WHEN HE LEFT THEM

Couture did, indeed, bring news concerning La Salle. Within the palisaded walls that crowned the rock of Fort St. Louis, the Man with the Iron Hand now listened to a story that hardened his soul with anger and despair. The AbbÉ and Joutel had told him much, but they had not told him all. From what Couture said it became evident that when the AbbÉ and his party reached the post on the Arkansas, they had told some things which they did not afterwards relate at Fort St. Louis. Thus through Couture’s account, pieced out by other details learned later, Tonty came to know the real heart of the story which the AbbÉ and Joutel had only told in half.

The thread of the hidden tale ran back to the beginning of the voyage from France. On the way across the sea there was a growing discontent among the men, which ripened into intrigue when they landed. While Joutel with part of the colony was guarding the supplies on the shore and squaring timbers to be used in the fort upstream, a confession by one of the men enabled him to foil a conspiracy to kill Le Gros, who guarded the storehouse, and himself steal arms and supplies from the storehouse and desert to the wilds. Joutel turned the men over to La Salle, but the incident did not make sufficient impression upon his own unsuspicious nature. When some months later Duhaut came back alone from La Salle’s first expedition, Joutel contented himself with watching him narrowly for a few days. When La Salle set out on his second expedition, Duhaut remained behind with the men at the fort.

As the weeks of La Salle’s absence lengthened into months, discontent spread among the members of the colony at the fort. Probably La Salle was lost; at all events, it did not look as if he were coming back. Little knots of men drew off together to talk of their wrongs. Why not desert La Salle and take matters into their own hands? Duhaut passed among the discontented with words of encouragement: under his management things would be different. Having staked considerable wealth in the enterprise of La Salle’s colony, Duhaut had grumbled much at the ill fortune that had come upon them; but in spite of all the losses of the colony he had managed to keep a large supply of goods,—knives, hatchets, cloth for garments and for Indian trade,—and these and many other possessions he now promised to divide among those who would follow him.

Joutel, learning of the mutterings of the men and the intrigues of Duhaut, called the conspirator before him with sharp words. Later he felt that he would have done better service to La Salle if he had put Duhaut to death upon the spot. After talking with the men and quieting their discontent, he tried to prevent further trouble by keeping them busily at work about the fort. It was not long after this incident that La Salle came back from his search for the lost river.

The party which journeyed forth upon the final expedition in January of 1687 was not large, but it was one which held great possibilities for trouble. There were stanch friends of La Salle in the party—among them his hotheaded nephew Moranget. But Duhaut also was there with his devoted tool L’ArchevÊque and his friend Liotot the surgeon—a man who, like Duhaut, had money invested in the colonial venture and was sorely put out at the progress of affairs.

For more than two months the seventeen men traveled together across the prairies until, about the middle of March, they drew near to a place where La Salle on his former trip to the Cenis villages had hidden some supplies.

They halted and La Salle sent out a party of men to bring the food into camp. It was on the fifteenth of the month that this party of seven set out—Duhaut and L’ArchevÊque, Liotot and Hiens the buccaneer, Teissier, a servant of La Salle’s named Saget, and Nika, a faithful Shawnee who had crossed the ocean twice with La Salle and served him with undying devotion. They did not have far to go; but they found the food spoiled and unfit for use.

On the way back the keen-eyed Shawnee saw two buffaloes, and, slipping along after them, killed them both. The men halted where they were and sent Saget back to camp to tell La Salle that if he would send horses they would bring the meat home. No one having returned by nightfall the six men slept upon the ground. The next day they cut up the buffaloes and placed the meat upon scaffolds to dry. Then, as was the custom of hunters, they laid aside the marrow bones and some other portions for their own use.

Saget returned from the camp with three men—Moranget, De Marie, and Meusnier—and with horses on which to pack the meat. Now Moranget, the nephew of La Salle, was not a favorite with the men to whom he came this day. When he had been ill for weeks on the shore of the bay from the arrow which rash adventure had lodged in his shoulder, Liotot the surgeon had cared for him with a patience which no man of the colony forgot; but when he was well again his surly temper vented itself upon even the doctor who had tended him. None the less did Duhaut dislike him, for he felt that his long month of hardship when lost in the wilds would not have come upon him if Moranget had been more patient in waiting for him.

No March wind was ever more blustering than this young man as he rode into the little camp and saw the meat drying on the scaffolds and the men guarding the marrow bones and other bits for themselves. In an unreasoning fury he seized, not only the drying meat, but the men’s own portion. He would take care of the meat thereafter, he said, and not let them eat it up as they had in the past.

His words fell upon the hatred of these fierce men like a match tossed into gunpowder. The five drew apart and held council. Too long had they borne with this young upstart. Night fell, but the conspirators did not sleep. Liotot rose quietly, while Moranget, Nika, and Saget were fast asleep. Hatchet in hand the surgeon stole over beside them and with a single blow split open the head of the hated Moranget. Nika and Saget he treated in the same fashion.

Meanwhile the other conspirators crouched with guns in hand ready to shoot if any one made resistance. Moranget was the only one to stir. Half sitting up he gasped and tried to speak. Then the murderers, to implicate the innocent De Marie, who had accompanied Moranget, forced him upon pain of death to finish the killing of his friend.

Murder had lifted its horrid head at last in the voyage that had known almost every other disaster. Could it stop there? The men took counsel together. What would be their chance of life when the news reached their leader? Their only safety now lay in going at once to the camp and killing both La Salle and Joutel. They started, but the river, swollen by a heavy rain, made them pause to construct a raft to transport their meat. While thus delayed they suddenly heard a gun fired as if in signal. Duhaut and his man L’ArchevÊque quickly crossed the river and a moment later they saw La Salle in the distance coming to seek them. Duhaut dropped quietly in the weeds to await his approach. La Salle, accompanied by the Recollet Douay, drew nearer, caught sight of L’ArchevÊque, and called out to him to know where Moranget was. Without removing his hat or otherwise saluting his astonished chief, L’ArchevÊque answered in an indifferent tone that he was along the river somewhere. La Salle started toward him with a rebuke. L’ArchevÊque answered with still more insolence. Then the crack of a gun came from the tall grass where Duhaut was hiding and La Salle, shot in the head, fell upon the ground. Without a word he died.

Douay, speechless, stood still in his tracks. The others came running up, Liotot in scornful exultation crying out over the body of La Salle: “There thou liest! Great Bashaw! There thou liest!”

Hiens, rough man that he was, perhaps already felt remorse—for La Salle had been good to him. Teissier the mariner, who had neither joined in the plot nor tried to prevent it, looked on while the men stripped the fallen leader and dragged his dead body into the bushes.

There they left him, their leader, a prey to the birds of the air and the wolves of the plains, unburied in the far corner of the Great Valley of whose waters and prairies and people he would never dream again.