FATHER HENNEPIN.

"Thou art a comfort to a soldier, mademoiselle," said Tonty, heartily.

"But not to a priest," observed Barbe. "For last birthday when I was eleven my uncle Abbe stuck out his lip and said I was eleven years bad.

But my uncle La Salle kissed my cheek. There goeth Francois le Moyne."

Her face became suddenly distorted with grimaces of derision beside which Tonty could scarcely keep his gravity. A boy of about her own age ran past, dropping her a sneer for her pains.

"Monsieur, these Le Moynes and Sorels and Bouchers and Varennes and Joliets and Le Bers, they are all against my uncle La Salle. The girls talk about it in the convent. But he hath the governor on his side, so what can they do? I have pinched Jeanne le Ber at school, but she will never pinch back and it only makes her feel holier. So I pinch her no more. Do you know Jeanne le Ber?"

"No," said Tonty, "I have not that pleasure."

"Oh, monsieur, it is no pleasure. She says so many prayers. When I have prayers for penances they make me so tired I have to get up and hop between them. But Jeanne le Ber would pray all the time if her father did not pull her off her knees. My father and mother died in France. If they were alive they would not have to pull me off my knees."

"But a woman should learn to pray, even as a man should learn to fight,"

observed Tonty. "He stands between her and danger, and she should stand linking him to heaven."

"I can fight for myself," said Barbe. "And everybody ought to say his own prayers; but it makes one disagreeable to say more than his share. I wish to grow up an agreeable person."

They had reached the palisade entrance which fronted the river, Barbe's feet still lagging amid the lively scenes outside. She allowed Tonty to lead her with his left hand, thus sheltering her next the booths from streams of pa.s.sing Indians and traders.

Beside this open gate she would have lingered indefinitely, chattering to a guardian who felt her hatred of convent restraint, and gazing at preparations for the council: at prunes and chopped pieces of oxen being put to boil for an Indian feast; at the governor's chair from the fortress, where the sub-governor lived, borne by men to the middle of that s.p.a.ce yearly occupied as the council ring. But a watchful Sister was hovering ready inside the palisade gate, and reaching forth her arm she drew her charge away from Tonty, giving him brief and scandalized thanks for his service.

Barbe looked back. It was worth Tonty's while to catch sight of that regretful face smeared about its warm neck by curls, its lips parted to repeat and still repeat, "Adieu, monsieur. Adieu, monsieur."

But two men had come between the disappearing child and him, one man, dressed partly like an officer and partly like a coureur de bois, throwing both arms around Tonty in the eager Latin manner.

"My cousin Henri de Tonty, welcome to the New World. I waited with my gouty leg at the fortress for you; but when you came not, like a good woodsman, I tracked you down."

"My cousin Greysolon du Lhut! Glad am I to find you so speedily. This cold and heavy hand belies me."

"I heard of this hand. But the other was well lost, my cousin. Take courage in beholding me; I had nearly lost a leg, and not by good powder and shot either, but with gout which disgracefully loads up a man with his own dead members. But the Iroquois virgin, Catharine Tegahkouita, hath interceded for me."

"Monsieur de Tonty will observe we have saints among the savages in New France," said the other man.

He was a Recollet friar with sandalled feet, wearing a gray capote of coa.r.s.e texture which was girt with the cord of Saint Francis. His peaked hood hung behind his shoulders leaving his shaven crown to glisten with rosy enjoyment of the sunlight. A crucifix hung at his side; but no man ever devoted his life to prayer who was so manifestly created to enjoy the world. He had a nose of Flemish amplitude depressed in the centre, fat lips, a terraced chin, and twinkling good-humored eyes. The gray capote could not conceal a pompous swell of the stomach and the strut of his sandalled feet.

"My cousin Tonty," said Du Lhut, "this is Father Louis Hennepin from Fort Frontenac. He hath come down to Montreal[3] to meet Monsieur de la Salle and engage himself in the new western venture."

