Behind his litter marched a mighty army of three thousand stalwart men, bare-armed, bare-legged, in a uniform of flowing, white, plaited mulberry bark, relieved by dyed skins, striped with yellow, black, and red, thrown across their broad shoulders. They carried bows made of the acacia-wood, and arrows of reed tipped with bird-feathers. Gigantic, muscular, stern-faced warriors, the army of the sun-worshippers broke upon the gaze of the astonished Europeans with startling effect.
It has been asserted that the immediate ancestors of these children of the sun, angered at Montezuma, had joined Cortez in his victorious campaign against that unfortunate monarch. Later on, crushed and rebellious under Spanish tyranny, they had migrated toward the north and had found peaceful lands to their liking near the banks of the lower Mississippi. Whatever may be the truth of this, the fact remains that upon the afternoon which found Sieur de la Salle’s envoys the honored guests of the Brother of the Sun, the latter’s army defiled to the eastward of the city with ranks which begot in the eyes of the Count de Sancerre and the veteran de Tonti a gleam of mingled amazement and admiration. Not only were the warriors of the sun, individually, men suggesting prowess and endurance, but they, as a body, gave evidence of having learned, from sources beyond the reach of native Americans further to the northward, tactics indicating a European origin. If the sun-worshippers had, in fact, suffered from Spanish cruelty, they had also derived from their tyrannical allies valuable hints pertaining to the art of war. As he gazed at this army of athletes, Henri de Tonti, for the first time since he had left de la Salle’s camp, felt regret for the protest he had made against the expedition which his leader had decreed. Here before him stood a splendid band of soldiers who might be made, with some diplomacy, loyal friends to the on-pushing French.
To the mind of Zenobe Membré the martial array before him presented a magnificent collection of lost souls, well worthy, in outward seeming, of the saving grace of the cross. To snatch from the grasp of Satan so many glorious exponents of manly vigor would be, indeed, a triumph for Mother Church. Something of this he breathed into the ear of the motionless and silent Chatémuc, who stood with the friar upon a low hillock, overlooking the plain, viewing with amazement this imposing regiment, each member of which seemed to be taller by several inches than the stately Mohican.
“Look, Katonah!” cried de Sancerre, seizing the Indian maiden by the arm. “See, there, at the side of his dark-brown Majesty’s peripatetic flower-garden, stands my aged midnight prowler! Her old face is turned up to his. Can you see her, ma petite?”
Katonah stretched her shapely limbs to their utmost to look above the press in front of her, and presently her eyes lighted upon the shrivelled crone with whose discovery she had been intrusted by de la Salle.
“Go to your brother and keep the friar by his side until I return, Katonah,” whispered the Frenchman, excitedly. “I must have speech at once with this old hag.”
The sun-worshippers, pouring in throngs from their abandoned city—men, women, and children following and preceding the army in the fervor of their welcome to the white-faced children of the moon, who had come to them so mysteriously from the bosom of a wonder-working stream—impeded, by their respectful but exacting curiosity, the progress of de Sancerre toward the royal group. Women, scantily clad but gay with flowers and feathers, would put forth their brown hands to touch the tattered velvets of the Frenchman’s travel-stained but once gorgeous costume. Naked boys and girls squirmed toward him unabashed, marvelling at the pallor of his face and the splendor of the buckles upon his shoes.
“Peste!” muttered the annoyed courtier under his breath. “If they but knew how hard I have to strive to hold these outworn garments to my back, they’d keep their hands away. I’ll reach the royal presence as naked as a baby unless they grow more gentle with my garb.” And all the time he smiled and bowed, while men and women, boys and girls, cried out in wild approval of his courtly grace.
Henri de Tonti, who had lost much of his European polish through the long friction of camps and the wilderness, had reached the Great Sun’s flowery throne without winning the enthusiastic good-will of these impressionable adult children, who seemed to feel instinctively that the unbending, sallow, grim-faced Italian was less worthy, somehow, of their friendship than the fascinating, smiling Frenchman who followed gayly in the footsteps of the unmagnetic captain toward their king. In the presence of royalty the advantage in address possessed by de Sancerre over de Tonti was emphasized at once. With curt ceremony the Italian had saluted the smiling, black-eyed monarch, and had then stood silent, gazing helplessly upon the expectant throng pressing toward the litter, in the vain hope of finding some way to communicate with the royal sun-worshipper.
De Sancerre’s triumphal progress toward the throne had attracted the attention of the Brother of the Sun, and the plaudits of his subjects had led the latter to believe that the leading personage among his pale-faced guests was now before him. Falling gracefully upon one knee, the Frenchman kissed the out-stretched hand of the beaming King with a flourish and a fervor which aroused the admiring multitude to a fresh outburst of delighted shouts.