The morning star yet shone and the river valley was drenched with half frosty dew, and filled with silver mist when the AbbÉ Cavelier and his party descended to their canoes and set off up the river. They had made their farewells the night before, but Tonty and Greysolon du Lhut appeared, Tonty accompanying them down the descent. He came up with a bound before the boat was off, thundered at Bellefontaine’s door, and pulled that sleepy officer into the open air, calling at his ear,— “What fellow is this in the AbbÉ’s party who kept out of my sight until he carried his load but now to the canoe?” “You must mean Teissier, Monsieur de Tonty. He has lain ailing in the storehouse.” “Look,—yonder he goes.” Tonty made Bellefontaine lean over the eastern earthwork, but even the boat was blurred upon the river. “That was Jolycoeur,” declared Tonty, “whom Monsieur de la Salle promised me he would never take into his service again. That fellow tried to poison Monsieur de la Salle at Fort Frontenac.” “Monsieur de Tonty,” remonstrated the subordinate, “I know him well. He was here a month. He told me he was enlisted at St. Domingo, while Monsieur de la Salle lay in a fever, to replace men who deserted. He is a pilot and his name is Teissier.” “Whatever his real name may be we had him here on the Rock before you came, and he was called Jolycoeur.” “At any rate,” said Du Lhut, “his being of AbbÉ Cavelier’s company argues that he hath done La Salle no late harm.” Tonty thought about the matter while light grew in the sky, but dismissed it when the priest of Fort St. Louis summoned his great family to matins. On such pleasant mornings they were chanted in the open air. The sun rose, drawing filaments from the mass of vapor like a spinner, and every shred disappeared while the eye watched it. Preparations went forward for breakfast, while children’s and One urchin brought Tonty a paper, saying it was Monsieur Joutel’s, the young man who slept in the storehouse and was that morning gone from the fort. “Did he tell you to give it to me?” inquired Tonty. “Monsieur,” complained the lad, “he pinned it in the cap of my large brother and left order it was to be given to you after two days. But my large brother hath this morning pinned it in my cap, and it may work me harm. Besides, I desire to amuse myself by the river, and if I lost Monsieur Joutel’s paper I should get whipped.” “I commend you,” laughed Tonty, as he took the packet. “You must have no secrets from your commandant.” The child leaped, relieved, toward the gate, and this heavy communication shook between the iron and the natural hand. Tonty spread it open on his right gauntlet. He read a few moments with darkening countenance. Then the busy people on the Rock were startled by a cry of awful anguish. Tonty Men and women paused in their various business, and children, like frightened sheep, With up-spread arms the Italian raved across the open space, this far-reaching calamity widening like an eternally expanding circle around him. His rage at the assassins of La Salle—among whom he had himself placed a man whom he thought fit to be trusted—and his sorrow broke bounds in such sobs as men utter. “Oh, that I might brain them with this hand! Oh, wretched people on these plains! What hope remains to us? What will become of all these families, whose resource he was, whose sole consolation! It is despair for us! Thou wert one of the greatest men of this age,—so useful to France by thy great discoveries, so strong in thy virtues, so respected, so cherished by people even the most barbarous. That such a man should be massacred by wretches, and the earth did not engulf them or the lightning strike them dead!” Tonty’s blood boiled in his face. “Why do you all stand here like rocks instead of getting out the boats? Get out the boats! They stripped my master; they left his naked body to wolves and crows on Trinity River. Get ready the canoes. I will hunt those assassins, down to the last man, through every forest on this continent!” “You did not finish this relation,” Tonty turned with a furious push at Du Lhut which sent him staggering backward. “Is Jolycoeur dead? I will run down this forgiving priest of a brother of Monsieur de la Salle’s, and the assassin he harbored here under his protection he shall give up to justice!” “Thou mad-blooded loyal-hearted Italian!” exclaimed Du Lhut, dragging him out of the throng and holding him against a tree, “dost thou think nobody can feel this wrong except thee? I would go with thee anywhere if it could be revenged. But hearken to me, Henri de Tonty; if you go after the AbbÉ it will appear that you wish to strip him of the goods he bore away.” “He brought an order from Monsieur de la Salle,” retorted Tonty. “On that