CHAPTER XXIX
I FOLLOW MY PATH
A full hour later I went to Cadillac. "I am leaving," I said. "I am taking Pierre. The Ottawa girl, his wife, says she is going with us. It is foolish,—but Pierre wishes it. He is dough in her hands."
Cadillac shook my well shoulder. "Go to bed for a day. You are ash color."
"No, I must be on my way. The time is short enough as it is. Have the
Senecas gone?"
"No, it will be some hours before they are ready. If you start now, you will be enough in advance to keep out of sight."
I could not forbear a shrug. "Three hours' start to collect an army!
Well, it shall serve. And you follow to-morrow?"
Cadillac gave a trumpeting laugh. "Yes, tomorrow. I shall take a hundred men and leave a hundred here for guard. I have made arrangements. Longuant leads the Ottawas, and old Kondiaronk the loyal Hurons. Where shall we meet you?"
"I cannot tell. Stop at the Pottawatamie Islands and Onanguissé will know. Keep watch of Pemaou. He will make trouble if he can."
Cadillac looked at the horizon. "Montlivet, I have bad news. Pemaou has gone."
"Gone! Where?"
"I don't know. To the Seneca camp, probably. His canoes have just left."
I tapped the ground. I was tired and angry. "You should have prevented such a possibility," I let myself say.
But he kept his temper. "What could I have done?" he asked quietly.
"I have no authority in my garrison."
I regretted my outburst. "You could not have done anything," I hastened. "And if Pemaou has indeed gone to the Senecas, it is good news for me. I am impatient for a meeting with him that I did not dare have here for fear of entangling myself and losing time. I shall hope for an encounter in the west. And now I am away, monsieur."
I wished to leave with as little stir as possible, so Pierre took the canoe around the point, and I joined him there. To reach the rendezvous I walked through the old maize field where I had met the English captive. It had been moonlight then. Now it was hot noon, and the waves of light made me faint. I had forgotten breakfast. I cursed myself at the omission, for I needed strength.
But I was not to leave quite unattended. When I reached the canoe, I found Father Carheil talking to Singing Arrow. I was glad to see him. There was something that propped my pride and courage in his irritable, tender greeting.
He pressed a vial into my hands. "It is confection of Jacinth. It has great virtue. Take it with you, my son."
I knelt. "I would rather take your blessing, father."
He gave it to me, and his old hands trembled. "Come back, my son.
Come back safely. You will return this way?"
I looked off at the blue, beckoning west. "I do not know, father. I go without ties or responsibilities. I am not sure where I shall end. I doubt that I return this way."
"But where, my son? Where do you go?"
I pointed, and his mystic glance followed my hand. "Out there in the blue, father,—somewhere. I don't know where. It has beckoned you thus far; can you resist its cry to you to come farther and force its secrets from it?"
He clutched his rosary, and I knew I had touched one of his temptations. He loved the wilderness as I have never seen it loved. Even his fellow priests and the few soldiers and traders crowded him. He wanted the land alone,—alone with his Indians. He would not look at the blue track.
"It is the path of ambition, and it is strewn with wrecks. Come back to us here, my son."
But I would not look away from the west. "Some day I shall come back. Not now. Father, I married Ambition. She lives in the wilderness. I think I shall abide with her the next year."
He frowned at me. "Where has Madame de Montlivet gone?"
"She has started for her home in England, father."
He tapped his teeth with his forefinger. "You sent a curious guard with her. Take the advice of an old man who has lived among Indians. It is usually unwise to mix tribes."
"What do you mean?"
"You should have sent a guard of Ottawas with your wife and Starling."
"They were all Ottawas."
"No, they were more than half Hurons. I counted."
I jammed my teeth together and tried to think. I had just said that the west was calling me, that I was untrammeled. Untrammeled! Why, I was enmeshed, choked by conflicting duties. I put my head back, and breathed hard.
"Father, are you sure? Cadillac himself saw to it that they were all
Ottawas."
The priest stepped forward and wiped his handkerchief across my face. It was wet. "My son, take this more calmly. Cadillac does not know one Indian from another. Does this mean harm?"
I shook the sweat from my fingers. "I do not know what it means. But
I must go west. I must. Hundreds of men depend on me. Father
Carheil?"
"Yes, my son."
"I bound you once on this very spot. May I bind you again?"
"With promises?"
"Yes. Will you see Cadillac at once, tell him what you know, and have a company of Ottawas sent in pursuit of Lord Starling? Will you yourself see that it is rightly done?"
