummond Island.”
“Are you sure he was drowned?”
“Oh, sure!” Moses' jaw dropped. “Frank he go down like a stone; and
his spirit follow me ever since. His spirit tell Catharine. His spirit
drive these men back so Cross Village know the truth. Good name,
Chibam—that mean spirit. It follow me all the time. I get no rest till
that spirit satisfied.”
“My unhappy son, you must confess and give yourself up to justice.”
“Justice no good. Justice hang. Frank Chibam want me go down like
stone. Frank Chibam drive me back where he went down. But I not have
my boat. Next thing Frank Chibam send me boat.”
“What did you do with Frank's and yours?”
“I leave it at Drummond Island, with Chippewa there; and tell him
to give it to nobody but Frank Chibam. I never set foot on that boat
again—Frank's spirit angrier there than anywhere else.”
“But how did you come home?”
“I get other Chippewa at Drummond to bring me to Mackinac. Then I
get Chippewa at Mackinac to bring me to Cross Village. I tell last
Chippewa I had a shipwreck. After Frank drowned I not know what to do.
I had to come home. I thought if I said the boat was wrecked my people
might believe me. I have to see Lucy.” His bloodshot eyes piteously
sought the compassion of his confessor. One moment's lapse into a
brutal frenzy which now seemed some other man's had changed all things
for him.
Never before had penitent come to that closet in such despair. Moses
had repented through what seemed to him a long nightmare of succeeding
days. There was no hope for him. He was called a Christian Indian, but
the white man's consolations and ideas of retribution were not the red
man's.
He heard the priest arrange a journey for him to give himself up to
the law. The priest was a wise man, but this was uselessly clogging
the wheels of fate. He did not want to sit in a jail with Frank
Chibam's spirit. Such company was bad enough in the open sunlight. It
was plain that neither Frank nor Catharine would be appeased by any
offering short of their full measure of vengeance.
Having settled it that Moses' penance for his crime must be to give
himself up to the law, the priest left him in the chapel and went out
to press some sail-boat into service. It would be almost impossible
to take any Indian from the festivities. The death of the most agile
dancer and the withdrawal of the most ardent horse-racer had very
mildly checked the usual joy.
Moses in his broken state was, perhaps, capable of sailing a boat,
but it would be wiser to have another skipper aboard in crossing the
strait to Mackinac.
It was fortunate, on the other hand, that the fête had prevented
fishermen from hailing the passing schooner. The men were known by
all the villagers, having stayed at the Cross Village inn, a place
scarcely larger than a Chippewa cabin, kept by the only white family.
These tribe remnants were gentle in their semi-civilization, yet the
priest dreaded to think what might become of Moses if they discovered
his lie and denied him the indulgence accorded to accidental
man-killers.
To borrow a sail-boat would be easy enough while sympathy lasted for
his penitent. He remembered also that Lucy could help sail it, and it
would be best to take her to Mackinac for the parting with her husband.
The cross was stretching its afternoon shadow, and wind sweet with
the moisture of many tossing blue miles flowed across the bluff.
There never had been a fairer day for the yearly dances. Under his
trouble the priest was conscious of trivial self-reproach that he had
not told the passers it was fête day. But he reflected that few could
love this remote little aboriginal world as he loved it, in joy or
tragedy. The glamour of the North was over it through every season.
At bleak January-end, in wastes of snow, the small houses were sealed
and glowing with fires, and sledges creaked on the crust, while the
shout of Indian children could be heard. Then the ice-boat shot out on
the closed strait above and veered like a spirit from point to point,
almost silent and terribly swift. On mornings after there had been
a dry mist from the lake, this whole world was bridal-white, every
twig loaded with frost blooms, until the far-reaching glory gave it
a tropical beauty and lavishness and the frost fell like showers of
flower petals.
His people stood respectfully out of his way as he entered the grove.
The “throb, throb” and “pat, pat” of drum and feet were farther off,
where young men were dancing in a ring. He could see their lithe
bodies sway between tree boles. Old squaws sat with knees up to their
chins, and old men smoked, pressing close to the spectacle. The priest
was sensitive enough to feel a stir of uneasiness at his invasion of
the aboriginal temple, and he was not long in having a boat put at his
disposal.
The next thing was to induce Moses and Lucy to accompany him quietly
down to the dock. He spoke to Lucy at her door. She sat in dull
dejection, her basket-work and supply of sweet grass on the floor
beside her.
“Come, Lucy! I have business in Mackinac, and Moses and you must take
me there.”
“Did that schooner bring you news, father?”
“Yes.”
“But it is late.”
“We may remain there to-night. Take such things with you as your
husband might need for a week.”
Lucy obediently put her basket-work away and prepared for the journey.
She was conscious of triumph over Catharine, from whom the priest was
about to rescue Moses. She put on her best sweet-grass hat and made up
her bundle.
The priest brought Moses out of the chapel with a pity and tenderness
that touched Lucy, and the three went down the steep road. Her
grandmother was sitting in the sun by the gable and did not notice
them. The old woman was telling herself the story of Nanabojou. The
sail-boat which they were to take was anchored off the end of the
dock. Moses rowed out after it and brought it alongside. He was busy
raising the sails and the priest and Lucy had already taken their
seats when the little craft answered to a light bound over the stern,
and Catharine sat resolutely down, looking at Moses Nazagebic.
