"The seignior does not know. They parted at the door."
"Oh, he has gone to the lodges to watch the dancing."
"I have been there. No one has seen him since he set out to hunt this
morning."
"Where are Louizon's canoemen?"
"Jean Boucher and his son are at the dancing. They say he came into
this house."
Archange could not adjust her mind to anxiety without the suspicion
that her mother-in-law might be acting as the instrument of Louizon's
resentment. The huge feather bed was a tangible comfort interposed
betwixt herself and calamity.
"He was sulky to-night," she declared. "He has gone up to sleep in
Michel's attic to frighten me."
"I have been there. I have searched the house."
"But are you sure it was Michel in the bed?"
"There was no one. Michel is here."
Archange snatched the curtain aside, and leaned out to see the orphan
sprawled on a bearskin in front of the collapsing logs. He had pushed
the sashes inward from the gallery and hoisted himself over the high
sill after the bed drapery was closed for the night, for the window
yet stood open. Madame Cadotte sheltered the candle she carried, but
the wind blew it out. There was a rich glow from the fireplace upon
Michel's stuffed legs and arms, his cheeks, and the full parted lips
through which his breath audibly flowed. The other end of the room,
lacking the candle, was in shadow. The thump of the Indian drum could
still be heard, and distinctly and more distinctly, as if they were
approaching the house, the rapids.
Both women heard more. They had not noticed any voice at the window
when they were speaking themselves, but some offensive thing scented
the wind, and they heard, hoarsely spoken in Chippewa from the
gallery,--
"How fat he is!"
Archange, with a gasp, threw herself upon her mother-in-law for
safety, and Madame Cadotte put both arms and the smoking candle around
her. A feeble yet dexterous scramble on the sill resulted in something
dropping into the room. It moved toward the hearth glow, a gaunt
vertebrate body scarcely expanded by ribs, but covered by a red
blanket, and a head with deathlike features overhung by strips of
hair. This vision of famine leaned forward and indented Michel with
one finger, croaking again,--
"How fat he is!"
The boy roused himself, and, for one instant stupid and apologetic,
was going to sit up and whine. He saw what bent over him, and,
bristling with unimaginable revolutions of arms and legs, he yelled a
yell which seemed to sweep the thing back through the window.
Next day no one thought of dancing or fishing or of the coming
English. Frenchmen and Indians turned out together to search for
Louizon Cadotte. Though he never in his life had set foot to any
expedition without first notifying his household, and it was not the
custom to hunt alone in the woods, his disappearance would not have
roused the settlement in so short a time had there been no windigo
hanging about the Sault. It was told that the windigo, who entered his
house again in the night, must have made way with him.
Jacques Repentigny heard this with some amusement. Of windigos he had
no experience, but he had hunted and camped much of the summer with
Louizon.
"I do not think he would let himself be knocked on the head by a
woman," said Jacques.
"White chief doesn't know what helps a windigo," explained a Chippewa;
and the canoeman Jean Boucher interpreted him. "Bad spirit makes a
windigo strong as a bear. I saw this one. She stole my whitefish and
ate them raw."
"Why didn't you give her cooked food when you saw her?" demanded
Jacques.
"She would not eat that now. She likes offal better."
"Yes, she was going to eat me," declared Michel Pensonneau. "After
she finished Monsieur Louizon, she got through the window to carry me
off."
Michel enjoyed the windigo. Though he strummed on his lip and mourned
aloud whenever Madame Cadotte was by, he felt so comfortably full of
food and horror, and so important with his story, that life threatened
him with nothing worse than satiety.
