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Title: Before Marquette, A Three-Part Story

Date of first publication: 1918

Author: Kathrene Pinkerton (1887-1967)

Author: Robert E. Pinkerton (1882-1970)

Illustrator: Valentine De Alton (1889-1936)

Date first posted: April 6, 2026

Date last updated: April 6, 2026

Faded Page eBook #20260413

This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins, Pat McCoy & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

This file was produced from images generously made available by Luminist Archives.

“Five hundred and sixty-two pounds, six shillings, your Excellency,” replied his secretary.

Sir William Berkeley struck the table with his jeweled snuff-box and rose to his feet. He shook back the lace cuffs from his wrists impatiently and strode across the room to the window.

“And we’ve killed off none of the savages. Has less fur been taken, or have we not received it?”

“There is no reason, your Excellency, to believe that the savages have taken less. They are eager enough for the goods.”

“Call it what you will. I care not whether it be advisement or expostulation. I know this much. All fur of the colony, every hide and hair, is to pass through my hands, and it does not. I am indifferent to the few paltry pounds I lose, but there is sedition, rebellion, defiance of the king and of the king’s will, in this.”

The secretary discreetly remained silent while the governor paced from the table to the window and back. The plier of quills knew his excellency too well to attempt speech now. Any word would be incautious in the face of the rising tempest. He was surprised, however, when Sir William, his eyes thoughtful, the storm cloud passed, suddenly stopped and asked—

“They tell me that he has been to the Blue Mountains, has traveled far to the north, even to the Plymouth Company’s lands.”

“Even farther, your Excellency, if report be true. I have heard that he has crossed the St. Lawrence, that he spent a year with the French.”

“The St. Lawrence, eh? That’s where the fur is found in plenty, and where none escapes. And I’ve heard it said that, with the exception of the Longhouses, the Indians are always friendly to the French.”

Still thoughtful, the governor turned again to the window and looked out over the river, the far reaches of which were tinted with that first, fresh, delicate green of budding leaves. At last he spoke quickly, decisively:

“Bring me the charges against this young Jeffreys, all of them. Write them out, clearly and at length.”

“Now,” commanded Sir William, “have the warder of the gaol conduct this young rover before me at once.”

“Yes, here!” and the governor’s face grew red with his fury. “Here in this room, and at once!”

The governor looked up to see a strange figure framed by the big-planked portal. Not in the gold and lace and bright colors of the gentry of Virginia was he clothed, nor in the rough costume of an indented servant. On his feet were moccasins, beaded, the tops rolling over to escalloped edges. His legs, long, straight, and not too heavy, were encased in buckskin leggings, and down each outer seam was a long fringe of the leather.

He wore a shirt of woolen and over it a buckskin jacket that reached below his hips and around the edges, across the shoulders and down the arms of which were long fringes like those of the leggings. On his head was a cap made of the skins of mink, and hanging from the top of it was the long, bushy tail of a gray fox.

The garb, strange as it was, held the governor’s attention for only a moment. The face under the brown cap, smooth-shaven, brown, was one the handsome Royalist himself would have envied in his youth. The forehead was high and wide. The eyes, gray, steady and frank, were wide apart. The lips were full but slightly compressed, and beneath was a chin that was as square as the perfect symmetry of the face would permit.

There was no question, no curiosity, no cringing, in the gaze that met the governor’s. There was something stately yet free in the poise of the head, and the lithe figure, while it seemed molten within the leathern garments, still had that easy dignity and grace of carriage which distinguishes the animals the skins had once clothed.

With a smile the young man in the doorway plucked the fur helmet from his head, and still with a smile he stood looking at the governor.

The amanuensis slipped out past the silent figure that still stood in the doorway.

“But, your Excellency,” expostulated one of the men with a glance toward the prisoner.

“Now, sirrah, you are Richard Jeffreys, eh?” he continued when he and the young man were alone.

“And yet you, the son of an honorable, God-fearing, loyal subject of the king, a son who should be the pride of his father, lie in gaol under the charge of failure to attend church, blasphemy, failure to plant corn, illicit trade with the Indians, smuggling furs and seditious utterances. There is proof enough to hang you three times over.”

“Been told! And do you have to be told when you shatter every law of the colony?”

“I am sometimes a stranger to the colony and its laws do not always follow me. It would interest me greatly to read the laws as they stand today. I am sure they would be enlightening.”

“And I, who have thanked God often enough that there were no schools or printing presses in the colony, live to see the like of the heathen savages stand before me with this insolent boast of his learning!”

His excellency, purple with passion, rid himself of enough finable oaths to stand his own proud figure upon the gallows ten times over. He stopped only when his vision cleared of the rage mist and he found the young man looking at him with unconcealed interest and a slight smile upon his lips.

“It pleases me,” he said when the governor was silent at last, “that the laws have been so broadened that a slip of the tongue or righteous anger can no longer send a man dangling at a rope’s end.”

The thrust served to renew the storm, and through it all the young man stood across the table, his eyes twinkling with amusement. Where his words had failed, his attitude, his hidden laughter, served to bring the governor to his senses.

“The rope’s end, knotted, noosed, awaits you!” his excellency said fiercely. “But aside with that. It matters not now. There is another reason I have for bringing you here. They tell me you have been to the Blue Mountains.”

Sir William’s anger fell from him as a cloak might drop from his shoulders. He leaned forward across the table, his eyes eager, his bearing no longer that of the king’s ruler of Virginia Colony.

“Then,” he said at last, his voice husky, “have you seen the South Sea, the Red Sea, what they call the Gulf of California?”

“No,” answered young Jeffreys, the smile in his eyes verging upon laughter. “Had I seen it, it might be that the noose would be unknotted were I to lead your men to it?”

“I would cut it with mine own sword, for the South Sea means gold, and the king needs gold.”

“Why should the gold be the king’s?” he asked. “Has he ever left England? Has he ever seen this land? Have his minions ever seen it?”

“It is the king’s domain!” snapped the governor. “His by right of discovery, by right of conquest, by the right God has given him.”

“God has given him! God made that land but he never destined it for a king. There lies not an inch of king’s land beyond the Blue Mountains, and there never will. That land is too broad, too fair, too pleasant. A king’s wish would be lost in it, a king’s voice would echo in vain among its hills, a king’s lungs would wither if they once inhaled the pure air that sweeps the plains. God set aside that land for men, and some day they will take it.”

“You will before tomorrow’s sun rises,” whispered his excellency between clenched teeth. “Where did you learn this sedition? Your father?”

“Leave my father out of this,” answered Jeffreys sharply. “He lives his own life. I live mine. He was born in England. He is a good man, true to his teachings, to this absurd theory that a man, by divine right, can oppress other men.

“But I was born in the colony of Virginia. I have never seen a king, and, thank God, no king has ever seen the land of my birth, nor ever will. My thoughts are mine own. I could have no others, after seeing this land of men beyond the Blue Mountains.”

“You have preached this?” asked the governor, the words coming with difficulty.

“There are others who think and preach the same? Tell me. They may sever your noose.”

“The governor seems to wish that I cheat the gallows,” he said, with a suggestion of interrogation in his tone.

“I would hang you and every traitor of your ilk with the greatest joy, and hang you will tomorrow at dawn, unless——”

“You are young, you have wit, and with that wit must go courage to take you past the Blue Mountains, where no white men have been. There is yet hope for you. The king needs you. There is this. Have you ever preached such sedition to others?”

“My thoughts have always been vague, unformed. They came to my mind as the air beyond the Blue Mountains came to my lungs. Perhaps it is the air in that land that breeds them. I only know it is not so close as this in the colony. It seems untainted. But when the thoughts came to me I did not rush back and preach them. Perhaps I would some time. I had no intention of doing so today until you drove me to it.”

“I!” cried Berkeley. “I! But let that lie. You have not spoken so to others. And you say your thoughts are vague. There is something that may dispel them, as the sun sweeps the fog from the river in the morning. Love of life would do that.”

The governor paused and studied the young man’s face. The laughing eyes told him nothing.

“Give me your attention,” he said at last, straightening in his chair and speaking quickly, as if he had reached a decision and wished the matter settled. “They tell me you have been north, past the St. Lawrence?”

“Then you know something of the fur trade, of the methods they employ, of how they keep on such amiable terms with the savages?”

“Good! The fur trade of Virginia is not as it should be. There is need of a better understanding with the Indians, though, God knows, I have done all I could do to placate them.”

“Quiet, sirrah!” shouted the governor. “Your life is at stake. This fur business must be controlled as the king would have it. Unlicensed traders are visiting the Indians. The Dutch are smuggling. One of their ships was in the Chesapeake only last week. A man must go among the Indians, win them completely, and he must catch these outlaw traders red-handed, must find where they meet the smugglers and bring the information that will permit us to apprehend them.”

“Silence!” roared the governor. “There is no spying on outlaws and traitors. This would be in the service of the king. The gallows are waiting for you, the gallows or this.”

Jeffreys in no way showed surprise, but he did turn and look out of the window, at the broad river, placid in the late afternoon of an early Spring day, at the sun glinting from the freshly budding leaves.

“You are young, you love life, as I can see now by your glance at the sunshine,” continued the governor. “Take an oath of allegiance to his majesty here before me, mend your ways, and Captain Jeffreys’ son may live to be a credit to him, to him and to his king. No one will ever know. Come, be quick! Say the word and you live.”

“But you are asking me to make myself over instanter, to implant in myself new thoughts, new ideas, a new mind, a new heart. I have always been free, wandering where I wished, and the life has been sweet. The odor of a wigwam is not washed from a man in an hour.”

“Between death and the manner of life,” and Jeffreys glanced out of the window at the long shadows. “I wish three hours in which to adjust myself. My mind is slow and can not be spurred.”

“You deserve not three minutes. But you may wait. Only remember that the noose is certain at dawn.”

“And I will send you word from the gaol?” asked Jeffreys, the smile again in his eyes.

“No. I will have you brought here. There are other things beside the fur of which I would speak. When that is attended to there is the South Sea. You not only have the opportunity of life but of honor, of achievement for your king, and of your king’s gratitude.”

A few minutes later he stood looking out between the bars of his cell. It was the supper hour and the street beneath him was empty of all except two or three hurrying servants.

Jeffreys’ eyes, however, were on the tops of the trees, where the sun still lingered. His ears were tuned only for the twitter of industrious nest-builders in the sycamore across the way. It was life, budding, joyous life, that he saw and heard all about him, and he smiled, though not wistfully, or longingly.

“Betsykins!” he exclaimed even before he looked down. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Dick!” and the girl, who was no more than seventeen, looked up with streaming eyes and blanched face. “Is it true? Are they going to—to—to hang you in the morning?”

“So they say. Before the sun comes up again. But what brings you here? You must hasten away or there will be talk of you.”

“I had to, Dick. Father was coming to Jamestown this morning and I made him bring me. He is waiting now in the minister’s house, wondering where I am, for I ran away. Oh, Dick! I had to see you again! I——”

She stopped speaking and covered her face with her hands. Even so far above her he could hear her sobs.

“Come, come, Betsykins,” he whispered. “You must run back. Some one will see you. When does your father return to Carver Manor?”

“And talk with me you shall, this very night, little Betsy,” he whispered, his face pressed between the bars. “I thought I had not a friend in the colony, and now when one comes she deserves the best, deserves what she wishes. Come, now. Run along to the minister’s that your father may not be delayed. And tonight, at nine o’clock, be in the little grove of sycamores below your father’s wharf.”

“I am not jesting. Go quickly, and tonight I’ll talk to you for fifteen minutes.”

“Elizabeth,” whispered Dick sharply, “leave at once! Some one is coming up the street and you must not be seen talking with a gaolbird.”

“They are nothing, for I go on a king’s mission,” and he laughed softly. “Remember! The sycamores at nine. I will be waiting for you.”

CHAPTER II
THE TRYST AT THE SYCAMORES

“Well?” demanded Governor Berkeley when the door closed and he and Dick Jeffreys were alone.

The young man’s head was bent, his easy, confident bearing had vanished, and he stared down the table between him and his excellency.

“Does the noose have to tighten about your neck before your wild brain will come to itself and act?”

“It is hard to decide,” was the hesitating answer. “You see, I do not know all that I am to do, all that is required of me.”

“First of all, sirrah, you are required to acknowledge your king, to swear allegiance anew and to remain loyal to him and to the church. That is no more than is required of any subject of his gracious majesty. Nay, it is a privilege of which any one in the colony should be glad.

“Secondly, you must abandon the wild ideas to which you so heedlessly gave voice this afternoon. You must be loyal in thought as well as in action.”

“Following that,” and the governor leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his haughtiness giving way to sudden intentness, “there is the fur trade. You have knowledge of the Indians, you understand the methods of the French. You know something of the outlaw traders who are smuggling pelts to the Dutch. That must be stopped, and you, with the power of the king behind you, are to stop it.

“That done, and it should be accomplished in a year, there is the matter of the South Sea, the Red Sea of the Spanish, the Gulf of California, the way to the Indies. There is this kingdom of Quivira, which the Spaniards never found, which is a second Peru. There is gold, and there are pearls and rubies across the Blue Mountains somewhere. They can not be far, for the Indians say that the Eastern Sea beats against a rock from which our own Roanoke flows.

“The French are pushing westward to the headwaters of the St. Lawrence. Already they have reports of the great water only a little way beyond. We can not let them find and take this land, these rich treasures, while we sit idle. True, the king has sent no commands, has not expressed a wish, but we would not be loyal subjects were we to cast aside opportunities for new empires.”

“I am to find these treasures for the king?” asked Dick, looking up for the first time.

“Would I risk the savages and strange lands, famine and thirst, for a man I never saw, never will see, who has done nothing for me?”

“Egad, sirrah! Another word of that and you will fatten the crows. I’m offering you a chance for your life and you quibble! Dost not know that the king is the appointed of God, that he rules by God’s right, and that thou, a crawling worm upon God’s footstool, art answerable to the king?”

He had turned toward the window. His countenance was pensive, though in his eyes, which the governor could not see, was a gleam of amusement, a twinkle that belied the seriousness of his tone when he continued:

“I have been in many far places, among the savages, across mountain ranges, beside great lakes, on the banks of wide rivers, on the edges of fertile plains. I had never given much thought to kings and men until then. Somehow, perhaps as the air came to my nostrils, things came to my mind out there. The sun was warm, the flowers were bright and carpeted the ground, the birds sang in the trees, the winds faintly rustled the leaves. It was fair, a heaven upon earth. Life was full, complete.

“Then I remembered things as they were in the colony, men sold to slavery because they dared think, men better than I who had dared oppose a king’s will, branded because they sought that freedom I had for the taking. I remembered the whippings and the pillory here in Jamestown, the binding laws and the cramping customs. And yet, only half a hundred leagues away, I was beyond the influence of kings and kings’ laws, out where the air and sky and water and woods were free, where a man could think and pray and swear with only his own consciousness of what is right to govern him.

“And that fair land, that free land, you ask me to go and take in the name of a king, in the name of all that which is not free. You ask me for the sake of my life to bind a country and a people with the thongs which bind Virginia, to stifle and oppress, to enslave and degrade.”

He wheeled suddenly from the window and leaned across the table, peering into the purple, distorted, shocked face of Sir William.

“Have you noticed,” he said, “that not once, this evening or today, have I addressed you as ‘your Excellency,’ or even as ‘sir’? I’ll tell you why. You have not my respect. In the name of this king you have ruled this colony. In the name of your own love of power, your own selfishness, your own disregard for the rights, the hearts and the minds of your fellow-beings, you have refused the people the right to elect their own representatives. You have condemned men to death because you liked not the color of their hair. You have grown fat while honest men, men who dared tell what they think, have slaved in this colony without enough to eat or wear.

“I tell you, Governor Berkeley, you and your kind have come to the wrong land. It may be that God gave your king the right to rule. You may believe that, or attempt to make others believe it, if you will. But I know that God set aside this land for men, for kingless men, for the rule of right and justice. And I tell you now, Governor Berkeley, that before a hundred years have passed men will rule this land.”

For a full minute he stared straight into his excellency’s eyes, a procedure that only increased the anger which already so choked the governor he could not speak. Dick’s own eyes were dancing, and their glee lifted the corners of his mouth. Then suddenly, as Sir William was about to gain sufficient control to voice his rage, the young man burst into a low laugh.

“There! That is said!” he cried. “A mouth-filling speech, was it not? The greater part of it I learned from a trapper, a Puritan, with whom I spent a Winter beyond New Amsterdam, or New York I believe it is now. A queer old bookworm. I have often wished I could try it on some one like yourself, but I never thought I would have the pleasure. I never dreamed that your own avarice would some time give me this opportunity to speak with you alone, that your own fear of the slipping power of kings, your dread of the intoxication of the free air of this land, would make you stoop to plotting here in this room with a gaolbird. But I have had my chance. I have taken it. Now this other of which you speak. To be sure, I——”

He stopped and peered again into the governor’s face, smiled when he saw that perplexity and lack of understanding were effacing his excellency’s rage.

Dick straightened, threw back his shoulders, turned his head carelessly toward the window. Languidly he raised his arms. Then suddenly his hands shot down, his body seemed to drop and the next instant he had leaped up and forward.

Before the astonished governor could think or move the young man was crouching on his heels on the table directly in front of him. His laughing face was thrust forward to within a foot of the outraged visage.

Sir William Berkeley was no coward, but neither was he a match for the young athlete before him. At his first movement, the first parting of his lips, Dick’s hands reached out. One grasped his excellency’s throat, the other closed his mouth and bent back his head.

“Not a move, or your own breast shall sheath your dagger,” whispered the laughing Dick. “Not a sound, for sounds do not now accord with my plan. We have talked, and to no purpose. You offered me a noose or a place to suckle at the breast of the royal sow. Do you remember the eagle an Indian brought to the tavern a few years ago and which hung in a cage at the door? You asked me to become as that eagle, asked me, who have known the free air of a free land, to submit to a king’s fetters. And do you remember how one day that eagle grasped the hand of a drawer at the tavern when the cage door was open and how he fought his way out to freedom?

“Even now your own hand is in the eagle’s grip. I knew this afternoon your fear for your unjust profits in the fur trade was greater than your desire to punish what you term sedition. I knew you would have me here again tonight, and I knew that thereby you would give me my chance.”

Sir William Berkeley’s face became purple under the pressure. The grip of Dick’s fingers was like that of a smith’s vise, but now it suddenly loosened and he whipped from his waist a long sash which he had not worn in the afternoon.

“I will leave this with your excellency as a memento,” he said as he loosened his other hand and drew the sash across Sir William’s mouth and tied it. “I got it from the French last year. You see it is long, long enough to bind your excellency’s arms as well as his mouth. There! Now for the feet. This cord from the draperies seems destined to meet my needs.”

He leaped to the floor and in another moment had securely fastened the feet of the half-conscious governor to his chair. As he straightened up and surveyed his work his eyes clouded.

“I require time,” he said thoughtfully. “It might be that you will be able to utter some sound before I have passed beyond your reach. This drapery will serve,” and he tore it from a window.

As he was about to swathe Sir William’s head and shoulders in the thick curtain he stopped and smiled into the eyes that glared into his.

“It was great sport, your Excellency,” he cried mockingly. “I have enjoyed this afternoon and evening more than I had ever expected to enjoy an entertainment. The bear-baiting your cavaliers seem to dote upon never approached this for pure sport. And as for the noose of which you boasted——”

He laughed softly and then flung the curtain about the governor’s head and shoulders, binding it on with the long cord from another drapery. The work completed to his satisfaction, he bent over so that his lips were close to the governor’s ear.

“If your Excellency wishes me, I will be at the South Sea,” he whispered. “Some of the king’s own will surely be brave enough to seek me there.”

“Thanks, many thanks, for an enjoyable evening,” he said. “I only regret that it is not possible for me to laugh aloud.”

He walked across to the window, opened it, and sprang out. Crouching, keeping in the shadows, he made his way to the river.

Dick Jeffreys had not planned heedlessly. In the afternoon he had seen Indians on the streets of Jamestown, Indians who, he knew, had come by water. He was certain where they had beached their canoes, and five minutes after he had left Government House he was in one and headed up-stream. Two hours later, breathless, for he had paddled hard, he drew in to shore at a clump of sycamores. As he stepped out he listened a moment and then whistled softly.

“Dick!” cried a voice from the darkness above him. “Dick! Is it you? Oh, Dick!”

“Not so loud, Betsykins,” he whispered as he climbed the bank, to the girl’s side.

“Yes,” he answered as he sat down on the bank and rocked back and forth, holding his sides and attempting, sometimes vainly, to stifle his laughter.

“Betsy,” he finally said, “it was the most comical time I have ever had. The poor old simpleton! His fur trade is getting away from him and he wants it back. It’s his perquisite from the king, though the colony is supposed to have granted him alone the right to trade. And now that it is slipping he was willing to grant me my head and my liberty, forget my past, if I would but tame his Indians and spy upon the outlaw traders and Dutch smugglers.”

“Then you are free!” the girl cried ecstatically. “You will cease roaming and—and talking so freely! You will settle down, Dick?”

“If I settle down, Betsykins, it will be a thousand leagues from Virginia. Wait until tomorrow. The greatest roar that ever came out of Government House will be heard as far back as the Blue Mountains. I wonder—I wonder—” and he broke off to indulge in another fit of silent laughter.

Repeating at length and with interpolations his conversations with Sir William both in the afternoon and evening, stopping often to chuckle over his thrusts and their reception by Royalist ears, and ending with a detailed description of how his excellency had appeared when he leaped on to the table and squatted close to his astonished face, Dick related what had happened.

During the recital Elizabeth Carver, who had seated herself beside him on the ground, listened with increasing fear. When at last he had finished she did not speak, was too shocked, too stunned, too greatly overwhelmed by the knowledge of what his recklessness had brought upon his head.

“I only wish,” Dick himself broke the silence, “that I could be a mouse beneath the tavern floor and hear the wits of Jamestown recount the affair, if the wits or any one else ever hear the true report from the governor’s lips.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Elizabeth in a strained, unnatural voice.

“Lead Sir William’s trainbands a merry chase for a week or so and then strike north to the French settlements,” was the ready answer. “There’s the place for adventure, Betsykins. The savages are friendly, except the Longhouses. Fur is plenty, and a man may live as he wishes, without laws telling how to breathe as well as think.”

“To stick my head into Sir William’s anxious noose? To be told what I shall eat and wear and plant and swear, how I shall pray and what price to pay? Ha, ha, ha!” and again he held his sides in an effort to stifle his mirth.

“No, no, Betsykins. I’ve tasted the wine of freedom and this Virginia sack has become bitter. I’d feel like that panther your brother tried to tame were I to remain in the colony. There’s a wide land out there to the north and west, a land where a man may think and live and speak as he chooses, where there never was a king and his persecution and never will be, where a man can be himself and not the stayed, beruffled manikin the king and his court would have him.”

A suppressed exclamation from Elizabeth brought a sudden stop to Dick’s exuberance.

“Forgive me, little friend,” he said penitently. “I had forgotten that you are the king’s own, Royalist to the tips of your pretty fingers. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to bait Sir William. There is a zest in placing your head inside the lion’s mouth and jerking it out before he can snap his jaws. And the thought of it is so fresh I could not but tell of it. Oh, Betsykins! Could you have but seen his face! Even the daughter of so stanch a cavalier as Charles Carver would have laughed, if not Colonel Carver himself. It—why, Betsy, what is it? Forgive me, little friend. I’ll tell no more of it.”

For a moment he listened to the girl’s sobs as she sat beside him in the darkness beneath the sycamores, her hands covering her face. The first twinge of remorse came to him, silenced the laughter in a heart whose thoughtless recklessness had turned gray the hair of his father and had deprived him, though never to his regret, of his place in the cavalier aristocracy of Virginia.

To Dick Jeffreys, roamer, playmate of savages, friend of outlaw traders, there had never been anything attractive in the plantation life. The Summer his mother had died, when he was fourteen, he had first run away with the Indians. Before he was eighteen his father, scandalized, stern, demanding obedience, had forbidden him to come near the plantation, and the same night had sent a trusted overseer to induce Dick to return.

Elizabeth Carver, seven years younger, boyhood playmate, now at the dawn of womanhood, was still a playmate to the careless Dick, still a companion as well as the only person in the colony who dared risk a word with him. Even as he sat there in the darkness, distressed by her sobs, accusing himself for having hurt her, she was still to him the little girl who had joined so whole-heartedly in the games he and her brother had arranged, the same stanch comrade, the same worshiper of his boyish escapades. The years had passed lightly with Dick Jeffreys, and he thought less of the passage of time with others.

He was altogether mystified then when Elizabeth suddenly lifted her head and said coldly—

“I suppose you are going on up the river,” she said quietly. “I must leave now. They will wonder where I am.”

“Yes, I must be going. The trainbands will be on the trail soon and the forest will be a bedlam with the bloodhounds turned loose. Oh, they’ll press close to the Blue Mountains and peer into every thicket to find me. It’s going to be great sport, beating them, covering the trail, doubling, playing the fox, almost as much sport as baiting Sir William himself. But I must not give them too much time. Good-by, little——”

Suddenly the girl stepped close and grasped his arm, clung to him in a new terror.

He, too, had heard the sound of pounding hoofs on the road less than a hundred yards back from the river. Up and down every highway, on every stream, the hunters were spreading. Every plantation would have the news before morning. Every path, every river, every bit of cover, would be watched, searched, guarded. Even the Indians, with promises of rum to spur them on, would search for his footprints. The bloodhounds, eager after sniffing his cot in the gaol, would scatter through the swamps and woods.

“You can’t go!” Elizabeth protested. “It is too late. You are cut off on the river and on the land. They are arousing your own father’s house even now. Listen, Dick! There is only one way. The cabin we built when we were children, back of the tobacco sheds. It is still there in the pines, with its little attic which you arranged for me to hide in when we played Indian massacre. No one ever goes near it, or thinks of it. Wait here a few moments. Then go there. I’ll see that you get food and water every day.”

“No, no, Betsy!” he protested. “I can’t hide behind a woman’s skirts. I’ve started this— Betsy!”

He sprang forward but it was too late. The girl had jumped down the bank and with one thrust of her strong young arms had sent his light canoe far out into the current.

“It was the only way, Dick,” she panted as she turned to face him. “It was sure death to go on by water or by land. They will never consider to look for you so near Jamestown. If they see that canoe they’ll only think you took to the forest farther up the river. In two weeks the search will be abandoned and you can get to the Blue Mountains in perfect safety.”

He was silent, for he knew that she spoke the truth, but when he did attempt to speak she interrupted.

“I’ll see that food and water are carried to you daily, Dick. And when I know the search has been given up I’ll send you a musket and powder and ball. That will be the signal that all is well, that you may go. Now I say good-by.”

Choking back the tears, striving to keep her voice steady, she held out her hand. He dropped to one knee and pressed it to his lips.

“You’re a jewel, little Betsykins,” he whispered. “If you had only been a boy!”

With an effort she regained control of herself and when she did speak again it was gently, almost compassionately.

“Good-by, Dick,” she said. “I am going to ask only one thing before you go, for I won’t see you again. Please remember that, no matter where you go or what you do, no matter what you may now think you believe or care about, that always, always, Dick, I will have faith that you will never forget that you are the son of a gentleman or that you are at heart a gentleman yourself.”

CHAPTER III
BEYOND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

For more than a league Dick Jeffreys had been pushing straight north through the sand. His feet slipped backward with each step and their soles were blistered from the heat of the open places where the sun beat down with all its August intensity. His way led through scattered patches of scrub oak, sometimes hardly high enough to afford shelter, and across blistering bare spots where no plant could find nourishment.

“It’s worse than the sands along the shore of Virginia and the Carolinas,” he panted. “And I’ve heard that the Spaniards’ country is like this and that it is easy to die of the thirst there.”

He stopped suddenly and dropped the butt of his musket to the ground. It was not a halt of fear lest he had wandered into the Spanish possessions with their attendant dangers of death by thirst or at the hands of Mexico’s conquerors, for Dick’s shoulders shook and his face was contorted by his efforts to suppress his laughter. Since April he had not dared even sneeze. Hundreds of leagues through an unknown land, four months of dodging strange savages, escapes innumerable, had given him a caution he had not believed possible.

“If I had done it!” he whispered when at last he had mastered his mirth. “If, after baiting Sir William in his own den and then telling him he could look for me at the South Sea if he wanted to speak with me, though I had intended to strike in the opposite direction for the land of the French; if, after his offer of my life an I would find the land of gold for his king, and my laughing at his offer, if, after all that, I should run west from these devilish Conestogas and be chased farther west by the still more devilish Eries, and then west and north again by savages who did not even permit me to stop and ask their names——”

He stopped, again a victim of his desire to laugh, and the tears were in his eyes when at last he lifted his musket and started on through the hot sand.

“If, after all that,” he whispered to himself, “I should blunder into this South Sea, this Red Sea, this Gulf of California, wouldn’t it be a joke on Sir William?”

He plunged and slipped through the sand and brush, unmindful of the labor of travel and of the heat in his new-found amusement.

“Wouldn’t it be a joke on Sir William and his king,” he continued in a whisper, for a man can not spend four months alone in the wilderness without sometimes voicing his thoughts aloud, “if I should find this fabled sea and its gold and its rubies when I can’t go back to tell them of it for fear they’ll hang me. They’d rather have their precious notions of divine right and the like unbattered than all the wealth of the Indies.

“Oh, well! They need not trouble themselves. If I keep on far enough and long enough, and the savages are not too persistent, I’ll arrive in the land of the French somehow, and then heigh-ho! A long life and a merry one, a free land and a kingless one! By Winter I’ll be in my future home.”

The character of the country had changed suddenly as he talked to himself. His eyes were always moving, up and down, to this side and that, never missing a depression of the sand or the possibilities of a particularly dense thicket, the shaking of a bit of grass or the blue of the sky unmarred by a whiff of smoke. These precautions were second nature, as automatic and as necessary to his continued existence as his respiration and the beating of his heart.

Consciously, however, he had not seen the opening ahead, the sudden termination of the scrub oak and other small growth, until he found himself at the base of a hill of sand. It rolled upward gently, its surface wrinkled by waves like those on a small lake beneath a gentle breeze. There was no vegetation, nothing except sand.

After a hasty survey of the country to the right and left, Dick started up the long slope. From its crest he found a higher hill of sand beyond, and all about him the sun beat down in scorching fury, while from the ground a heat almost as intense arose.

From the second hill there was nothing to be seen except an ocean of rolling sand, sand, hill after hill, valley after valley, and all bare as water itself.

“I’ll have one more look from that next hill,” thought Dick aloud. “It’s higher, and it may be that I can see to the end of it. If not, I’ll turn back. I’m so dry now I’m cracking, and there’s no chance for water in such a desert.”

He climbed slowly to the top of the third hill, for his musket and pack were heavy and the heat was becoming unbearable. As his feet slipped in the last few steps he stopped suddenly and stared.

“Mon Dieu, as Monsieur Crapaud would say were he in my place!” exclaimed Dick. “It is the sea, the South Sea, the Gulf of California! I started out to find the French and I have found the Spanish. It’s back I’ll have to turn, for I’d rather risk the pine splinters of the savages than the work of those Spanish devils.”