Moses let the sails fall and leaped out. He tied the rope to the dock.
“Get into the boat again, Moses!” commanded the priest. “And
Catharine, you go back!”
Moses shook his head. His spirit was broken, but it was a physical
impossibility for him to sail a boat to Mackinac with Catharine aboard.
The priest knew he might as well attempt to control gulls. French
clamor or Anglo-Saxon brutality would be easy to persuade or compel,
in comparison with this dense aboriginal silence. He took patience and
sat still, reading his breviary. The boat ground softly against logs,
and Lucy hugged her bundle, determined on the journey. Moses remained
with his back to them, dangling his legs over the end of the dock.
Catharine kept her place, grasping the edges of the craft. It was
plain if Moses Nazagebic went to Mackinac it would be in the hands of
officers sent to bring him at a later period. So the day dropped down
in splendor, lake and sky becoming one dazzle of gold so bright the
eye might not dwell on it. The party of four returned, and Catharine
walked last up the hill. Religion and penance were nothing to a
Chippewa girl who had distinct intentions of vengeance.
She kept an eye on her victim while she milked the cows as they came
from the woods to keep their nightly appointment. The priest owned
some lack in himself that he could not better handle the destinies
around him. They hurt him, as rock would bruise tender flesh.
Barbaric instrumentation and shouting did not keep him awake after
darkness closed in. He would have lain awake if a dog had not stirred
in Cross Village. He heard the wind change and strike the east side of
his house with gusts of rain. Fires must die down to wet ashes in the
grove. He knew the cross stood white and tall in scudding mist, and on
the crosses in the cemetery chaplets and flowers made of white rags
hung bedraggled. He foresaw the kind of day which would open before
his poor penitent and be a symbol of the life that was to follow.
It was the priest himself who introduced Moses to this day, opening
the door and standing unheeding under the overflow of the eaves. The
hiss of rain could be heard, and daylight penetrated reluctantly
abroad. Moses sat drooped forward with his elbows on his knees by the
open fire. Lucy hurried to answer the summons, believing the priest
had found some new haven for Moses while her cousin was out of the
house.
But there stood Catharine behind the priest, the spell of her
fierceness broken, and at her side was Frank Chibam, undrowned and
amiably grinning, his dark red skin stung by the weather, indeed, but
otherwise little changed by water.
“Tell Moses I want him!” said the priest. “And Catharine, you go into
the house!”
This time Catharine nimbly obeyed. As for Lucy, she made no outcry.
She merely satisfied herself it was Frank Chibam before hurrying her
husband to the spectacle.
Moses stepped out bareheaded into the rain, and his jaw dropped. The
priest closed the door behind him.
Frank took his hand. Moses felt the young man's firm sinew and muscle.
He looked piteously at the priest, his head sagging to one side, his
face working in a spasm.
“I should have prepared him, Frank. This comes too suddenly on him.”
They took Moses between them and walked with him along the fence at
the foot of the cross. The raindrops moved down his face like tears.
He did not speak, but listened with a child's intentness, first to one
and then to the other, leaning his arm on his partner's shoulder.
“I don't understand why he was so certain he had killed you, Frank.
He told me he struck you with an oar and saw you go down in the water
like a stone.”
“Whiskey, father,” explained Frank in trader's brief English. “Plenty
very bad whiskey. It make me sick for a week. The boom knocked us both
down, and I fell into the water. The fisherman from one of the little
islands who pull me out say that. Moses, he drunker than me; he too
drunk to bring the boat home.”
“The poor fellow told lies to cover the crime he thought he had
committed. He has suffered, Frank. And I have suffered. We will say
nothing about Catharine. Why didn't you come sooner?”
“I take the boat and go fishing. I say, 'Moses, that lazy Chippewa,
leave the boat for me to bring home; I make him wait for it.’”
“Did you quarrel at all?”
“Maybe so,” said Frank. “Whiskey not let you remember much. But I
could kill Moses easier than he could kill me.”
“He has suffered enough. But you, my son, ought to do heavy penance.”
“Not put off wedding?” suggested Frank, uneasily.
“I had not thought of unusual methods; it might be good discipline for
Catharine, too. But we have lost enough cheer on your account.”
“I never spend my money for whiskey any more, father. If some man ask
me to take a drink, I drink with him, but not get drunk—no.”
Moses laughed, his face shortening in horizontal lines.
“That Frank Chibam. Frank make me pay for all the whiskey. He not
drowned. I not kill him. His spirit only an evil dream.”
“The evil dream is now past, Moses,” said the priest.
“Wake up, my brother!” said Frank in Chippewa. “I have a boatful of
fish. You must come and help me with them. The good father will go
back to his books when he sees you are yourself once more.”
Under the rain-cloud the lake had turned to blue-black velvet water
pricked with thousands of tossing white-caps. Near shore it seemed
full of submerged smoke. And the rack tore itself, dragging low
across the west. Moses, remembering the last sunset and its sickening
splendors, felt that he had never seen so fine a day. He worked
bareheaded and with his sleeves above his elbows among the fish.