While parties went up the river and down the river, and talked about
the chutes in the rapids where a victim could be sucked down to death
in an instant, or about tracing the windigo's secret camp, Archange
hid herself in the attic. She lay upon Michel's bed and wept, or
walked the plank floor. It was no place for her. At noon the bark roof
heated her almost to fever. The dormer windows gave her little air,
and there was dust as well as something like an individual sediment of
the poverty from which the boy had come. Yet she could endure the loft
dungeon better than the face of the Chippewa mother who blamed her,
or the bluff excitement of Monsieur Cadotte. She could hear his voice
from time to time, as he ran in for spirits or provisions for parties
of searchers. And Archange had aversion, like the instinct of a maid,
to betraying fondness for her husband. She was furious with him, also,
for causing her pain. When she thought of the windigo, of the rapids,
of any peril which might be working his limitless absence, she set
clenched hands in her loosened hair and trembled with hysterical
anguish. But the enormity of his behavior if he were alive made her
hiss at the rafters. "Good, monsieur! Next time I will have four
officers. I will have the entire garrison sitting along the gallery!
Yes, and they shall be English, too. And there is one thing you will
never know, besides." She laughed through her weeping. "You will never
know I made eyes at a windigo."
The preenings and posings of a creature whose perfections he once
thought were the result of a happy chance had made Louizon roar. She
remembered all their life together, and moaned, "I will say this:
he was the best husband that any girl ever had. We scarcely had a
disagreement. But to be the widow of a man who is eaten up--O Ste.
Marie!"
In the clear August weather the wide river seemed to bring its
opposite shores nearer. Islands within a stone's throw of the
settlement, rocky drops in a boiling current, vividly showed their
rich foliage of pines. On one of these islands Father Dablon and
Father Marquette had built their first mission chapel; and though they
afterwards removed it to the mainland, the old tracery of foundation
stones could still be seen. The mountains of Lake Superior showed like
a cloud. On the ridge above fort and houses the Chippewa lodges were
pleasant in the sunlight, sending ribbons of smoke from their camp
fires far above the serrated edge of the woods. Naked Indian children
and their playmates of the settlement shouted to one another, as they
ran along the river margin, threats of instant seizure by the windigo.
The Chippewa widow, holding her husband in her arms, for she was
not permitted to hang him on her back, stood and talked with her
red-skinned intimates of the lodges. The Frenchwomen collected at the
seigniory house. As for the men of the garrison, they were obliged
to stay and receive the English then on the way from Detour. But
they came out to see the boats off with the concern of brothers, and
Archange's uncle, the post commandant, embraced Monsieur Cadotte.
The priest and Jacques Repentigny did not speak to each other about
that wretched creature whose hoverings around the Sault were connected
with Louizon Cadotte's disappearance. But the priest went with
Louizon's father down the river, and Jacques led the party which took
the opposite direction. Though so many years had passed since Father
Dablon and Father Marquette built the first bark chapel, their
successor found his work very little easier than theirs had been.
A canoe was missing from the little fleet usually tied alongshore, but
it was not the one belonging to Louizon. The young seignior took that
one, having Jean Boucher and Jean's son to paddle for him. No other
man of Sault Ste. Marie could pole up the rapids or paddle down them
as this expert Chippewa could. He had been baptized with a French
name, and his son after him, but no Chippewa of pure blood and name
looked habitually as he did into those whirlpools called the chutes,
where the slip of a paddle meant death. Yet nobody feared the rapids.
It was common for boys and girls to flit around near shore in birch
canoes, balancing themselves and expertly dipping up whitefish.
Jean Boucher thrust out his boat from behind an island, and, turning
it as a fish glides, moved over thin sheets of water spraying upon
rocks. The fall of the Ste. Marie is gradual, but even at its upper
end there is a little hill to climb. Jean set his pole into the stone
floor of the river, and lifted the vessel length by length from crest
to crest of foam. His paddles lay behind him, and his arms were bare
to the elbows, showing their strong red sinews. He had let his hair
grow like a Frenchman's, and it hung forward shading his hatless
brows. A skin apron was girded in front of him to meet waves which
frothed up over the canoe's high prow. Blacksmith of the waters, he
beat a path between juts of rock; struggling to hold a point with the
pole, calling a quick word to his helper, and laughing as he forged
his way. Other voyagers who did not care to tax themselves with this
labor made a portage with their canoes alongshore, and started above
the glassy curve where the river bends down to its leap.