Before him, stretching to the horizon at the north and as far as he could see to the east and west, was a great sheet of blue water. Between him and the shore the sand sloped gradually to a huge crescent beach. He could see along this rim of sand for leagues in both directions, but nowhere, either on land or on the sea, was there evidence of human occupation.

“Spaniards or no Spaniards, I’m going to say that I’ve been to the South Sea, though why they should call it the Red Sea I fail to understand. I never saw water more blue, or more of it, even in the Western ocean, for that matter. Here’s to say I’ve waded into it.”

He was still half a mile from the water and the sand slipped and burned his feet. In the excitement of his discovery he had forgotten his thirst for the moment, but now, with so much water before him, it returned redoubled.

“Egad, and I could drink it, salt and all!” he muttered as he trudged slowly on.

A short distance from the beach Dick’s automatic habits of observation became active and his mind began to turn over the messages brought to him.

Then he suddenly lifted his musket above his head and strode into the shallow water, which lay without movement, as if prostrated by the heat.

“In the name of Charles the Second, King of England, I claim this sea and all the land bordering thereon!” he cried. “There! I’ve settled accounts with Sir William. His desire is quenched. Now I must quench my thirst.”

He laughed aloud for, though his parched throat made of the effort little more than a cackle, there was no one to overhear, no savage to bring his tribe upon him. Suddenly he stopped and looked at the water between his feet. Then he stooped, cupped his hand and brought it dripping to his lips.

“Sweet!” he cried. “Sweet as any nectar, though if I had eggs here I could boil them in it. This water is as warm as that of the James, though it is clear and pure.”

He rinsed out his mouth several times, let a little trickle down his throat and at last began to drink slowly from his cupped hands.

“No Red Sea or Gulf of California is this,” he said when he was satisfied and had risen to look about him. “It is one of the great lakes they told me of on the St. Lawrence, though which one I don’t know how I’m to learn. But anyhow it is the land of the French. Their traders have seen all five of them and even now will be arriving with their goods. I have only to follow the shores until I find traces of them, and if I do meet savages I need not fear. They’ll never know me from a Frenchman.”

The conviction that he had reached one of the five great lakes of which the French had told him, that he was at last in the land he had sought when he had slipped out of Virginia four months before, served to revive him as much as the water. He looked toward the east and then the west and could see no difference in the great, curving beach.

“One way is as good as another,” he said. “I’m as sure of finding a Frenchman on the left as the right, and so long as I’ve been traveling west and north I’ll keep on.”

He turned to the left and started along the hard sand close to the water. It was a little damp and consequently not so hot as the desert through which he had toiled in the morning. The nearness of the water, too, was a comfort, while the fact that he was a fair sight for any eyes within miles did not concern him. He believed he was in a land where the savages were friendly to the only white men they knew, the French, and if he did encounter one he could obtain some information as to the rendezvous of the traders.

Though Dick walked steadily all afternoon he failed to find any traces of savages or French. He did come to the end of the sand but only to find a low, swampy country with great stretches of coarse grass, willows bordering the shore and the whole apparently as lifeless as the dry desert he had crossed. At sunset he reached what appeared to be a small island in the swamp, a higher bit of ground with elms and oaks upon it and, best of all, a mother grouse with a flock seeking a nesting-place for the night in the branches of an oak.

Dick waited patiently until dusk and then swung himself up and began to whack at the stupid birds with a light stick. He knocked down six of the eight and was assured of supper and breakfast. When the sun came out of the sea in the morning he was ready for the day’s march, and so certain was he that he had reached the land of the French and friendly savages he started along the shore with a light heart and lips parted in song.

His course had been bending more and more until by mid-forenoon he was going almost straight north. The low, swampy country continued, but farther up the coast he saw the beginning of higher ground and beyond that high bluffs that rose from the water. At noon, while still in the marsh, further progress was arrested by a river. It was too deep to ford, and there was nothing at hand with which to build a raft to float across his few possessions. While he stood there, undecided as to his course, a birchbark canoe swept around the bend above him. In it were three white men.

A smile of contentment on his face, for the end of his four hazardous months had come, Dick stood leaning on his musket, awaiting the strangers. That they were Frenchmen he did not doubt. Men of no other race had ever penetrated so far to the westward. Even at that distance he could distinguish their gray homespun clothing, the bright sashes without which no coureurs de bois ever went into the wilderness, and their peculiar “pudding-bag” caps.

That they would be friendly Dick was equally confident. Most of them, he knew, were outlaws like himself, men who had preceded even the Jesuits into the far places along the shores of the Great Lakes, men who traded with the savages without that necessary permit from the king of France. Recognizing no superiors, no laws, no right save that of might and their own inclinations, daring the unknown wilderness and the equally unknown temper of its savage inhabitants, their lives in tune with the wild rapids of the rivers, the fierce storms of the lakes and the fiercer natures of the natives, they appeared to Dick Jeffreys in all the romantic coloring with which his imagination had clothed them. He need only tell them, he knew, that he, too, was an outlaw, a fugitive from the wrath and stifling influence of kings, and they would accept him.

As he stood there the canoe came straight down the center of the river. The three men had seen him as quickly as he had seen them, but had not missed a stroke of their paddles, nor had they in any way indicated that they considered his presence unaccountable.

When they were fifty paces away Dick lifted his right hand and called—“Bon jour.”

“Bon jour, bon jour,” came a friendly answer from the men in the bow and the middle.

Dick’s mother had received a good education in England before she had married Captain Jeffreys and sailed for Virginia. One of the things she had insisted upon Dick learning in his early boyhood was the French language, and his year in New France had served to perfect him in the tongue.

“Wait, comrades,” he called. “Give me a moment of your time that I may know whether I am at the Gulf of California, the Eastern ocean or only on one of the five big ponds of the king of France.”

The two men in the bow of the canoe laughed outright, but the one in the stern demanded suspiciously——

“I,” replied Dick readily, “am like yourself, a rover of the forests, a man without a king, without a home and without a care, and with the one desire—a glass of brandy, a comrade with whom to drink it and never a ‘blackrobe’ to repress my enjoyment of either.”

“A coureur de bois like the rest of us!” cried the bowman as he dug the water with his paddle and pulled the canoe nearer shore.

“An Englishman with too ready a tongue!” retorted the stern paddler as he pulled the craft the other way. “Let us be on to the nets.”

“Come, come, Basile,” objected the man in the bow. “Only yesterday you were saying that there should be four of us, that we have too much for three since Gabriel found that brandy would not float him in the last rapids of the Mattawan. We still have far to go and are in need of a strong back and another paddle. Another musket, too, for that matter. Come, friend, get into the canoe and we’ll lift the nets and then talk it over.”

He had been pulling the craft closer to shore and the bow touched the bank at Dick’s feet.

“We want men of our own blood in this, men we know,” growled the one addressed as Basile.

“We know he is a man or he wouldn’t be here with a million savages between him and his settlement, and we care not of his blood so that we are sure of the heart that pumps it!” cried the bowman. “Get in, friend.”

Basile remained silent, though there was an ugly look on his face. Dick glanced at him, smiled good-naturedly, and stepped into the canoe.

They did not speak as they shot down the river under the impetus of four paddles. Dick knew that here was his first opportunity to prove himself, and his spruce blade bent with the force of his arms.

“Enough!” cried Basile at last, and with a swirl of water they brought up at a stick floating at the mouth of the river. The net was quickly overhauled and two score of fish taken. Then, their paddles snapping briskly, they turned up-stream. The two men in the forepart of the canoe broke into a voyageurs’ song, obscene and blasphemous but with an air that quickened the paddle strokes and seemed of its own buoyancy to lift the light craft from the water. Dick’s body tingled with the thrill of it, swayed to its rhythm, and when they broke into the chorus the second time he joined them joyously.

“Silence!” whispered Basile fiercely as they rounded a bend. “There’s some one at the cabine.”

Quietly now, but as swiftly, they went on between the low, marshy banks. Another bend and they saw the river fork. On a bit of high ground between the two streams a white tent gleamed against the willows. Gliding in and out of the door, shrieking as they bore casks and bales of goods down to their waiting canoes, were a dozen savages.

Paddling fiercely, swearing continuously, searing oaths which Dick had never heard before, the three coureurs de bois shot their craft straight toward the Indians. Dick, silent but with leaping heart at this chance of a fray, bent his back as effectively as the others.

The canoe did not slacken speed as it approached the bank. One of the savages, in the act of shakily lifting a gourd to his lips saw the white men and shrieked a warning. At the same instant the canoe struck and its occupants, rising to their feet with the last stroke, landed with an impetus that carried them, muskets swinging about their heads, to the door of the tent.

The savages had taken advantage of the hour’s absence of the Frenchmen and, though their brains were inflamed by the liquid fire they had consumed, they were not able to convert their blood-thirsty desires into action. They swayed and tottered as they gathered to meet the attack and half of them went down in the first rush. Three of these were on their feet instantly, however, and when the four white men faced about in front of their tent they were met by a compact group of gleaming brown bodies, flashing knives and swinging hatchets.

Dick, his musket whirling like a flail, did not wait for the attack but sprang forward with an answering yell. Two savages went down before him, but the impetus of the heavy weapon carried him into the center of the group, and a knife slit open his buckskin shirt and gashed his shoulder. Still he kept his musket swinging, with the result that the group was divided and the three Frenchmen, charging together, swept one-half before them into the river.

Back they came to join Dick, who faced the remainder. The savages wavered and then broke for their canoes.

“Get the goods!” cried Basile as he dashed after them. “Unload the canoes first!”

They pursued the fleeing party so closely there was no time for embarking, and as the Indians did not return to the attack, the white men unloaded the canoes and piled the casks and bales of goods upon the bank.

In the meantime the five savages who had been forced into the river had struggled back to shore, all the fight gone out of them. They held up their hands in token of surrender and Basile nodded toward the canoes. The men filed past, lifted their craft into the water and stepped in.

Basile began to speak quickly, sharply, in Miami, a tongue not unlike some Dick had known to the east. The Indians who had retreated up the river bank returned and deposited their weapons in the canoes. The six of them filed past the tent to where three of their comrades lay upon the ground. Without examining the bodies to see whether life had fled, they carried them to the canoes and dropped them in. The next moment their three barks were shooting down the river.

“Eh, Basile?” cried one of the Frenchmen joyously. “What do you think now? Is he not one of us? Oh, that was a pretty charge he made, straight through the thick of them. Come! Shake his hand.”

Dick had recognized in Basile the leader of the trio, and from the first the man’s dislike had been evident. As he faced him now, flushed from his exertions and by the words of the Frenchman, he saw no lessening in hostility. Rather it seemed to be increased, though now only Basile’s eyes gave expression to his feeling. The man’s evil face even broke into a forced smile as he held out his hand.

“You fought well and showed your courage,” he said to Dick as he stepped forward to meet him. “I hold no objection to your being one of us, after we have had time to hear your story. It is a strange thing, an Englishman so far from his colony. None has ever been here before. But no doubt you can explain it.”

His tone was almost gracious, but as Dick looked into his eyes he saw that the words were empty, that he need not seek friendship there.

“Leon! Michel!” Basile cried sharply as he turned to the others. “Get down the river quickly and lift the net. The savages will be back with the darkness, as soon as the brandy soaks out of them. We must be off this cursed Chicagon River and down the Riviere des Plaines before they can find us.”

The impatience of his tone, the peevish authority of it, gave Dick his first clew to the reasons back of the man’s hostility. He was the leader, not only because of the happy, careless attitude of the other two and their lack of initiative, but because of his own superior mental qualifications. And in the young Virginian he recognized a rival, one not amenable to discipline. Dick laughed outright and bowed to the Frenchman.

“Have no anxiety, monsieur,” he said. “I harbor no ambitions, no aspirations except to enjoy life as I find it.”

CHAPTER IV
“ONE OF US”

Dick Jeffreys was left alone with Basile when Leon and Michel went down the Chicagon River to the lake to recover their net. The Frenchman was busy examining and arranging the goods with which the Indians had attempted to run off, and the Virginian with his shoulder. The cut was only three inches long and little more than through the skin. When he had bathed and bound it the canoe had returned and all four immediately began preparations for departure.

There was no time for Dick to ask questions as to the plans of the party. The Miamis, three of whom they knew were badly wounded if not dead, would be back at night with a larger party, and the urgent need was to get as far away as possible. As to what part of the French country he had reached, what the three coureurs de bois intended to do, and the explanation of his own presence in the country, all that could wait until a less strenuous time.

The two canoes of the party were soon loaded and Dick took the bow of one with Michel in the stern. His shoulder was irritated by the exertion of paddling but he said nothing, and their craft, though heavily loaded and propelled against the current, did not lag behind the other.

They paddled all afternoon without stopping and the sun had set when at last they turned ashore. Dick saw a well-beaten path leading from the landing-place out across a low prairie.

“Here’s where the toil comes, friend!” cried Michel as he arose stiffly from the canoe.

“We have a long start and can carry across to the Riviere des Plaines before they come half-way from the lake, even should they be on the right track,” said Basile. “But we must lose no time.”

Then began the first of many trips. Before the second load was portaged night had fallen, and through the darkness they toiled back and forth, bearing canoes, bales of goods and casks of brandy upon their backs. It was after midnight when the last article had been carried across, and even then there was no rest. The two canoes were loaded and turned down-stream and until after sunrise they journeyed on into the southwest.

“Ah, Basile!” cried Michel when the sun was high. “We have left the country of the Miamis and must be in that of the Islinois, where the thieves dare not follow. Let us go ashore and eat and sleep.”

Basile turned his canoe toward a good camping-spot. They cooked a meal and then all except Leon stretched out in the shade of some willows. Later Michel was wakened and stood guard, and at noon they were again in the canoes. Until darkness descended upon the river Basile did not permit lagging, and then, after a hasty meal, all four dropped asleep in the long grass on the bank.

The sun had risen high enough to be uncomfortable before they wakened in the morning, and even then they only sought shade and slept a little longer. Dick saw that the Frenchmen did not fear possible pursuit by the Miamis and that they were in no hurry to go on.

He was glad of the opportunity not only to rest but because they could now tell him something of where he was, where they were going and what they intended to do. He was happy because he had reached the land of the French, because he had joined a band of the coureurs de bois, but his restless spirit was not content with a mere following of the life of these adventurers, and he had chosen to construe Basile’s hostility as a challenge to the leadership of these free spirits of the wilderness. As he had nothing to conceal and recognized the value of frankness in cementing the friendship which he knew he had gained with Leon and Michel, he chose the indolent hours of the forenoon to tell of himself.

“Friends,” he began, “my coming among you has seemed strange, and it is as much to me as to yourselves. I will begin at the beginning and tell of myself all that you could care to know.

“First, my name is Richard Jeffreys, generally called Dick, which is the English method of saying Richard if one of that name be a close friend. My father is Captain Jeffreys of the colony of Virginia, in which I was born twenty-four years ago. Had I followed precedent I would now be a gay cavalier, riding a good horse from plantation to plantation, dressed in silks and satins and lace and gold, a sword at my side, a dagger in my belt and never without a quart of sack in my belly. I would have had slaves and a chest of money, acres of tobacco and possibly, in time, a seat in the House of Burgesses.

“But you see I am not. Why? Because in Virginia a man may let his body wander at will between tavern and plantation, between bear-baiting and carousing, while he must leave his mind at home under a lock and key furnished by the king. He must think as the king prescribes, swear only as much as the king permits, go to church or the gallows, and even on his own land plant what the king decides.

“I chose to cramp my body within buckskin and let my mind wander, to think and swear and live as I willed, and that is how I am here.”

“And welcome you are!” exclaimed Michel. “Without your swinging musket there at the forks of the Chicagon we might have been dead men. We’ll broach a keg to your health and the success of all of us.”

“There appears to be much still to be explained,” growled Basile. “An Englishman in New France smells to me too much of a spy.”

“Listen further,” replied Dick amiably, and answering the leader’s hostile glance with a smile. “I was about to explain all.”

He told of his boyhood, how he had acquired a desire for the forests rather than the settlements through his early association with the savages, of how he had gone north through the land of the Delawares, through the colony of the Dutch, the land of the Mohicans and finally to the St. Lawrence, where he had spent a Winter with a trader licensed by the French king. From tales he had heard there he had first become enamored of the life of the coureurs de bois in that great and little-known land to the westward on the shores of the five great lakes.

“And who was that trader?” asked Basile sharply, and with a cunning smile for Leon and Michel.

“His name was Simon Bouisson,” answered Dick readily, “and he traded to the westward of Quebec.”

“Simon Bouisson!” shouted Michel in glee. “And how, friend, did this Monsieur Bouisson appear?”

“I have never been in your Paris but I imagine that the gargoyles on one of the famous buildings are not at all unlike Simon,” answered Dick.

Leon and Michel rolled upon the ground in the excess of their mirth and even Basile joined in the laughter.

“But,” he said, “you have still to explain how you, from the colony of Virginia, could reach the southern shore of the Lake of the Islinois, or Lac Mecheygan, as some call it, when the land of the Longhouses lies directly between. The Iroquois are not in the habit of letting any one wander at will through their domain.”

Dick began a complete account of his interview with Sir William Berkeley and his escape from the gaol. Michel and Leon broke in several times with their laughter and applause. But Basile, as Dick gained favor with the others, became more dour of expression.

Without a reference to Elizabeth Carver and her part in his escape, the young Virginian related how he had started northward to gain the Delawares’ country, only to be driven in his canoe up the Potomac to escape a hostile band of Paspaheghs. He was pursued far and at last took to the woods in the Blue Mountains, to wander westward until he came to a river which he had seen before and which the savages called the Monongahela. The chance discovery of a canoe permitted him to descend this stream for a long distance without encountering any one.

As this route took him north and straight toward the Iroquois country, he began to have misgivings, when the stream was joined by another and the one current at last set off toward the southwest, a stream rapidly increasing in size and the most beautiful he had ever seen. When Dick described its lower reaches, and the savages from whom he escaped, Michel broke in with the explanation:

“That is the river the Iroquois call the Ohio, which means something like broad and beautiful. Farther west it is known to the savages as the Ouabashe. One of the king’s men from Montreal, named La Salle, traveled on it a ways some seasons ago. Had you kept on, if the reports of the savages be true, you would have come to the great water, the one the savages to the west speak of as the Misisepe.”

“And I would have been there long ere this had it not been for some red devils I encountered. They saw me and gave chase, and I turned into a big river that flowed in from the north and went up it for more than a hundred leagues. Then one night some knaves who, from the dress, or lack of it, must have been brothers to the Miamis who attacked us on the Chicagon, got between me and my canoe. I slipped away in the night, working north, for I knew the French were in that direction, and at last came out on what you have called Lac Mecheygan, only the day before I saw you. I believed it was the sea, until I tasted it.”

“As you have seen and as you have heard,” replied Dick with a smile. “I can not go back to the English colony. Death is certain there. Since I spent a year in New France I have wished to lead the life of the coureurs de bois. It appeals to me. Freedom of thought and action, of mind and body! No law, no rulers! Risks but no cares, a pleasant land and more pleasant companions! Why are you yourself a ranger of the forests, Monsieur Basile?”

“Does the king of France claim this land?” he asked. “Does he know it is here. I am sure that you have never taken reports to Montreal of what you know of it.”

“Ha, ha, Basile!” cried Michel. “He scored there. We found this land beyond the Lac Mecheygan and we do not intend to give it to any king. Why should we run the risks for fat loafers in Europe? No! Monsieur Dick is right, and he is one of us. It makes no difference if he is English. He has the soul of the forest-rangers, and that is enough for us. Eh, Leon?”

“I care not if he be Dutch or Spanish after the way he charged the Miamis,” agreed Leon. “We started with four. We will end with four. Let Monsieur Dick have Gabriel’s share. He’ll earn it before we are through.”

Basile’s face had become black as the others spoke, but before he could voice his protest Dick, who had been watching him closely, interrupted.

“I will not permit such generosity,” he declared. “It is not right and I do not wish it. It is the life, not the profits, I crave. Only let me continue with you, sharing in the labor and the risks, and I am content. Then, the next year, perhaps.”

“He is as fair and generous as he is brave!” cried Michel. “Come, Basile! Iron out your face. Monsieur Dick is to be one of us.”

The days went by, wonderful days for the Virginian. Never before had he seen so fair a country. The river flowed gently between prairie banks. Trees bordered the stream and wandered in patches and long lines out on to the plains. The sun shone brightly, inviting indolence. The breezes over the land were sweet and fresh.

Each day they dropped a little farther down the stream. Before long they entered a larger river, the river of the Islinois, Dick was informed, though none of the Frenchmen, and no white men before them, had ever been so far.

They feasted as they went. Wild turkeys were in the trees. Raspberries were ripe, and the three Frenchmen showed Dick how to dig and boil the prairie apple, which tasted to the Virginian much like the potato of the colonies. Deer grazed about them in herds. Fish of many kinds were plentiful in the water. They saw, too, for the first time, the pisikous, the bœufs sauvage, or wild cattle. Dick had never heard of these animals, though the other three had known of the huge beasts through savage reports, and their first encounter brought consternation to all four.

No longer than domestic cattle but twice the size, with great humps on their shoulders and massive heads in which beady eyes were set beneath black, curving horns and in the midst of a wealth of brown, curling hair, they roamed the plains in great herds. Their size, their numbers, and the ferocious appearance of the males, sent the four men in terror to their canoes when first encountered. Later Leon killed one and after they had tasted the tongue and the meat of the hump, and bands of the animals were seen every day, they were accepted as merely one of the bounties of this undreamed of land.

From the beginning Dick fell easily into the indolent, careless, untrammeled life of his companions. For hours each day, and always in the evening, they lay in the shade or beside a fire and told tales, experiences and adventures in far, strange places, among stranger people in wildernesses where no white men had ever been before. History has given to some men the distinction of being first in various places, but in the land of the Great Lakes and beyond, both to the west and north, the coureurs de bois, seeking adventure, freedom and opportunities for illicit trade with the Indians, far outstripped the emissaries of the king of France and the courageous Jesuits.

Dick caught at once the significance of these stories. It was well, among themselves, to tell of far places, but a whisper of them on the St. Lawrence meant prison and perhaps worse. He learned that Leon La Gard, with one companion, had penetrated the rich fur country to the north of Lac Superior, the greatest and the most distant of the great lakes; that Michel Charon had gone west from the same lake until he had passed the forest and come to a great plain; that Basile Pombert had gone south from Lac Mecheygan, past the Ouabashe, or the Ohio of the Iroquois, until he had found savages with muskets obtained from the Spaniards of La Floride.

“But this Red Sea, this Gulf of California, this land of gold and precious stones, have any of you seen it, or been near it?” asked Dick, his imagination inflamed by the stories.

“Who knows?” answered Leon with a shrug of his shoulders. “Perhaps this very river of the Islinois enters it. Perhaps tomorrow we will be floating upon salt water. Along the western shore of Lac Mecheygan, all along the shores of Lac Superior, always the savages speak of the Misisepe, the Michisepe, ‘the great water,’ as the Algonquin tongue expresses it, a land of strange people, of huge monsters and fiery demons.

“I have never known any who have been to it, though some have informed me that they have been told that its waters are salt. Once, south of Lac Superior, when among the Outaouas and the Hurons, who were pursued there by the Iroquois, on a river they called Le Noir, or the Black, I was told that if I kept on down-stream I would come to the Misisepe. I would have gone, but it was late in the season.”

“There is a ‘blackrobe’ even now at Michilimakinac called Marquette,” said Michel, “who plans to go to this Misisepe. We stopped there on our way to the Chicagon River and he asked us many questions about where we had been and what we have heard of the place. He has an idea it is a river, from what he told us, and that it flows into the Gulf of California. Even now he awaits orders from his superior to go to look for the ‘great water’ next year, and he expects the governor of New France to send a man to accompany him. Then they’ll claim it for the king.”

“And you, who have been farther than the others, you and the other coureurs de bois, have you never claimed what you have found?” asked Dick. “From the Lac Mecheygan and Lac Superior westward, it is any man’s land, any king’s, open to the first who sees and claims it!”

“We claim it for our own, for what that claim be worth,” answered Michel. “Why should we take it for a king? The king’s men, and the king’s laws, would come in and drive us out for our pains. There is enough land to the east for the fawners, for the men with king’s licenses and favors, for the faint-hearts who dare not go beyond the sight of a plowed field or sound of church bells, for those who fear they might die unshriven. This land is for us who dare come to it, and it will remain ours if we can keep the ‘blackrobes’ and others back. This Marquette learned nothing from us that will be to his advantage, and if we can first see some of the savages on his route we may keep him out altogether.

“No, Monsieur Dick. Remember that you are to forget all that you see and hear. A discreet tongue is the sign of the coureurs de bois.”

“He has already shown that his tongue is loose,” interrupted Basile fiercely. “I have known from the first that there was no good in an Englishman coming into this land. An Englishman is too greedy to seek only adventure. His knees are too weak from bending to a throne to carry him so far into savage country merely to gain freedom. Leon! Michel! Did you not see his eyes gleam when he asked of the Red Sea and its gold and rubies? Did you not catch the tone of his voice when he wanted to know if this land of ours has been taken in the name of a king?

“I tell you, this Monsieur Dick is an English spy, a man who came into our country to take it for his own king. There was talk of it, and fear of it, when we were on the St. Lawrence this Spring. Now we know it.”

As Basile spoke he had risen to his feet. His rage choked him toward the end and at last, his eyes gleaming evilly, he drew a knife and rushed at Dick, who still lay upon the ground.

Basile was thick, heavy, much older than the Virginian, and he had used a knife before. Despite his rage, his attack was not without planning. Dick, seeing him come, would attempt to rise to defend himself. In that defenseless position the knife would descend.

But Dick only pretended to rise. Instead he rolled into a ball and flung himself at Basile’s feet. As the Frenchman sprawled headlong he himself sprang up and after him.

They had been lying at the edge of a bank six-feet high, a deep pool directly beneath them. Basile’s fall had carried him close to the brink and Dick, with a push of his foot, sent him flying out into the water.

Leon and Michel had taken no part in the affair but now, as Dick stood there laughing at the antics of Basile as he rose to the surface, they suddenly sprang to their feet.

“The savages!” they cried in a low tone together. “See! Over the river. The Islinois we have been seeking.”

Dick looked across the stream. On the farther bank, standing in the shade of some willows, were two score or more of Indians.

CHAPTER V
THE ISLINOIS

He bent over the bank, up which Basile Pombert, his knife still in his hand, was climbing to return to the attack.

“Fool!” Leon hissed. “Look across the river. We have reached the Islinois. They are watching us. Climb the bank and pretend you were only having sport with Monsieur Dick.”

Basile turned and saw the Indians for the first time. Instantly his rage vanished and the angry glint in his eyes was succeeded by a covetous gleam that, to Dick, was even more sinister than the frank hatred to which he had become accustomed.

“Your hand, Dick!” he cried suddenly. “Help me up, and laugh, all of you. Michel! Come and join us! All of you! Clasp hands and circle ’round. They’ll think it is a dance to end our sport.”

Laughing uproariously, kicking their heels as they spun about, the four joined hands and whirled madly for a moment. Then they swung into line and faced the Indians across the stream.

“The calumet, Michel,” whispered Basile, and Michel went to a pack and took out a long-stemmed pipe which he filled with tobacco.

“Now,” directed Basile, “you and Dick get into a canoe and take it to their chief to smoke. Then bring him and one or two others back. Their tongue is much like that of the other savages we know and you can speak with them.”

Michel directed Dick into the stern of the canoe and himself stood in the bow, bearing the pipe aloft. The Frenchmen seemed to have no fear whatever of this strange people who undoubtedly had never seen white men, and the Virginian, accepting their belief in the friendliness of the natives, paddled vigorously toward the opposite shore.

As they approached, Michel holding the mouth-piece of the pipe toward the savages, one of them detached himself from the group beneath the trees and stepped toward the bank. Straight, tall, naked except for a few ornaments, his brown skin gleaming in the sunshine, his face expressionless, the chief stood there in all the dignity with which the Indian was once able to enshroud himself.

The bow of the canoe touched the bank and Michel stepped out. With flint and steel he deftly lighted the tobacco in the stone bowl as the chief placed his lips to the mouth-piece and puffed. Michel smoked. Others came forward and the pipe went the rounds.

Not a word was spoken, not even a whisper was heard in the closely packed group of Indians. When Dick and Michel looked at them they seemed to be at ease, unconcerned, but their curiosity could not be entirely hidden and several times the Virginian, on turning quickly, surprised stares of amazement.

The ceremony of the pipe completed, Michel indicated to the leader that he was to enter the canoe and cross the river. He did so without hesitation and in a few minutes was being courteously welcomed by Basile and Leon.

It was with difficulty that Dick repressed his excitement. It had been his hope, upon leaving Virginia, that he could work north to the St. Lawrence and enter the fur trade. In time he hoped to become one of the coureurs de bois, to penetrate that amazing country to the west of which such strange stories were heard, to go on with some adventurous companions into new lands, among new people, to be the first somewhere.

Now, as a result of his misfortunes of the Spring and early Summer, he had been driven far to the west, only to encounter at once the very men he had sought and in the first weeks to be, with them, the first white men in a new wilderness, the first to see these nations that possessed a land so fertile and abundant in all that one could wish.

He looked forward eagerly to the outcome of the present ceremonies which, he knew, so delighted the savage heart, to the establishment of friendly relations with these people and the development of a prosperous trade. As for his trouble with Basile, he gave it little thought. He knew that the Frenchman, because of cleverness and love of power, had won to leadership over the careless, easy-going Leon and Michel. Dick himself had been a favorite with these two from the beginning and a certain aggressiveness and confidence had aroused in Basile the fear of a rival.

It was this that lay at the bottom of the Frenchman’s charges of spying, that had prompted his attack that morning. Dick in no way feared Basile. Settlement of the question of supremacy between the two was inevitable and its hazards were part of the life he sought. If Basile, fired by hatred, could let the matter drop in the presence of the real business of the party, Dick could do as well. Accordingly he turned his whole attention to the ceremonies now being enacted.

First Basile made the chief a present of a steel knife, exhibiting its keenness and hardness. The savage’s eyes glowed with pleasure and continually he tried the edge with his thumb, laughing outright when too much pressure caused a deep gash.

Then he was given a hatchet, the blade of which was as sharp as that of the knife. Basile, who had quickly taken note of the stone-tipped arrows, stone knives and horn-pronged war-club of the chief, made the most of the superiority of the steel.

While the presents were being tested and admired Dick glanced across the river to discover that every savage had disappeared. As he searched the bank, expecting some ruse and realizing their helpless position should the Indians become hostile, he learned the reason. Down-stream and moving across the plain toward the river like a cloud shadow, only darker, and making a noise like distant thunder, was a great herd of bœufs sauvage.

“Basile!” cried Dick as he picked up his musket. “See. I’ll now show them what powder can do!”

He leaped down the bank, pushed off the canoe and paddled quickly toward the approaching herd. In midstream he caught sight of some of the band hiding behind a fringe of willows at a point near which the buffalo would reach the river. He landed and joined them, his musket ready.