Gulls were flying, each making a burnished white glare against that
background of weather. Looking up, the Chippewa could see the cross at
the top of the bluff, standing over him in holy benediction. He felt
lighter-bodied than a gull. And the anguish of that wretch who had sat
on the fence believing himself a murderer was forgotten.
In the house his wife was exacting what in elder times would have
been typified by an intricate piece of wampum, from her repentant
cousin. Catharine brought in wood and carried water. Catharine was
not permitted to make the great fish-pie, but could only look on. She
served humbly. She had wronged her kinspeople by evil suspicion, and
must make atonement. No words were lost between her and Lucy. She
must lay her hand upon her mouth and be tasked until the elder woman
was appeased. It was not the way of civilized women, but it was the
aboriginal scheme, which the priest found good.
Lucy was not yet ready to demand the truth about the two white men and
the shipwrecked boat. Her entire mind was given to humbling Catharine
and impressing upon that forward young squaw that her husband was in
no way accountable for the disappearance and vagrancy of Frank Chibam.
The grandmother basked at the hearth corner while this silent
retribution went on unseen. She was repeating again the story of the
first cross in Cross Village. She did not know that anything had
happened in the house.
THE KING OF BEAVER
Success was the word most used by the King of Beaver. Though he
stood before his people as a prophet assuming to speak revelations,
executive power breathed from him. He was a tall, golden-tinted man
with a head like a dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard
and mustache which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight.
He had student hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress,
though that was careful as a girl's, which set him apart from farmers
listening on the benches around him, but the keen light of his blue
eyes, wherein shone the master.
Emeline thought she had never before seen such a man. He had an
attraction which she felt loathsome, and the more so because it drew
some part of her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his, and
she resented that kinship, trying to lose herself among farmers' wives
and daughters, who listened to their Prophet stolidly, and were in no
danger of being naturally selected by him. This moral terror Emeline
could not have expressed in words, and she hid it like a shame. She
also resented the subservience of her kinspeople to one no greater
than herself. Her stock had been masters of men.
As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the circle he encountered
this rebel defying his assumption, and paused in his speaking a full
minute, the drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being shifted
and rearranged on the table. Then he began again, the dictatorial key
transposed into melody. His covert message was to the new maid in the
congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a web. He wrapped her
around and around with beautiful sentences. As Speaker of the State
Legislature he had learned well how to handle men in the mass, but
nature had doubly endowed him for entrancing women. The spiritual part
of James Strang, King and Prophet of a peculiar sect, appealed to the
one best calculated to appreciate him during the remainder of his
exhortation.
The Tabernacle, to which Beaver Island Mormons gathered every Saturday
instead of every Sunday, was yet unfinished. Its circular shape and
vaulted ceiling, panelled in the hard woods of the island, had been
planned by the man who stood in the centre. Many openings under the
eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July
sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own
fields and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun
and hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not
lacking. They sat on benches arranged in circles around a central
platform which held the Prophet's chair and table. This was his
simple plan for making his world revolve around him.
Roxy Cheeseman, Emeline's cousin, was stirred to restlessness by the
Prophet's unusual manner, and shifted uneasily on the bench. Her
short, scarlet-cheeked face made her a favorite among the young men.
She had besides this attraction a small waist and foot, and a father
who was very well off indeed for a Beaver Island farmer. Roxy's black
eyes, with the round and unwinking stare of a bird's, were fixed
on King Strang, as if she instinctively warded off a gaze which by
swerving a little could smite her.
But the Prophet paid no attention to any one when the meeting was
over, his custom being to crush his notes in one hand at the end of
his peroration, and to retire like a priest, leaving the dispersing
congregation awed by his rapt face.
The two cousins walked sedately along the street of St. James village,
while their elders lingered about the Tabernacle door shaking hands.
That primitive settlement of the early '50's consisted of a few houses
and log stores, a mill, the Tabernacle, and long docks, at which
steamers touched perhaps once a week. The forest partially encircled
it. A few Gentiles, making Saturday purchases in a shop kept by one
of their own kind, glanced with dislike at the separating Mormons.
The shouts of Gentile children could also be heard at Saturday play.
Otherwise a Sabbath peacefulness was over the landscape. Beaver Island
had not a rugged coast-line, though the harbor of St. James was deep
and good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.
Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In
summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through
the woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.
The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension,
having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded
garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.
“He lives here,” said Roxy.
Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her
question was—
“How many with him?”
“All of them—eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French
travels with him. Didn't you notice her in the Tabernacle—the girl
with the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?”
“Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?”
Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked
guardedly behind her.
“Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only
two years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we
heard she dressed in men's clothes and acted as his secretary.”
“But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your
religion?”
“I don't know,” responded Roxy, mysteriously. “The Gentiles on the
mainland are very hard on us.”
They followed the track between fragrant grape-vine and hickory, and
the girl bred to respect polygamy inquired—
“Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?”
“No, I don't,” retorted the girl bred to abhor it.