The maid’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“I wish they would speak, or laugh, or do something,” she whispered to Father Claude, “Are they not interested? They hardly seem to hear him.”
The priest looked at her gravely.
“Yes,” he replied, “they are listening.”
The time had come to speak of La Grange. The Captain had been steadily leading up to this moment. He had tried to show the Indians that they had no complaint, no cause for war, unless it was the one incident at Fort Frontenac. He knew that the chiefs not only understood his argument, but that they were quietly waiting for him to approach this real cause of trouble, and were probably curious to 265 see how he would meet it. The mind of the Iroquois, when in the council, separated from the heat and emotion of the dance, the hunt, the war-path, was remarkably keen. Menard felt sure that if he could present his case logically and firmly, it would appeal to most of the chief and older warriors. Then the maid came into his thoughts, and he knew, though he did not look down, that she was gazing up at him and waiting. He hesitated for a moment longer. The chiefs, too, were waiting. The Long House was hushed:––three hundred faces were looking at him through the twisting, curling smoke that blurred the scene into an unreal picture. Yes, the time had come to speak of La Grange; and he spoke the first words hurriedly, stepping half-unconsciously farther from the maid.
There was a part of the true story of the capture which he did not tell,––the Governor’s part. For the rest, it was all there, every word about La Grange and his treacherous act coming out almost brutally.
“Your speakers have told you of the hunting party that was taken into the stone house, and put into chains, and sent away to be slaves to the Chief-Across-the-Water. There is a chief 266 at the stone house whom you have seen fighting bravely in many a battle. He is a bold warrior; none is so quick or so tireless as Captain la Grange. But he has a devil in his heart. The bad medicine of white man and redman, the fire-water, is always close to him, ready to whisper to him and guide him. It was not the father at Quebec that broke the faith with the Onondagas. It was not the Big Buffalo. If the Big Buffalo could so forget his brothers of the Onondaga lodges, he would not have come back to the Long House to tell them of the sorrow of the Great Mountain. My brothers have seen the Big Buffalo in war and peace––they know that he would not do this.
“The devil was in Captain la Grange’s heart. He captured my brothers. He told the Great Mountain that it was a war party, that he had taken them prisoners fairly. He lied to the Great Mountain. When the Great Mountain asked the Big Buffalo to bring the prisoners to his great village on the river, the Big Buffalo could not say, ‘No, I am no longer your son!’ When the Great Mountain commands, the Big Buffalo obeys. With sorrow in his heart he did as his father told him.” 267
Menard was struggling to put the maid out of his thoughts, to keep in view only the safety of the column and the welfare of New France. And as the words came rapidly to his lips and fell upon the ears of that silent audience, he began to feel that they believed him.
“My brothers,” he said, with more feeling than they knew, “it is five seasons since I left your village for the land of the white man. In that time you have had no thought that I was not indeed your brother, the son of your chief. You have known other Frenchmen. Father Claude, who sits by my side; Father Jean de Lamberville, who has given his many years to save you for the great white man’s Manitou; Major d’Orvilliers, who has never failed to give food and shelter to the starving hunter at his great stone house,––I could name a hundred others. You know that these are honest, that what they promise will be done. But in every village is a fool, in every family is one who is weak and cannot earn a name on the hunt. You have a warrior in this house who to-day raised his hand against a visitor in the great council. My brothers,––it is with sadness that I say it,––not all the white men are true warriors. You are wise chiefs and brave warriors; 268 you know that because one man is a dog, it is not so with all his nation. The Great Mountain sends me to you, and I speak in his voice. I tell you that Captain la Grange is a dog, that he has broken the faith of the white man and the redman, that the father at Quebec and the Great-Chief-Across-the-Water, who are so quick to punish their red children, will also punish the white. The white men are good. They love the Onondagas. And if any white man breaks the faith, he shall be punished.”