“You are not going? They will not take you? Oh, M’sieu, I cannot––you must not!”
She would have said more, but he bent down and kissed her forehead. Then, with his free hand he unclasped her fingers and went away. At the door he turned. She was sitting on the bench, gazing after him with a look that he 218 never forgot. For all of the unhappiness, the agony, that came to him from those eyes, it was with a lighter heart that he faced the warriors who rushed to seize him.
Every brave, woman, and child that the village could supply was in the double line that stretched away from a point on the path not a hundred yards distant to the long council house, which stood on a slight rise of ground. They were armed with muskets, clubs, knives,––with any instrument which could bruise or, mutilate the soldier as he passed, and yet leave life in him for the harder trials to follow. Five warriors, muskets in hand, had come to the hut. They sprang at Menard as he stepped out through the doorway, striking him roughly and holding his elbows behind his back.
A shout went up from the waiting lines, and muskets and clubs were waved in the air. The Captain stepped forward briskly with head erect, scorning to glance at the braves who walked on either side. He knew that they would not kill him in the gantlet; they would save him for the fire. He had passed through this once, he could do it again, conscious that every moment brought nearer the chance of a rescue by the Big Throat. Perhaps twenty paces had been 219 covered, and his guardians were prodding him and trying to force him into a run, when he heard a shout from the priest, and then the sounds of a struggle at the hut. He turned his head, but a rude hand knocked it back. Again he heard the priest’s voice, and this time, with it, a woman’s scream.
The Captain hesitated for a second. The warriors prodded him again, and before they could raise their arms he had jerked loose, snatched a musket from one, and swinging it around his head, sent the two to the ground, one with a cracked skull. Before those in the lines could fairly see what had happened, he was running toward the hut with two captured muskets and a knife. In front of the hut the three other Indians were struggling with Father Claude, who was fighting in a frenzy, and the maid. She was hanging back, and one redskin had crushed her two wrists together in his hand and was dragging her.
Menard was on them with a leap. They did not see him until a musket whirled about their ears, and one man fell, rolling, at the maid’s feet.
“Back into the hut!” he said roughly, and she obeyed. As he turned to aid the priest he called after her, “Pile up the logs, quick!” 220
She understood, and with the strength that came with the moment, she dragged the logs to the door.
Menard crushed down the two remaining Indians as he would have crushed wild beasts, without a glance toward the mob that was running at him, without a thought for the gash in his arm, made first by an arrow at La Gallette and now reopened by a knife thrust. The Father, too, was wounded, but still he could fight. There was but a second more. The Captain threw the four muskets into the hut, and after them the powder-horns and bullet-pouches which he had barely time to strip from the dead men. Then he crowded the priest through the opening above the logs, and came tumbling after. Another second saw the logs piled close against the door, while a shower of bullets and arrows rattled against them.
“Take a musket, Father. Now, fire together! Quick, the others! Can you load these, Mademoiselle?”