The Islinois, arrows ready, bows half-drawn, were intent upon the game until the white man strode in among them. At first his coming caused some resentment but Dick’s confident, expectant attitude, his calm assurance and manner of holding what they knew must be some sort of weapon, aroused curiosity, almost forgetfulness of the game. They gathered near him, looked at his hair, his skin, his eyes and, not without amusement, at his weapon, if weapon it could be. Then one of them gave a low hiss and all turned to see the edge of the herd sweeping close to the shelter.

Immediately Dick stepped out. Not an Indian followed, nor was an arrow loosened. All gazed in wonder at this hunter who so exposed himself, who stood as if looking at the game in idle curiosity. As they watched, the Virginian suddenly lifted the musket to his shoulder. A roar followed. Smoke rolled forth in a cloud. When it lifted a monster bull lay on the ground, kicking in his death agony.

With a bow to the hunters and a magnanimous wave of his hand toward the quarry, Dick walked back toward his canoe and paddled across the stream.

“Bravo!” cried Michel as he landed. “A master stroke, Monsieur Dick! We could see you plainly and you should have been here to watch the chief’s face. He had no more than grasped what you had done than we presented him with a musket and he has invited us down to the village. It’s only two leagues down the stream and we start at once. Mon Dieu! What a haul we will make. We haven’t broached a cask. And when we do!”

Trying vainly to repress his emotions, the Frenchman danced gaily back to his companions beside the chief. That worthy arose as Dick approached and held out his hand. He spoke a few words, most of which Dick grasped because of their similarity to other Algonquin tongues.

“Come boys,” commanded Basile. “Two of you take the chief across now so that he can talk with his men. Then bring him back and we’ll take him to the village in one of the canoes. These people never use boats and it will please him to ride upon the water.”

Dick and Michel paddled the chief across the river where his men crowded about him in an excited, jabbering group, each trying to be first to handle the mysterious weapon their leader so proudly displayed. He issued a few brief directions and then returned.

Back at their camp the four white men loaded their canoes rapidly and then, the chief reposing in state in the center of the craft paddled by Basile and Leon, they turned down-river, accompanied by the shouting, excited savages on shore.

In little more than an hour the village, strung along the right bank of the river, was reached. The noisy escort had announced their coming long before and the shore was crowded with women, children and old men.

“That’s good,” Michel whispered to Dick with quick relief when he saw the small number of cabines. “The forty hunters are all the men of the village, which means there won’t be too many to handle.”

“You don’t expect trouble surely after the friendly manner in which they received us, do you?” asked the Virginian.

“There is always trouble when a savage and brandy get together. I have heard that there are more than a hundred thousand of these people, who are the richest and most powerful of any nation the French have met, excepting always the Longhouses. They grow big fields of corn and roots and melons and squashes, there is game enough for four times as many on these plains, and it is said that they never know what famine is, as is so often the case with the nations to the north. These people sow their crops and then go out for game, come home and harvest what they have planted, and then they go for the big Winter hunt. That is what the other savages have said of them, and it is known that they always live in plenty.”

The canoes were landed and when Dick climbed the bank he saw that Michel had not stretched the truth. Compared with the northern Indians, especially those in the country beyond the St. Lawrence, these were indeed a pleasant people in a land more pleasant than he had ever dreamed of. As he passed through the throng he was impressed by the courtesy of their manner, their happiness and contentment as expressed in sleek bodies and smiling faces. Old and young, they seemed like happy, frolicking children, sincere in their welcome to the white strangers.

Dick, in his attitude toward life, was little more than a child himself and, not only because he knew that a quick way to an Indian’s heart is through his child, but because this scene of contentment had captivated his spirit, he picked up a naked little boy and tossed him into the air again and again. At first the child was frightened, but against Dick’s infectious smile its terror was powerless, and when at last he swung the youngster to his shoulder and strode off through the village the child fastened his fingers in his hair and chattered with delight.

“Here,” growled Basile as Dick returned to the shore. “We’d not have a thread of anything left if we all ran off and left these savages to do as they wished with the canoes. You and Michel stay here and guard them while Leon and I have a talk with the chief. We must see what they have to trade before we go further.”

“You have a gay heart,” said the coureur de bois, “but there is always a time in life when one must be serious, and we have reached it now. The chief desires to send off runners to inform another village down-river of our arrival, but we don’t want any more than we have here, and not these unless it be worth our while.”

Dick did not reply. It was not this unusual seriousness of the ordinarily carefree Michel that silenced him but something sinister in the cold, calculating methods of the Frenchmen. To the Virginian trade with the savages meant an exchange of goods for fur and food. If these Indians did not have much they could trade for what there was and go on to the next village. Why need fear greater numbers of such friendly, happy, contented people?

He reviewed these amazing plans and actions as he sat on the bow of the canoe but the memory of his happy hours with Michel and Leon forced him to the conclusion that Basile, with his scheming, his evil mind, alone was at the bottom of any possible knavery. The other two, indolent, light-hearted, unaspiring, were merely tools in the older man’s hands.

For the first time since he had joined them Dick entertained a serious thought, and it was in the resolution that he would give Basile cause for his jealousy, that he would wrest the leadership from this villainous Frenchman.

“It’s good news,” he cried. “They have a wealth of beaver skins and many of smaller animals, besides dozens of fine specimens of the robes of the bœufs sauvage. Basile has dissuaded the chief from summoning the next village and we are to begin trading at once. Out with the bales, boys, all but the casks. They’ll wait until tonight.”

The three began to unload the canoes. Basile and the chief soon joined them and the goods were arranged on the bank. More presents were made to the leading men of the village and then the trading began.

At first Dick was inclined to be a little ashamed of the values given and received but he forgot it in the expression of happiness upon the faces of the savages and in the reflection that the Frenchmen had brought the goods safely through more than six hundred leagues of wilderness.

He and Michel were set to work baling the furs received and for the remainder of the day he had little time for anything else. At sunset the goods were exhausted and the Indians still had many furs. Basile looked at the others and Leon and Michel nodded. A cask was immediately brought from the canoes and broached. Basile let a little into a gourd and passed it to the chief, explaining that it was the strong water of the French of which he undoubtedly had heard from other savages, that it made the sun shine and the rain cease, the heart gay and the feet light.

The chief took a swallow and then clutched his throat in sudden fear as the potent liquor scorched and choked him. Then, as it reached his stomach and warmed it, he patted his abdomen and a smile spread over his face.

Again Basile held the gourd toward him and again the chief drank, this time greedily, despite the burning sensation in his throat. The remainder was offered to one of the warriors who downed it at a gulp and then grinned sheepishly when the others laughed at the distortions of his face.

Basile, who evidently had quickly perfected himself in the slight change to the Islinois tongue, now spoke to the chief at some length. The leader, who was most evidently feeling the effects of the brandy, listened for a moment, caught the meaning of what the Frenchman was saying, and then turned to his people, to whom he talked rapidly.

Immediately there was a scramble of men hurrying to the cabins. Dick, who, because he was busy, and because of his unfamiliarity with this new branch of the Algonquin tongue, had not understood the exact meaning of all that was said, was amazed to see them come running back, their hands full of bows, arrows, spears, war clubs, stone knives and weapons of every conceivable sort. Basile in the meantime had unloaded the casks and the savages dumped the village arsenal into the two canoes.

“Why are we doing this?” demanded Dick when he and Michel, at Basile’s command, had paddled the two canoes across the river and emptied their contents upon the opposite shore.

“To save our own precious heads from being split open tonight,” was the laughing reply. “Such a sight as you shall see, Dick, and such a haul as we shall make!”

“But why should we not leave the weapons in the canoes?” asked the Virginian, who now understood that more brandy was to be given to the savages but that the Frenchmen, fearing violence from the liquor-aroused natives, had made this arrangement for their own protection.

“Because we’ll need the canoe, my friend,” was the reply, “and see that you do not take too much of the brandy yourself. We will need good heads and nerves, and stout arms, too, for there will be leagues and leagues of paddling before we sleep again.”

CHAPTER VI
THE MACHINATIONS OF BASILE

With night came to the peaceful village of the Islinois scenes undreamed of even in the fiercest passions of savage warfare. A huge fire blazed high in the space between the row of brush and grass cabins and the river bank where the Frenchmen had landed, and around this, shrieking, reeling, their naked bodies glistening with perspiration in the firelight, circled the warriors of the band.

Basile, cool, calculating, with an eye for everything and every one, poured brandy into the greedily extended gourds, but never until Leon or Michel had first received a bundle of furs, and always with an impartiality that would result in no warrior escaping the enflaming consequences of the debauch. Basile wanted no laggards, no half-sober savages, and so unerringly did he estimate the effects of the liquor on each one, so skilfully did he apportion the brandy, each man and youth in the village moved forward to the successive stages of drunkenness as uniformly as troops maneuver on a parade-ground.

The savages danced and yelled about the fire. They still contained control of their bodies, though their brains were scorched. Constantly men broke away, rushed into the darkness and returned with fresh bundles of furs, which they tossed at Basile’s feet before extending their gourds. The brandy was downed at a gulp and, freshly inflamed, they whirled away into the shrieking circle.

Except in isolated instances of insolent attempts to compel larger portions, the white men were not molested. Basile had cleverly implanted the idea in their minds at the beginning that fur would always bring brandy, and nothing else, and automatically, as the effects wore off, as more stimulant was desired, the savages rushed away for new bundles of pelts.

Dick Jeffreys, though in full view of the orgy, had little time to note the details of the trading. As fast as the fur was received, the brandy doled out, Leon and Michel tossed the skins back to him to be tied into bundles and piled on the river bank close to the canoes.

It was not the demoralization of the warriors, or even the possible danger to the four white men should the savages get beyond control, that occupied Dick’s mind as he worked rapidly over his bales. Brandy, he knew, had always been an accessory to the fur trade. The savages had come to expect it, and perhaps after all there was no harm done in thus transporting them into a new world, in furnishing high lights they could not otherwise hope for. Surely nothing had happened so far that could be objected to, even the huge price paid for the liquor. There was no other brandy within a hundred leagues or more, and everywhere supply and demand govern price.

But it was in the attitude of Michel when they had transported the weapons across the river, in the cold, scheming actions of Basile, in a dread of something far worse for which he could find no tangible grounds, that Dick had his misgivings. As he pondered over this, his eyes spared from his work as much as possible, a change came. As he turned toward the river, laden with fur, Basile looked at the shrieking circle of warriors and then glanced at Michel and Leon.

The leader of the savages, his legs becoming uncertain in their movements, thrust himself forward and tossed a bundle of beaver skins at the feet of the white men. At the same time his gourd waved uncertainly toward the cask.

“You are not generous,” Basile told him with a smile. “Have not your women scraped these skins? Have they not planted the maize? Have they not cared for the meat when you have killed it? Why then should they not share in your rejoicing?”

The chief’s eyes narrowed as he digested this idea, and they glinted selfishly.

“Just a drink, half a gourd, for your wives,” continued Basile. “They have earned it. Come! Be generous as befits a great chief.”

Several other Indians had come up to clamor for more drink, and they had heard. One seemed to find amusement in the idea and yelled his approval. But before he could hand his gourd forward the chief, not to be outdone, demanded a full dipper for the women of his family. As Basile filled it, more generously than ever before, the chief turned and called the names of his women.

Every woman and child in the village had been present at the carousal, sitting in a circle outside the dancers, adding to the tumult, the women even begging sometimes for a little of the elixir which seemed so to exalt the men. As the chief called out, three women arose, one tumbling a child from her lap, and ran forward. The chief passed the gourd to them and, amid much giggling, coughing, sputtering and gibes from the others, the liquor was downed.

The warriors immediately clamored for brandy for their women and in a moment Basile was doling out the fiery stuff faster than before. Half an hour later every woman in the circle was as intoxicated as the men and, joining in the dance, they outstripped the braves with their shrill screams and contortions.

With the advent of the women the character of the orgy began to change swiftly. The crowd of dancers about the fire was more dense. One brave stepped on another’s feet and was knocked down. He arose, pulled a burning stick from the fire and struck his adversary across the face, blinding him and sending him reeling through the blaze.

The encounter pleased the crowd and at the same time aroused a desire for conflict. Several fights started. Two men wrestled impotently for a time, a yelping circle of demons about them. Then one, with a snap like that of a fear-maddened beast, bit off the other’s nose.

A woman, shrieking hysterically, pulled a burning stick from the fire and held it across the bare back of a dancing warrior. He cried in agony and then whirled and thrust the woman into the fire, where she stumbled and fell and then rushed out from the other side, her hair a blazing torch.

On every side personal encounters started. Without weapons, unable to strike or wrestle effectively, the savages resorted to snapping and tearing with their teeth. Noses and ears were bitten off, chunks of flesh were ripped from backs and breasts and shoulders. Blood flowed down the bare bodies of the men and soaked the scanty skin garments of the women.

One woman suddenly ran from the circle, snatched up a sleeping infant from the arms of an older child and, with a fiendish shriek, hurled it into the center of the flames. The little body writhed for a few moments, its skin scorched and crinkled. Then it lay quite still.

Dick, stupefied by the horror of the scene, did not realize for a time that no more furs were forthcoming, though the gourds were kept full. Basile was assisted in the dispensation by both Leon and Michel. All three worked swiftly, their faces alight in anticipation, seemingly oblivious of the horror about them.

At last Basile rolled out a cask, knocked in the head and waved the savages toward it. There was a scramble immediately, the clattering of gourds drowned out by yells and screams. Fights were started everywhere, blood flowed to the accompaniment of shrieks of anguish. Men and women reeled and weaved about aimlessly. Some swayed and fell, to lie motionless, completely overcome, or to struggle vainly to rise. One warrior stumbled and plunged down the bank, falling with his head and shoulders in the water. His feet kicked for a time, but his body only slid farther in the mud and at last it disappeared without leaving a ripple on the water.

He dashed off after Michel and Basile but the Virginian, sickened by the events of the evening, comparing the bestial creatures before his eyes with the happy, contented, smiling, friendly people he had seen only a few hours before, remained where he stood, too stunned even to comprehend the reality of this complete and wanton degradation.

As he watched, the very horror of the scene began to compel a realization of the crime in which he had had a part. His paralysis became that of enervating disgust and repulsion, of self-accusation and remorse.

“Come, you English fool!” cried Basile from behind him. “Get into the cabins at once. We must be away soon.”

Dick whirled to see the Frenchman’s evil face scowling at him from above a heap of trade-goods with which his arms were laden. Basile dumped his burden down on the bank beside the furs and again faced Dick.

“You beast!” cried the Virginian, stung at last to action by the realization that his companions were about to terminate their visit by stealing all they had traded, by robbing these unsuspecting, friendly children not only of their innocence but even of the very price of it.

He leaped forward and struck Basile in the face with all his strength. The Frenchman reeled against a savage and then, cursing hysterically, sprang back to meet the attack. Dick stepped to one side and again his fist found Basile’s face. At the same instant a stick of wood thrown by a drunken warrior sent the Virginian reeling down the bank beside the Frenchman.

Dick whirled at Basile’s side to see a group of shrieking warriors charging down upon them, led by the one against whom Basile had fallen and who had struck Dick in retaliation.

“Your fists,” advised Basile. “Strike quick and hard and don’t let them get their arms about you.”

Side by side he and Dick met the charge of the reeling, crazed savages. Two went down, then a third. But others took their places and the white men, to evade the clutching arms and gleaming teeth, would have been forced back into the river had not Michel and Leon charged into them with swinging muskets.

No more than a dozen Indians had taken part in the attack. The others, apparently uninterested, still circled about the fire.

“I’ll attend to you later, English dog!” Basile whispered in Dick’s ear as he turned away to follow Leon and Michel to the cabins and fresh plundering.

The Frenchmen left Dick standing above the bodies of the savages they had knocked senseless. Instinctively he started after the coureurs de bois and then his utter helplessness in the face of all that had happened brought him up with a start.

The Indians were mad with liquor, past control, past help of any kind. Once they had recovered, once they learned all that had been done to them, their desire for vengeance would be boundless. Now the damage had been done. Dick could only hope to escape with the Frenchmen and settle with Basile afterward.

To rid himself at least of the sight of this rape of an innocent people the Virginian started down the bank of the river, seeking the darkness beyond the circle of the fire. He stumbled blindly on among some bushes, stopping only when he heard a low cry and sounds of a struggle in front of him. At the same instant a warrior applied a torch to the grass roof of a cabin and the whole village was lighted instantly.

The first rays disclosed to Dick a young girl struggling in the arms of Basile. The Frenchman’s face was red from her scratches, but he only laughed and held her more tightly.

Instantly Dick was upon him, striking, tearing at his arms, beating his face and head and shoulders. Basile dropped the girl with a curse and reached for his knife. As it slipped from his belt Dick swung with all his strength and his fist met the Frenchman’s jaw. He dropped silently into the grass.

“When you played with my little brother today,” she began suddenly, “I knew you were not like the others. Now you have saved me. So I shall tell you something to save you. My father once journeyed far to the north, to a great lake your people call Superior. He saw Frenchmen there, like yourselves, and he saw them give brandy to our people. Today he would not taste of it, nor would he let me, and when you began to give brandy to us he went down the river to tell the warriors of the next village. They come soon, and then there will be stakes, and pine splinters, for all of you.”

The seriousness of her manner had commanded Dick’s attention and, although he had been unable to comprehend all of her speech, he had grasped enough of it to have a clear idea of her meaning.

“You say,” he asked, “that your father will lead the warriors against us?”

A single war-whoop sounded from down the river, a cry stabbing through the darkness and the dying clamor about the fire. Instantly Dick stooped and lifted Basile’s limp body. With a struggle he swung it to his shoulder and set off along the bank toward the canoes.

“Leon! Michel!” he cried as he staggered beneath his burden. “Quick, or we are lost!”

As he came to the dance-fire the two Frenchmen, their arms full of loot, rushed down to the canoes.

“Quick!” Dick commanded. “To your paddles. The warriors of the next village are here.”

“But they have been warned by one from this village, one who would not drink, and they have been told that we robbed and killed after making them mad. It’s the stake for all of us.”

His words were drowned by a yell from the edge of the village that froze all three for an instant. Then as one man they turned to the canoe into which Dick had dumped Basile, threw in their muskets and leaped after them. Dick in the bow, Michel in the stern, Leon kneeling astride his unconscious companion, they paddled as they had never paddled before.

But before they had pulled away from the light of the burning cabin Dick looked over his shoulder to see a stream of naked warriors flow through the circle about the fire. There was a yell, shrill, high above the bedlam of the camp, echoing like the staccato cry of the wolf that snaps at the haunches of a deer. A glistening arm pointed toward the shadow of the fleeing canoe and the next instant arrows rained on the water about it.

CHAPTER VII
HIDDEN ENEMIES

The Islinois River was too wide for effective archery and the canoe was turned toward the opposite bank where, blending with the shadows, it sped on up-stream, unseen by the savages and unheard, for the paddles dipped noiselessly.

All three men knew, however, that this did not mean safety. Down-stream they might have out-distanced their pursuers, only to put leagues of hostile territory between them and Lac Mecheygan. Up-stream, following the many convolutions of the river, fighting the current, there was no hope of escape after daylight came. Knowing each bend, each shallow place where they could ford or swim, the savages could easily strike across country and cut them off at dawn. To abandon the canoe would be equally fatal, for every foot of both banks would be examined in the first light of the new day.

For the present, in the darkness and with the river between them and the savages, they were safe. A few of the Islinois had attempted to follow in the canoe left behind but their unfamiliarity with the craft permitted the coureurs de bois to outdistance them easily. The three men drove ahead with all their strength. They could hear their pursuers on the opposite bank, and sometimes an arrow plumped into the water near them. But the stream was straight and broad and with little current for several leagues and after an hour there were no sounds of the Indians.

“Lie still,” whispered Leon as he laid aside his paddle and placed both hands on Basile’s shoulders. “Don’t speak above a whisper. The savages pursue us. When you feel able to sit up your blade will be welcome.”

“If I am needed,” was the answer, “I am well able to paddle now. There are no broken bones. I only lost all knowledge of life for a time. Where is that dog of an Englishman?”

“He is here, ahead. ’Twas he that carried you to the canoe, else you would even now be wearing pine splinters. Never mind him for the present. It needs the strength and skill of all four to escape the shrieking devils on the bank. It is the stake for all of us if we are caught. Use your blade now and settle your quarrels later.”

“Very well,” said Basile as he arose cautiously to his knees. “Give me a paddle. I can wait.”

“Well said,” Leon encouraged. “Now to work for another league. Then we can stop for breath and perhaps a plan.”

All four now bent to their work and the canoe was fairly lifted from the water as the paddles went into the stream in perfect unison. They sped on, faster than the Indians could run on land, and after half an hour Michel called a halt in the shadow of a small, heavily-wooded island in midriver.

“I have no breath left,” he gasped as he took hold of a willow branch to anchor the canoe. “We can’t keep that up for long, and there are several big bends beyond. By morning they will surely be ahead.”

“And if we did outstrip them we would only run into the Miamis, who would treat us no better,” said Leon.

“I have a plan,” whispered Dick as he turned in the bow. “A quarter of a league above us a stream comes in from the left. It is large enough for the canoe, so large it must come from some distance. I remember it because Michel and I stopped to shoot a deer just above it before we camped at the place where we first saw the Islinois.”

“The savages are on that bank and can follow it easily,” sneered Basile. “We would only be running into them.”

“No, it is our only chance,” declared Dick. “Ahead the river makes a turn to the right and then almost doubles back upon itself. It is at the upper end of that big bend that they will hope to be in ahead of us at daylight. They will not believe that we would turn off and let them get between us and Lac Mecheygan. If we hurry now and go up this small stream before they come to it we can leave them behind and without a trace of the direction we have taken and without a suspicion that we are not ahead. From the headwaters of this stream we can surely reach some place of safety to the north.”

“Monsieur Dick is right!” agreed Michel enthusiastically. “The canoe leaves no trace. We can turn up this stream for many leagues and who knows but that we may cross over to the Rocky River that comes down from near the land of the Puans, or Ouinibegous. A Mascouten once told me that the Rocky River flowed down along the border of the Islinois country and at last entered the Misisepe.”

“It is our only chance,” said Leon. “Come! Let us be on the way to this stream before they reach it.”

“Even if we don’t, it is better than letting these devils burn us at the stake, as they will before another night if we are not on our way,” retorted Michel. “Monsieur Dick is right. It is the only thing we can do.”

Again the canoe was shot swiftly up-stream and in a few minutes Dick signaled from the bow that they were opposite the mouth of the river flowing in from the north. For a moment they listened intently but there was no sign of life on either shore.

“Paddle,” whispered Michel. “It’s a chance, but one we should be glad to take.”

Silently, cautiously, each man’s nerves taut, the canoe was driven close to the north bank. Alone on the water, it could be seen easily from the shore. Yet there were no savage yells, no arrows dropping about them.

“We are in time,” whispered Leon. “We have headed them. Come! Up this stream before they do suspect us.”

The canoe stole into the shadows of the trees bordering the smaller river as if into a tunnel and the silent paddles shot it on through the darkness. For an hour they continued, the tension growing less until, when they came to a wide, open marsh through which the stream twisted in a long series of bends and ox-bows, there was no longer fear of immediate pursuit. But none of the men even hoped for safety there and so long as the night lasted they continued to paddle.

The first signs of dawn found them five or six leagues from the Islinois River and out of the big marsh. The banks were higher, trees had come again, although the stream was narrower and twisted and turned until they would have lost all sense of direction had it not been for the stars.

“There’s our salvation,” whispered Leon excitedly as the stream suddenly widened in a little valley and in the center of the pond, which was about an eighth of a league across, they could see the dark shadow of a small island. “We’ll crawl into the brush on that isle, hide the canoe and sleep until night. If they should come this way after us they’d never find us there.”

There was a ready acceptance of this proposal as all were near exhaustion. Before daylight they and their canoe were safely hidden and, each taking his turn as look-out, they slept until nightfall.

Again the hours of darkness were spent in putting more leagues between them and the Islinois River, but not long after midnight they found the stream had grown so small that further progress by canoe was impossible.

“Now we are trapped!” exclaimed Basile. “We can’t go on without leaving footprints on the bank, even could we hide the canoe so that they would not find it.”

“There is still the good chance that they never suspected our coming this way,” objected Dick. “If we land now we need only strike straight north until we come to this Rocky River of which Michel has heard. If we are pursued there is still the possibility of our getting to the Rocky River first. When we reach that and the land of the Puans we will be safe.”

“To be sure,” agreed Michel. “It is the only course open to us. Dick and I will carry the canoe and you two the muskets. We can change each league.”

“I’d carry it a thousand rather than have those devils on my back,” declared Leon. “It is the only way out of the difficulty, so let’s be at it.”

They were in a country of which white men knew nothing, far off any possible water route, and they were not even certain that the Rocky River existed or that, if it did, they could reach it by traveling north. Moreover, none of the men had eaten since the night of their flight and, so long as there was danger of pursuit, they could not risk the time for, or the noise of, getting game. They had fled with only one canoe, their muskets and powder-horns and ball pouches, from which they were never separated when among strange savages.

The coureurs de bois were accustomed to famine as well as to feasting, however, and Dick would have been the last to complain of the weakness of hunger. The fear of the vengeance of the ravished Islinois was still with them, and all knew the fate that awaited should they be overtaken.

Accordingly as they struck off across the level prairie in the light of the stars they forgot their burdens in the desire for this unknown river. Each hour they walked a league, and each hour the bearers of the canoe exchanged their burden for the scarcely less heavy or awkward and irksome muskets and powder-horns.

The agreement they had made for carrying the canoe kept Dick and Michel together, but the heavy work left little opportunity for discussion, even had Dick felt that it would be possible to gain Michel’s support in his quarrel. That Basile was allowing no time to elapse before making plans for revenge was easily evident in the manner in which he drew Leon ahead that they might talk without being heard.

There was nothing, however, the Virginian could do. His only chance for safety lay in remaining with the coureurs de bois and so great was the problem that confronted them he put aside his trouble with Basile for future settlement and gave his entire attention to searching for signs of the much desired river.

The country was either flat or rolling, usually treeless. Once their hunger was doubled when they encountered a small herd of buffalo and were compelled to go on without trying a shot. Twice their hopes were aroused when the land dipped and they were forced to skirt a marsh. But each time higher land came to rob them of their hopes for a river.

Daylight brought them to a forest of oaks and under their shelter they continued.

“Not another step will I carry that beast!” cried Leon when his turn came to abandon one end of the canoe.

“You’ll only exchange that burden for the tortures of purgatory,” declared Michel. “Look at the trail we are leaving. Those savages could follow it with their eyes swathed. Come on! Wood usually means water in this prairie country. The river may be just beyond.”

Half an hour more brought them to the banks of a broad stream and without the waste of a moment they put it between them and possible pursuit.

“Noise or no noise,” said Michel as they landed on the north side, “I’m going to have a stag for breakfast.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Basile as he picked up his musket. “Two shots are no louder than one.”

Dick and Leon carried the canoe out of sight behind some bushes and lay down to rest. In less than an hour the hunters returned with a young buck and the good news that they had discovered traces of a recent camp of Mascouten hunters.

“It means we are in their country and the Islinois will not dare follow us much farther,” said Michel. “We can risk the smoke of a fire so long as we have chanced the noise of a shot, and then we’ll put a few more leagues between us and the Islinois.”

They ate the meat when it was little more than scorched. After the meal, which left little of the buck, Basile took the hide and, inserting his knife in the center, began to cut around and around until he had a thong half an inch wide and several yards long. Silently he handed one end to Michel and, passing it back and forth through the fire, they burned off the hair. Once or twice during the operation Basile glanced at Dick, a hard smile on his cruel mouth.

“Now we’ll be going,” he said when they had finished. “We should be a dozen leagues farther away by night and perhaps in the village of the Mascoutens.”

All day they paddled toward the northeast and not once was there evidence that they were followed by the Islinois. Because fear of the savages was still with them, however, they paddled swiftly and without speaking. Hour after hour they went on and on, silent, watchful, always swiftly.

Even in the silence, and despite the natural cause of it, Dick began to feel the presence of a barrier between him and the other three. The hostility of Basile was to be expected and from it he knew that, when safety was certain, there would come a decisive struggle. But Michel and Leon, amiable, carefree, light-hearted, he had once considered firm friends. That his apparent criticism of their plundering methods should have lost for him some of their regard he had no doubt, but he had not expected the complete change in them that he now felt.

In the first hurried flight from the Islinois and the hours of anxious search for the Rocky River this enmity had not been so evident. Now the more leagues they put between them and the aroused savages the more Dick sensed the fact that he was not only going deeper and deeper into an unknown land but that he was going alone. He remembered how Basile and Leon had gone on ahead, how he had overheard their voices in argument when they made the long portage in the night. He recalled the alacrity with which Basile had joined Michel in the hunt that morning.

But night and a camp on the bank of the river came before he found a tangible basis for his suspicions. Michel wandered off with his musket as soon as they landed and returned with another buck and again with news of a still more recent camp of Mascouten hunters. Basile’s interest was at once aroused and, on one pretext or another, he drew first Leon and then Michel aside.

But still nothing was said, nothing was done, no mention was made of the disaster to their plans on the river of the Islinois. Then, after supper, when each had selected a comfortable place beside the fire, Basile spoke:

“Michel! Leon! You will remember that on the Chicagon I protested against taking this Englishman with us. You will remember that we started from Montreal with the fixed plan of trading among the Islinois, and you will remember the hopes we had for a most successful venture. You will remember, too, your debts, which must be paid on your return or there is to be no return.

“What has happened? This Englishman forced himself upon us, with pleasant words enough but with what actions?”

“I’ll back up those actions with words, and the words, in turn, with more action!” interrupted Dick angrily. “As for your acts, Basile Pombert, there are no words to express the scorn of an honest man for them.”

“And he is the man who bragged that he is an outlaw!” laughed Leon. “The one who came to the French country to gain freedom, to escape the law. He talks like a blackrobe.”

“I came for freedom, yes,” replied Dick, his anger increased by Leon thus openly aligning himself with Basile. “But I do not call it freedom to gain the opportunity to rob, to cheat, to ravish. I sought freedom, but not a license from Satan himself, nor did I seek the arts of the imps of hell. An outlaw I am, but a man may flee the wrath of a king and still be honest, still remember that he is better than the beasts.”

“He should have been a Jesuit,” laughed Basile. “He should carry the cross, not honest brandy, to the pagan savages. Would not that Père Marquette at Michilimakinac have rejoiced to hear him?”

Angry as Dick was he was not without caution, and in this jeering attitude of Basile he recognized a greater danger than he had expected. The Frenchman felt that he was playing a safe hand, that he was merely testing his power, merely whetting his appetite for the enjoyment of the final victory.

Dick’s contempt for the man, his repulsion, and his memory, still vivid, of that last night on the Islinois, caused him to minimize the danger.

“Call it the cross or what you will,” he retorted angrily, “had I been told, Basile, what you planned doing to those innocent people you ravished I would have prevented it, even if I had been forced to wring your serpent’s neck to accomplish it.”

