There was sorrow in more than one household in old St. Louis, but time softened and healed it. And now the inhabitants congratulated themselves on their freedom heretofore from raids like these. Towns had been destroyed, prisoners had been treated to almost every barbarity. Giving up their lives had not been the worst.
But the summer came on gloriously, and Colonel Chouteau made many plans for the advancement of the town. He was repairing the old house where his friend had lived, and improving the grounds, and everyone felt that in him they had a true friend.
One July day three worn and weary people came in at the northern gate, and after the guards had looked sharply at them there was a shout of joy. Pierre Duchesne, whose family had lived on a faint hope, young Normand Fleurey, and Mère Lunde, looking a decade older and more wrinkled than ever.
She sat down on a stone and wept while the sounds of joy and congratulation were all about her.
Who could give her any comfort? She suffered Gaspard Denys’s pain as well as her own. And though there had been adventures and hiding from roving Indians, living on barks and roots, she could not tell them over while her heart was so sore.
She went to the old house, where the three had known so much content.
“He will come back some day,” she said, “but the child—” and her voice would break at that.
She heard Marchand had been very ill with a fever, beside the wounds. He had come near to losing his leg, and was still a little lame, and very weak and heartbroken. His wife had been torn from his arms when an Indian had given him the blow on his head with a club, and there memory had stopped. Though Mère Lunde would talk to no one else, to him she told the sad story. And he had been lying helpless all the time Wawataysee had been in such danger! Yes, he knew what would happen to her now, but presently he would go up to the strait and never rest until he had killed all who worked her ill. Oh, if she had fallen into the hands of her old tribe!
That thought was madness. But he understood what the courage of her despair would be. She would not suffer any degradation, death would be a boon instead. Ah, if he could have joined Denys! He knew the cruelty and treachery of those whose hands she had fallen into. And the child!
But it would be useless to start disabled as he was, although his anger was fierce enough, and Denys was well on the journey. Yet it was terrible to wait with awful visions before his eyes. He had seen both men and women tortured, and the agonies prolonged with fiendish delight.