"Venture!" exclaimed a keen-visaged man in the garb of a merchant-colonist who was carrying a bale of goods to one of the booths,--for no man in Montreal was ashamed to get profit out of the beaver fair. "Where your Monsieur de la Salle is concerned there will be venture enough, but no results for any man but La Salle."

He set his bale down as if it were a challenge.

Points of light sprung into Tonty's eyes and the blood in his face showed its quickening.

"Monsieur," he spoke, "if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle."

"Jacques le Ber is a n.o.ble of the colony," declared Du Lhut, with the derisive freedom this great ranger and leader of coureurs de bois a.s.sumed toward any one; "for hath he not purchased his patent of King Louis for six thousand livres? But look you, my cousin Tonty, if the king allowed not us colonial n.o.bles to engage in trade he would lose us all by starvation; for scarce a miserable censitaire on our lands can pay us his capon and pint of wheat at the end of the year."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Monsieur," spoke Tonty, "if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle."--_Page 32._]

"I will answer to you, monsieur," said Jacques le Ber to the soldier, "that La Salle is the enemy of the colony, and the betrayer of them that have been his friends."

Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty's arms. Du Lhut then dragged him with expostulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Frontenac's strict orders that all quarrels should be suppressed during the beaver fair, and as the young man's furious looks still sought the merchant, reminding him of the harm he might do La Salle by an open quarrel with Montreal traders.

"I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as thou art,--I tell you it will not do," declared Du Lhut.

"Let the man keep his distance, then!"

"Why, you hot-blooded fellow! why do you take these Frenchmen so seriously?"

"Sieur de la Salle is my friend. I will strike any man who denounces him."

"Oh, come out toward the mountain. Let us make a little pilgrimage,"

laughed Du Lhut. "We must cool thee, Tonty, we must cool thee; or La Salle's enemies will lie in one heap the length of Montreal, mowed by this iron hand!"

As Jacques le Ber carried forward his bale, Father Hennepin walked beside him dealing forth good-natured remonstrance with fat hands and out-turned lips.

"My son, G.o.d save me from the man who doth nurse a grievance. Your case is simply this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and it is now called Fort Frontenac. He put you and a.s.sociates of yours in charge, and you had profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recommendation to the king, Sieur de la Salle was made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly chewed to the poisoning of thy immortal soul."

"You churchmen all,--Jesuits, Sulpitians, or Recollets,--are over zealous to domineer in this colony," spoke Jacques le Ber, through the effort of carrying his bale.

"My son," said Father Hennepin, swelling his stomach and inflating his throat, "why should I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue, if I felt no zeal for saving souls?"

"I spoke of domineering," repeated the angry merchant.

"And touching Monsieur de la Salle," said Father Hennepin, "I exhort thee not to love him; for who could love him,--but to rid thyself of hatred of any one."

"Father Hennepin has not then attached himself to La Salle's new enterprise?"

"I have a grand plan of discovery of my own," said the friar, deeply, rolling his shaven head, "an enterprise which would terrify anybody but me. The Sieur de la Salle merely opens my path. I will confess to thee, my son, that in youth I often hid myself behind the doors of taverns,--which were no fit haunts for men of holy life,--to hearken unto sailors' tales of strange lands. And thus would I willingly do without eating or drinking, such burning desire I had to explore new countries."

The Father did not observe that Jacques le Ber had reached his own booth and was there arranging his goods regardless of explorations in strange lands, but walked on, talking to the air, his out-thrust lips rounding every word, until some derisive savage pointed out this solo.

Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place in the governor's council, thinking wrathfully of his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all do, upon the affronts and hindrances of the present, rather than on his prospect of founding a strong and worthy family in the colony.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The romancer here differs from the historian, who says Father Hennepin met La Salle at Quebec.

IV.

A COUNCIL.

The North American savage, with an unerring instinct which republics might well study, sent his wisest men to the front to represent him.