“Let me tie Jolycœur and fling him into my canoe, and I turn back at once. I can hold your claims on the Illinois against any number of governor’s agents. Take the surgeon Liotot in Jolycœur’s place. Liotot came with me, anxious to return to France.”
“Jolycœur is no worse than the others, my Tonty, and he has had many opportunities. How often has my life been threatened!”
“He intends mischief, monsieur. If I had heard it before you set out, this journey need not have been made.”
“Tonty,” declared the explorer, “I think sometimes I carry my own destruction within myself. I will not chop nice phrases for these hounds who continually ruin my undertakings by their faithlessness. If a man must keep patting the populace, he can do little else. But I am glad you overtook me here. My Tonty, if I had a hundred men like you I could spread out the unknown wilderness and possess it as that child possesses that hide of buffalo.”
Though their undertakings were united, and the Italian had staked his fortune in the Norman’s ventures, La Salle always assumed, and Tonty from the first granted him, entire mastery of the West. Both looked with occupied eyes at Barbe, who felt her life enlarged by witnessing this conference.
“Monsieur, what aspect have affairs taken since you reached Fort Frontenac?”
“Worse, Tonty, than I dreaded when I left the Illinois. You know how this new governor stripped Fort Frontenac of men and made its unprotected state an excuse for seizing it, saying I had not obeyed the king’s order to maintain a garrison. And you know how he and the merchants of Montreal have possessed themselves of my seigniory here. They have sold and are still busy selling my goods from this post, putting the money into their pockets. I spent nearly thirty-five thousand francs improving this grant of Frontenac. But worse than that, Tonty, they have ruined my credit both here and in France. Even my brother will no more lift a finger for me. The king is turned against me. The fortunes of my family—even the fortune of that child—are sucked down in my ruin.”
Barbe noted her own bankruptcy with the unconcern of youth. Monsieur de Tonty’s face, when you looked up at it from a rug beside the hearth, showed well its full rounded chin, square jaws, and high temples, the richness of its Italian coloring against the blackness of its Italian hair.
“They call me a dreamer and a madman, these fellows now in power, and have persuaded the king that my discoveries are of no account.”
“Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “do you remember the mouth of the great river?”[12]