Gros Cap rose in the sky, revealing its peak in bolder lines as the
searchers pushed up the Ste. Marie, exploring mile after mile of pine
and white birch and fantastic rock. The shaggy bank stooped to them,
the illimitable glory of the wilderness witnessing a little procession
of boats like chips floating by.
It was almost sunset when they came back, the tired paddlers keeping
near that shore on which they intended to land. No trace of Louizon
Cadotte could be found; and those who had not seen the windigo were
ready to declare that there was no such thing about the Sault, when,
just above the rapids, she appeared from the dense up-slope of forest.
Jacques Repentigny's canoe had kept the lead, but a dozen light-bodied
Chippewas sprung on shore and rushed past him into the bushes.
The woman had disappeared in underbrush, but, surrounded by hunters
in full chase, she came running out, and fell on her hands, making
a hoarse noise in her throat. As she looked up, all the marks in her
aged aboriginal face were distinct to Jacques Repentigny. The sutures
in her temples were parted. She rolled herself around in a ball, and
hid her head in her dirty red blanket. Any wild beast was in harmony
with the wilderness, but this sick human being was a blot upon it.
Jacques felt the compassion of a god for her. Her pursuers were after
her, and the thud of stones they threw made him heartsick, as if the
thing were done to the woman he loved.
"Let her alone!" he commanded fiercely.
"Kill her!" shouted the hunters. "Hit the windigo on the head!"
All that world of northern air could not sweeten her, but Jacques
picked her up without a thought of her offensiveness and ran to his
canoe. The bones resisted him; the claws scratched at him through her
blanket. Jean Boucher lifted a paddle to hit the creature as soon as
she was down.
"If you strike her, I will kill you!" warned Jacques, and he sprung
into the boat.
The superstitious Chippewas threw themselves madly into their canoes
to follow. It would go hard, but they would get the windigo and
take the young seignior out of her spell. The Frenchmen, with man's
instinct for the chase, were in full cry with them.
Jean Boucher laid down his paddle sulkily, and his son did the same.
Jacques took a long pistol from his belt and pointed it at the old
Indian.
"If you don't paddle for life, I will shoot you." And his eyes were
eyes which Jean respected as he never had respected anything before.
The young man was a beautiful fellow. If he wanted to save a windigo,
why, the saints let him. The priest might say a good word about it
when you came to think, also.
"Where shall I paddle to?" inquired Jean Boucher, drawing in his
breath. The canoe leaped ahead, grazing hands stretched out to seize
it.
"To the other side of the river."
"Down the rapids?"
"Yes."
"Go down rough or go down smooth?"
"Rough--rough--where they cannot catch you."
The old canoeman snorted. He would like to see any of them catch him.
They were straining after him, and half a dozen canoes shot down that
glassy slide which leads to the rocks.
It takes three minutes for a skillful paddler to run that dangerous
race of three quarters of a mile. Jean Boucher stood at the prow, and
the waves boiled as high as his waist. Jacques dreaded only that the
windigo might move and destroy the delicate poise of the boat; but she
lay very still. The little craft quivered from rock to rock without
grazing one, rearing itself over a great breaker or sinking under a
crest of foam. Now a billow towered up, and Jean broke it with his
paddle, shouting his joy. Showers fell on the woman coiled in the
bottom of the boat. They were going down very rough indeed. Yells from
the other canoes grew less distinct. Jacques turned his head, keeping
a true balance, and saw that their pursuers were skirting toward the
shore. They must make a long detour to catch him after he reached the
foot of the fall.
The roar of awful waters met him as he looked ahead. Jean Boucher
drove the paddle down and spoke to his son. The canoe leaned sidewise,
sucked by the first chute, a caldron in the river bed where all Ste.