His foot drummed a tattoo. "I ask no favors of the commandant."
"Father!"
"Oh yes, I"——
"Then go at once, I beg you. Hasten."
He shook his head at me, but he turned and ran. I watched him a moment, then I stepped in the canoe.
"I will take a paddle," I told Pierre. "I can do something with my left hand. Singing Arrow must take one, too."
It had come to me before in my life to be compelled to force the apparently impossible out of opportunity. But never had I asked myself to attempt such a task as this. I had only one day the start of Cadillac, and in that time I must collect an army. But if success were within human reach I was well armored to secure it, for I carried a desperate heart.
So if I say we went swiftly, it conveys no meaning of what we really accomplished. We paddled as long as our arms would obey us, slept sparingly, and paddled again. Singing Arrow was worth two men. She paddled for us, cooked for us, and packed the bales when our hands blundered with weariness. She was tireless.
And watching her I saw something lived before me day by day that I had tried to forget was in the world. There was love between this Indian woman and my peasant Pierre. They had found the real love, the love that is wine and meat. It was very strange. Pierre was quiet, and he was wont to be boisterous, but he looked into the girl's eyes, and I saw that both of them forgot that the hours of work were long. I have not seen this miracle many times, though I have seen many marriages. What had Pierre done that he should find it?
Well, the west called me. And if a man whines under his luck, that proves that he deserves all that has happened.
And so we reached the Pottawatamie Islands.
We were so cramped and exhausted that we staggered as we tried to walk from the canoe, yet we remained at the islands but an hour. And in that hour I talked to Onanguissé and the old men, and perfected our plans. When we embarked again we had two large canoes with strong-armed Pottawatamies at the paddles. We were on our way to the Malhominis, and I slept most of the distance, for nature was in revolt. Yet through all my heavy slumber droned the voice of Onanguissé, and always he repeated what he had said when we parted.
"I called her the turtle dove. But at heart she was an eagle. Did you ask her to peck and twitter like a tame robin? I could have told you that she would fly away."
We reached the mouth of the Wild Rice River at evening, and pushed up through the reeds in the darkness. I knew if Pemaou was lying in ambush for me this would be the place for him. But we reached the village safely, so I said to myself that the Huron had grown slow-witted.
In other times, in times before the broth of life had lost its salt, I should have enjoyed that moment of entry into the Malhominis camp. The cry that met me was of relief and welcome, but I ignored all greetings till I had pushed my way to the pole where the dried band of rushes still hung. I tore it away, and hung a silver chain in its place. "Brother!" I said to Outchipouac, and he gave me his calumet in answer.
And then I had ado to compel a hearing. The Malhominis repented their injustice, and would have overpowered me with rejoicings and flattery, but I made them understand at last that I had but two hours to spend with them, and they quieted like children before a tutor. My first question was for news of Labarthe and Leclerc, but I learned nothing. Indeed, the Malhominis could tell me nothing of the Seneca camp beyond the fact that it was still there. They had cowered in their village dreading a Seneca attack, and they were feverishly anxious for concerted action. They suggested that I save time by sending messengers to the Chippewas and Winnebagoes, while I went myself to the Sac camp.
This was good advice and I adopted it. I drew maps on bark, gave the messengers my watchword, and instructed them what to say. The rendezvous I had selected was easy to find. Some few miles south of the Seneca camp a small river debouched into La Baye des Puants. We would meet there. Cadillac and the Pottawatamies would come together from the north; the Malhominis, the Winnebagoes, and the Chippewas would come separately, and I would lead the Sacs under my command. All was agreed upon, and I saw the messengers dispatched. Then I took a canoe and eight men, and started on my own journey. It was then past midnight.
The eight men worked well. By sunrise I was fighting the dogs and the stench in the Sacs village, and by eleven the same morning I was on my way again with eighty braves following. The Sacs were such clumsy people in canoes that I did not dare trust them on the water, so we arranged to make a detour to the west and reach the rendezvous by land.
It was a terrible journey. We had to make on foot nearly double the distance that the other tribes would make by canoe, so we gave ourselves no rest. The trail led by morass and fallen timber, and it was the season of stinging gnats and breathless days. The Sacs were always filthy in camp or journeying, and I turned coward at the food I was obliged to eat. But I did not dare leave them and trust them to come alone. They were a fierce, sullen people, unstable as hyenas, but they were terrible in war. I had won some power over them, and they followed me with the eyes of snarling dogs. But they would not have gone a mile without my hand to beckon.
So through filth and gnats, heat, toil, and lack of food, I followed
Ambition.