The cry of those rapids in Ste. Marie's River called the Sault could
be heard at all hours through the settlement on the rising shore and
into the forest beyond. Three quarters of a mile of frothing billows,
like some colossal instrument, never ceased playing music down an
inclined channel until the trance of winter locked it up. At August
dusk, when all that shaggy world was sinking to darkness, the gushing
monotone became very distinct.
Louizon Cadotte and his father's young seignior, Jacques de
Repentigny, stepped from a birch canoe on the bank near the fort, two
Chippewa Indians following with their game. Hunting furnished no
small addition to the food supply of the settlement, for the English
conquest had brought about scarcity at this as well as other Western
posts. Peace was declared in Europe; but soldiers on the frontier,
waiting orders to march out at any time, were not abundantly supplied
with stores, and they let season after season go by, reluctant to put
in harvests which might be reaped by their successors.
Jacques was barely nineteen, and Louizon was considerably older. But
the Repentignys had gone back to France after the fall of Quebec; and
five years of European life had matured the young seignior as decades
of border experience would never mature his half-breed tenant. Yet
Louizon was a fine dark-skinned fellow, well made for one of short
stature. He trod close by his tall superior with visible fondness;
enjoying this spectacle of a man the like of whom he had not seen on
the frontier.
Jacques looked back, as he walked, at the long zigzag shadows on the
river. Forest fire in the distance showed a leaning column, black at
base, pearl-colored in the primrose air, like smoke from some gigantic
altar. He had seen islands in the lake under which the sky seemed to
slip, throwing them above the horizon in mirage, and trees standing
like detached bushes on a world rim of water. The Ste. Marie River was
a beautiful light green in color, and sunset and twilight played upon
it all the miracles of change.
"I wish my father had never left this country," said young Repentigny,
feeling that spell cast by the wilderness. "Here is his place. He
should have withdrawn to the Sault, and accommodated himself to the
English, instead of returning to France. The service in other parts
of the world does not suit him. Plenty of good men have held to Canada
and their honor also."
"Yes, yes," assented Louizon. "The English cannot be got rid of. For
my part, I shall be glad when this post changes hands. I am sick of
our officers."
He scowled with open resentment. The seigniory house faced the parade
ground, and they could see against its large low mass, lounging on the
gallery, one each side of a window, the white uniforms of two French
soldiers. The window sashes, screened by small curtains across the
middle, were swung into the room; and Louizon's wife leaned on her
elbows across the sill, the rosy atmosphere of his own fire projecting
to view every ring of her bewitching hair, and even her long eyelashes
as she turned her gaze from side to side.
It was so dark, and the object of their regard was so bright, that
these buzzing bees of Frenchmen did not see her husband until he ran
up the steps facing them. Both of them greeted him heartily. He felt
it a peculiar indignity that his wife's danglers forever passed their
good-will on to him; and he left them in the common hall, with his
father and the young seignior, and the two or three Indians who
congregated there every evening to ask for presents or to smoke.
Louizon's wife met him in the middle of the broad low apartment where
he had been so proud to introduce her as a bride, and turned her
cheek to be kissed. She was not fond of having her lips touched. Her
hazel-colored hair was perfumed. She was so supple and exquisite, so
dimpled and aggravating, that the Chippewa in him longed to take her
by the scalp-lock of her light head; but the Frenchman bestowed the
salute. Louizon had married the prettiest woman in the settlement.
Life overflowed in her, so that her presence spread animation. Both
men and women paid homage to her. Her very mother-in-law was her
slave. And this was the stranger spectacle because Madame Cadotte
the senior, though born a Chippewa, did not easily make herself
subservient to anybody.
The time had been when Louizon was proud of any notice this siren
conferred on him. But so exacting and tyrannical is the nature of man
that when he got her he wanted to keep her entirely to himself. From
his Chippewa mother, who, though treated with deference, had never
dared to disobey his father, he inherited a fond and jealous nature;
and his beautiful wife chafed it. Young Repentigny saw that she was
like a Parisian. But Louizon felt that she was a spirit too fine and
tantalizing for him to grasp, and she had him in her power.
He hung his powderhorn behind the door, and stepped upon a stool to
put his gun on its rack above the fireplace. The fire showed his round
figure, short but well muscled, and the boyish petulance of his shaven
lip. The sun shone hot upon the Sault of an August noon, but morning
and night were cool, and a blaze was usually kept in the chimney.
"You found plenty of game?" said his wife; and it was one of this
woman's wickedest charms that she could be so interested in her
companion of the moment.
"Yes," he answered, scowling more, and thinking of the brace on the
gallery whom he had not shot, but wished to.
She laughed at him.