“And accomplish it you did, son of an English dog!” cried Basile, displaying anger for the first time. “As I was telling Leon and Michel, we planned much, we hoped to return to the St. Lawrence with the wherewithal for a glorious time. What has prevented it? This English swine forced himself upon us and then robbed us of our hard-earned reward. His talk is pretty, but his actions are those of a spy, as I first said, and that night on the Islinois, I tell you, he showed his real self. I saw him talking with this girl, the one who left these marks on my face, and with her father, and he told them a false story of our being robbers, brigands, even murderers. What happened? This old man warned another village, and here we are, penniless, fugitives, victims of an English spy.”

“You lie, Pombert,” interrupted Dick in a low voice. “You lie and you know you lie. But I will say this. Had I known what you intended, had I known how to prevent what you did, I would have taken any risk to defeat you. From the first you have shown yourself to be a sneak, an ungrateful cur, a beast in the shape of a man, but with no other human attributes. I would not try to shame you by reminding you that, had I not carried you to the canoe, you would even now be a shriveled cinder on an Islinois stake. I claim no credit for that. It was a selfish act, for I was only saving you for death at my own hands.”

The Virginian had spoken calmly but in deadly earnest and as he finished he started to rise. Instantly Basile rolled across the ground and grasped him about the knees. Leon and Michel, springing to their feet, threw themselves at Dick’s shoulders and waist. Striking, exerting all his strength to throw them off, he went down beneath them and before he had ceased struggling the long strip of rawhide Basile had cut held his arms and legs.

The three Frenchmen, panting, wiping the perspiration from their faces, took seats across the fire from their captive.

“A big canoe and a full one on our return to the St. Lawrence before Winter sets in,” answered Basile.

“And you can talk like that without brandy?” demanded Michel in mock amazement.

“Be silent, you two with the sheep’s heads!” commanded Basile sternly. “You are like horses. You can work if well driven, but, turned loose in a field, how much could you plow? I planned the most successful endeavor of our lives. You meddled, took this English dog along despite my wishes, and see what has happened. Tell me, both of you, who of us has the head? Who can plan?”

“You are right, Basile,” answered Leon humbly. “We have been wrong. Lead and we will follow, anywhere. Is it not so, Michel?”

“Even to this Misisepe, be it fresh or salt, full of monsters or no,” was the reply.

“Then listen,” said Pombert, pressing his advantage, “and you shall learn how we shall drift down the St. Lawrence with a big canoe and a full one before Winter comes.

“We can not go many leagues up this river without finding the Mascoutens. You have heard tell of them. They are warlike, but there are not enough of them to be successful. They like prisoners and the pleasures of the stake but have few captives. They are tricky and they are vain. What do you think would please them most?”

“To be gone in a night! No! We have that which they would desire most, a white man for slave, for prisoner, for torture. Do you not see? A word or two in the chief’s ear, a story of the English king who sent a man to take the lands of the Mascoutens for himself, of how, if he returns to his ruler it will be to lead an army into this peaceful land and slay every savage. We can say that by torturing this prisoner their young men will become strong and brave, so strong and brave they will be successful even against the Longhouses.

“They have never had a white prisoner. It will be easy for us to mold their simple minds to the belief that torturing one releases to them all the white man’s strength. Oh, no!” and he grinned across the fire at Dick. “We’ll make this Englishman long for the noose of his king.”

“You fool!” replied Basile. “Must I even expand your chest so that your lungs may receive the breath of life? For this great gift to them we will receive a big canoe and every pelt of every kind in their village. This English devil lost us a year’s profits. Let him repay us.”

The next morning only three paddles dipped into the waters of the Rocky River. In the bottom of the canoe, still bound, lay Dick Jeffreys. All night the Frenchmen had taken turns guarding him and now he was constantly under the eye of all. Once in the night he had pleaded with Michel, sought to win again the friendship the coureur de bois had first displayed, only to find that the influence of Basile, coupled with the poverty of the trio, held full sway.

At noon they entered a long stretch of the river with rounded bluffs, heavily wooded, on either side. At the far end where the river curved was a flat, treeless expanse and grouped in the center of this were a score or more of cabines.

“And see that you leave all the talk to me,” cautioned Basile. “I want no bungling here.”

For a day the Frenchmen feasted with the savages, observing the native custom of delaying the statement of a visit’s object. They were given a cabine in which to keep their prisoner, who was an object of much curiosity until Basile spread the word that Dick was not a Frenchman but a devil from the other side of the stinking water. And always Michel or Leon were on guard at the hut. At night all three slept there.

“When do we begin?” demanded Leon irritably the second night. “Let’s get this over and be on our way.”

“Tomorrow,” answered Basile. “I will hold a talk with the chiefs alone. By night it should all be arranged.”

The next forenoon Michel and Leon remained in the hut while Basile went to confer with the leading men. The two coureurs de bois settled themselves comfortably for a long wait, for they knew the deliberate habits of the savages in discussion. They were wholly unprepared, therefore, when their leader returned in a few minutes and thrust his head into the low door.

“Settled so soon!” cried Leon. “Pombert, you are capable of being prime minister to the king. Were they glad of the chance to have our friend for the stake?”

“He’ll burn, and to the tune of the shrieks of his yellow heart,” was the answer. “But something bigger is afoot. Come and I’ll tell you.”

CHAPTER VIII
BASILE GROWS AMBITIOUS

Dick, alert for any opportunity but helpless in the bonds with which he was tied, glanced quickly about the bare cabine. It was the first time he had been left alone and he looked for a forgotten knife, hatchet, anything that might cut or saw through the rawhide.

From outside he could hear the low tones of Basile but he did not try to overhear. Whatever this new plan of the Frenchman it would be fiendish enough and now no opportunity for escape must be overlooked.

Dick could see nothing of value to him from where he lay. He rolled over so that he might have a view of that part of the cabine behind him, but the floor was bare and nothing hung from the empty walls. As he was about to roll back to his original position something sharp pricked him on one shoulder.

Hitching himself around, he began to feel in the dry grass on which he had been lying. His hands were bound closely to his sides but he could move his numbed fingers lightly—at last they struck a hard substance. His heart leaped at the first touch, for instantly he recognized the object as a flint arrow-head. He clutched it so tightly one keen edge cut the skin between his fingers. The pain brought a smile for the worth of the tool was proved. Though it caused torture he worked his fingers around until he could slip the flint into the pocket in his leggings and then, content, rolled back to his original position.

For the first time he became conscious of the voices outside the hut. Basile, greatly excited, was talking more loudly, his whispering tones penetrating farther than had he spoken in his usual coarsened growl.

“Has not started to trade because he expects to Winter in the West,” Dick overheard. “His voyageurs deserted him and he is trying to employ Mascoutens to man his canoes.”

“No, but from what the savages say there is no doubt but that he is Antoine Goddin.”

“And on his last journey!” exclaimed Basile fiercely. “Next to this Englishman there is none I hate more. It was three years ago, in west of the Sault Ste. Marie, among the Saulteurs, that he robbed me of a year’s profits.”

“Is he the one who told the savages that you were plundering them that he might get the trade for himself?” asked Leon.

“The same. A sanctimonious wretch who has the good will of the blackrobes, talks of laws, boasts that he trades legally, by the king’s sanction, and speaks of this land as ‘the new Empire of France.’ I swore that some day I would cross his trail, and the day has come.”

“But there is risk in killing a Frenchman,” objected Michel. “Savages do not count.”

“Risk!” exclaimed Basile. “Have you, too, absorbed the faint-heartedness of the Englishman? Think, man! Never before has a white man penetrated to this river. None will come for years afterward, and are not the Mascoutens known to be evil, deceitful? Have not his voyageurs deserted him, and will not that be known? Is he not camped alone on the river? Does an Indian hatchet leave a different mark when swung by a white man?

“What if this licensed trader returns with wealth. Do you not think more of his breed will follow? Then what of us who carry not the sanction of kings? We will be driven out of this land that we have discovered, out of the lands wherein our profits lay. You sicken me, Michel, with your tremors. But in any event he is mine. I am to be avenged.”

“We have a trading outfit, goods and brandy. We will Winter to the north and in the Spring we will be on our way to the St. Lawrence with heavy canoes.”

“He will still pay the price, will still buy us a canoeload of beaver skins. There is a band of Hurons on Lac Mecheygan, driven far from their homes by the Longhouses. We will take this Englishman to them, tell them he is Dutch, from the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam, and they will give us every skin in their village for him, for did not the Dutch, and the English, too, furnish the Longhouses with muskets and powder?”

“Yes, and a double revenge for me,” replied Basile venomously. “I have a mind to stay and see the Hurons play with the Englishman.”

“When do we brain this Goddin and take his outfit?” sneered Basile. “I have a mind to turn the Englishman over to the Mascoutens now if his presence among us fills you with such qualms. Today we go on up the river until we learn where he has his camp. Then tonight! And we will be rich men again.”

Basile hurried away to confer with the chiefs of the village and Michel and Leon entered the hut. They were silent and did not look into the corner where Dick lay. The Virginian, who had been bound so long his legs and arms were becoming numb, lifted his head.

“Michel,” he said, “there was a time when we might have become fast friends. We liked each other then and there should be no cause for hard feelings now, no reason why you can not grant me one small favor.”

“This rawhide is drying and shrinking,” Dick continued. “See how it is cutting into my flesh. Already the feeling is gone. Do me this one favor, Michel, and loosen the bonds a little.”

“And the savages will be cheated, and you, too,” answered Dick. “Another day and my legs and arms will be dead.”

“There is something in that, Leon,” said Michel as he took a hesitating step toward the prisoner. “See, the hide has cut into his flesh. It will do no harm to loosen them. Besides, he will always be in our sight.”

He crossed over and knelt beside Dick. The green hide had stiffened and contracted and it was with difficulty that he untied the knots. As the blood rushed into his extremities Dick writhed and groaned from the excruciating pain. His wrists and legs were swollen and Michel, when he rebound them, could not refrain from leaving the thongs as loose as possible.

Faint from the pain but thankful that it had not come when he had severed the bonds himself, Dick lay back with his face to the wall. In a short time, he knew, the blood would be running in all his veins, the numbness and swelling would almost disappear, and when the time for his escape came he would have the use of his arms and legs.

Dick’s determination to escape had grown twofold since he had overheard Basile’s infamous plans. Not only his own life but that of this unsuspecting Frenchman was at stake and all the repugnance and horror with which he had watched the rape of the Islinois was redoubled at the thought of Basile’s treachery. Seeking freedom himself when he had left Virginia, he was appalled at this interpretation of it by the depraved Pombert.

“We start at once!” cried Basile as he entered the cabine suddenly. “I have explained that we go to visit our countryman and that we will return. Word has been received that Goddin is no more than six leagues up the river. We will start at once so as to find his camp by dark.”

With the Mascoutens thronging about in their curiosity over the spectacle of two white men carrying another securely bound, they went down to their canoe. Dick was laid in the bottom and the Frenchmen paddled off.

If Basile originally had intended to keep his plans from Dick by calling Leon and Michel outside the cabine to discuss them, he abandoned the idea once they were under way. The man was exuberant, already spending the gains of this new crime. He found time, too, to taunt Dick, to describe in detail what he intended to do when they arrived at the camp of the licensed trader, and the Virginian, though he lay quietly with his eyes closed, resolved that nothing could stand in the way of his liberty that he might rid the earth of this evil spirit.

Leon and Michel, wholly lacking in moral conception rather than instinctively criminal, failed to respond to Basile’s mood. They paddled steadily, their eyes always searching the banks ahead for the camp of the trader. But they went to their work without enthusiasm, as if it were a disagreeable task that must be done and then forgotten.

Late in the afternoon they began to go more slowly, reconnoitering from each bend, becoming impatient when sunset approached.

“These cursed savages make a league to their own liking,” complained Basile. “We have gone eight leagues, not six, and still there is no sign of him.”

“Be quiet,” whispered Michel from the bow as he threw out his paddle and drew the canoe backward and toward the bank. “There is smoke ahead, around the next bend.”

Silently they stepped ashore, leaving Dick in the canoe, and crawled through the brush along the bank to see if they had reached their destination. While Dick was still undecided whether he should cut his bonds then or later they returned and immediately began to discuss their plans.

“He’s on the other bank, less than a quarter of a league away,” said Basile. “Michel, slip through the brush up the shore and find a place where you can watch him. See if there is any one with him, how many canoes are there, and how the land lies behind his camp. Be back at dark.”

Dick was lifted from the canoe and Basile with his hand in the Virginian’s collar, dragged him up the bank and back into the brush. The two then carried the canoe out of sight and sat down to await Michel’s report.

Basile, now that his revenge was near, became exuberant. He recounted in detail the wrongs for which he held Antoine Goddin responsible, sneered at the circuitous traits for which the trader was known, and exultantly described how he would end his life.

“If he is asleep I will waken him before I strike, let him see who it is that is avenging past wrongs,” he declared.

“You lie, Pombert!” exclaimed Dick. “You are too much of a coward to strike a man except in the back, and, by Heaven, if these thongs were off my legs and arms I’d prove it now.”

“Those thongs will stay there until the Hurons, thinking you are a Dutch friend of the Iroquois, burn them off,” taunted Basile. “And no more from you or I’ll give you a taste of what the savages can do.”

“I well believe that you are capable of it,” replied Dick. “I do not doubt but that it is Longhouse blood itself that gives you that swarthy countenance and that black heart.”

“Beware, black heart,” the Virginian warned in a low tone. “Touch me now and my face will appear before you as you swing your bloody hatchet tonight. Lay a hand on me now and after the stake I’ll follow you wherever you go, and at last to the fire that surely waits for you when the savages catch their ravisher.”

The Frenchman recoiled with a mumbled oath and Dick laughed outright at this result of the curse he had placed upon the other.

Basile was strangely quiet until the return of Michel just at dusk with a report that the trader was Goddin himself and that he was alone in his camp, with two large canoes drawn up on the bank and a large cabine in which his goods undoubtedly were stored. The trader had cooked his supper and was smoking his evening pipe when Michel left.

“Now,” began Basile eagerly, “to work! We’ll take the canoe, cross the river, enter the forest and come upon him from the rear. He will be asleep soon, and remember that it is I who am to enter his cabine. Tonight men, tonight we will be rich! No one carries a greater outfit out of the St. Lawrence than this Goddin.”

“What of him while we are about this?” asked Leon as he nodded toward the brush where Dick lay.

“Let him lie until we return,” was the command. “Look after his bonds, Michel, and we will be off.”

Michel bent over Dick, felt of the thongs about his ankles and those that bound his arms to his sides and reported him secure.

As he spoke Dick worked his fingers into his pocket and grasped the piece of flint. Not a second could be wasted. Time spelled life both for Goddin and himself. Not only must he reach the camp before the others but he was under the added disadvantage of having to cross the river without a canoe.

The moment he heard the Frenchmen lift their canoe from the brush he was busy with his flint. It was difficult work for his hands were still slightly numbed and he had to bend them at a painful angle to reach a thong with his flint. He had cut half-way through when he was surprised by the sudden appearance of Leon and Basile.

“We’ll make sure of him and tie him to this tree,” said the leader as he grasped Dick’s collar and heaved him farther into the brush. “We’ll do it this way so that he not only will be here when we return but will get a little taste of what is coming to him.”

As he talked he tied one end of a thong around Dick’s ankles, passed it around the tree and then beneath the captive’s armpits. He turned Dick on his side with the small of his back against the tree and then drew the thong tight, hauling the feet and shoulders around until Dick feared that his back would be broken.

A moment later Dick heard them step into the canoe and in the silence that followed he knew that they had gone. Immediately he was at work with his flint. But now his difficulties were increased as his right hand, in which he held the arrow-head, was wedged between his body and the tree. He could, however, still reach a thong around the waist, and to which his wrists were bound, and painfully he began to cut it through.

Twice before it snapped exhaustion forced him to stop. But his first success brought added determination and although his position caused excruciating pain and the perspiration poured from his face, he continued frantically to saw at his bonds.

A half-hour went by and his hands were not free though he had cut through the thong in several places. From the plans of the three, and the report of Michel concerning the location of Goddin’s camp, he might even then be too late. It occurred to him to call, to shout as loudly as he could with the hope that he might arouse the trader and thereby put him on his guard. As he strained to fill his lungs for the effort the bonds about his waist loosened and his hands fell away from his sides.

Exultantly he tugged until both wrists were free and then, though the effort brought torture to cramped muscles, he lifted his right hand above his head and cut the thong that held shoulders and heels together around the tree. The next instant he was sitting up, freeing his legs of the coils.

Dick’s one plan was to reach Goddin’s camp in time to warn him. So great was the urgency he was able to rise despite the pain in every muscle, but when he attempted to walk he wondered vaguely why he should suffer such torture for the sake of a man he had never seen. But the remembrance of Basile’s evil face came to him and he struggled on northward along the river bank, teeth tightly clenched to prevent his crying out at the agony each step cost.

As he walked the pain became less and when at last he saw the lighter spot against the dark forest across the river and knew he was opposite the trader’s tent he felt able to swim the stream. He plunged in at once, waded as far as he could, and then struck out for the opposite shore.

The bank sloped up gradually from the water to the door of the tent, or cabine as the French called it, which was set in the center of a small opening in the forest. For a moment Dick watched and listened and then began to crawl forward on his hands and knees.

“Stay where you are or I will shoot,” came a low voice from the thick brush at his left.

Dick’s first thought was that one of the three Frenchmen had seen him and he was about to run for cover when the even, cool tone impressed itself upon him for the first time.

“Monsieur Goddin,” he whispered, “I am a friend, though you never saw me. But three Frenchmen are about to attack you from the forest. Thank God I have been in time.”

“You are an Englishman,” said Goddin. “Your story is as strange as your presence in this country.”

“For your life, sir, do not speak above a whisper,” implored Dick. “You can see that I am unarmed. Go back to the brush and I will follow and explain. But pray make no noise.”

Goddin hesitated a moment and then walked backward toward the place where he had hidden. Dick crawled after him.

“Now,” said Goddin, who still kept his musket aimed at Dick, “what is this nonsense about three Frenchmen attacking a countryman?”

“You have proven your words,” was the quick answer in an entirely different tone. “I need listen to no more except the details of Pombert’s villainy. And I daresay that those co-devils, Leon La Gard and Michel Charon, are with him.”

“They are,” answered Dick, “and all three may be even now at the edge of this clearing. They left me across the river, below the next bend, securely tied, they believed, and paddled across and planned to come upon you from the rear when you were asleep.”

“Twice foiled,” laughed Goddin softly. “There is a big swamp directly behind the tent through which they are probably floundering, and you will notice yourself, monsieur, that I was not asleep in my tent. Does Pombert take me for a fool to sleep so when I am alone among strange savages? My bed was here and you wakened me. They would have done the same.”

“Not a mite less thanks to you, monsieur, and I will show that Antoine Goddin never forgets a favor, or the reverse. But all that may wait until tomorrow. Now we will plan to rid New France of this Pombert and thereby merit the respect of all honest men. The others are only tools of his and will stand or fall as the battle swings. Listen! I heard a broken twig.”

CHAPTER IX
THE MEDICINE MAN

“Listen, monsieur,” whispered Dick when he and Goddin were safely hidden in the bushes. “I placed a curse on Pombert today, not that I believe in it but because I knew that he would, and I was not sure that I would free myself and warn you in time. I told him that when he struck your sleeping figure with his hatchet my face would appear before him.”

“There is only a roll of blankets for him to murder in the tent,” answered the Frenchman. “A shot from my musket at this distance is ample.”

“It is not hate. It is a loathing, like a man has for a snake. Pombert is an evil thing, a vile thing, and there is no murder in killing him. Besides, I still feel that green thong tightening into my flesh.”

“You have hardly proved your point, monsieur, but you have the desire, and he is yours. Here is my musket.”

“No, a hatchet is what I want, what he deserves. And I’ll be waiting for him in the tent. He will see my face when he is ready to strike.”

Goddin handed the Virginian a small ax that he had placed in his nest in the brush and instantly Dick was worming his way forward in the grass. The Frenchman looked, saw him start, and then nothing moved in the darkness.

“I did not know an Englishman had blood so warm,” he mused. “But he is a man, and I think a man after my own liking.”

Goddin did not have long to wait. It was too dark for him to see a figure against the thick foliage behind the camp but he could distinguish a shadow between him and the white tent. It flitted across, silently, quickly, and he knew Pombert had come.

Dick, in the manner he had learned from the Indian boys in his youth, had gained the tent without the possibility of being seen from the thicket behind it. The grass was long and his movements so silent a snake could not have done it more quietly. He slipped in under the flap almost on top of the bed Antoine Goddin had arranged for just such an emergency. Behind it, piled to the peak, were bales of goods. Against these Dick leaned, waiting, his hatchet ready.

There was a faint sound beside the tent, a pause, then further movement. In a moment the tent flap began to move back and Dick heard the rustle of a body rubbing against the canvas. The triangle of blackness lost its clear-cut shape and a dark figure arose, one arm lifted.

A shriek that seemed to rip open the tent burst from the Frenchman’s throat. He staggered back, helpless in his terror.

“Come, craven,” Dick said sharply. “Lift your hand to strike. I could not even kill a snake that runs.”

The words had their desired effect. With a second cry, now of rage, Basile sprang forward, a knife uplifted. His every movement was silhouetted against the white tent while the Virginian’s position could be distinguished only by his voice. Dick stepped to one side and the head of his hatchet crushed into Pombert’s skull. Without a sound the Frenchman collapsed. He had hardly touched the ground before Dick had gripped his collar and dragged him outside.

As he stood there, about to call to Goddin, the crashing of brush in the forest behind the camp told him of the presence of the others.

“Come, Monsieur Goddin,” he called in a loud voice. “We live in a safer world.”

“Monsieur,” he said solemnly as he saw the body lying at Dick’s feet, “I and all honest men owe you their thanks. It is a strange thing that liberty appears in such various guises. To Pombert it meant a chance to rob, to plunder, to kill, and to escape punishment. Thank God that same freedom attracts men who think and see in straight lines, for no finer land ever lay beneath the sun than that in which we are, monsieur, and it must be saved for those who will not abuse it.”

“Who are you?” demanded Dick curiously, “to speak and think in this manner?”

“Also a ranger of the forests, and one of too many who are giving us the name of thieves and ravishers, of licentious outlaws, of defilers of a simple people and a fair land. But we are not all thus, as you shall learn if you stay in this country. To be a forest runner does not always mean to be a thief.

“But what of you, monsieur? You must pardon my curiosity, but an Englishman in a land where Englishmen have never been, of which they do not even know, and a man of your character in company with Basile Pombert—you can see that the whole is very strange.”

“But there is nothing strange in my story,” replied Dick, “and I will tell it to you. But first let us rid ourselves of what remains of Pombert. He was made in God’s image even if wholly devoid of his precepts. I would not like to think that wild beasts devoured even the body of such a man.”

“We will carry it into the brush and cover it with a blanket,” said Goddin. “In the morning there will be light, and now you need a fire for you are wet.”

They carried the body away from the tent and built a fire, for they had no fear of Leon and Michel. While Dick warmed and dried himself he gave his history, beginning as he had done on the Des Plaines River with his boyhood, his wanderings, his encounter with Sir William Berkeley, his escape from Virginia, his hazardous journey down the Ohio, his discovery of Lac Mecheygan and his finding the coureurs de bois.

Throughout the recital Dick spoke lightly, recounting his conversation with Sir William in detail because he still laughed over it himself.

“My faith, monsieur!” Goddin exclaimed after his hearty laughter had interrupted the tale. “You have the spirit of the French, the Latin lightness of humor. I did not know that Englishmen could even appreciate satire. They have always been pictured to me as slow of wit and inclined to be morose.”

“Perhaps I am not an Englishman,” replied Dick seriously. “How long have you lived in this land beyond the Western ocean?”

“And I was born in it. Do you not think, monsieur, that birth in such a land as this, or a long life in it, instils something in the heart that is entirely different from that of the man in Europe?”

“I am sure of it,” was the answer. “I have often thought so. It has already begun. Your own Pilgrims to the Plymouth country, the Huguenots from mine own France who settled in La Floride only to perish, they are the straws. But what led to your trouble with Pombert?”

Dick told of the pillaging of the Islinois, of the flight and of Pombert’s attempt to obtain revenge and to recoup by giving him to the Indians as a prisoner.

“I feel,” said Goddin solemnly, “that you have twice saved my life, my friend. I was on my way to the country of the Islinois, of whom I had heard. Now it would be folly to go on. The story of Pombert’s treachery will spread far and it will ill fare a Frenchman who ventures among them. Now I must return to the country south of Lac Superior, on the waters of the Miscousing, or Ouisconsin, as it is called, where I have Wintered before. I had hoped to return with bales of the skins of wild cattle, of which I have heard, but now will take beaver instead. What are your plans?”

“Plans!” laughed Dick. “Where have I had time for planning? I had hoped to find the French and lead the life of the coureurs de bois. After what I saw of the methods of Pombert I knew it was impossible.”

“Would you come with me as voyageur? I am without men, and your profits, you know, are fixed by law. The voyageurs receive half after all expenses are paid and divide it among themselves.”

“I will do so gladly,” replied Dick eagerly, “but only on condition that I go as your friend. It is not that I would escape the labor. You are welcome to all I have. But I would not earn so generous a share after half the journey has been made.”

“I would be glad to have you with me as a friend,” said Goddin warmly, “and the profits will be settled to your satisfaction. I am expecting four Indians in the morning to help me with the canoes and the goods. I had made arrangements for them to go south but they will more willingly go north. Come and share my bed, for you must be tired.”

There began for the young Virginian the life of which he had dreamed. The pleasant Summer waned and the wonderful Fall came, and always they traveled northward. Large lakes and little rivers that flowed sluggishly or tumbled over rocks, creeks too small for paddling the heavily-loaded canoes, portages in swamp, forest and prairie, each was traversed, and each began to signify to Dick a new link in the friendship which bound Goddin and himself.

Here was no villainy, no plan for plunder or murder, no thought of a quick dash into a new country to despoil and leave a trail of rape and poisoned passion. Here was no desire to abuse what seemed nothing less than a Heaven-granted privilege, the right to wander at will through this wonderfully fertile country, to live in the tranquility of that peace which only the wide places know.

As they traveled on and on, crossing from one watercourse to another, watching the character of the land change constantly and yet always remain fair, Dick began to question as to its extent.

“No man knows,” was Goddin’s answer. “It is my desire to find out some day, to go on and on into the west until I come to the sea. It was this desire that first sent me into the country around the uppermost of these great lakes, and according to my calculations and plans another year or two should see me on my way.”

“I often doubt if that is what I will find,” said Goddin. “For ten years now I have traded in the district around Michilimakinac. I have talked with Saulteurs from beyond Lac Superior, with the Hurons and Outaouas, Ouinibegous, Outagamis, Mascoutens, Renards, Sakis and even with the Nadouaissioux, who live farther to the west than any tribe white men have ever seen. I have listened to coureurs de bois who have been in places of which they dare not speak when they return to the St. Lawrence, and I have questioned other forest-rangers, like Nicholas Perrot, Raddison and Groseilliers, and with Jesuits who are always seeking new pagan peoples, and all these are men who do speak of the places they have seen.

“If you believe all that you hear you would go mad. I think it is the white man, and the white man’s hope, that has given rise to the story of the Red Sea being near us, that and the savage legends of stinking water, by which they mean salt. My own opinion, based upon reports from all sources and arrived at after much weighing and sifting and balancing, is that we are still a long way from the Gulf of California.

“The ‘great water,’ the Misisepe, of which the savages speak, is only a river I feel certain, but a large river like the St. Lawrence and flowing through an immense country. Great streams come in from the west and I believe one could travel almost a thousand leagues and still fail to reach the Eastern ocean, the way to the Indies.

“The white man hopes for the South Sea and pearls and gold. He grasps eagerly at tales of great water and strange people, forgetting that the savage is fearful of unknown lands and prone to believe in monsters and unnatural things. I have even talked with savages who, I am certain, have been on the Misisepe, and within two years I expect to be there myself. The cost of such an expedition is great, but I have been saving and after another visit to Montreal I will start.”

They spoke often of this “great water” and of what might lie beyond it. Dick was continually amazed by the extent of Goddin’s travels, his knowledge of the various savage nations and the districts they claimed as their own. The Frenchman was generous with his information and the young Virginian, finding romance in every word, absorbed it to the last detail. He learned, too, the names and histories of many Frenchmen, coureurs de bois, men who had traveled far, endured much, only to fail to receive recognition from France for all their efforts.

“It is a strange thing that sends men into unknown places,” said Goddin one night. “But since the world began I imagine men have done it. They risk their lives, everything, endure incredible hardships, and they die only with the satisfaction that they were first of their race in some part of the world. You have the soul of an explorer, Monsieur Dick. Why do you not join me in this journey I have planned. Perhaps we might discover this ‘great water,’ learn a little of the land beyond.”

The words brought a smile to Dick’s eyes which he could not conceal and Goddin, seeing his mirth, angry, hurt, stared at him in silence.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” the Virginian begged contritely. “My sense of humor is ever ready to give offense. But there is some cause for laughter. I scorned the chance, even to save my neck from the noose, to find this land for one king. Now, after all my adventures in a quest for freedom, you ask me to help find it for another. Sir William Berkeley promised me honor to serve King Charles, to take in his name a land he would never see, and you ask me to do the same for still another who believes that God gave him the right to persecute honest men. Think you then that there can be no kingless land?”

“Do you remember your asking me if I believed that this land and the air above it instil something in the heart of a man which is unknown in Europe?” asked Goddin in answer. “I do believe that, and I believe that some day this land will be filled with people of the white race and that they will rule themselves. Perhaps it is only a dream, perhaps I brood too much when alone in the forest, but perhaps I do see the significance of events in Europe and there is a basis for my belief in the growing power of the people to think for themselves. Yet, despite even reason, I can not help but feel that this land you and I have seen can never come under the rule of a tyrant.

“Many times when I have looked over the broad valleys, have dug my toe into the fertile soil, have traveled so far and so easily on the great waterways, I have in my imagination seen farms and villages and cities filled with a happy, contented, prosperous people. I have said this to others, once to Perrot, and have been laughed at.

“ ‘What?’ Perrot exclaimed. ‘This savage land another France! A plow in these prairies! Ships on these great lakes! Antoine, you are a dreamer! This is a fur land and will remain so. It is too far and, besides, there are not people enough in all the world to fill a corner of it. It’s fur we seek here and all we will ever find, and for that we should be thankful.’

“I didn’t say so to him but I see the fur trade as the opening wedge only, something that will serve its purpose and be gone. That is why I am content to follow it, if by doing so I will add my mite to making the land known.”

“But you have not answered my objections to finding this land in the name of a king,” protested Dick.

“I was only leading up to it. You saw Pombert’s idea of liberty. You must admit that even a king’s is better. To me a king is only a symbol for the people he rules, and in time I believe that all kings, if they exist at all, will be only symbols of what holds the people together and gives them safety and happiness. If I found this ‘great water,’ this Misisepe, I would take it in the name of my king to make my act legal, but in reality I would know that I was taking it in the name of my race, my nation, the people of whom I am one, and that in time it would be theirs.”

