“Lean against the tree-trunk, señora,” said de Sancerre to Doña Julia, his voice tripping over his breath as he spoke. “I fear old Noco has found our pace too hot. But, even now, I dare not rest. We must go on!”
Descending the hillock to the treacherous ooze which mirrored the moon in a multitude of pools, the Frenchman filled his bedraggled bonnet with cold water and returned quickly to Noco’s side. Bending down, he forced the panting beldame to drink deep of the refreshing draught. Then he poured a cold stream upon her drawn, dusky face and through the white hair above her wrinkled brow. The old hag’s beady eyes had watched his every movement. Had he not cast a spell upon the moon-kissed water with which he laved her head? Surely this revival of her strength, which raised her on the instant to her feet, was magical. Cruel though he might have been to her, the Brother of the Moon was making full reparation with his witchery for the suffering which she had undergone. Old Noco was more superstitious at midnight than at dawn, more a savage in the forest than in her city hut. The mocking gleam which her eyes had known so well the moonlight could not find, as she stood facing de Sancerre, gazing up at him with a question in her glance.
“Cabanacte?” she exclaimed, still short of breath.
“We will seek him by the river,” answered de Sancerre, pointing to a break in the forest which opened toward the east, as he drew the woman toward the hollow gum-tree against which the Spanish girl was seated, silently pouring out her soul in gratitude to Mother Mary and the saints.
“But there is no time,” complained the old woman. “They will miss Coyocop, and if they find us in the woods—ugh!” The grunt of horror to which Noco gave vent bore witness to how much cruelty her aged eyes had gazed upon.
“Listen, Doña Noco,” said de Sancerre sternly, as he extended his hand to Julia de Aquilar and, indulging in a courtly flourish wholly out of keeping with his environment, drew her to her feet, “we have set out to find Katonah and your grandson. Be true to Cabanacte and put your trust in Coyocop. Listen, señora,” and here de Sancerre bent down and addressed the old crone with impressive emphasis, “as we hurry on, ponder the words I speak; the City of the Sun is unworthy of the spirit sent from God. It is accursed. Its temple runs with blood, and its vile priests have sealed the city’s doom. Come; ’twas your grandson who found Coyocop. ’Tis Coyocop who shall now find Cabanacte.”
Onward through the moonlit forest the trio kept their course, tending always toward a noble river that might bear them, could they build a raft, to the vagrant camp of de la Salle, pitched somewhere further south. Wasting no breath in futile words, de Sancerre maintained a telling pace which carried them every moment further from a city of murder toward a stream where hunger menaced them.
For two long, heavy hours they struggled eastward across the treacherous margin of a river grown erratic from its weary longing for the sea. Now and then de Sancerre would turn to refresh his straining eyes with a vision of beauty, done in black and white against the moonlight, and, for all time, upon his heart. A word of encouragement would escape from his dry lips at intervals, and a smile of hope and gratitude would reward him for his prodigality of breath.
The want and hardship which confronted them, the chances of capture from savage tribes, of death from starvation, or swamp-begotten fever, although clear to de Sancerre’s mind, could not, in that glad hour, cast a shadow upon his buoyant spirits. “A half-done miracle is worse than none,” he had said to Doña Julia. It gave him renewed confidence in the future to feel that upon his own courage, pertinacity, and foresight would depend the happy outcome of a strange adventure which chance, at the outset, had made possible. It was pleasant to de Sancerre to reflect that he could now relieve the saints of all responsibility for the issue of events.
Nevertheless, the Frenchman uttered a word of gratitude to St. Maturin, who watches over fools, when, about two hours after midnight, he and his companions shook the forest from their weary shoulders and stood upon the curving shore of the River Colbert—known to later times as the Mississippi. De Sancerre’s quick eye saw at once that at this point Sieur de la Salle had, weeks before, made his camp for a night. By a short cut through the woods, the Frenchman had reached a point upon the river to gain which the canoes of the great explorer had labored for a day upon the winding stream. That the litter left upon the bank had not been abandoned by a party of roving Indians was proven beyond peradventure to do Sancerre by a discovery which electrified his pulse and renewed his admiration for the saint whom he had just invoked. As he hurried down the slope which fell gently from the forest to the stream, anxious to enter the deserted huts, made of reeds and leafy branches by expert hands to serve as shelter for a single night, de Sancerre’s torn shoes struck against an object which forced an exclamation of astonishment and delight from his ready tongue.