Marie's current seemed to go down, and whirl, and rise, and froth, and
roar.
"Ha!" shouted Jean Boucher. His face glistened with beads of water and
the glory of mastering Nature.
Scarcely were they past the first pit when the canoe plunged on the
verge of another. This sight was a moment of madness. The great chute,
lined with moving water walls and floored with whirling foam, bellowed
as if it were submerging the world. Columns of green water sheeted in
white rose above it and fell forward on the current. As the canoemen
held on with their paddles and shot by through spume and rain, every
soul in the boat exulted except the woman who lay flat on its keel.
The rapids gave a voyager the illusion that they were running uphill
to meet him, that they were breasting and opposing him instead of
carrying him forward. There was scarcely a breath between riding the
edge of the bottomless pit and shooting out on clear water. The rapids
were past, and they paddled for the other shore, a mile away.
On the west side the green water seemed turning to fire, but as the
sunset went out, shadows sunk on the broad surface. The fresh evening
breath of a primitive world blew across it. Down river the channel
turned, and Jacques could see nothing of the English or of the other
party. His pursuers had decided to land at the settlement.
It was twilight when Jean Boucher brought the canoe to pine woods
which met them at the edge of the water. The young Repentigny had been
wondering what he should do with his windigo. There was no settlement
on this shore, and had there been one it would offer no hospitality to
such as she was. His canoemen would hardly camp with her, and he had
no provisions. To keep her from being stoned or torn to pieces he had
made an inconsiderate flight. But his perplexity dissolved in a moment
before the sight of Louizon Cadotte coming out of the woods towards
them, having no hunting equipments and looking foolish.
"Where have you been?" called Jacques.
"Down this shore," responded Louizon.
"Did you take a canoe and come out here last night?"
"Yes, monsieur. I wished to be by myself. The canoe is below. I was
coming home."
"It is time you were coming home, when all the men in the settlement
are searching for you, and all the women trying to console your mother
and your wife."
"My wife--she is not then talking with any one on the gallery?"
Louizon's voice betrayed gratified revenge.
"I do not know. But there is a woman in this canoe who might talk on
the gallery and complain to the priest against a man who has got her
stoned on his account."
Louizon did not understand this, even when he looked at the heap of
dirty blanket in the canoe.
"Who is it?" he inquired.
"The Chippewas call her a windigo. They were all chasing her for
eating you up. But now we can take her back to the priest, and they
will let her alone when they see you. Where is your canoe?"
"Down here among the bushes," answered Louizon. He went to get it,
ashamed to look the young seignior in the face. He was light-headed
from hunger and exposure, and what followed seemed to him afterwards a
piteous dream.
"Come back!" called the young seignior, and Louizon turned back. The
two men's eyes met in a solemn look.
"Jean Boucher says this woman is dead."
Jean Boucher stood on the bank, holding the canoe with one hand, and
turning her unresisting face with the other. Jacques and Louizon took
off their hats.
They heard the cry of the whip-poor-will. The river had lost all its
green and was purple, and purple shadows lay on the distant mountains
and opposite ridge. Darkness was mercifully covering this poor
demented Indian woman, overcome by the burdens of her life, aged
without being venerable, perhaps made hideous by want and sorrow.
When they had looked at her in silence, respecting her because she
could no longer be hurt by anything in the world, Louizon whispered
aside to his seignior,--
"What shall we do with her?"
"Bury her," the old canoeman answered for him.
One of the party yet thought of taking her back to the priest. But she
did not belong to priests and rites. Jean Boucher said they could dig
in the forest mould with a paddle, and he and his son would make her a
grave. The two Chippewas left the burden to the young men.
Jacques Repentigny and Louizon Cadotte took up the woman who, perhaps
had never been what they considered woman; who had missed the good,
and got for her portion the ignorance and degradation of the world;
yet who must be something to the Almighty, for he had sent youth and
love to pity and take care of her in her death. They carried her into
the woods between them.