This was a new idea for Dick and he received Goddin’s words in an unusually thoughtful silence. The older man, sensing the impression he had made, content to plant only the seeds in Dick’s fertile mind, changed the subject to one lying more near their every-day life. It was not, however, the last discussion on this topic. Again and again it cropped up in their long talks before the camp-fire in the evenings. And always, though Dick said little, the Frenchman felt more and more certain that when the time came to do that for which he had waited he would not go alone.

Goddin was by no means always serious and in Dick’s exuberant spirits as well as in his freedom from accepted beliefs he found a constant source of delight. He recognized, too, the romantic nature of the Virginian and recounted many adventures, described many scenes in strange places, and unfolded a wealth of information concerning the many savage nations which lived in the neighborhood of the great lakes.

In the early Fall they reached a place far up the Ouisconsin River where Goddin had Wintered two years before and where beaver skins were plentiful and of exceptional quality. The four Indians returned to their own country and the two white men repaired the cabines Goddin had used before, moved the trade-goods into one and made the other comfortable for living-quarters.

The Winter was a busy one and, for Dick, passed quickly. The savages seemed to learn miraculously that they had come and flocked to the post. Later when the snows were deep Goddin and Dick made journeys to their camps. Always they obtained fur on these trips and weekly Dick saw the pile of goods diminish and the bales of pelts increase.

It was well that the two worked at their fur-gathering in the early Winter, for with the approach of Spring came the usual famine season. And with it came a change in the industry of the savages, the fur trade stopping as suddenly as if it had been cut off with a knife. Goddin, knowing that their work in the district was finished, made plans to go down-river as soon as the ice would permit, and the fur was baled for the journey.

Daily the famine grew worse. Dick found one camp wiped out by starvation. Hunters brought their families and crowded around the post begging for food. Goddin, though his own supplies were low and he and Dick were living mostly on what little game they were able to kill, gave what he could. Even in the face of possible want for themselves the Frenchman could not refrain from giving food to the women and children who hung about his door, though he was severe enough in denouncing the men for not hunting and daily drove them out in search of game.

Among the Ouinibegous who sought Goddin’s charity was a medicine-man who had gained sufficient prestige in his band to abandon hunting and live off the proceeds of his magic arts. Once Goddin caught him taking food he had just given to a child and drove him off with a club.

Sickness followed hard on the heels of famine and there were several deaths. The medicine-man’s services were in demand, but as his patients died he became more and more bitter toward the white men, denouncing them as the cause of his failures to cure and openly insolent when he encountered Goddin alone.

One family, the first to arrive at the post, had been particularly troublesome. The father was too lazy to hunt and upon the mother fell the work of providing for the three children. Her bravery in the face of her difficulties, her refusal to complain, the ceaseless efforts she made to snare birds and hares, her self-denial and her affection for her children, had aroused the sympathy and admiration of Dick and Goddin and she was helped more generously than any of the others.

She never begged until one day when the snow had nearly gone and the ice was breaking in the river. She brought to the cabin her youngest child. Its wasted little body was wrapped in a filthy deerskin and when she threw this back the white men recoiled with exclamations of horror. The entire body of the child was covered with large ulcerated sores.

“I have an ointment for troubles of the skin and I’ll use it!” exclaimed Goddin fiercely. “It is folly to meddle with such things. The Jesuits have aroused much resentment by preaching against the medicine-man. It can only lead to trouble. But we can’t abandon this woman now. She has been brave and she has done everything possible to keep her family alive. We can’t desert her, Dick. I’ll give her the ointment to apply.”

The woman went away, her eyes alone expressing her thankfulness, and a few minutes later when Goddin found her husband on the river bank, sprawled out in the welcome sun, he chased him into the forest with a club.

“The dog lies there while she eats out her own heart!” he stormed to Dick as they sat down to dinner. “It is folly to do this, to interfere with them, for they believe that they are right in all things and secretly laugh at our methods, though they are anxious enough to have our steel and goods. But we will be leaving in a few days now and I’m willing to have taken the risk.”

The Frenchman, anxious to start down the river with the first breaking of the ice, had completed his preparations in the first of April. The fur was baled, the canoes had been made ready, six Ouinibegous had been engaged to man them as far as Michilimakinac and the maize and wild oats which had been saved for the journey were sacked.

Two days after the Indian woman had been given the ointment the two white men stood on the bank of the river watching the ice grind down-stream. The warm sun was welcomed on their backs, little rivulets of water flowed into the larger stream, some trees were beginning to open their buds.

“Tomorrow is the day,” said Goddin. “By tonight the river will be free of ice and by the time we reach the portage into the river that will take us to Lac Mecheygan the water will be so high we can paddle across and escape the carry of nearly half a league. Run up the river to where the savages are camped, my friend, and tell the men we have engaged to be here tonight. Then we can start early in the morning.”

Dick took his musket, for a buck or even a bird was welcome, and entered the forest. A half-league up the river the savages had gathered at a rapids that they might catch the first fish of the Spring run, but when Dick reached their village he found the men squatting in the sun before the cabines while the women were equally idle.

The sullen silence with which he was greeted instantly acquainted Dick with the fact that something was wrong. His summons to the men Goddin had engaged was received without comment. As he stood there staring about him, wondering at this sudden change in the attitude of the savages toward him, the death wail arose from the last cabine of the row along the river bank. The shrieks echoed up and down the stream and women all about him joined in the shrill, moaning cry until Dick was forced to stop his ears.

At a loss to explain this unfriendliness of a people who had fawned about him in their desire for food only the week before, Dick walked out of the village and sought the trail to the post. Once or twice he glanced back uneasily.

“Who cares if the beggars are unfriendly now that the fish are beginning to fill their miserable stomachs,” he muttered as he walked swiftly down the trail. “We will be gone tomorrow.”

A low hiss from the brush beside him brought a quick halt and he turned to see an old Indian looking out from behind a giant pine.

“Hurry back,” whispered the man, whom Dick recognized as an Islinois the Ouinibegous had taken prisoner and kept as a slave. “The child for whom the Frenchman made medicine has died. The medicine-man of the band has claimed that the white men’s medicine killed him. He and the child’s father are even now on the way to the white men’s cabine. Their minds are evil and they carry the white men’s arrows. If you would arrive in time to save the bearded white man, do not wait. Get into the canoes and flee, for the medicine-man has stirred up all the people against you.”

Before the man had finished Dick was running down the trail. He realized instantly what lay back of his reception at the village and he had learned enough of the treacherous nature of the Ouinibegous to recognize the danger to Goddin. It would not be an open attack. Neither the medicine-man nor the lazy father of the dead child would dare. It would be a stealthy stalk in the shelter of the bushes behind the cabine, a musket fired so close there would be no chance of missing.

His heart chilled by the fear that he would be too late to save his friend, Dick ran as he had never run before. He forgot the heavy musket in his hand, splashed heedlessly through water and swamp and melting snow, leaped over fallen trees and dashed the brush aside.

Breathless, he came at last to the clearing in which the two rough log buildings stood. It was empty of any living thing, and Dick, hysterical in his thankfulness, stopping to gulp the air into his bursting lungs, began to search the brush around the edge for a lurking figure.

As he looked Goddin stepped out through the door. In the same instant that the warning cry sprang to Dick’s lips a musket roared and the Frenchman swayed, clutched at his breast and then fell at full length.

CHAPTER X
ALONE

Dick Jeffreys, sickened, nerveless, stunned by the horror of this unthinkable crime, benumbed by the loss of his friend, stared across the clearing as if he were looking at something unreal, as if he were still in the grip of a horrible nightmare. He did not move, could not, until a black head appeared from behind a clump of bushes.

The sight brought instant action and he dashed into the open, straight toward the ambush from which Goddin had been slaughtered. So quick was his rush, so swiftly did rage spur him on, he had passed the cabines before the murderers had gained their feet to flee. One fired a musket wildly and then dropped it. His back was hardly turned before Dick was upon him, and the Virginian’s heavy weapon crashed down through his skull.

The second savage, the father of the dead child, the one whose musket was empty and therefore who had actually fired the shot which had killed Goddin, dodged from tree to tree, but he had not run twenty yards before a ball struck him squarely in the middle of the back.

Still raging, hysterical, sobbing, his brain in a tumult, Dick turned back to the clearing. Fearful now in the presence of death, hesitating as he was about to look into the white face of the man he had grown to love, he approached Goddin’s body slowly. When only a few paces away there was a slight twitch in one of the Frenchman’s legs and with a glad cry the Virginian sprang forward and turned his friend over.

Eagerly he thrust his hand inside Goddin’s shirt. The heart was still beating.

And then through his loneliness and despair for his friend and his rage against the savages who had brought this sorrow to him another fact impressed itself. Instantly he leaped to his feet.

Over the forest had descended a sudden hush. There was no sound except the occasional lazy grinding of a laggard ice cake against the shore. Dick realized for the first time that throughout his run down the river from the Indian village, while he stood at the edge of the clearing, even while the savage’s musket roared and Antoine fell, the death wail had been echoing up and down the valley. Now all was still.

Dick stood looking up the river. The village was around a bend but he knew instinctively what was transpiring there. The women had ceased their wailing, but in another moment the war-cry would take its place. The musket shots had been heard. The medicine-man and his dupe would not return. Inside of an hour thirty men would be at his heels.

Instantly he decided upon the only possible course. He stooped over Goddin just as the Frenchman opened his eyes.

“Thank God!” whispered Dick. “I must carry you to the canoe. Tell me if it hurts too much, but bear as much as you can, my friend. The savages will be here in an hour and we must be down-stream as far as possible.”

Dick slipped his arms gently beneath Goddin’s body and staggered to his feet. A canoe was drawn partly out of the water and in this he laid his burden. Immediately he was running back to the cabine, to return with powder-horns, bullet pouches, an ax, blankets and several other articles that first met his eyes. He dumped these into the bow and ran back for corn, wild oats, a kettle and whatever else he could lay his hands on. With an ax he crushed in the sides of the remaining craft and five minutes after he had lifted Goddin their canoe was afloat and turned down-stream.

For half an hour Dick paddled with all his skill and strength. He wanted to get as far away as possible before the pursuit started because he knew that he must stop soon to dress Goddin’s wounds. A long, straight stretch of water a league below the post offered the opportunity he desired and when he reached the lower end of it he turned ashore at a point where he could command his back-trail for a long distance.

As he stepped out and examined the wounded man he felt suddenly numb, suddenly alone in the vast, savage-peopled wilderness. That there could be no hope he recognized instantly, and yet because the bond between them was so strong Dick would not admit his despair. The bullet had smashed Goddin’s right arm above the elbow and then entered his right lung, perhaps the left, for it had not passed out on the other side. In the bottom of the canoe was a pool of blood, and the injured man’s beard was crimson.

Dick cut off the sleeve of the jacket and bound up the arm as best he could. The hole in the side was more difficult and every time he moved the body blood gushed out. He completed the task only partly to his satisfaction and as he finished Goddin again regained consciousness.

“Not at all,” was the instant reply. “Nothing that will keep you on your back more than a few days.”

“I knew you would say that, Dick, but I know what has happened. If I were in Montreal with the best surgeon in New France at hand, I could not live.”

“Of course not, if you think that way. Why, Antoine, before we reach Michilimakinac you’ll be helping me paddle.”

“Before we reach the river of the Mascoutens you will dig a grave,” answered Goddin calmly. “But why are we in a canoe, Dick?”

“I killed the dog who shot you and the medicine-man who drove him to it,” was the reply. “At the village they were sullen and it needed only that to turn them into a wolf-pack.”

“But the furs, and what remained of the outfit! I wanted you to have the benefit of them, my friend.”

“I wouldn’t touch a hide of them!” exclaimed Dick fiercely. “What is all the fur in New France to your life, Antoine? Don’t speak of such a thing now.”

“And my license, too,” continued the Frenchman. “That is in a wallet in my pocket, Dick. Don’t forget it when you bury me.”

He had been watching the long stretch of river anxiously and suddenly he grasped the bow of the canoe and set it afloat.

“They are coming, Antoine,” he whispered as he pushed out into the current. “Be brave, for it will be many hours before we stop again.”

Seeking always the swiftest current, exerting all his strength in every stroke, Dick drove the canoe on. Hour after hour, without losing a pace in distance or a moment in time, he kept steadily on at top speed. The fear of the pursuing Ouinibegous was constantly with him, but it was never for himself. Always there was the picture of their remorselessness, the fiendish speed with which they would bind Antoine to a tree that he might not die before they could add to his agony.

The afternoon wore on and evening came. The river bent often and sharply and there were no long stretches by which he could gauge the result of the race. At every curve he glanced over his shoulder, but darkness set in without his catching a glimpse of the pursuing craft. He was still ahead because he had only to flee, and the savages had to guard against his hiding on shore.

The night brought excessive weariness but no cessation of his efforts. He knew that he had probably held his own and now he could not afford to forego the opportunity to increase his lead. The low clouds, the absence of moon or stars, were his hope, for the savages must go slowly to make sure they did not pass him. Yet he cursed the darkness fearfully for he could no longer see the pale face of Antoine. Even as he struggled on to save him life might pass.

This dread uncertainty finally brought a halt, the first in long hours of paddling. He laid aside his blade and crawled forward.

Dick dipped the kettle over the side and lifted Goddin’s head. Then he wrapped blankets about him and returned to the paddle in the stern.

More hours went by and in the silence and darkness the canoe sped on into the south. If Dick were weary, if his arms and shoulders and back ached, he did not know it. He thought only of what would happen should the Ouinibegous overtake him, of how he must outdistance them so that he could have time to care for Antoine.

As the night wore on Goddin became delirious. He rolled and tossed in the bottom of the canoe and often Dick was forced to stop and thrust him down beneath the thwarts. He talked continually, now of his boyhood in France, of his father and mother, of Montreal, the river of the Outaouas, of Perrot and Raddison and Groseilliers, of many strange nations of savages and of distant places he had seen. Sometimes he spoke in French, sometimes in the language of the Saulteurs, or the Ouinibegous, the Hurons, the Outaouas and even of the Nadouaissioux.

Dick understood them all, for he was not only familiar with the Algonquin dialects but, to his surprise, he had found that the Ouinibegous spoke a language almost the same as that of the Sheraws of his own Virginia, while that of the Nadouaissioux, who lived north of the “great water,” as spoken by Goddin, showed that these widely scattered nations belonged to the same family.

The delirium added to Dick’s fear for his friend since each contortion of the Frenchman’s body reopened his wounds. But he dared not stop for always there was the greater fear of being overtaken by the Ouinibegous. Of them and their methods he had learned enough during his Winter among them, and from Goddin’s stories, to keep him pushing on after every ounce of strength in his body seemed to have been exhausted.

The Ouinibegous had once been a powerful nation, vain, insolent, deceitful, eaters of their enemies’ flesh, wholly untrustworthy, accused of more crimes than any people except the Longhouses. Now they were reduced to a comparative handful since the Islinois had avenged themselves for a bit of treachery that had brought exclamations of horror even from several nations of the savages themselves. Embittered in their defeat, their desire for conquest and torture had been sharpened. And all of this would vent itself upon the helpless Frenchman should they succeed in his capture.

In the dawn Dick kept on as he had all night. He was without a plan, without any alternative. He remembered that Goddin had told him how, in the Spring floods, it was possible to paddle across the portage from the Ouisconsin into the river which led to Lac Mecheygan. Now his hopes depended upon that being true. If he could reach this place and get through to the river of the Mascoutens he might escape in time to reach Lac Mecheygan and Michilimakinac, where there undoubtedly would be Frenchmen and proper care for his friend.

Dick estimated that, with the swift current, he was making two leagues an hour, if not a little more, and they had Wintered about fifty leagues above the portage. If he kept on paddling throughout the twenty-four hours he would come to the carrying-place at noon. There he could leave the Ouisconsin and in a short time be in waters that flowed to Lac Mecheygan.

Success in his plan depended entirely upon his ability to gain on the savages. That they would continue the pursuit he did not doubt, not only because he had killed their medicine-man and another but because they would not wish to incur the hostility of the French and the powerful nations allied with them. The Ouinibegous in their weakened condition could not afford to have news of their treachery reach Michilimakinac.

But the forenoon hours dragged by without his being able to learn whether he were half a league or five leagues in the lead. At dawn Goddin’s delirium had ceased, but the bottom of the canoe was covered with blood, a red stream trickling down between Dick’s knees into the stern. The wounded man’s face was deadly white. He lay without movement and his eyes were closed.

The suspense became unbearable to Dick. Even if life remained it might pass at any moment. At last, in frantic desperation, heedless of consequences, he laid aside his paddle and crawled forward.

“I was sleeping, Dick,” he whispered, “but I am glad you wakened me for I feel sure that I would have passed away without knowing it.”

“Nor must you try to deceive yourself, my friend. It is coming soon, very soon, and I wish you would take me ashore, lean me against a tree in the sun and let me die looking at this fair land I have grown to love.”

Dick was about to protest when Goddin’s eyes closed, his face became contorted by pain and blood flowed from his mouth. The Virginian realized that what he had tried to make himself believe could not be true, that the end had come.

Returning to the stern he glanced back up-stream. He was at the foot of a long, straight stretch, the first he had passed since daylight. Ahead the river turned sharply to the left, curving at the foot of a low, grassy bank upon which was a thick grove of oaks. It was a spot Goddin would like, a fair view of river and shore, and it would give Dick an opportunity to watch his back-trail for nearly a league. He paddled to it, landed, and then with infinite care and at the cost of all his strength he lifted Goddin to the grass at the foot of the trees.

“Thank you, Dick,” said Antoine when he looked up the long stretch of river. “It is the place I would have chosen. Now if I may have a drink, please. There. Thank you. Now sit down in front of me, Dick, and please do not look as if the end of the world had come. There is no reason why death should be so dreadful.”

“Antoine! Antoine!” cried the Virginian. “Don’t speak so! You can not die now!”

“You are young, my friend, and youth always has the wrong idea of death. There is no reason why death should not be pleasant. It is for me as I lie here with this view before me, with the smell of Spring in the air and with you beside me. That is one of the things I am most thankful for, that I have known you, and that we have this friendship. It has brought youth to me, Dick, mine own youth back again, and I owe you much.”

His eyes closed, his lips moved silently for a moment, and he seemed to be asleep. After a while he began to speak again.

“I am not regretful. I have lived a full life, though I have not accomplished all that I had wished. I have gone through it with open eyes, knowing that this life in the wilderness is filled with danger. But it has been the sauce for the pudding, and those of us who take the risks can not complain when we are caught.

“I will be gone soon, Dick. I can see only a little way up the river, just across to the other shore. I want you to have my license to trade, friend. It is the only thing I can leave. And I will go content that you will make honest use of it, that you will see as I have seen that the fur is only the beginning, that this fair land was not meant for savages who spend their lives in killing and torturing, that there is to come a day when it will be filled with a happy people.

“I know you have the vision, and the true heart, and that you will do your share in the work that is to be done. You may never receive a reward, may even be persecuted for what you do. History may never give you credit, but those are little things. Live so that you may die with a clean heart and the honest conviction that you have done your duty to your fellow-men. That is the sum of life, and I know it will be yours.”

Again his eyes closed and he was silent for a long time. Dick feared the end had come and waited in dumb terror. At last the blood-blackened lips moved.

“I am going, Dick,” he whispered. “Good-by, friend. I wish you would—no, I will not ask a promise. I know you will go on into this new land. I had hoped to find it for my people, take it in the name of my king. But yours will do as well, for it can never be a king’s land but a country of an honest, happy people. Good-by, Dick.”

The young Virginian, tears streaming down his face, bent over the hand of his friend and kissed it passionately.

The fingers stiffened convulsively in his clasp, blood flowed from the wounded man’s lips, and Dick knew that he was alone.

For a time he knelt there beside the body. He had hoped, refused to believe, and now that death had come to this man for whom he had never had anything except love and respect, he was as stunned as though the Ouinibegous’ bullet had brought instant oblivion.

Humbly, reverently, he stretched the body out beneath the tree, folded the hands across the chest and stood looking down into the calm, peaceful face.

“It is when we die that we have the only test of bravery,” he said aloud. “Life but trains us for it. Here died a man with a heart like those of the knights of old.”

The stillness of the bright, sunny Spring noon was suddenly rent by a chorus of whoops and shrill yells. Dick wheeled toward the river to see three canoes, each manned by a half-dozen savages, less than half a league away.

CHAPTER XI
THE VISION

With his heart empty, in the deep, black despondency of youth, Dick’s first thought was to remain where he was, to stand above the body of his friend and avenge him before he himself at last fell beside it. He need not wait long. In a few minutes all would be over.

But a remembrance of savage methods of which he had heard quickened him to action. It would be sacrilege to leave what remained of his friend to be the plaything of their inhuman passions, to permit that strong, brave face to be mutilated even in death. He stooped, grasped the body about the waist and staggered down to the canoe with it. He dropped it on to the blood-soaked blankets, for every second was precious, and shoved off. A few strokes took him around the bend but not out of hearing of the yells of rage that echoed up and down the river.

As grimly as twenty-four hours before, Dick settled to his task. With a lead of less than half a league not a stroke must be missed. His own canoe was fast, one Goddin had ordered made according to his own design, but it was heavily loaded and driven by only one paddle. The pursuing canoes were larger, slower, but propelled by half a dozen blades each, and the swift current would play no favorites.

The one factor in Dick’s favor, the one which probably had given him the last uninterrupted moments with Antoine, was the fact that the Ouinibegous would be delayed by the fear that he would hide behind some island or turn up a forest-hidden tributary. Around one of the quick bends it would be easy for him to go ashore, hide himself and the canoe, and watch them pass.

But this would only serve to put his enemies between him and ultimate safety, while there was always the danger that a sharp eye would catch a glimpse of sign on the wet shore. For the present at least his best course lay in keeping as far ahead as possible and he drove on, always in the swiftest part of the current, never overlooking any position that would add to his speed.

He was weary, sore, losing strength, but, like a true racer, he ascribed greater weariness and debility to his adversaries, while his will spurred muscles that shrieked their agony but submitted.

An hour went by. The river twisted and turned and not once did Dick catch sight of the savages. Mid-afternoon came and for the first time he thought of the portage into the river of the Mascoutens, the only route to Lac Mecheygan and a land in which he could find white men. He began to watch the banks but nothing was familiar. He had come up with Goddin when the water was low at the end of a dry Summer. Now the Ouisconsin was beginning to overflow its banks and it was not at all like the stream on which he had embarked the day before.

More perplexing than all else, his general course was different. Early in the day he had traveled in a southeasterly direction. Now the declining sun was to the left of the bow. It could mean only that he was traveling toward the southwest, away from Lac Mecheygan.

Dick, however, still hoped for the portage, still watched the left bank for signs of the carrying-place, but he dared not stop for a careful search. So long as he could lift a paddle he must keep on with the current. If he had missed the portage it was a hazard of the game all forest-rangers must expect.

Before sunset there was no longer any doubt in his mind that he had passed it. The character of the country had changed. Pines had given way to oak, maple, linden, elms, aspens and, along the shores, willows in thick hedges. High bluffs now bordered the valley, which was from one to two leagues wide, and the river three or four times as big as where he had begun his journey seemed to wander about the great bottom lands as if seeking a better channel.

The flood was not at its height for the sandbars which formed the banks were still dry. Dick could see evidences of how the river sometimes had taken the entire valley for its bed. Now it turned and twisted, dashed from the high bluffs on one side to those on the other, only to be turned again by the great hills.

The river, too, was now thickly strewn with islands. Sometimes they were bare, white stretches of sand. Again they were small, thin strips of higher ground upon which great trees were growing. Always the river gnawed at their sides and undermined trees hung far out over the current. Often the islands stretched for a league or two in a long line, connected by rows of willows the tops of which waved in the current. Two channels then resulted, each a river in itself.

In the evening the stream straightened out for more than a league and was comparatively free of islands. At the lower end Dick laid aside his paddle and looked back. As the canoe was whirled on by the swift current he watched the far end of the straight stretch. Now, if ever, the pursuing canoes would be seen. But at last he swung around the bend without a sight of them.

In the evening chill his muscles had stiffened in the short rest and when again he took up his paddle it was only to torture himself. Every muscle, every nerve, his numbed brain, cried for rest. His eyes ached. He was too near exhaustion even to realize that he was hungry.

The canoe swung straight on in the center of the swiftest part, sometimes stern first, sometimes broadside to the current. He was traveling without effort and darkness would come soon. He stretched himself out in the bottom and instantly was asleep.

Dick was wakened by the sudden stopping of the canoe and a swirling of water against its side. Dazed, stiff, his brain as cramped as his body, he lifted himself and looked around. The sun was high. The canoe had come to rest on the end of a sandbar opposite the base of a bluff which towered nearly four hundred feet above the stream and against which the river dashed furiously, only to be swung out again into the center of the broad valley.

On the sandbar was dry driftwood and Dick crawled out and started a fire. There was a long stretch of water behind him, but so far as he could see he was alone. Birds sang, a fish sometimes flipped above the surface, but otherwise there was no movement, no sound of life. He cooked breakfast and, his strength and alertness revived, immediately cursed himself for his folly in so exposing himself to the pursuing Ouinibegous. He shoved off and began to paddle as swiftly as the day before.

When nightfall came again Dick began to believe that he was no longer followed. The savages had not suspected his going down the Ouisconsin past the portage. They were probably seeking for him there, believing that he had turned aside before he reached it or had attempted to paddle through to the river that led to Lac Mecheygan. All day he had made his two leagues an hour, had passed through a country as beautiful as any he had ever seen, and yet there had been no sign of human habitation.

He and Goddin had often talked with the Ouinibegous during the Winter in an effort to learn something of the “great water” that lay to the westward. But no member of the tribe had ever been to it, though they believed that it was only a few days’ paddle down the Ouisconsin. It was a great water, they said. On its shores strange, fierce nations dwelt, and beneath its surface were great monsters that swallowed whole canoes and all that was in them at a gulp. None of their people had ever dared venture so far. They would not risk it now.

In the darkness Dick again abandoned himself to the current and stretched out in the bottom of the canoe. When morning came he found that some miracle had kept him off the sandbars all night, and he was still drifting, now straight west, in the same cliff-bound valley. With his breakfast came confidence that he need no longer fear pursuit and for the first time he gave thought to the problem that now confronted him. The body beneath the blanket in the bow must be buried. This necessity redoubled his loneliness and his sense of loss, but it also brought an idea. He set the canoe afloat and began to paddle.

Now with the bluffs towering above him on the right, now swinging at the base of a high cliff on the left, turning from side to side of the broad valley, Dick kept on with the current. The river had become a great noble stream, as beautiful as any he had ever seen. He had gone so far to the south since the murder of Goddin he found the leaves budding, the land green with the vividness of Spring. The little islands, with which the channel was dotted, lay like huge emeralds before him. The towering bluffs had entirely lost their ruggedness beneath their new cloaks of verdure. The valley was a broad prairie studded with clumps of oaks.

At noon the hills came close to the water on either side, and then the river swung around a bend and straightened out into a long expanse which broadened at the far end beneath a line of high hills. For two leagues the water was unbroken except for a few small islands directly in front. On the left a long ridge rose nearly four hundred feet above him, and on the right low, oak-covered hills gave way to a broad prairie.

“Not even the river that flows into the sea at New Amsterdam excels it!” he whispered.

And then the significance of what he saw impelled itself and he knew that even then his speeding canoe was at the mouth of the Ouisconsin, that he, the first of white men, was looking upon the “great water,” the upper reaches of the Misisepe.

Dazed by the magnificence of this wonderful confluence of the two waters, Dick sat motionless, only unconsciously keeping the canoe headed with the current. The force of the water swept him on past the islands and then the view opened before him to the north and south. For leagues in either direction he could see the great river. To the south it was broad, unbroken, stretching from bluff to bluff. To the north it widened, the channel studded by many islands, washing at the base of the hills on the west and at the edge of a prairie on the east. Not until its strong, quiet, sweeping current caught and whirled him away to the south did Dick begin to paddle.

Straight on toward the west he went, where a mountain towered above the water. The current became swifter, not the bubbling, swirling, twisting water he had known in the Ouisconsin, but a silent, powerful drift, a force entirely in accord with the majesty of such a stream.

Swept down, fighting steadily, at last catching a huge eddy, Dick finally reached the base of the mountain on the western side and beached his canoe. Immediately above him, twenty feet higher than the water, directly facing the entrance of the Ouisconsin and commanding a broad sweep of the great river itself, was the bare crown of a knoll.

He set to work at once. With his ax he made a rough spade with which to dig a shallow grave in the rocky soil. He was forced to cut out a thwart in the canoe to remove the body of Goddin, but he reached the knoll with it and laid it in the slight depression. Over it he built up a tomb of stones as high as his shoulders. Then he hewed from a dry driftwood log a plank in which he burned deeply with the heated end of his ramrod this inscription:

“Oh, Antoine!” cried Dick as he stepped back and looked at the result of his work: “If you could only know! But you must know! You must know that you lie in the land you sought, beyond the ‘great water.’ ”

In the spell of the emotion which gripped him Dick stood for a time beside the tomb of his friend. In the first moments he was overpowered by a sense of loneliness. On the Ouisconsin there had always been the fear of being overtaken by the Ouinibegous. Now he seemed to realize for the first time that he was more completely, more utterly alone than man had ever been before.

In that moment there was no room for thought of the glory of his achievement. If there were gladness it was only because he had been able to lay the body of his friend on the shore of the “great water” that he had desired so in life, that beside it he might peacefully sleep away the ages and watch perhaps the coming of the people for whom he had planned and hoped.

Loneliness and grief Dick suffered too, but somehow it was no longer the former unreconciled bitterness. In its place had come a quiet, sorrowful acceptance of the fact that he must say good-by to the only man he had ever really loved and travel alone on the “great water,” hundreds of leagues from the nearest of his race, completely surrounded by thousands and thousands of savages.

Gradually, despite his grief and his loneliness, the one great thought impressed itself. He, the first of the white race, had found that for which men had toiled and hoped through a century. He, of the colony of Virginia, in one short year had done what the French had sought to do for scores of years. He had been driven to it, had reached the river when fleeing from certain death at the hands of savages. But nothing could detract from the indisputable fact that he was there, that he had found the “great water,” that to him had come the distinction of being first.

He looked up and down the broad reaches of the stream, across to the Ouisconsin, up to the towering cliffs and bluffs. Never, he thought, had he looked upon a grander, a more imposing, scene. Except that he knew he was far to the west of Lac Mecheygan, he had no knowledge of the country in which he found himself. What this Misisepe was, whence it came, where it finally reached the sea, he could not even guess. Where he stood it flowed straight south bending slightly toward the east. But for all he could tell it might swerve off to the west and the Gulf of California, or to the east and the coast of the Western ocean south of Virginia.

Behind him was a deep ravine that seemed to offer an opportunity to scale the bluff and see more of the beautiful land that lay about him, and impulsively he started toward it.