order I would give him the last skin in the storehouse. What I will strip him of is the wretch he carries in his forgiving bosom!” “And you will put a scandal upon this young Tonty leaned against the tree, pallor succeeding the pulsing of blood in his face. He looked at Du Lhut with piteous black eyes, like a stag brought down in full career. “The AbbÉ Cavelier,” Bellefontaine was whispering to one of the immigrants, “carried from this fortress above four thousand livres worth of furs, besides other goods!” “And left mademoiselle married without fortune,” muttered back the other. “He did well for himself by concealing the death of Sieur de la Salle.” Men and women looked mournfully at each other as Tonty walked across the fort and shut himself in his house. They wondered at hearing no crying within it such as a woman might utter upon the first shock of her grief. With La Salle’s own instinct Barbe locked herself within her room. It was not known to the Tonty sat in his door overlooking the cliff all day. Clouds sailed over the Rock. The lingering robins quarrelled with crows. That glittering pinnacled cliff across the ravine shone like white castle turrets. Smoke went up from the lodges on the plains as it had done during the six months La Salle’s bones were bleaching on Trinity River; but now a whisper like the whisper of wind in September corn-leaves was rushing from lodge to lodge. Tonty heard tribe after tribe take up the lament for the dead. Not only was it a lament for La Salle; but it was also for their own homes. He and Tonty had brought them back from exile, had banded them for strength and helped them ward off the Iroquois. His unstinted success meant their greatest prosperity. The undespairing Norman’s death foreshadowed theirs, with all that silence and desolation which must fall on the Rock of St. Louis before another civilization possessed it. Night came, and the leaves sifted down in its light breeze as if only half inclined to their The rich valley of the Illinois grew dimmer and dimmer under the starlight. Tonty could no longer see the river’s brown surface, but he could distinguish the little trail of foam down its centre churned by rapids above. Twisted pines, which had tangled their roots in everlasting rock, hung below him, children of the air. Some man of the garrison approached the windlass and let down the bucket with creak and rattle. He waited with the ear of custom for its clanking cry as it plunged, its gurgle and struggle in the water, and the many splashes with which it ascended. His face showed as a pale spot in the dusk when he rose from the doorstep and came into the room to light a candle. Barbe must be brought out from her silent ordeal and comforted and fed. Tonty set his lighted candle on a table and considered how he should approach her door. The furniture of the room had been hastily carried in that morning from its uses in the fÊte. While Tonty hesitated, the door on the fortress side opened, and La Salle stepped into the room. Tonty’s voice died in his throat. The joy and terror of this sight held him without power to move. It was La Salle; a mere shred of his former person, girt like some skeleton apostle with a buffalo hide which left his arm bones naked as well as his journey roughened feet. Beard had Hoarse and strong from the depths of his breast Tonty brought out the cry,— “O my master, my master!” “Tonty,” spoke La Salle, standing still, with the rapture of achievement in his eyes, “I have found the lost river!” He moved across the room and went out of the cliff door. His gaunt limbs and shaggy robe were seen one instant against the palisades, as if his eye were passing that starlit valley in review, the picture in miniature of the great west. He was gone while Tonty looked at him. The whisper of water at the base of the rock, and of the sea’s sweet song in pines, took the place of the voice which had spoken. A lad began to carol within the fortress, but hushed himself with sudden remembrance. That brooding body of darkness, which so overlies us all that its daily removal by sunlight is a continued miracle, pressed around this silent room resisted only by one feeble candle. And Tonty stood motionless in the room, blanched and exalted by what he had seen. Barbe’s opening her chamber door startled him and set in motion the arrested machinery of life. “What has been here, monsieur?” she asked under her breath. Tonty, without replying, moved to receive her, crushing under his foot a beech-nut which one of the children of the fortress had dropped upon the floor. Barbe’s arms girded his great chest. “Oh, monsieur,” she said with a sob, “I thought I heard a voice in this room, and I know I would myself break through death to come back to you!” |