"Archange Cadotte," said Louizon, turning around on the stool before
he descended; and she spread out her skirts, taking two dancing steps
to indicate that she heard him. "How long am I to be mortified by your
conduct to Monsieur de Repentigny?"
"Oh--Monsieur de Repentigny. It is now that boy from France, at whom I
have never looked."
"The man I would have you look at, madame, you scarcely notice."
"Why should I notice him? He pays little attention to me."
"Ah, he is not one of your danglers, madame. He would not look at
another man's wife. He has had trouble himself."
"So will you have if you scorch the backs of your legs," observed
Archange.
Louizon stood obstinately on the stool and ignored the heat. He was in
the act of stepping down, but he checked it as she spoke.
"Monsieur de Repentigny came back to this country to marry a young
English lady of Quebec. He thinks of her, not of you."
"I am sure he is welcome," murmured Archange. "But it seems the young
English lady prefers to stay in Quebec."
"She never looked at any other man, madame. She is dead."
"No wonder. I should be dead, too, if I had looked at one stupid man
all my life."
Louizon's eyes sparkled. "Madame, I will have you know that the
seignior of Sault Ste. Marie is entitled to your homage."
"Monsieur, I will have you know that I do not pay homage to any man."
"You, Archange Cadotte? You are in love with a new man every day."
"Not in the least, monsieur. I only desire to have a new man in love
with me every day."
Her mischievous mouth was a scarlet button in her face, and Louizon
leaped to the floor, and kicked the stool across the room.
"The devil himself is no match at all for you!"
"But I married him before I knew that," returned Archange; and Louizon
grinned in his wrath.
"I don't like such women."
"Oh yes, you do. Men always like women whom they cannot chain."
"I have never tried to chain you." Her husband approached, shaking his
finger at her. "There is not another woman in the settlement who has
her way as you have. And see how you treat me!"
"How do I treat you?" inquired Archange, sitting down and resigning
herself to statistics.
"Ste. Marie! St. Joseph!" shouted the Frenchman. "How does she treat
me! And every man in the seigniory dangling at her apron string!"
"You are mistaken. There is the young seignior; and there is the new
English commandant, who must be now within the seigniory, for they
expect him at the post to-morrow morning. It is all the same: if I
look at a man you are furious, and if I refuse to look at him you are
more furious still."
Louizon felt that inward breaking up which proved to him that he could
not stand before the tongue of this woman. Groping for expression, he
declared,--
"If thou wert sickly or blind, I would be just as good to thee as when
thou wert a bride. I am not the kind that changes if a woman loses her
fine looks."
"No doubt you would like to see me with the smallpox," suggested
Archange. "But it is never best to try a man too far."
"You try me too far,--let me tell you that. But you shall try me no
further."
The Indian appeared distinctly on his softer French features, as one
picture may be stamped over another.
"Smoke a pipe, Louizon," urged the thorn in his flesh. "You are always
so much more agreeable when your mouth is stopped."
But he left the room without looking at her again. Archange remarked
to herself that he would be better natured when his mother had given
him his supper; and she yawned, smiling at the maladroit creatures
whom she made her sport. Her husband was the best young man in the
settlement. She was entirely satisfied with him, and grateful to
him for taking the orphan niece of a poor post commandant, without
prospects since the conquest, and giving her sumptuous quarters and
comparative wealth; but she could not forbear amusing herself with his
masculine weaknesses.
Archange was by no means a slave in the frontier household. She did
not spin, or draw water, or tend the oven. Her mother-in-law, Madame
Cadotte, had a hold on perennially destitute Chippewa women who could
be made to work for longer or shorter periods in a Frenchman's kitchen
or loom-house instead of with savage implements. Archange's bed had
ruffled curtains, and her pretty dresses, carefully folded, filled a
large chest.
She returned to the high window sill, and watched the purple distances
growing black. She could smell the tobacco the men were smoking in the
open hall, and hear their voices. Archange knew what her mother-in-law
was giving the young seignior and Louizon for their supper. She could
fancy the officers laying down their pipes to draw to the board, also,
for the Cadottes kept open house all the year round.
The thump of the Indian drum was added to the deep melody of the
rapids. There were always a few lodges of Chippewas about the Sault.
When the trapping season and the maple-sugar making were over and his
profits drunk up, time was the largest possession of an Indian. He
spent it around the door of his French brother, ready to fish or to
drink whenever invited. If no one cared to go on the river, he turned
to his hereditary amusements. Every night that the rapids were void of
torches showing where the canoes of white fishers darted, the thump of
the Indian drum and the yell of Indian dancers could be heard.