Deep into the heart of the hills he went, his path darkened by great maples and elms and oaks. A tiny stream trickled over rocks and under moss, and as the ravine narrowed he was forced back and forth across it, sometimes straight up its bed. Suddenly he was confronted by cliffs that rose straight up past the tops of the tallest trees. The water had cut and worn them, and the rough surface was brilliant with alternate strata of many colors.

Still following the bed of the stream, Dick came at last to a pool at the base of a cliff. From the top the water fell in a broad, thin sheet. As he looked up he saw that his only course lay behind the waterfall. A ledge offered slippery footing and he passed back of the cascade, around the edge of the falls and up into a broader ravine.

Here he turned to the left up a steep slope clothed with oaks and at last, pushing through a fringe of brush, came out with startling suddenness upon the point of the bluff.

Dick could not repress an exclamation of amazement. Far to the north and the south stretched the great river. Its width was a measure of the mighty valley of which it was the center. The glint of the sun from its surface was only a flash of the brightness of a vast land. The hazy distance enshrouded its coming and going and yet invited pleasant journeying into the mystery beyond.

The river itself held a peculiar power in its vastness, its silent, majestic, incontestable might. There was no hurry, no turmoil. Calm, dignified, peaceful, it lay there, the great artery through which flowed the life of the world’s wonderland.

Directly opposite Dick opened the mouth of the Ouisconsin, most beautiful of waterways. As far as he could see in either direction steep, rounded, heavily-wooded bluffs hemmed in the Misisepe on the west. To the east and north lay a broad, green plain which, to Dick, could have been intended by the Maker only for the nurture of a coming race. The whole land, in fact, seemed dormant, expectant, lying ready.

“What an empire!” cried the Virginian aloud. “Nothing could be more fair than this. It is as Antoine said, the land for a strong, happy race of people. If only he might have lived to see it!”

The mention of his friend’s name brought a realization of what his friend had longed for, what he had planned and worked for, what had been so cruelly denied him, and what had now been given to one who had not even striven for it.

The thought brought a sense of humility and of responsibility. Not when he had revolted at the rape of the Islinois, not when he had avenged the death of Antoine Goddin, not when he had knelt beside his dying friend, did Dick Jeffreys emerge from the chrysalis of youth. It remained for this knowledge that he had found a new land, the land of which Antoine Goddin had dreamed, to stiffen the fibers of his soul, to bring him face to face with responsibility and duty.

For a time Dick stood there, dizzy with the idea, failing to grasp anything more than the present. Then Antoine’s dying words returned to him, and the thought and the trust behind them.

“The fur is only the beginning. This fair land was not meant for savages who spend their lives in killing and torturing. I know that you will have the vision, that you will do your share. You will have done your duty to your fellow-men. No, I will not ask a promise. Your king will do as well, for it can never be a king’s land, but a land of honest, happy people.”

“Not for your sake, Antoine,” he said aloud. “Not for the sake of any man. You said once that a king is only a symbol to you, a symbol of that which holds a people together. You were right, my friend. You were honest and brave, and you had the vision. I can do no better than follow.”

He walked forward to the very edge of the cliff and there, silhouetted against the April sky, high above the mighty river, he cried in a loud voice:

“In the name of the people of England and through their king, Charles the Second, I claim this land.”

He turned, chose a giant oak several paces behind him, and began to hew away one side. When he had a broad, flat surface he built a fire, heated his ramrod and burned into the wood the words he had cried to the heavens a few minutes before.

With some difficulty he counted the days since Antoine had been shot and thereby arrived at the date. Beneath his inscription he burned:

Dick did not even dream that two months later to the day two canoes would appear between the islands far up the Ouisconsin and that, as he had done a few hours before, Louis Joliet, representative of the French king, and Jacques Marquette, Jesuit, with five French voyageurs, would sweep out into the current of the Misisepe.

Dick’s thoughts were elsewhere. Before him lay six or seven hundred leagues of wilderness, thousands upon thousands of savages, hunger and toil and privation, possibly torture and death, and, at the end of it all, Sir William Berkeley with his hatred and his noose.

He did not falter for an instant. His face was stern, his eyes steady and bright with a new zeal. He turned swiftly down the side of the bluff with a glad shout—

CHAPTER XII
THE ISLINOIS COLLECT

Since his arrival at the Misisepe River Dick had seen no indications of the presence of savages. The Ouisconsin apparently flowed through an unpeopled wilderness. So far as he had been able to discover the land lay empty.

His sudden resolution, his new determination to return to Virginia and make good his claim to this beautiful country for his own people, had completely occupied his mind for the moment. The new zeal burned fiercely and he had no thought except the hundreds of leagues he must put behind him in his new mission.

He half-fell down the very side of the great bluff, catching trees and saplings to steady himself, leaping over boulders, crashing through brush. When almost down he remembered what the three coureurs de bois had told him of a Jesuit priest named Jacques Marquette who was planning a journey to the mysterious Misisepe as soon as a representative of the French king should join him at Michilimakinac. The thought that they might arrive any day, might return first with news of their discovery, spurred him to fresh recklessness, and he dashed out into the open space at the foot of the bluff so swiftly he was carried to the water’s edge by the impetus of his descent.

Intent only upon the need of speed if he were to make his return trip to Virginia before Fall, he wheeled at once toward the place where he had left his canoe.

Then for the first time he became aware that he was not alone. Between him and his craft stood forty or fifty savages, all of whom were regarding him with undisguised astonishment. Instantly he recognized them by their moccasins and weapons to be Islinois. And in the same instant he realized that he faced a danger to himself and its consequent defeat of his new purpose.

Quickly he searched the faces of the Indians, seeking one which might even resemble a victim of Pombert’s treachery on the Islinois River. If he were known or suspected he knew that there was no hope, that his journey would end even before it began and his discovery of the “great water” would be valueless.

As Dick stood before the group of savages, studying each expressionless face for some sign of recognition or of hostility, his heart leaped at the thought that the Islinois were a people of scores of villages, that, men, women and children, they numbered more than a hundred thousand. The chances of these men coming from the distant village from which he and the three Frenchmen had escaped was slight. He was about to walk forward with his hands stretched out in a sign of friendliness when the group parted and a warrior stepped forth and faced his companions.

Immediately he began to speak, and so slowly that Dick had no difficulty in understanding him.

“This is one of the white men of whom we have heard,” the savage began. “For many years there have come to us stories of these people with hairy faces who kill without arrows or clubs, who make many things of iron. The Outaouas and Hurons have traded with them since I was a child, but only the few of us who have gone north to the great lake at Chequamoigan have ever seen them.

“Last Summer, as you all know, four of these white men came to our country. They had canoes laden with things to trade, and they had much of the strong water that robs us of our senses. They met some of our people, far up our river, and after making them mad with the strong water they stole all they had. Some of our people in the next village were warned and the white men fled leaving everything behind them.

“Because of the strong water our people fought and killed each other. They became mad, threw each other into the fire, set their homes ablaze, were worse than the beasts. None of us here was in that village but all of us have heard of what happened there. We have all sworn to have revenge, for even the goods that they left in their flight could not pay for the lives that were taken from us.

“This,” and he pointed to Dick, “is one of their race. Few of them have dared venture so far from the great water to the east. This man might even be one of them. If he is, it is our duty to the Islinois to take him with us, to show him to the people of that village. Then we can have vengeance. If he is not we will not harm him, and we will give him presents and send him back to his own people with a warning of the wrath of the Islinois against all those who plunder and slay as did those four white men on the big river in our own country.

“We have heard that the white men are fair and generous, that they give fine presents and that their goods are such as we would like to have. We want to be friendly with the white people, but the honor of our nation will not permit us to submit to robbery and death. If good white men come we will welcome them, but we must make the white men understand now that we are not to be plundered.”

Dick saw many nods of approval as the man, evidently a chief, finished speaking, and he knew that quick action was necessary if he were to thwart a procedure that meant certain death for him.

“I am pleased to hear so fair a speech from the men of the Islinois,” he said as he stepped closer. “I am glad, too, that you have spoken so plainly about the four white men who plundered a village of your people. It is only just that such men should pay the penalty.

“White men are not all such as those who have visited you. There are people of your own race who do not always do right and the same is true of white men, for they are all children of the one Father. White men have a justice of their own that is bigger than the justice of your people. If a man does wrong we do not wait for the people of his victims to take revenge. He is punished if his crime is known.

There was an unconscious forward movement on the part of the savages at this announcement and their attention was complete.

“One of them himself drank of the strong water enough to loosen his tongue,” Dick continued, “and he told of what they had done. Did the white men who heard him tell him he was brave? Did they give him presents because of his deed? I will tell you how they answered him.”

“That hand, that arm, that hatchet,” he exclaimed, “broke the head of the white man who plundered your people! He was the leader. The others were only his tools, as arrows in his hands. They ran into the forest and escaped. But he who led them against your people, who alone was responsible for their crime, was dead within seven days after he fled from your country.”

The savages, easily swayed by eloquence, lovers of the dramatic, were profoundly impressed. They began to talk excitedly, and several made friendly advances. Only the man who had first spoken remained silent. He stood in front of Dick looking steadily and searchingly into the white man’s eyes. His arms were folded across his bare chest and as the chatter behind him increased his brows contracted in a frown.

“I am glad to hear the words of the white man,” he said as he waved his hand for silence. “If they are true words none could sound better. If they are not true our people are unavenged. I feel that they are true but I can not go back to my people and make them believe what I believe. They must hear the white man themselves or they will never know. If the white man’s words are true he will receive many presents from my people. We will show him how many and how great we are and he will come to trade with us and get furs. We will take him with us to our country and give him presents and let him tell the people of the plundered village how he has avenged their wrongs.”

An exclamation of approval broke from the savages and they began to press forward eagerly.

“But,” protested Dick. “I must hurry back to my own country if I am to return before the snow comes with more goods. It is a journey of many moons.”

“If the white man has spoken the truth he will have no fear to come among us, and we will pay him richly for his goods,” said the chief with a gesture of finality.

Dick argued, protested, but the more he talked the deeper became the frown on the chief’s face, the more open his suspicion. The Virginian saw his mistake. Then, too, he realised that there was a chance to escape before he reached the country of the Islinois, especially if he agreed to go willingly. These savages knew nothing of the use of canoes and with his birchbark craft he could outwit or outdistance them.

“I will go with the people of the Islinois,” he announced. “I have nothing to fear. I would prefer to go among you with goods. But it shall be as you wish.”

The savages proved very friendly but the chief never abandoned his suspicions and Dick was virtually a prisoner. After the Indian custom, he pretended to ignore this, acted as if he did not see the precautions taken to prevent his escape, and talked and joked with the various members of the party.

The savages were not on the war-path, as he had known when he first saw them, but the reason for their presence so far from their home was a mystery until, nearly a league farther up the river, the men were joined by their families, the women bearing heavy burdens, mostly of wild cattle skins and robes, leggings and various articles made from the hair of the animal.

Dick was not permitted to go alone in his canoe. Three men were placed in it with him. Among them the chief, and when they reached a point opposite the broad plain on the east bank the craft was used to transport the entire party across the stream. This required two days, for the savages were not accustomed to the use of the canoe and the current often carried them far down before they could make a landing.

Once the band was across cabines were erected and then began for Dick the strangest scene he had ever witnessed. From up the river came a large brigade of canoes filled with people of the Ayoë nation. They had hardly made themselves at home before a still larger number of Nadouaissioux paddled down from the north, whole families crowded into smaller canoes than Dick had ever seen.

Mascoutens came down the Ouisconsin from the country near Lac Mecheygan, and, as the weeks slipped by, Saulteurs from the Lac Superior country. Kickapous journeyed up the Misisepe from the lower reaches of the Rocky River and strange tribes of which Dick had never heard drifted in from the west. A month after the arrival of the Islinois he estimated that nearly five thousand savages were encamped on the plain between the river and the bluffs.

As the number grew Dick began to dread each new arrival. Of all the people there he was by far the most conspicuous, the most talked of. Only a few of the savages had ever seen a white man and their interest was unending. Whenever a shout went up to signal the approach of a new band either by land or water, the Virginian made himself ready.

Should Ouinibegous venture so far to join the conglomerate gathering his situation would be serious. Should more Islinois come from the village the Frenchmen had attempted to plunder his fate would be sealed instantly. Should more Mascoutens paddle from the upper reaches of the Rock River he might be recognized and the Islinois’ suspicions confirmed.

But by mid-May the last of the visitors seemed to have arrived. For a week no new bands came, and then Dick learned for the first time the reason for this strange gathering. The Nadouaissioux brought out wild rice and fine, dark furs and traded them for buffalo fat. The Ayoës depended entirely upon a large supply of soft, red stone in their bartering, and so great was the desire for this pipe material they reaped a large reward in copper from the Saulteurs and articles of European manufacture from the Mascoutens.

Each tribe came loaded with the products of its own particular country. Copper, pointstones, mica, soapstone, jade, flint, obsidian and shells were bartered in this strange mart. Clam shells from Dick’s own Atlantic Ocean, quaintly fringed in beadwork, passed from hand to hand here on the banks of the great Misisepe and rivaled in popularity the obsidian which, the savages told him, came from some great mountains as far to the westward as the salt water lay to the east.

For each article in this strange collection there was a demand. Ayoës took salt-water shells with which to make beads in their homes far to the west. The Nadouaissioux were glad to get obsidian for the manufacture of spear and arrow heads and knives. The Islinois eagerly exchanged woven hair goods for copper. There was not a nation that did not have a want, nor a nation that could not fill it.

The ground upon which these distant peoples gathered was sacred to commerce. Even though nations might be at war there were no hostilities so long as they remained on the prairie between the hills and the great river at the mouth of the Ouisconsin. Distant tribes mingled freely, without fear and without suspicion. Ayoës with the red pipestone which could be obtained only in their country strolled into the cabines of Mascoutens and exchanged it for steel knives. Children of the Nadouaissioux romped with those of the Islinois. Kickapou boys shot blackbirds along the river banks in company with Saulteur youngsters.

The Mascoutens had several muskets and the Nadouaissioux boasted three or four weapons captured a year or two before from the Hurons, but they lacked powder for them. The Ayoës has never seen firearms before, nor the Islinois, and Dick made the most of his musket. The Islinois, as they saw the respect of the other nations for their guest, became very proud of him. Always he was asked to accompany them on their hunts for deer or the wild cattle, and the pride with which they afterward exhibited his game would have been laughable to Dick had it not been so valuable.

Feasts were given continually and in this, because of Dick’s musket and his skill in hunting, the Islinois easily outdid all other nations. Their vanity, naturally great, seemed about to burst and the members of the tribe secretly discussed the power their great nation could wield were they only equipped with firearms. They questioned Dick as to the possibility of getting them and began to boast among themselves of their future prowess.

Their attitude troubled the Virginian for he had found them a kindly, generous, amiable people and he saw in this new arrogance and vanity the beginning of one of the terrible tribal wars. But he could not allow any interest in them to affect his chances for freedom and he established himself more firmly in their regard by readily promising the white man’s weapons.

Everything that Dick did or said had behind it the one idea of escape. Daily he saw the fruits of his efforts in the added confidence with which the Islinois regarded him. Only the chief never abated his watchfulness. It was almost as though he had made himself responsible to the people of the plundered village for Dick’s appearance. Always he saw to it that warriors were with him and at night a man sat at the door of the cabine in which Dick slept.

One thing, however, gave the Virginian hope. The gathering of the strange tribes would break up in a few days. Then, in the confusion of departure, he would grasp any opportunity. The day the Ayoës were preparing to leave he began to make definite plans.

But the Islinois, desirous of making one last impression on the assembled nations, had arranged a mammoth feast. A band of young men were sent to hunt deer and Dick could not afford to arouse their suspicions by refusing to accompany them. As usual he remained beside a gully while the savages drove the game toward him. In this way he had killed four deer by noon and the party moved over to another ravine. Beside the runway here they found six Nadouaissioux who were just about to drive the place for themselves.

The Islinois young men, insolent with the pride which had come to the whole band and confident in Dick’s musket and their own superior numbers, ordered the Nadouaissioux out. The savages from the north refused and instantly the battle began. Dick attempted to prevent the attack, to make the Islinois see the unreasonableness of their demands. But his efforts were unavailing and in less than three minutes the six Nadouaissioux lay dead.

In the exaltation of this achievement the Islinois returned with their game and a story of how they had punished the insolent Nadouaissioux. They were reprimanded by the chief and cautioned to keep the affair secret. The feast was given that night and plans for the entire party to leave the next day were hurriedly made. Several Nadouaissioux had been invited and the Islinois watched them closely for signs that the loss of the hunters had become known. But the feast passed off without trouble and the Islinois, eager to be off, prepared to leave at dawn.

In the confusion resulting from the hurried flight Dick believed that at last his chance had come. The chief, however, detailed two men to guard him constantly. No loophole was offered, and in the morning the entire band, heavily loaded with the results of their bartering, began to cross the river. Arrangements had been made with the Mascoutens to aid with their canoes and in a short time the entire party was on the west bank.

The Islinois had kept a close watch on the Nadouaissioux but no signs of hostility or suspicion were detected. The Northern savages had even appeared to take little heed of the departure of the small band from the south.

Once across the river the Islinois proceeded down its western bank. The men aided with the burdens to make all possible haste. At night a strong guard was thrown out around their camp and early the second morning the march was resumed.

After three days all fear of pursuit was abandoned and they traveled more leisurely. In this reaction Dick hoped an opportunity for his escape might come, but the chief seemed rather to redouble his vigilance. In the manner of the savages he sought to give the impression that the Virginian was an honored guest, one in their care, and to be guarded constantly. Politely but brazenly he even insisted upon Dick relinquishing his musket at night, saying that the weapon was too precious to become the loot of a thieving Western Indian.

At the end of the fourth day camp was made in a ravine between two steep bluffs on the western shore. No one feared the Nadouaissioux so far to the south and no guards were thrown out. A couple of sentries in the camp itself were deemed sufficient.

It was then that the Nadouaissioux struck. In the first light of dawn, when sleep was soundest, as early as it was possible to distinguish friend from foe, the Northern warriors, who all the time had been ahead of the Islinois, passing them the first night in their canoes, stole close to the camp and completely surrounded it, taking every precaution to let no one escape.

So superior were they in numbers and so sudden and wholly unexpected was their attack, the Islinois were powerless. Those who did reach their feet and pick up their weapons were struck down at once. Fifteen of the forty men were killed and the others, seeing themselves at the mercy of the foe, surrendered.

The Nadouaissioux evidently had planned to capture Dick alive. His first knowledge of the raid was gained from a strong clasp on his ankles. He wakened to find a savage at each wrist and he lay there without struggling, watching the Northern Indians spread through the encampment, killing all those who offered resistance.

Five minutes after the attack began the victors were in complete control and Dick shuddered at what was to follow. Twenty-five men were prisoners and all the women and children of the party. There could only be torture for the first, slavery for the others. Dick’s knowledge of savage warfare was extensive and he could conceive of no alternative.

The leader of the Nadouaissioux ordered that Dick be brought to him. He knew that the white man could speak both languages and he was asked to interpret. To Dick’s complete amazement the chief began as follows:

“We learned before the feast given by the Islinois what their young men had done. When our hunters did not return we went to look for them and found their bodies and the footprints of the Islinois. And all the time we were eating of the meat of the Islinois we were thinking of their treachery and planning our revenge. For our duty was clear and, though we did not wish it and have had to travel far out of our way, we have come to avenge our dead. We did not intend even now to kill any of the Islinois. We have done so only when they took weapons against us. We want only the ten young men who murdered our hunters.”

Dick translated this speech to the prisoners. They, too, were mystified by this leniency but instantly they grasped at the opportunity to escape. The men began at once to point out those who had taken part in the attack on the Nadouaissioux and as they did so the Northern warriors took them aside. Four were among the dead but the remaining six were closely guarded.

“Now,” the Nadouaissioux chief said to Dick, “tell the people of the Islinois that they may go back to their country but that they are to tell their people that we are a mighty nation, that we desire to live at peace with our neighbors, but that treachery is never permitted to go unavenged.”

Dick translated the speech and the Islinois, as if in a trance, prepared for their departure. The Virginian was equally dazed by this unheard of toleration on the part of a band of savages and as he began to see that it was real, sincere, not intended as a cloak to hide another attack, he imagined that his own opportunity had come. His canoe was at the river bank. The Islinois were forced to travel by land. By night he would be fifteen or twenty leagues in the lead and speeding toward Virginia.

In his eagerness to be off he turned to get his musket. The chief of the Nadouaissioux stepped in front of him, his hand up-raised.

“But I had nothing to do with the killing of your young men,” protested the Virginian. “I am not like the Islinois, who killed for the love of the killing.”

“We know,” answered the chief sternly, “that you were present at the slaughter of our hunters.”

“Did you see the bodies?” asked Dick scornfully. “Did you find holes in them made by the white man’s arrows?”

“We saw the bodies,” answered the chief solemnly, “and we did not find holes made by the arrows of the white man. But we do not think the white man is a fool and a hatchet hangs from his belt.”

“Can you find blood upon it?” he demanded. “Did you see a mark on your dead that was not made by the war-clubs of the Islinois?”

“We only know that the white man was there,” was the answer as the chief turned away to order his warriors to prepare for the journey to the prairie at the mouth of the Ouisconsin.

Dick was frantic in his despair. Not once during his captivity among the Islinois had he relinquished the thought of escape. Always he had planned on the moment when the vigilance of the chief would be relaxed, when his attention would be taken by other matters. Now when the moment had arrived there had come this new blow to his plans. It was unthinkable.

As he stood there, dazed by this new turn of affairs it was not fear that he felt but hot resentment that the decision of one petty chief of a band of savages should thus defeat the success of his great mission, should render impossible the gift that he could make to his own people.

The Nadouaissioux, he knew, lived far to the north, west of Lac Superior, far beyond the limits of the country known to the coureurs de bois. If he were to make his long journey to Virginia before Winter he must start at once. To go with this band to their home in the north meant, even should he escape later, that it would be impossible to reach Virginia before the Winter snows.

The knowledge threw Dick into a fresh rage and he ran after the chief to protest again. He argued, pleaded, threatened the wrath of the king of France, an avenging army of white men. But the Nadouaissioux only smiled. In the end Dick was forced into a canoe and the entire party started up-stream. Again Virginia faded into the distance.

CHAPTER XIII
THE EXECUTION

When the Nadouaissioux war-party started northward on the Misisepe the Islinois prisoners were forced to do their share of the paddling. The Southern savages were so unskilful their captors laughed and jeered at their clumsy efforts. Dick, adept as he was in a canoe, escaped this but he marveled at the ability of the Northerners in handling their little craft. Only three or four men could find room in one, but they fairly lifted them from the water as they shot up-stream.

The mouth of the Ouisconsin was reached on the afternoon of the second day and the great prairie was found to be deserted by all except the families of the Nadouaissioux. The thousands of savages who had come for the annual bartering had dispersed to their homes and the Nadouaissioux themselves were ready for departure the next morning.

The desperate position in which Dick found himself drove him to renew his protests against being carried away with them, although before he began he felt the futility of his words. This time he did not plead or threaten. Rather he argued with all the eloquence at his command.

He pointed out that the French, of whom they believed him one, would surely hear of this action and that no traders would dare to venture among them and carry to them the white man’s weapons, for which they were so desirous. He felt that he scored here but, although he watched their faces closely, he was unable to learn anything as to the weight of his argument. They met this as they had all else that he had said in silence, a silence that was maddening because it told nothing.

His failure even to elicit a reply convinced the Virginian that success must lie in his ability to slip away, to steal a canoe and paddle down the Misisepe. The attitude of the Nadouaissioux encouraged him in this, for while daylight lasted at the bartering-place there were no guards appointed. To all outward appearances the prisoners could go and come as they pleased, though none was unwise enough to wander far from the center of the camp. Every woman and child was in reality a watchful sentry and a hundred warriors would respond instantly to the first alarm.

With the coming of darkness all opportunity of escape vanished, however. Dick and the six other prisoners were placed in a cabine and a dozen armed warriors took up their station outside.

The Islinois apparently went to sleep instantly, but Dick lay awake for a long time. Now that he realized that escape was hopeless for the present he reviewed the situation more carefully. From the direction in which the Misisepe flowed and from the information he had received from the savages and Antoine Goddin, he believed that the Ohio of the Iroquois joined the “great water” not far from the place where he had left it on his journey from Virginia. This convinced him that the best way back to the colony was to go down the Misisepe until he came to the Ohio, then eastward on the route by which he had come.

If his deductions were correct only three or four months would be ample for the journey, provided always that he met no hostile nations and was not made prisoner again. It was now the first of June. He would dare start as late as the first of August. That would give him two months in which to make good his escape.

The knowledge brought relief from the first incoherent feeling of the need of desperate haste. Now he could plan carefully, calmly, and, he told himself, successfully. When the two months were up, or before, he resolved that he would be on his way to Virginia to do the thing he had promised himself that he would do.

With these two months in view he laid his plans. He would appear to submit to his captivity among the Nadouaissioux. This alone would not deceive them and he must find some method of convincing the savages that he had no desire to leave. Even if he journeyed far north with them they undoubtedly would remain on or near the Misisepe and, down-stream, he could quickly regain the lost ground.

Dick was not foolish enough to announce his submission at once. Only by his manner did he appear content to start northward the next morning. He took his place in his own canoe, paddled as hard as any of the women, and even sang a song or two as he toiled. The Nadouaissioux did not ill-treat their prisoners but that the deaths of the young men were not being forgotten was evident in the almost continuous weeping.

In fact, when camp was made, weeping, Dick believed, was the principal occupation of men, women and children. Culinary duties were neglected the first night while the whole band shed tears. Never before had Dick seen more or greater expressions of sorrow, and his own heart was moved until he heard one warrior, whose eyes were fairly raining tears, relate a humorous story of the bartering-place.

Even the Islinois, who could speak only with Dick because of the complete dissimilarity of the languages, were struck by this ability to shed tears at will. But more than anything else the Southern savages spoke of the toleration of their captors and, after the second day of the northward journey they all began to share the hope that they might be held as slaves and adopted into the nation.

The evening of the third day the canoes reached a second prairie on the east bank of the river, one fully as large as that just above the mouth of the Ouisconsin. The great bluffs continued on either side, though here for the first time a valley stretched away to the eastward between the hills and a small river flowed in to join the Misisepe. Here the party camped for the night.

The next morning Dick found that the Nadouaissioux were not preparing to depart. The weeping habit had been revived and when he left the cabine in which he had slept the entire band was shedding tears. The kindly attitude of the savages had vanished, too, and as Dick started to walk away one of the guards thrust him back through the door. A few minutes later all seven prisoners were marched forth and, surrounded by the guards and followed by the entire band, led to a grove of trees near the river bank. There the chief made a speech which he asked Dick to translate to the Islinois.

“Six of our hunters were slain by the people of the Islinois and the white man who was with them,” he began. “Our young men were hunting the deer, with no thought of war or murder. Our people went to the bartering-place with no evil thoughts for any other people. We kept the truce which has existed on the prairie at the Rivers Ouisconsin and Misisepe ever since our oldest men can remember. Never have we molested our deadliest foes while gathered there.

“The young men of the Islinois forgot their duty, their reverence for the spirits that guard the place. Without cause they slew our young men.

“There have come to us stories of how the people living far to the east near the stinking water take prisoners and tie them to stakes, how they burn and slash them, cut off their noses and ears, hold hot stones to their breasts, gouge out their eyes, thrust splinters of pine into their flesh and set them afire. We have heard that they tie them to stakes in the ground and roast off their feet and legs, that they tear out their finger-nails, that they butcher them as they never would butcher the wild cattle or the deer or the moose.

“All these ways are strange to our people. We find no pleasure in them. We live peaceably among ourselves and our neighbors. But we are not a timid race.”

“In a war we are not afraid to fight, as our enemies have learned, but once we have won we are generous. We like to show that, though we are victors, we bear no ill-will toward the vanquished. It is even the custom of our people when we are at war with another nation and take prisoners to send them back to their own people.”

He paused and nodded toward Dick, who repeated his words to the other prisoners. The Virginian spoke as fully as the chief, even added a few words because of his own dawning hope that after all they were to be released. The temperate words and even tone of the chief were inexplicable in the light of what Dick knew of savage revenge and savage torture.

But Antoine Goddin had told him that the Sioux were unlike any other savage nation. Their leniency toward the band of Islinois, their treatment of prisoners and now the magnanimous tone of the chief, all confirmed this report, and in the face of it all Dick could only conclude that they neither wished nor intended to detain him longer.

“We are now three days’ journey from the prairie where all the nations barter each year. We are approaching our own country, even now are on its borders. We have with us the six Islinois and the white man who killed our young men. They killed them, not in war but with evil minds and for an evil purpose. Under such conditions it is our duty as well as our desire that they die. We do not wish that they die as do the prisoners of the nations to the east. We are brave enough without eating their hearts and drinking their blood to add to our own courage. But they must die as is the custom of our people.”

Dick, his face pale, his eyes staring, was too stunned by this announcement to turn away from the chief. The instant before he had seen liberty, a quick departure. Now he stood face to face with death.

“Is the white man afraid to die for the deaths he caused?” asked the chief scornfully. “Is his heart as white as his skin?”

Dick’s fear was not so much for himself, though he was young and death could never come easily. But his soul rebelled at this blasting of his hopes, at a fate which hinged so great an enterprise upon so inconsequential a thing.

Partly in English, partly in Nadouaissioux, he protested his innocence, stormed against the injustice of their action, threatened with the direst consequences his imagination could arouse.

But even as he raved and swore in the face of the chief and the leading men of the band who were gathered before him he read the uselessness of his words.

As Dick, inarticulate, with working lips and dazed brain, stood staring at the savages the death scene of Antoine Goddin came to him as if it were a vision, as if a spirit had suddenly appeared to rebuke him. He saw the bank of the Ouisconsin where his friend had died, saw him lying there at the foot of the great oak, his face calm, his eyes brave to the end.

The Frenchman’s words returned with all their simple courage. Antoine had played a dangerous game in a far land. He had weighed his chances, taken his risks, that the great object might be obtained. He had died like a man dies when he knows that the balance has swung the other way and the lips that had finally closed were curseless.

Dick recoiled before a comparison of the Frenchman’s words and actions and his own. If he, too, must relinquish his work to those who would follow, at least he could do it with the same quiet courage. He turned suddenly to the waiting Islinois. Head up, eyes bright and steady, his voice clear and unfaltering, he repeated the last words of the chief’s message and then faced the Nadouaissioux to await the end.

Immediately one of the Islinois was led away from the others and tied to a tree. Before him all the boys of the village lined up, their bows drawn, arrows in place. No sooner had the guards stepped back than the flint-tipped shafts were drawn. There was a twanging of bow strings. The next moment a hail of arrows struck the prisoner.

Like a human porcupine he stood there, arrows impaled in every part of his chest, abdomen and arms. But he still lived, for the boys’ arms had not been strong enough. Almost instantly, however, other arrows had been fitted to the bows and a second flight clattered among the shafts already imbedded. The body of the prisoner sagged in its bonds and his head fell forward. Several warriors ran up and cut the dead man loose. The body was thrown into the river.

