The Indians stood petrified. Tonty, ill-pleased at the interruption, waved his hand impatiently and the robin said again, "Squaws work." That magic hand! Every Indian saw it make the bird talk. What would it do next? With an impulse for safety they turned as one man and went scrambling, sliding and falling to the bottom of the hill.
Tonty was provoked. "Oh, Tony, that was such an untimely thing for you to do when I need the workers. Such an old, old trick, too—so childish!"
"It is all the better for being ancient and simple if it succeeds," grinned the unrepentant Anthony; "and besides, I did not do it. I couldn't. It is much harder than singing a tune."
"Didn't the sounds come through those crooked teeth of yours?"
Anthony shook his head and crossed his heart. His chum stood innocently aloof. "Give us an hour, dear Tonty, to rest our muscles in a ball game. At your signal I will bring them all here again to work at double speed," and away he ran to play.
Tonty, heavy with care, went to the Sieur La Salle with the list of his needs. The fort was nearly repaired. Quantities of stores, enough for a siege, were arriving on the backs of squaws every hour in the day. Bales and bales of furs by the same pack beasts were also coming up.
As the two leaders stood side by side and gazed down on the lovely fertile plain, the happy towns and the rollicking ball game, they talked of how best to hold the Great River valley from this vantage point. A town of some six thousand Illinois lay just across the river. In another direction, also within reach of the refuge of the fort, was a village of Miamis almost as large. Of Shawnees, Weas, and half a dozen others in much smaller tribes there were enough to make perhaps some twenty thousand souls.
These were allies. Also they were dependents. They expected the Sieur La Salle to give them French goods in exchange for furs and to help provide them with food if their crops failed. First of all, his soldiers and his steel weapons must protect them from their ferocious enemies, the Iroquois.
He had claimed all this land with their consent. In return he must save their constantly threatened lives. Until he could get a line of ships coming through the Gulf to his new-found port, Fort Saint Louis must be supplied from Canada by that route through the Great Lakes which he had struggled over back and forth in so many heartbreaking journeys of winter hardships.