Archange's mind was running on the new English garrison who were said
to be so near taking possession of the picketed fort, when she
saw something red on the parade ground. The figure stood erect and
motionless, gathering all the remaining light on its indistinct
coloring, and Archange's heart gave a leap at the hint of a military
man in a red uniform. She was all alive, like a whitefisher casting
the net or a hunter sighting game. It was Archange's nature, without
even taking thought, to turn her head on her round neck so that the
illuminated curls would show against a background of wall, and wreathe
her half-bare arms across the sill. To be looked at, to lure and
tantalize, was more than pastime. It was a woman's chief privilege.
Archange held the secret conviction that the priest himself could be
made to give her lighter penances by an angelic expression she could
assume. It is convenient to have large brown eyes and the trick of
casting them sidewise in sweet distress.
But the Chippewa widow came in earlier than usual that evening, being
anxious to go back to the lodges to watch the dancing. Archange pushed
the sashes shut, ready for other diversion, and Michel Pensonneau
never failed to furnish her that. The little boy was at the widow's
heels. Michel was an orphan.
"If Archange had children," Madame Cadotte had said to Louizon, "she
would not seek other amusement. Take the little Pensonneau lad that
his grandmother can hardly feed. He will give Archange something to
do."
So Louizon brought home the little Pensonneau lad. Archange looked at
him, and considered that here was another person to wait on her. As to
keeping him clean and making clothes for him, they might as well have
expected her to train the sledge dogs. She made him serve her, but for
mothering he had to go to Madame Cadotte. Yet Archange far outweighed
Madame Cadotte with him. The labors put upon him by the autocrat of
the house were sweeter than mococks full of maple sugar from the hand
of the Chippewa housekeeper. At first Archange would not let him come
into her room. She dictated to him through door or window. But when he
grew fat with good food and was decently clad under Madame Cadotte's
hand, the great promotion of entering that sacred apartment was
allowed him. Michel came in whenever he could. It was his nightly
habit to follow the Chippewa widow there after supper, and watch her
brush Archange's hair.
Michel stood at the end of the hearth with a roll of pagessanung or
plum-leather in his fist. His cheeks had a hard garnered redness like
polished apples. The Chippewa widow set her husband carefully against
the wall. The husband was a bundle about two feet long, containing
her best clothes tied up in her dead warrior's sashes and rolled in a
piece of cloth. His armbands and his necklace of bear's-claws appeared
at the top as a grotesque head. This bundle the widow was obliged to
carry with her everywhere. To be seen without it was a disgrace, until
that time when her husband's nearest relations should take it away
from her and give her new clothes, thus signifying that she had
mourned long enough to satisfy them. As the husband's relations
were unable to cover themselves, the prospect of her release seemed
distant. For her food she was glad to depend on her labor in the
Cadotte household. There was no hunter to supply her lodge now.
The widow let down Archange's hair and began to brush it. The long
mass was too much for its owner to handle. It spread around her like
a garment, as she sat on her chair, and its ends touched the floor.
Michel thought there was nothing more wonderful in the world than this
glory of hair, its rings and ripples shining in the firelight. The
widow's jaws worked in unobtrusive rumination on a piece of pleasantly
bitter fungus, the Indian substitute for quinine, which the Chippewas
called waubudone. As she consoled herself much with this medicine,
and her many-syllabled name was hard to pronounce, Archange called her
Waubudone, an offense against her dignity which the widow might not
have endured from anybody else, though she bore it without a word from
this soft-haired magnate.
As she carefully carded the mass of hair lock by lock, thinking it
an unnecessary nightly labor, the restless head under her hands
was turned towards the portable husband. Archange had not much
imagination, but to her the thing was uncanny. She repeated what she
said every night:--
"Do stand him in the hall and let him smell the smoke, Waubudone."
"No," refused the widow.
"But I don't want him in my bedroom. You are not obliged to keep that
thing in your sight all the time."
"Yes," said the widow.
A dialect of mingled French and Chippewa was what they spoke, and
Michel knew enough of both tongues to follow the talk.
"Are they never going to take him from you? If they don't take him
from you soon, I shall go to the lodges and speak to his people about
it myself."
The Chippewa widow usually passed over this threat in silence; but,
threading a lock with the comb, she now said,--
"Best not go to the lodges awhile."
"Why?" inquired Archange. "Have the English already arrived? Is the
tribe dissatisfied?"
"Don't know that."
"Then why should I not go to the lodges?"
"Windigo at the Sault now."
Archange wheeled to look at her face. The widow was unmoved. She
was little older than Archange, but her features showed a stoical
harshness in the firelight. Michel, who often went to the lodges,
widened his mouth and forgot to fill it with plum-leather. There was
no sweet which Michel loved as he did this confection of wild plums
and maple sugar boiled down and spread on sheets of birch bark. Madame
Cadotte made the best pagessanung at the Sault.
"Look at the boy," laughed Archange. "He will not want to go to the
lodges any more after dark."