A second Islinois was bound to the tree and he, too, lived until the second flight of arrows.

The third walked up proudly and was rewarded by a bit of flint entering his eye and piercing his brain, bringing instant death. The boy who had fired the arrow ran forward and drew it out with a shrill cry, and there were grunts of approval from the warriors.

The boys of the band were now hysterical in their excitement and danced impatiently while the fourth victim was led out. They selected their arrows with care and crowded each other to get the most advantageous positions. As a result of their excitement the Islinois did not die until the fourth volley and more than a hundred and fifty shafts were imbedded in his flesh. His bonds were cut and he fell forward, driving a score of arrows entirely through his body.

Dick, the spell of Goddin’s death scene still upon him, stood calmly in his place. He watched each successive victim as he was led forward, saw the swift flight of the arrows, heard the body splash into the waters of the great river.

The fifth Islinois died with the third flight of arrows from the boys and only one remained before Dick’s turn would come, for they were evidently holding him for the last. The sixth was led forward and one youngster, edging ahead of the others and not waiting until the guards had retreated from the tree, let fly an arrow which cleanly entered the victim’s mouth.

A roar of laughter swept over the men and women and the other boys, incensed that one of their number had taken an advantage, fell to arguing among themselves. Laughter convulsed the savages as they stared at the victim, a shaft protruding from his mouth, a thin line of blood running down his chin.

At last, one by one, then two and three at a time, the boys began drawing their bows again. There was a twang, a slight hiss as the feathered shaft twisted in its flight and, miraculously it seemed, another arrow suddenly appeared in the prisoner’s flesh.

Quickly the number increased. Blood drenched the savage’s naked chest and ran in streams down his legs. He stood there, head erect, eyes unblinking, and still the bows twanged until it seemed that there was not room for another arrow above his waist. Then simultaneously two shafts struck his eyes and his head fell forward.

Beginning with the laughter over the first arrow protruding from the man’s mouth and the excitement and quarrel of the youthful executioners, the slow death of the last of the Islinois had wrought up the entire band. Men and women shrieked and yelled and danced about, but the instant the prisoner was killed everything was quiet.

Dick, fascinated by the spectacle, was the last to realize the sudden stillness and as he looked around he found every person staring at him. The boys, nervous, eager, were fitting their best arrows to their bows.

CHAPTER XIV
A NADOUAISSIOUX

For a moment Dick had the impulse to turn upon his captors, to attack his guards barehanded, to run amuck among them and compel a quick death. It was not that he believed he might escape, that he might compel acknowledgment of his courage. It was simply the white man’s way to die. The savage is schooled through the generations to die haughtily, even at the stake. The white man must go out in a blaze of fierce endeavor and action.

Even as he turned and saw that he could easily grasp the war-club of a man near him he knew that he would not try. He had chosen a life among the savages, had chosen to play their game. He would follow it to the end and die according to their custom. Though he were white, he could do no more here than die as dies the savage.

In the silence that had descended upon the crowd the young Virginian turned toward the guards and held out his hands. They stepped toward him, grasped his wrists and led him to the tree.

The boys, their youthful minds inflamed during the execution of the six Islinois, hysterical even in the unusual excitement, were silent and nervous while the white man was bound. Here was unknown game. Here was flesh their flint and obsidian had never penetrated. Here was a representative of that unknown and mysterious race who drove their arrows with thunder, who made keen tools of iron, and who came from a marvelous land far beyond the stinking water.

The youngsters did not falter, did not shrink from the task before them, but their bows trembled and there was an unnatural stiffness in their bearing as they stood ready.

In that nervous condition Dick saw that what he most dreaded would be inevitable. If the boys were cool and unexcited death would be quick. In their present state the prolonged agony of the Islinois would be nothing with what he must suffer. The thought of numberless arrows sticking into his flesh, none with force enough to bring the end, was maddening, and impulsively he began to speak.

The half-drawn bows of the boys straightened. There was a quick movement of the crowd toward him.

“Though I am a white man I can die as well as can your own people,” the Virginian said. “But I have lived as a man and I wish to die as a man. When I fought I fought as a man, in the open, face to face with my enemy. That is the way the white man wants to die, facing his enemy, not a crowd of children with their child’s weapons.

“You are not my enemies. I have never harmed you. But you think I have and you are going to kill me. You are a big people and a just people, slow to anger, and I know that you will grant the wish of a man who is about to die.”

“Send those children to their mothers’ skirts!” he cried fiercely. “Put men in their places. Let men’s bows be drawn, not bows that are used to kill blackbirds along the river. That is what I ask.”

It was a demand rather than a request. Its effect was apparent. The men began to speak in whispers among themselves. The chief waved the boys back. The warriors seemed naturally to form a large circle. Several began preparations to make speeches, but an old man, stiff from years of hunting and fighting and exposure, stepped forward and began to address them.

“You all know me,” he said. “You all know that my loss in the treachery of the Islinois was double that of any one else. You know that my two sons, the only children I had, the only support of an old man and their mother, were killed. You know that I face my old age without the comfort and care of children, that I am doomed to loneliness and sorrow until the end. I am like the broken reed in the river in the moon of the rut of the moose. The winds and the currents have their will with me. I am too weak to hold against them.

“The white man we hold as prisoner was present when my sons were killed by the treacherous Islinois. He says he tried to prevent the murder. From his actions today I would believe him. But, whether he is guilty or not, he was there. He was with the Islinois, came to the bartering-place with them, was with the hunting-party that brought so much sorrow to us.

“The white man has shown himself to be brave. He has looked upon death with steady eyes and firm lips. He has shown that he can die as we would all like to die.

“He has the bow that kills with thunder arrows. He has a hatchet and knife of iron, while we have only stone. He can paddle and he can hunt.

“My people, I want this young man for a son. I need him to provide for me in my old age, to kill moose and beaver that I may not starve, to bring skins that I may not freeze. I wish to take him into my home, to call him son and have him call me father. The white man and the Islinois robbed me of all that I have. Let them give back what they can.”

As the old man took his seat in the circle and the customary silence ensued, Dick looked eagerly at the faces of the warriors. He knew the savages often adopted prisoners into their own families to take the places of those slain in war. The Iroquois had kept their ranks full by adopting entire tribes.

But what gave him the greatest hope was the fact that a prisoner thus adopted never endeavors to return to his own people. It is the accepted belief that he has died, that his former existence has ended and that into his body has come the spirit of the slain warrior whose place he takes. Once adopted, Dick knew that the Nadouaissioux would not question his acceptance of the savage theory but would treat him immediately as one of the band, would permit him to go and come as he pleased. And that would mean Virginia before the Winter snows.

Other warriors, leaders in the band, arose and spoke briefly. Dick, straining against his bonds, listened eagerly to every word. Not one showed a desire to thwart the request of the old man. Only additional reasons for the adoption of the captive were proposed.

At the end the chief nodded and several young men ran to the tree to sever the thongs that bound the Virginian to it. He was escorted into the circle and formally presented to the father whose sons had been slain. And so, with a few simple ceremonies and much smoking of the calumet, Dick Jeffreys became a Nadouaissioux.

In the three days that the band remained on the prairie the Virginian devoted himself to establishing firmly the belief that he had taken the place of the sons who were slain. The morning after the execution of the Islinois he went off early with his musket, and alone. He crossed the prairie to a great, rock-crowned bluff and followed its base into the valley which opened to the east.

He went on into this for more than a league and, by sheer luck, encountered a small herd of wild cattle in a wooded valley. He crept close, killed a huge bull at the first shot and loaded again in time to kill another before the herd stampeded. Then, loading as he ran, he climbed the side and met the galloping animals face to face as they rounded the end of the ridge. A third went down and, before the last were out of range, a fourth was mortally wounded.

The buffalo had turned toward the west and as Dick made his way back to the encampment he encountered them again, getting two more and finishing the one he had wounded. He then hurried back to the savages and asked that the women be sent out after the meat. At night, when they returned, a hundred of them each carrying all the meat her strength permitted, the camp was in an uproar. In the feast that followed Dick was accorded the place of honor.

The band moved on up the river. Once they found a herd of buffalo swimming the stream and again Dick’s musket won respect. The grief-stricken father who had adopted him strutted about the camp and boasted of his son’s prowess. The boys who would have slain him a few days before followed him in awe. The old men of the band accorded his every word their closest attention. His counsel was invited and respected.

Dick did not overlook any opportunities to cement his hold upon the Nadouaissioux. He found them entirely different from any savages he had ever encountered. They were mild, pleasant, amiable people. The men were tall and well formed, though the women were more ugly than is usually the case with savages. Every member of the band, even to the infants, began the day with a bath in the river.

The Virginian easily fell into their mode of life, quickly adopted all their customs, established the best of terms with the men, and in a week he was, to all outward appearances, a savage.

Yet not once in all that time did he forget the one thing that prompted these actions. He studied the canoes, which were smaller and lighter than his own and better adapted to his long journey. He even chose the one he would take when he made his dash to the southward.

He strolled about the camp after dark, learning the habits of the various individual members of the band, noting the hour when they retired, marking down those who were prone to sit late about a fire and gossip. He made friends with the numberless dogs of the encampment, surreptitiously tossed them pieces of meat and then tested them by walking through the camp at night.

He was up at dawn, watching to see which members of the band were the earliest risers. When he had learned who each was he began to express a choice in the location of his own cabine at night that, when he had gone, his absence might be discovered as late as possible.

A week after he had been adopted Dick decided that the first cloudy night would suffice for his attempt. Every detail which could insure success had been planned. He had secreted a supply of dried meat and wild oats on the bank to be picked up on his return, had chosen two good paddles, and selected a small, narrow canoe capable of unusual speed.

The morning of the eighth day after his adoption the band began its leisurely journey northward in a fine drizzle. The low clouds drifted before a south wind. There was every indication that they would hang low through the night at least. Dick recognized his chance and resolved to take it. In that swift current he could travel twenty-four hours a day, sleeping in the bottom of the canoe as he had done on the Ouisconsin.

He should gain at least twelve hours’ start, perhaps more, and in that twelve hours he could gain twenty-five leagues. His pursuers, when they came, would travel faster, but his experience with the Ouinibegous had given him confidence and he knew that the Nadouaissioux would not dare venture too far south for fear of the Islinois.

As Dick, paddling unconsciously, went over and over his plans the leading canoes passed out of sight around a bend. When he suddenly became aware of his surroundings he found that, less than an hour after the start, the fleet of birchbarks had strung out along the shore of a large lake.

With the south wind helping, the Nadouaissioux made all possible speed. The lake was more than ten leagues long, Dick was told, and the high bluffs on either side were the home of fierce winds that always lay in wait for the savages that they might devour the canoes. Men, women and children showed their fear by paddling swiftly. It seemed to be the desire of every one to cross the lake as quickly as possible.

Half a league out Dick found to his dismay that the current had ceased. The lake was only an enlargement of the great stream, but it was a lake. Should the south wind hold he could make no more than a league an hour against it. The great lead he had counted upon would be cut in half. He might not be able even to get off the lake before he would be seen.

Though he cursed himself for not having begun his dash the night before, for not having made inquiries as to the route ahead, there was nothing to do except go on. He was trapped and all he could hope for was a fiercer wind that would drive the savages to camp on the western shore. Then, with only a small stretch of the lake between him and the river, he could get away.

The wind did increase, driving the canoes before it, sending the water swishing and surging alongside in curling rollers. Dick’s heart leaped at each successive blast, but the savages kept on, paddling harder, shouting hopefully to one another. A race was on, a race between the wind and mounting seas and the canoes, with the finish line a point setting out from the western shore, around which there would be shelter.

Dick kept on with the others, his foster-parents paddling with amazing strength, looking anxiously over their shoulders at the storm clouds behind them. Dick prayed that they would lose, begrudged each league that slipped behind them, was incensed that the wind did not make further progress too dangerous. He began to see that the entire success of his plan depended upon being driven ashore before the shelter of the distant point was reached.

But the wind settled to a steady blow, the little canoes rose and fell with the rollers in safety, and at noon the entire fleet had rounded the point and stopped to rest in its shelter. From the point Dick could see the end of the lake about three leagues to the northwest, across a broad expanse of water. The lake would require a whole night’s strenuous paddling under favorable conditions, he estimated, and if the wind kept up he could not hope to get out of sight.

The savages, after a rest, started on. They kept close to the west shore, out of the wind, but each member of the band had a watchful eye on the clouds. Their fear of the lake and the storms that swept it kept them working steadily and when sunset came they had reached the mouth of the river.

The land was low, swampy, the stream divided into many channels, and as the great fleet left the lake it separated into three divisions. Dick and his foster-parents were with a score of canoes that entered a swift, narrow place bordered by high rushes. Tired by their strenuous exertions since morning, they made headway with difficulty. The channel narrowed, the current became more swift, dusk was settling over the water.

Then suddenly out of the reeds on either side darted a flotilla of small canoes, each manned by four naked, painted, whooping savages.

Arrows fairly rained upon the Nadouaissioux. Many were wounded. Paddles dropped from nerveless hands and floated off down-stream. One canoe overturned and the heads of children bobbed in the current. Shrill yells came across the marshes, indicating that the attack was simultaneous in all the channels.

As Dick saw the canoes dash out from both sides his first thought was to flee. Whoever the attackers were, it was not his battle, but before he could turn his craft the enemy were among the Nadouaissioux and war-clubs were swinging right and left. One canoe dashed straight toward Dick’s and he laid aside his paddle for his musket and fired into the face of the leading savage just as he was about to brain his foster-mother.

The two canoes swung together broadside. A war-club crashed into the skull of Dick’s foster-father. The Virginian whirled his musket and knocked the second savage into the water, but before he could recover his balance the third brought down his club.

Dick swerved, it caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head, and he fell unconscious upon the body of the old Nadouaissioux.

CHAPTER XV
THE PROMISE

The war-party of the Otjibwa, known to the French as the Saulteurs because they were first found at the Sault Ste. Marie, numbered less than half as many men as the Nadouaissioux, but their attack was so sudden and so wholly unexpected, and the Nadouaissioux were at such a disadvantage, the slaughter was terrific for a time. The savages from Lac Superior cracked heads wherever they showed, male, female or infant, and the early darkness alone saved their victims from complete annihilation.

That Dick Jeffreys lived was due to the quick wit of his foster-mother. The canoes of the attacking party had swept past when she found herself alone in the bow of their craft and she immediately turned, drove across the current and hid in the reeds. Sounds of the battle came from down-stream and both sides but soon died away as the current swept every one out into the lake. The old woman judged that none remained between her and the upper river and stealthily she shoved out and began to paddle northward.

The clouds were low, the darkness intense. The river mouth was a vast marsh. High reeds bordered the narrow channels and islands were numerous. The old woman knew every nook of the river and in two hours she had traveled so far from the lake she dared go ashore and ascertain if her men were dead or only wounded. She turned her canoe into a tree-roofed slough and crept forward to feel of their bodies. Dick was breathing, but her husband’s hands were cold and blood no longer flowed from his crushed head.

As she knelt over them she heard the swish of water behind her and saw the dark shadow of a canoe against the brighter river. As she watched, another and another passed, stealthily, like ghosts, and she knew that her people were retreating in the darkness. She pushed out into the stream and all night toiled with the others against the current.

Dawn found their paddles still plying steadily and they did not stop until they were a league beyond a river flowing into the Misisepe from the north, the route by which the attackers had come. The entire party, numbering only a pitiful dozen canoes hid in a slough while three unwounded warriors in a single canoe went on to warn the great body of their people, who, they knew, would be camped at the big falls of the great river.

Dick’s foster-mother, weary as she was, did all she could do for the wounded man. She removed the body of her husband and made a soft bed for the Virginian in the bottom of the canoe. She felt of the great welt on the side of his head, pressed against the skull and grunted with satisfaction on finding that it had not been crushed. She washed the blood from his head and neck, bathed his face and crooned over him in an effort to bring him to consciousness.

But the hours went by and the Virginian lay in the bottom of the canoe, his face white, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling only slightly and with ominous pauses between.

Later in the afternoon a boy stationed on the bank of the main channel reported that the warriors were passing and the fugitives paddled out of their hiding-place to see a hundred canoes, each driven by four men, speeding down with the current to cut off the Saulteurs and avenge the deaths of their people.

Dick’s foster-mother toiled the remainder of the day to traverse the six leagues remaining before the main encampment of her people was reached and then, exhausted, she turned her patient over to others.

The morning of the second day Dick opened his eyes for the first time. He was too weak to move and he believed at first that the thunder in his ears was due to his injury, for in all his travels on the Misisepe he had not found even a rapids. He was lying in a bark cabine, alone, but soon his foster-mother entered, to retreat at once with loud shouts of joy that brought a crowd to the door. Broth was poured between his lips, his face and head bathed, and he dropped off to sleep.

The recovery of the Virginian was a matter of weeks, not days. Willing hands bore him each morning to the trees above the great falls, which Frenchmen were to see a few years later and name St. Anthony. Women brought him food, the choicest parts of the game. Old men came and sat beside him, smoking for hours in absolute silence if he showed no desire for conversation.

The war-party returned with a score of prisoners and long tales of vengeance. The Saulteurs had been dispersed, some fleeing into the forest, others down the river, all cut off for the time from their own country to the northeast.

Again Dick was amazed at the tolerance of the Nadouaissioux. Ten prisoners were executed as had been the Islinois. The others, after witnessing the execution, were set free and told to report to their people that the Nadouaissioux had not sought war, that they desired peace with the Saulteurs, but that their neighbors were guilty of the foulest treachery and would be exterminated if ever again they committed such an act.

The methods of torture Dick had seen to the eastward, and which he believed were practised by all savages, were unknown among the Nadouaissioux. It was a custom to be adopted later, after the effects of the Iroquois raids had been felt in the valley of the Misisepe.

Yet the people with whom Dick found himself called themselves Poualaks, or “warriors,” the name Nadouaissioux, meaning “a snake,” or “enemy,” having been given them by the Saulteurs. The French soon reduced this to Sioux, and the amiable, brave, honest people who spread from the Misisepe to the great mountains to the west, those who spared their prisoners and wept copiously at will, were the ancestors of the followers of Sitting Bull.

Dick believed his recovery would be short. Virginia was ever in his mind. July had come but there was still time for him to escape for his dash of several hundred leagues down the great river. But a week after he arrived at the falls he discovered that his right side was partially paralyzed. Sometimes he could move his right arm or leg but he never could be certain. A day might go by without his being able to walk.

At first this brought a greater despondency than at any time since the death of Antoine Goddin. There was a chance when he had been captured by the Islinois, still a chance when he was bound to the tree before the Nadouaissioux boys. Now he saw none. A thousand leagues of unknown wilderness lay between him and his destination, a thousand leagues of paddling, portaging, hunting his living, dodging hostile savages, finding his way. Not only a stout heart but a whole body was necessary, and he could not even swing a paddle, could not lift his musket to his shoulder, could not be certain but that the next step would topple him to the ground.

It was maddening, and for the first time Dick refused, even after days of contemplation, to accept his fate without bitterness. Savages he could fight or outwit, strange waters could be navigated, trackless forests could be traversed, but this was something wholly beyond his power to combat. Idle, chafing, cursing each day that found him still at the falls, he saw July pass. There was no improvement. The blow on the left side of his head had injured his brain or certain nerve-centers, and he saw a lifetime of hobbling, crawling beggary among savages who, as time passed, would lose their awe for his color, would forget that he had killed two of the Saulteurs in their disastrous battle down the Misisepe.

The first of August nearly all the people gathered at the great falls began to depart for their Winter home among the innumerable lakes at the source of the Misisepe. There, among the wild oats marshes, secure from attack and provided with grain and beaver and moose for the Winter, they would remain until the following Spring.

There was nothing for Dick but to accompany them. His foster-mother paddled him, he hobbled or crawled across portages. Warriors gave them of their game, were glad of the honor of carrying his musket. Some insinuated that Dick should teach them its use and give them powder and balls, but he had only a small amount of ammunition and even in the face of this last disaster he could not give up all hope that some day he might recover and start back to Virginia.

It was on the journey to the Winter home of the Nadouaissioux that peace was arranged with the Saulteurs. Dick had heard of the power of the calumet, had seen the reverence in which the Islinois held it, had been told by Goddin of its might among all the Western tribes. The Sioux especially kept all sworn promises with an inviolable fidelity and the ceremony of the calumet meant that absolute trust could be placed upon them.

The calumet itself, originally a stick of wood two or three feet long, a quarter of an inch thick and two inches wide, pierced from end to end so that the breath or spirit might pass through it, had, in Dick’s time, a bowl at one end in which to smoke the sacred tobacco. The whole affair was usually gorgeously decorated and many of the tribes knew and practised a dance and chant in honor of the calumet itself.

Since Dick had become a Nadouaissioux and had gained the confidence of the older men of the tribe, they often talked to him of the calumet and its power. It could be used in all things, as a passport to distant tribes, to ratify peace pacts or treaties, to secure good weather, to bring rain, to attest contracts and to declare war.

But not until he witnessed the treaty with the Saulteurs had he realized the really impressive ceremonies with which it could be smoked. For this was its most important use. Dick was accorded a seat in the front circle of warriors and as he watched the chiefs of the two nations gravely blowing the smoke toward the sky, the four world quarters and the earth, earnestly invoking the sun and other spirits as witnesses to their vows of “sacred kinship,” he could not but be impressed by the sincerity of the participants.

Through September the savages were busy with the harvest of wild oats. Huge quantities were gathered in the great marshes and put away for Winter. The women worked from morning to night, driving their canoes through the tall stalks and beating the kernels into the bottom with short sticks. The wild oats marshes were the property of the Sioux and even then were becoming a bone of contention with the Saulteurs and starting a warfare that was to last through nearly two centuries.

With the first snows of Fall Dick discovered that his paralysis was leaving him. Daily he began to have more and more use of his right arm and right leg. A fierce exaltation seized him. Each morning he tested his limbs, tried to walk, to lift things. If he were able to get away before the first ice in the lakes could reach the swift current of the Misisepe, he could keep ahead of Winter in its southward rush, could at least reach the Ohio before frost closed the waterways. That would be half his journey and he would risk the danger and privation of the rest. Before Spring Virginia would have the news of his discovery.

But he was too eager, pressed his recovery too hard. His nerves ceased entirely to function and, shivering, despondent, he lay beside the fire in the birchbark cabine as Winter gripped the Northern land.

It was then that Dick Jeffreys for the first time thought of other things in Virginia than his mission and Governor Berkeley. With the savages there had been constant human contact but never human fellowship. The oil was stirred into the water but never merged with it, never could be absorbed. Ever since the death of Antoine Goddin Dick had felt a void which even his breathless impatience to return to Virginia could not entirely fill.

Now, lying beside a small fire in a low, evil-smelling cabine, shut in by the fierce Winter of the North, despondent, comfortless, his mind turned to the people of Virginia. There was his father, alone like himself, with even a deeper personal sorrow, perhaps mortally wounded by what he would consider as the complete disgrace of his son. There was Elizabeth Carver, Betsykins, the one person in the colony who had been a real companion, who had more nearly understood him, and she, like his father, had been left with a great misunderstanding, had in the end been deprived even of that wonderful faith in him.

Dick sometimes marveled at this trust of the girl, whom he still considered, as he had that last night under the sycamores as a romping, boyish, carefree comrade. Even now he failed to understand how he had hurt her in that last interview, still believed it was his irreverence for kings that had shocked her royalist ears.

In his foster-mother alone did Dick find comfort. Like many Indian women who have passed middle age, who have seen Winters and famines and wars come and go, leaving their trail of suffering and sorrow and death, she was a strong, noble, virile character. Though the Nadouaissioux did not accord their women a high place, she had won to a certain influence through the sheer dominance of her will, her keen intellect and her biting tongue which were, in fact, the only qualities of leadership possessed even by the men.

Her sharp comments, her shrewd deductions, her knowledge of savage nature, expressed openly or in long conversations with the leading men, had resulted in her wielding a power in the hand that was not second even to the chief’s. The deaths of her two sons and husband had brought a certain bitterness, a vindictiveness that had won advantageous terms in the treaty with the Saulteurs, but it had also, in her loneliness, brought a great affection for the white man who had become her son. On Dick she lavished her tenderness, that mother love which is so often consuming among savage people, and, in time, her quick intuition and shrewd observation led to a discovery of his ambitions and hopes.

“Your body is here but your heart is not,” she said to him one night as they sat beside the fire. “Our people can become the children of another nation when adopted. But the white man can not change his heart any more than he can change his skin.”

Dick did not reply. He had a certain fondness for the old woman, a great respect, but he did not know that he could confide in her.

“You can trust me,” she uncannily answered his thought. “I am your mother, and I know my son.”

Dick looked at the wrinkled, dark-skinned face with the straight black hair brushed back from a low forehead. In the hard-pressed mouth, the thick nose the expression that always was stern and forbidding, he found nothing assuring. But in the eyes, black, unwavering, he found truth, the mother love, a real tenderness that belied the stern features.

“You are right, mother,” he answered impulsively. “I am not happy here. I can not be. You have been as kind to me as your own flesh and blood. Your people have been brothers. I should not ask more.

“But,” and his eyes glowed as he sat up and faced her across the fire, “my heart can never be here. It is in the place where I was born, where I have always lived, where my father, white-haired, sorrowing, waits for me. My land is far away and I would have been there now had not the Islinois falsely accused me and taken me prisoner. I must go back to my home, mother. I must go.”

“There is a woman,” she said at last. “You have not cared for the young women of our people.”

“No, there is none,” answered Dick earnestly. “It is because I love my land and my people and because I can not be happy away from them.”

For a long time she sat looking into the fire. The flickering blaze enhanced the savagery of her features. Her brown, knotted, toil-cramped hands were clasped about her knees. Her eyes stared, unwavering, unblinking, complete masks for her thoughts.

“My son,” she said at last, “you have not told me all. It is not a woman, for a woman brings another light to a man’s eyes. It is not the sickness of much thinking, for the longing for home dulls them. You have not told me all, and I do not ask it. I am an old woman, one who never before saw white men, and who am I to understand them? White men harness the thunder, cut and harden the iron, make signs with black water that are the same as words. Why, then, should they not have thoughts that we can not know?

“But you are my son, even my flesh and blood, and your happiness is my happiness. I would rather see you laughing with your own people than sorrowing with mine. When the Spring comes you will go.”

“But the chiefs! Your people! The calumet was sung and danced at my adoption!”

“Leave that to me, my son. I am old. My life is spent. I will never again see the harvest of the wild oats, never again suffer through another Winter. My husband is gone, my two strong sons. You have been as a son to me, but why should you remain here after I am gone?”

“You smoked it to save your life. And what is the calumet to a white man? He has other vows, and you gave none of them. Content yourself, my son. When the ice is gone from the lakes your canoe will be turned toward the south. In the moon of the crane you will go, and, because you shall bear the calumet, in the moon of the rut of the elk you will come to your own people.”

CHAPTER XVI
VIRGINIA

Not again through the long Winter did the old woman refer to Dick’s return to Virginia. Impatient, eager, he spoke to her one evening.

As he lay beside the fire, trying to determine whether she had spoken boastfully, idly, or whether she was really able to effect his escape from the Nadouaissioux, he discovered that the first of her predictions was coming true. Day by day he began to regain the use of his arm and leg. By Midwinter he could walk without assistance and could carry his musket. His strength returned and before Spring he was hunting moose and beaver with the men of the band.

In the Winter the Nadouaissioux scattered through the Great Lake country. In various places only a few leagues apart small villages of a few families were established. This gave to each an undisturbed game district and in Summer made it impossible for enemies to surprise the band. Before the foe had exterminated one settlement the word would be carried to the many others.

Dick and his foster-mother had Wintered on a small lake twenty leagues from the southernmost village. They were off the main stream of the Misisepe, separated from it by many small lakes and portages, and there were half a dozen villages on the route.

When the moon of the carp was in the last quarter and the snow had begun to go the old Nadouaissioux woman suddenly announced that she was about to make a journey and that she wished Dick to go with her. She had a small sledge upon which she bound food, robes and a mysterious bundle which she had been guarding carefully all through the Winter. Dick, though he could get no hint as to the object of her expedition, but hoping that it might mean the fulfilment of her promise, was eager to accompany her. Because she was old he asked to be allowed to pull the sledge, but she sternly informed him that his duty was to go ahead and hunt, leaving woman’s work to her.

Each night they stopped in one of the small, marsh-bound villages. Here for the first time since Dick had known her she showed an interest in petty village gossip. Her stories of their own intentions and experiences both amused and disturbed the Virginian, but so great was his confidence in her he did not ask questions. Back of it all he felt that there must be some motive, some purpose. So he sat silently beside the camp-fires while she asked innumerable trivial questions and inquired into every action through the Winter of every one she met.

At the end of the week they passed the last village. Still the old woman kept on and they camped that night in the open. But her garrulity had ceased as suddenly as it began. Now she sat for long hours beside the fire of dead pine, staring unblinkingly into the flames. She kept her thoughts to herself, offered no explanation to Dick of their mysterious journey. Each night he fell asleep while she sat thus, and each morning he wakened to find her there. Apparently she never slept.

For another week she led him on into the south, along the frozen bed of the Misisepe, which was now only a small, winding stream. Neither as they trudged on through the day nor as they sat beside the fire at night did she speak. As the time passed she seemed to grow more feeble, to become more weary after the day’s toil. But always her eyes were bright and steady and each night she refused to stop until darkness made further progress on the rotting ice impossible.

The afternoon of the ninth day after leaving the last village she turned toward the shore and pushed the brush aside.

“It is here,” she said simply. “We can rest until the river breaks its bonds.”

Dick, from his position behind her, caught a glimpse of red birchbark behind the bushes.

“Did you think I wasted my breath in all that foolish chatter in the villages?” she asked sharply. “Did you think I cared for gossip of all their silly doings?”

“To learn one thing, that this canoe was here behind these bushes. Now, my son, we have only to wait until the ice is gone. It will be soon, for the moon of the crane is new and I said that in the moon of the crane you would start to find your own people.”

Now that she had reached the canoe before the rotting ice drove her to the difficult travel along the bank, the old woman was more cheerful and communicative. The first night, after a supper of wild rice and moose meat, she brought out the mysterious bundle and untied it. It was long and thin and the outer wrapping of tanned moosehide disclosed a hunting shirt fringed and decorated with bands of porcupine quills. Without a word she handed it to Dick.

His astonished thanks were sincere for he knew that the quill work had required every spare moment of the Winter, but his eyes were fixed in what still remained in his foster-mother’s hands. It was the reason for the odd shape of the bundle, a long, richly ornamented calumet. Dick recognized it at once as the most sacred possession of the Nadouaissioux, the same pipe with which the treaty with the Saulteurs had been affirmed.

His foster-mother was busy, however, with another and smaller bundle. As she unwrapped the skin Dick exclaimed in amazement. She held half a dozen small bells, the tongue of each bound with a thong so that it would be noiseless.

“Where did you get them?” he demanded as he looked at these unaccountable evidences of trade with Europeans.

