Mackinac and Lake Stories

by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

The priest brought Moses out of the chapel with a pity and tenderness that touched Lucy, and the three went down the steep road. Her grandmother was sitting in the sun by the gable and did not notice them. The old woman was telling herself the story of Nanabojou. The sail-boat which they were to take was anchored off the end of the dock. Moses rowed out after it and brought it alongside. He was busy raising the sails and the priest and Lucy had already taken their seats when the little craft answered to a light bound over the stern, and Catharine sat resolutely down, looking at Moses Nazagebic.

Moses let the sails fall and leaped out. He tied the rope to the dock.

“Get into the boat again, Moses!” commanded the priest. “And Catharine, you go back!”

Moses shook his head. His spirit was broken, but it was a physical impossibility for him to sail a boat to Mackinac with Catharine aboard.

The priest knew he might as well attempt to control gulls. French clamor or Anglo-Saxon brutality would be easy to persuade or compel, in comparison with this dense aboriginal silence. He took patience and sat still, reading his breviary. The boat ground softly against logs, and Lucy hugged her bundle, determined on the journey. Moses remained with his back to them, dangling his legs over the end of the dock. Catharine kept her place, grasping the edges of the craft. It was plain if Moses Nazagebic went to Mackinac it would be in the hands of officers sent to bring him at a later period. So the day dropped down in splendor, lake and sky becoming one dazzle of gold so bright the eye might not dwell on it. The party of four returned, and Catharine walked last up the hill. Religion and penance were nothing to a Chippewa girl who had distinct intentions of vengeance.

She kept an eye on her victim while she milked the cows as they came from the woods to keep their nightly appointment. The priest owned some lack in himself that he could not better handle the destinies around him. They hurt him, as rock would bruise tender flesh.

Barbaric instrumentation and shouting did not keep him awake after darkness closed in. He would have lain awake if a dog had not stirred in Cross Village. He heard the wind change and strike the east side of his house with gusts of rain. Fires must die down to wet ashes in the grove. He knew the cross stood white and tall in scudding mist, and on the crosses in the cemetery chaplets and flowers made of white rags hung bedraggled. He foresaw the kind of day which would open before his poor penitent and be a symbol of the life that was to follow.

It was the priest himself who introduced Moses to this day, opening the door and standing unheeding under the overflow of the eaves. The hiss of rain could be heard, and daylight penetrated reluctantly abroad. Moses sat drooped forward with his elbows on his knees by the open fire. Lucy hurried to answer the summons, believing the priest had found some new haven for Moses while her cousin was out of the house.

But there stood Catharine behind the priest, the spell of her fierceness broken, and at her side was Frank Chibam, undrowned and amiably grinning, his dark red skin stung by the weather, indeed, but otherwise little changed by water.