“Listen, my son,” she began. “This calumet will bear you safely through the lands of strange people. Only show it, wave it toward the sun, smoke it with the people you meet, and you may pass unharmed. Never was there a calumet so powerful. The people of any nation who see it will recognize it at once.

“The shirt you must wear always. Upon it I have sewed quills of colors and in forms and figures which denote my prayers for your safety. These are as the words the white man makes with the black water. This,” and she pointed to a row of odd figures, “will preserve you from storms. This one will assure you fair weather. This will keep you safe from the jaws of wild beasts and the monsters you will meet far down the ‘great water.’ This will preserve you from the treachery of people like the Islinois and others who have no honor. I have spent the Winter working these prayers upon your shirt that I might know my son will be safe.

“The bells our people once received from the Hurons when they came to trade before we learned their black hearts and drove them far to the east. A few Summers ago the Outaouas attacked our people in the great marshes where we spent the Winter. They became lost and our warriors surrounded them. They hid like the ducks, with only their heads above water, crawling in the wild oats and reeds.

“For a long time our warriors waited, but they did not come out. We knew they had not escaped for there were no signs. At last the warriors found only one piece of dry land where the Outaouas could leave the marsh and across this, in the grass and brush, they stretched a fish net and to that they tied these bells, which they had received in trade from the Hurons. Then in the night the Outaouas crawled like snakes through the marsh and in the darkness thrust their heads against the net and caused the bells to ring. Our warriors came and slew a hundred of them, all except one, who was sent back to his people with the story of how we deal with those capable of such treachery.

“These bells are a sacred possession of our people but now they are yours. In your long journey you must go alone, must have time to sleep. Each night you are to tie strings to the brush near where you sleep and place these bells upon them. Then you will be warned in time.”

Dick was overwhelmed by the thoroughness of his foster-mother’s preparations but in her every act he saw only disaster for herself.

“I can not let you do this,” he cried. “What will your people say when they learn that the calumet and the bells are gone? What will become of you when they learn you have taken them, and to aid me to escape?”

“Where are my son’s wits?” she replied scornfully. “Do you think you could have passed through all those villages alone, could have reached the ‘great water,’ without setting every one to talking, and to thinking, without having a band of warriors at your heels? Do you think you could have passed on the ice without it being known? And, if you had waited for the ice to go, where would you have found a canoe, and how could you have carried one past the villages? My people believe you are one of them but a little thing would have given them strange thoughts, and you would never have reached the big falls.

“That was another reason for my talking. I told them my dead husband’s spirit had come to me in the Winter and told that the beasts had destroyed his grave and left him uncovered. They think I am going to cover my dead anew and that you go to help me.”

“But you! After taking these things, after all that you have done, what will your fate be when you return?”

“Your wits still hop about like the bugs in the grass,” she answered. “I am not going back.”

“I will go with you, my son, so far as the prairie where my sons died. There I, too, will die. I only hope that I will live long enough to reach the spot.”

“There is never happiness for the old women of my people. When we are old and useless no one cares for us. Our children have duties of their own, the mouths of their own children to feed, their own families to protect from the enemy. There is no happiness in the lives of the old. Their thoughts are in the past. Their fingers are stiff and can not sew garments. Their legs are feeble and they can not hunt enough to eat. Their arms are stiff and they can not gather enough wood to keep them warm through the Winter. When one is too old to work one is too old to live. Yonder is the last new moon I shall ever see.”

While they waited for the ice to go Dick tried to persuade her to return to her people with the calumet and the bells, only to find her purpose unshakable. Her husband and her sons dead, her adopted son on the way to his own people, life held nothing, she declared, and she only feared that she would not live long enough to reach the grave of her sons.

Dick could not understand her assurance that she could time her death so accurately. She had marched long hours each day, dragging the sledge. She seemed to be strong and well. And yet when the ice had rotted, the river had opened and at last they had embarked on the long journey, he saw that her paddle was ineffectual, that she made only the motions. Before they reached the great falls she was forced to admit that she could no longer gather the firewood and cook the meals. Only in her eyes, black, blazing, unquenchable, did life seem to remain.

Dick, now that he had started at last for Virginia, now that he was on his way with the message he bore, paddled steadily through the long days. The river, swelling hourly, bore him swiftly, but his paddle shot the little canoe even faster. The great falls were passed and the lake where the Saulteurs had ambushed the Nadouaissioux. Landmarks slipped by one after the other and he knew that two or three more days would see him at the mouth of the Ouisconsin.

But as he watched the silent figure curled in the bow he wondered if she would live to see her desire fulfilled. For days she had lain there in the bottom of the canoe, motionless, uncomplaining, her wasted body consumed bit by bit by the fire of her unconquerable will. As Dick’s fear that she would die any hour became greater her desire became his and he pressed on early and late, driving his little craft with the one purpose of reaching the bartering-place in time.

It was mid-afternoon of a bright April day when at last he turned into a channel setting in toward the eastern bank and shot down to the prairie above the mouth of the Ouisconsin. It was deserted. The bare poles of cabines scattered over the plain seemed like ghosts of the thousands who had thronged the place when he had last seen it.

As he approached the bank he feared that he might be too late. For hours he had not seen a movement of the silent figure in the bow. He stepped ashore and leaned over her.

“We are here, my son,” she said as her eyes opened. “You have your mother’s thanks. Carry me up so that I can see the prairie and I will die in sight of the place where my sons lie.”

He lifted her from the canoe and carried her to a knoll from which she could look out over the plain to the bare bluffs beyond. For a few moments she sat there, only her eyes moving. Then they closed and for the second time, on the banks of the great, unknown streams of the great, unknown wilderness, Dick felt that he was alone.

As carefully as with the body of Antoine Goddin, he prepared a final resting-place for her after the white man’s fashion. He dug deep in the soft earth and piled stones upon the grave. Then with his ramrod he burned an inscription in English upon a hewn board.

Sorrowfully and slowly he paddled away, caught the current and was swept down and across to the bluff at the base of which he had buried Antoine just a year before. For an hour he sat beside the tomb he had built, gazing out over the river, recalling the last moments with his friend.

In his abstraction Dick paddled until dark before he went ashore on an island to camp for the night. Day after day passed and he drifted down the mighty river, which constantly grew larger as streams flowed in from either side. The towering bluffs at last gave way to sweeping prairies. Game was abundant, the weather delightful. Peace and contentment seemed to hold the land, but always Dick paddled, always he pressed on, spurred anew by the thought of the two graves he had left at the mouth of the Ouisconsin.

Islands were numerous and afforded comparatively safe camping-places. One night, however, he tried the western shore and in the morning wakened to find a group of strange savages about him. Soberly he filled and lighted the calumet, waved it to the sun and the four quarters of the earth, and then passed it to the strangers to smoke.

The magic of the pipe was more potent than he had dreamed, annoyingly so, for they insisted upon taking him to their village and feasting him for three days before he was escorted back to the river. He found they were the Ottos, a branch of the Ouinibegous, distant cousins of the Nadouaissioux. There was no difficulty in understanding their dialect, and from them Dick learned that the wilderness, now taking the form of great plains, extended for several leagues to the westward, ending at the great mountains without a sign of salt water. On the plains were many and strange nations, and beyond the mountains, it was reported, were still other lands and other people.

The Ottos warned Dick that he would find savage people and still more savage monsters if he continued on the “great water,” but he fired his musket to show what he could do and departed with their best wishes.

A large stream flowed in from the east which he took to be the Rocky River. Two noble streams joined the great water from the west, and still the boundless prairies continued. Sometimes the Misisepe swung to the southeast or southwest, but almost always he traveled south.

At last he came to the mouth of a river on the east which he believed to be that of the Islinois. Twice he had passed villages of these people but had avoided being seen except by a solitary hunter he encountered on the shore.

Immediately after passing the mouth of the Islinois Dick came to the influx of a stream on the western side. It was a turbulent, muddy giant of a river, rushing into the beautiful, calm Misisepe, discoloring its waters, causing great, swirling eddies, taking possession of the valley and dashing on, carrying the canoe more swiftly than it had ever traveled before. Dick recognized it immediately as the great stream of which Western savages had spoken as the bartering-place the year before, the Pekitanoui, or “muddy river,” afterward to be known, through another savage language, as the Missouri.

In the mammoth river in which he now found himself Dick began to watch eagerly, at last anxiously, for the Ohio. From the vegetation and the climate he judged that he was as far south as Virginia, but still he was traveling straight on.

His belief that the Ohio joined the Misisepe was based on the rumor Basile Pombert had heard from savages he had seen and from his own knowledge of the country. He had traveled straight north from the Ohio nearly to Lac Mecheygan on a large stream. The Islinois flowed from nearly the same place and toward the southwest. In the great triangle between there would not be room for another river so large as the Ohio, and he reasoned that the first big tributary on the east must be the one he sought.

When he was about to despair, beginning to think of turning back, fearing his geographical guesses had been far wrong, he reached it and turned joyfully toward the east.

Long days of toil followed. The river was high, with a good current, and it turned and twisted in a manner that became increasingly exasperating. But after a few days remembered landmarks were passed and he went on with new energy, assured that his course was right. He spent almost every hour of the day in the canoe, but as his supply of wild rice gave out he was often forced ashore for game. Once he pressed on regardless of food but the consequent weakness convinced him of the folly of such a course.

Twice the calumet won passage past large villages of strange savages. Once when he was cooking a meal on shore two Indians crept close in a thicket and his life was saved by the prayers embroidered on his hunting-shirt.

But he knew that, once he had reached the mountains at the head of the Ohio, his calumet and quill-worked applications to the spirits would be unavailing. Only in the great valley of the Misisepe did the pipe hold sway. Then his skill as a woodsman and blind chance alone could win through to the settlements on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains.

And they won through. Near the head of the Monongahela he abandoned the canoe and struck into the wilderness. He avoided valleys in which he knew the savages would gather, kept on the high levels and slowly, cautiously wormed his way past.

In his concentration on the one purpose to reach Virginia Dick never forgot that he was only fighting his way to certain death. But not once since he had burned his inscription on the oak that towered above the “great water” had this consideration even made him falter. Scarcely, in fact, did he even think that his achievement might allay the hatred of Berkeley. If he had thought of himself at all it was only that his fate was insignificant in the face of his duty.

This feeling increased with the strain of constant watchfulness through the thousand leagues of travel since he had left the land of the Nadouaissioux and his greatest fear was not of Berkeley but of failure when the goal was almost in sight. As the strain increased there resulted a nervous condition that made sleep at night only a fitful jumble of dreams.

Twice he had cause to be thankful for the thoughtfulness of his foster-mother when the bells, tied to strings in bushes near his resting-place, warned him of the presence of prowling savages. Each time he risked the noise of firing his musket, for he knew that the entire tribe would be at his heels if he permitted the prowler to escape.

Fifty leagues from Jamestown Dick discovered the first evidence of an Indian uprising. An isolated clearing, far up toward the foothills, contained only the blackened timbers of a cabin and the bones of the settler’s family. He had realized that in the colony of Virginia itself, where long association with the whites had bred an intense hatred, and where Governor Berkeley’s fear for his fur trade had induced a policy of no defense, would come his greatest danger.

With this evidence of the savages’ hostility he could not tell whether it was an isolated massacre or whether he would find a string of ruined plantations across the colony and the survivors besieged in Jamestown itself. He kept to the thick swamps, the most inaccessible places, traveled only at night, spent most of his days in watching. Once he found the trail of what he believed to be a small war-party, and again he saw a thick column of smoke that undoubtedly rose from a burning settler’s home.

Dick was greatly weakened by the strain, sleeplessness and lack of food. Days and nights spent in the dark, dismal swampland, his body wet and shivering, finally had their result. When only a few leagues from his father’s plantation the fever caught him.

Still he forced himself to go on, barely a league a day. He was almost too weak to walk. Often delirium brought visions of hatchet-swinging, yelling savages bending over him. One evening, after dragging himself forward all day he came out upon the bank of the James. Down the stream a little way he saw the bow of a canoe hidden in the grass. When darkness fell he crawled into it, pushed out into the current and drifted down.

Every inch of the land and water was now familiar, even at night. In another league he would reach the cleared fields of his father’s plantation. A league beyond that he would see the manor house outlined against the sky, if it were there, if the savages had confined their operations to the outskirts of the settlement.

A bend in the river suddenly disclosed the lighted buildings. They were safe. Jamestown was safe. He worked the canoe painfully and slowly across the current to a point where, he knew, he would strike the wharf. In a few minutes he was walking up the broad path.

The great hall door was open, the windows lighted, but no one was to be seen. He crossed the broad veranda, entered the hall. The door of the dining-room opened and an old negro woman stepped out.

“Marse Dick!” she shrieked, and turned to flee. He caught her by the shoulder and swung her back.

“He’s done gone over to Marse Carver’s fo’ de big dinner to his lawdship an’ de gobernor, Marse Dick. Where yo’ been?”

Dick swung around and walked out through the door. He was deathly weak but he had shaken the grip of the fever from his brain sufficiently to realize that he could hang on only a little longer. Before the veil again descended, before what he believed would be the end, he must find the governor.

He stumbled down the steps and turned to the old familiar path through the pines. His feet seemed naturally to find their way, making each turn, lifting themselves over each root and stone. A quarter of a league and he stood before Carver Manor, brilliantly lighted in every window. From the open door came a burst of laughter. Staggering, he crossed the lawn, mounted the steps, entered the door.

A liveried servant barred his way. Dick thrust him aside, muttering—“The governor.”

The servant ran for assistance and Dick walked down the hall to the door which, he knew, opened into the dining-room. It was closed. He lifted the latch, half-fell as it swung open. He caught himself, stood stiffly erect and his eyes swept the brilliant scene before him.

The great table was bright with dozens of candles in their golden sticks, with plate, china and glassware. Around it were more than a score of people, the cavalier aristocracy of the colony, the women with gorgeous gowns direct from Paris, the men equally resplendent in silks and laces, vivid colors and shining swords.

A woman glanced up at the door and screamed. The chatter and the laughter ceased. Men sprang to their feet, hands instinctively falling to sword hilts.

Colonel Carver, at the head of the table took a step forward, only to stare in amazement at the figure in the doorway. Before him stood a tall man, thin, shaking with the fever, his skin deathly white beneath a straggly beard, his buckskin garments caked with mud, a rusty musket trailing at his side; but with eyes that burned as brilliantly as a dozen candles and with a head held high and proudly.

Instantly all eyes turned from the apparition in the doorway to the young woman who had cried the name. She had risen from the table and stood staring. Her beautiful face had become as pale as his, while in her eyes was both terror and disbelief.

Instantly the brilliancy of the staring eyes was clouded. Dick’s proudly held head was lowered and a great, overpowering amazement impelled a step forward.

As their eyes met Dick forgot the fever, the Misisepe, Berkeley, the noose, the brilliant assemblage, everything except this incomprehensible transformation from boyish comrade to wondrous, alluring womanhood. In the half-delirium of fever his mind instantly comprehended each act of his past and its consequences in the future. Heedlessly, prodigally, to satisfy vagrant, trifling whims, he had dissipated man’s greatest fortune. With startling clearness he recognized what that last interview beneath the sycamores had meant to her, how he had hurt her, what he had now brought upon himself.

“Betsykins,” he repeated in a low voice, one hand groping helplessly toward her.

In that moment Dick Jeffreys knew what he desired more than anything else in the world, that for which no sacrifice was too great. It was not Betsykins, his playmate, but Elizabeth, his mate, who stood there before him. But as he looked at her he saw the gulf between them.

The thought maddened him. What were kings and emperors’ and governors’ hatreds, what were purpose and high resolve and duty, before the demands of this overwhelming love that he had always felt but had never recognized? And yet he had fought his way back to stare through the noose at this glory that might have been.

Forgetting everything else, completely crushed, the iron resistance that had kept Dick on his feet for the last few days began to desert him. His head fell forward. His eyes half-closed. One hand groped for the door-handle. The candles began to swing about his head.

The hatred expressed in each syllable, the gloating inflection on the question at the end, stabbed through Dick’s wavering consciousness, brought his head up with a snap. An old man seated at the left of Colonel Carver had risen to his feet and as his eyes met Dick’s the young Virginian’s vision cleared instantly.

“The same, your Excellency,” he replied steadily and clearly. “I am Richard Jeffreys, and I have the honor to report that I have been far beyond the Blue Mountains, have reached the ‘great water’ of which we have heard. I did not find the Red Sea, the Gulf of California. It is a thousand leagues from here. But I have discovered a great river, greater than any river in Europe, and a land as large as two Europes, a land more fair, more fertile, than man has ever known. I was the first white man to see it, to traverse it, and I claimed it in the name of the people of England and their king, Charles the Second.”

CHAPTER XVII
THE DISCOVERY

For a few moments after Dick had finished speaking there was not a word, not a movement, about the big dining-table. Since the founding of the colony seventy years before there had been continual speculation as to what lay beyond the Blue Mountains. From the Spaniards had come amazing tales. They had traveled far to the south and west, even to the Eastern ocean. They had found gold and pearls, rich nations, strange lands.

But of what lay to the north of the Spanish country, of what lay west of Virginia, behind the Blue Mountains, no one knew.

Now this fever-stricken, wasted figure had suddenly appeared before them and had announced that not only had he been farther than had any white man before him, but also that he had taken this land of mystery in the name of the king of England.

“I found something more valuable than gold,” answered Dick, “a land which holds greater riches, and I found it for the people of the king.”

“And you expect,” asked the governor coldly, “that this will ransom your seditious carcass, that this will save you from the noose you slipped?”

“I expect nothing,” and Dick’s voice rang out proudly. “I found a land far more fair, far more fertile, far more vast, than I have ever seen before. And I took it in the name of the people and the king of England. And because you are the king’s representative in Virginia, I have come to you to report.”

“And do you think the king will balance that against your evil tongue?” demanded his excellency in a rage. “What does the king want of more wilderness? We can’t keep the savages out of what we have here in Virginia. What is land worth when it is so far away? Had you brought gold, or news of gold, the king might have listened to you. There is gold there. The Spaniards have found it.

“You have not been beyond the Blue Mountains, sirrah. You have hidden with the thieving, murdering savages in the foothills and have come out with this wild tale because you sickened of the life. Summon a guard, Colonel Carver. This man goes to the Jamestown gaol.”

There was a gasp of amazement from the diners. Dick’s manner of speaking, his burning eyes, his simple words and his startling announcement had convinced them all, had won for him the allegiance of every one except Sir William.

“You hold the right to say the gaol, sir,” answered Dick. “I expected nothing else from you. But I found this land. I traversed it for hundreds of leagues. It is a year last April since I first saw the Misisepe. Since then I have tried unceasingly to return. I would have been here a year ago had I not been twice captured by strange savages.

“You may call this land worthless, but the French think otherwise. They have penetrated far, but none so far as I have gone. Their king was about to send a priest and a representative to find the ‘great water’ and take it in his name. But I was first. A tree is blazed with the announcement of my discovery. Scorn it if you will, but the day will come when it will be filled with the people of our race, when there will be great plantations, towns and cities, when there will be a thriving commerce on its waterways. Scorn it and let the French have it. The responsibility will be yours.”

“To the gaol!” ordered Sir William in a fury. “I will listen to no more of this! I will not hear advice from an outlaw! Take him away!”

There was a scream from Elizabeth Carver and she dropped into her chair and buried her face in arms outflung among the china and glassware. Since she had first seen Dick in the doorway, had called his name, she had stood there looking at him, hoping, praying that he had retrieved himself.

As she sat there sobbing, an old man farther down the table, his hair white, his face deeply lined, staggered to his feet.

“Dick! Dick! My boy! My boy!” he cried as he flung out an arm toward the figure in the doorway.

“You forget yourself, Captain Jeffreys!” snapped the governor. “Yonder stands a fugitive, an outlaw, a defamer of his Majesty. He is no son of yours.”

“He is my son!” answered the father hotly. “And I am proud to say it, for he stands there now, proving himself a man.”

“I beg your Excellency’s pardon,” a cool, low voice broke in, and immediately there was silence, while every eye was turned toward the speaker.

He was a giant of a man, his great head with its high forehead, wide-set eyes and long black curls fittingly surmounting the imposing bulk of him. Of all the men at the table, he alone had not risen, had not shared in the excitement caused by Dick’s entrance and announcement.

Big as he was, there was nothing formidable in his appearance. Rather, in his strong, gentle face, in an expression of mental power that made one forget his physical size, there was something that instantly compelled confidence, and as he spoke even Governor Berkeley turned deferentially.

“There is nothing here in which you can even interest yourself, my lord,” said Sir William with a bow. “This young outlaw, after defying the king and his laws, ran away from the noose that he deserved and now returns with this impossible story with the expectation that it will save him from the gallows. The only importance of this incident to you and to his Majesty will be the knowledge that we deal rigidly with sedition in our colony.”

“I am sure, your Excellency,” the big man replied calmly, “that his Majesty is sufficiently assured of your zeal. It would be more fitting the governor of so great a colony if he employed his head a little more than his heart.”

A gasp, followed by a low murmur, broke from men and women alike, and Sir William blushing furiously, again bowed low but remained silent.

The big man turned in his chair so that he faced Dick and for a moment he looked at him curiously.

“A chair for Mister Jeffreys,” he ordered without taking his eyes from the ragged figure of the young Virginian.

“No, not there!” he said sharply as a servant placed a chair behind Dick. “Here, beside me! So. Now a glass of Colonel Carver’s good Madeira. Quick, simpleton! Can’t you see the man is ready to faint?”

“Your lordship,” began Governor Berkeley. “I pray you! Do not let yourself be contaminated by this fellow.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “his Excellency would like to have me tell of our last interview.”

It was a chance shot, for Dick did not believe that, except for the two gaol warders at the door, any one in the colony would ever have a suspicion as to the manner of his escape from Government House.

“Your lordship,” the governor choked, “there is only one place for this traitor, the gaol, and tomorrow morning I promise you he will swing from the gallows.”

“I don’t doubt it in the least, Berkeley,” replied the big man calmly. “But it is not serving the king well to use his power to settle a personal grudge, and I have no doubt but that you would snuff out the chance for empire to save your dignity.”

Dick glanced at his lordship, marveling at the shrewdness of the man in so quickly divining the true situation between himself and the governor. Sir William, pale with anger but silent, retreated to his chair.

“I might add,” continued the big man, “that Mister Jeffreys has given tonight a sample of the stuff of which empires are made, a glimpse of the courage and perseverance which is the boast of England, and which gives his Majesty pride in the worth of the people he had been granted the right to rule.”

He turned to Dick, looked at him a moment, and then, the rich lace of his cuff falling upon the muddy, torn buckskin leggings, laid a hand on the young man’s knee.

“My boy,” he said, “I am Lord Crompton. I am just arrived from his Majesty’s court, am his Majesty’s personal representative sent to report upon conditions in his colony of Virginia. Anything you may say to me will be faithfully reported to his Majesty, and I assure you that his Majesty is deeply interested in your story. First, tell me where you have been, what you have seen, and what you have done.”

Dick, revived as much by the kindliness and understanding of his lordship as by the glass of wine, recited briefly his experiences since he had left Virginia thirty months before. As he talked the very thought of the wonderful country he had found inspired him, and, when he had finished, the diners, men and women, had gathered around him and were listening intently.

“Your Excellency,” said Lord Crompton when Dick had finished, “had you been acquainted with the ‘Relations’ of the Jesuits as published in Paris, you would recognize nothing except truth in what Mister Jeffreys has said. Had you read them you would marvel at the fortitude of our young friend here, would stand in awe of what he has accomplished. To me it is an honor to know him, and I hope that he will give me his friendship.”

“My young friend,” he said at last, “I wish I could be spared the words I must speak now.”

The circle drew closer. Elizabeth Carver, who had pressed near with the others, stifled a cry.

“I know,” his lordship continued, “that, as a brave man, you will receive bravely what I have to say.”

“You are too late. The vast land you have found has been lost to England, not through your own failure, but through the failure of the king’s representatives in the colonies. Had there been others like you we would have been the fathers of empire.”

“Marquette, and Louis Joliet, emissary of the king of France. I was in Paris the first of the Summer. The city was aflame with the news of what they had found. The land has already been claimed by the French.”

“They reached the Misisepe, of which you have told, though Marquette called it the Colbert, about the middle of June, last year. They went down the river a great distance, returned up another to what they called Lac Mecheygan, and thence to Montreal, where Joliet arrived in November. The news was immediately dispatched to Paris.”

“Then we win!” shouted the young discoverer. “We still win! The tree opposite the mouth of the Ouisconsin stands there now, blazed with the date, April 17, 1673. That was two months before the French arrived.”

“Even so,” said Lord Crompton, “the French still win. I can not tell you or any one here my reasons, but England is not in a position, at present, to dispute the claims of France.”

“But it is not right!” protested Dick. “It is not the land for the French. They are fur-getters, not empire-builders. Everywhere they take from the land. Nowhere do they put anything in it. You can see for yourself. Look at the St. Lawrence, where they have settlements. There it is the fur, only the fur. Nothing is built for the future. This land that I have discovered is for our people, people who will care for it as we have cared for Virginia, who will, year by year, put in more than they take out, who will build up for those who will come after, not tear down.”

“You have a vision, my friend,” said Lord Crompton, “but too far-sighted, too impatient. Some day, inevitably. Now, no.”

But Dick did not hear. The disappointment, combined with the excitement and the tension of the moment, snapped the slender thread by which he clung to consciousness. His body sagged in the chair, his head fell forward, and he slipped to the floor. Kind hands straightened out his legs and arms, but his head rested among the Parisian silks and laces of Elizabeth Carver’s gown.

“Dick! Dick!” she cried. “Doctor!” and she looked wildly around until she saw the physician pushing through the crowd. “Tell me he won’t die!”

“Of course not, my child,” was the answer. “It is only the swamp fever, the fever piled upon the other load that burdened him. But he is strong. First, we must get him to bed. Colonel Carver?”

“I am honored to have Captain Jeffrey’s son in my house,” responded the colonel quickly.

Strong arms bore him up the stairs, women crowded the door to be of service, and only Governor Berkeley remained below with Lord Crompton.

“Your Excellency,” said his lordship, “may I not congratulate you upon the estimable young men of your colony. I am sure his Majesty will be delighted with my relation of tonight’s affair.”

“I am always at his Majesty’s service,” he murmured. “It is never my desire to thwart his slightest wish.”

“I am sure of that Berkeley, and I am sure that the king will have no cause to disapprove of your actions in the future.”

Dick opened his eyes the next morning to find himself in a bed for the first time in two and a half years. At first he believed he was alone. Then he turned his head slightly and saw his father sitting beside him.

“I am strong enough to stand on Sir William’s gallows,” was the reply. “That’s about all I came back for, it seems.”

Instantly he realized that at the first opportunity he had only driven his dagger deeper into a torn heart.

“Forgive me, father!” he cried impulsively as he reached for the hand that lay on the coverlet. “It seems that I am destined to wound you to the very end. But I can’t help it. After seeing that land to the west, after striving for a year and a half to return with the news of my discovery, there can’t be much else than bitterness in finding the fate of our people rests in hands like those of Berkeley.”

“There is nothing to forgive, my boy,” answered the old cavalier gently. “In one stroke you have wiped out whatever sorrow your heedless youth may have brought to me. And there need be no fear of Berkeley. We are beginning to see what he is, what his rule is doing for the colony. We are all loyal subjects of his Majesty, but we are citizens of the colony of Virginia, and right must rule here as it does in England.”

“They are pulled out by the roots so far as you are concerned,” and Captain Jeffrey’s face glowed with a pride of parenthood that so long had been denied him. “Lord Crompton rebuked the governor in the presence of all the guests last night, unmistakably gave Sir William to understand that he is to be held responsible to the king for your safety.”

“The same, and a man with a heart and a mind bigger than his great body. The king turned over the colony to two of his favorites, sold us out, and there has been such a stir that his lordship was dispatched to settle the matter. He is a favorite with the king, but he is a man, and——”

“He is a man!” interrupted Dick eagerly. “And if such as he can put up with the folly of kings in the hope that something good will come out of it for all of us, I can do no better than follow.”

“You will follow him, my boy,” and again the father’s pride lighted up his face. “He sails for England in two weeks and he told me last night that you are to go with him, are to tell his Majesty in person what you have found. And then, Dick, you are to come back, perhaps not to Virginia, but to the colonies in this new world, for there is much to be done beyond the Blue Mountains, and you are to lead the work.”

“My boy, as we grow older we learn many things,” answered his father soberly. “I begin to think of a king, not as a divinely empowered ruler of the people, but as—well—as——”

“Exactly. I’d hang for this if it were known, but it is so, my boy, and perhaps you will live to see the time when kings themselves are forced to admit it. But you are weak, and there must not be more strain. Sleep a while, Dick. In a few days I will take you home.”

For a moment he drank in her beauty, absorbing each detail of the whole that had so staggered him the night before. The brown, freckled skin of the romping child had become clear, ivory-tinted with rose petals. The straight, boyish figure had rounded, swelling into the fulness of the womanhood that had, to Dick, so miraculously come to her. She blushed at the scrutiny but her eyes could not hide her happiness.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered as he reached for her hand. “Betsykins! What has happened to you? Oh, what a fool I have been! My mad brain sent me off in search of adventure and what I sought all the time was here. Only now it is too late.”

“Father has told me all that. But I was not even thinking of Berkeley. It is you, Betsykins. You are no longer the girl I last saw under the sycamores by the river.”

“Not failure, Dick,” answered the girl quickly. “Did not your father tell you all the plans?”

“Betsykins! You know what I mean, what is more dear to me now than all else in the world. Blind fool that I was. My own boyish thoughtlessness lost it all for me. But tell me at least that you forgive and forget that last night beneath the sycamores. Believe me that I did not know what it was that I sought then.”

“There is nothing to forgive or forget. It is all in the past, wiped out by the fact that you have come back to me, back to Virginia, you, the man I always knew you would be and the man I love.”

She said it proudly, arrogantly, head held high. But only for a moment, for Dick’s arms drew her face down to his.

“What have I done to deserve all this?” he asked humbly. “Antoine, my Nadouaissioux mother, and now you.”

"Before Marquette" was originally published as a three-part serial in Adventure Magazine, August 18, September 3 and September 18, 1918.

Printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed. Archaic and obsolete spellings have been retained.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Book cover is placed in the public domain.

[The end of Before Marquette, A Three-Part Story, by Kathrene and Robert Pinkerton.]

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II THE TRYST AT THE SYCAMORES

CHAPTER III BEYOND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER IV “ONE OF US”

CHAPTER V THE ISLINOIS

CHAPTER VI THE MACHINATIONS OF BASILE

CHAPTER VII HIDDEN ENEMIES

CHAPTER VIII BASILE GROWS AMBITIOUS

CHAPTER IX THE MEDICINE MAN

CHAPTER X ALONE

CHAPTER XI THE VISION

CHAPTER XII THE ISLINOIS COLLECT

CHAPTER XIII THE EXECUTION

CHAPTER XIV A NADOUAISSIOUX

CHAPTER XV THE PROMISE

CHAPTER XVI VIRGINIA

CHAPTER XVII THE DISCOVERY