The Story of Tonty. Mary Hartwell Catherwood
have lingered indefinitely, chattering to a guardian who felt her hatred of convent restraint, and gazing at preparations for the council: at prunes and chopped pieces of oxen being put to boil for an Indian feast; at the governor’s chair from the fortress, where the sub-governor lived, borne by men to the middle of that space yearly occupied as the council ring. But a watchful Sister was hovering ready inside the palisade gate, and reaching forth her arm she drew her charge away from Tonty, giving him brief and scandalized thanks for his service.
Barbe looked back. It was worth Tonty’s while to catch sight of that regretful face smeared about its warm neck by curls, its lips parted to repeat and still repeat, “Adieu, monsieur. Adieu, monsieur.”
But two men had come between the disappearing child and him, one man, dressed partly like an officer and partly like a coureur de bois, throwing both arms around Tonty in the eager Latin manner.
“My cousin Henri de Tonty, welcome to the New World. I waited with my gouty leg at the fortress for you; but when you came not, like a good woodsman, I tracked you down.”
“My cousin Greysolon du Lhut! Glad am I to find you so speedily. This cold and heavy hand belies me.”
“I heard of this hand. But the other was well lost, my cousin. Take courage in beholding me; I had nearly lost a leg, and not by good powder and shot either, but with gout which disgracefully loads up a man with his own dead members. But the Iroquois virgin, Catharine Tegahkouita, hath interceded for me.”
“Monsieur de Tonty will observe we have saints among the savages in New France,” said the other man.
He was a Récollet friar with sandalled feet, wearing a gray capote of coarse texture which was girt with the cord of Saint Francis. His peaked hood hung behind his shoulders leaving his shaven crown to glisten with rosy enjoyment of the sunlight. A crucifix hung at his side; but no man ever devoted his life to prayer who was so manifestly created to enjoy the world. He had a nose of Flemish amplitude depressed in the centre, fat lips, a terraced chin, and twinkling good-humored eyes. The gray capote could not conceal a pompous swell of the stomach and the strut of his sandalled feet.
“My cousin Tonty,” said Du Lhut, “this is Father Louis Hennepin from Fort Frontenac. He hath come down to Montreal[3] to meet Monsieur de la Salle and engage himself in the new western venture.”
“Venture!” exclaimed a keen-visaged man in the garb of a merchant-colonist who was carrying a bale of goods to one of the booths—for no man in Montreal was ashamed to get profit out of the beaver fair. “Where your Monsieur de la Salle is concerned there will be venture enough, but no results for any man but La Salle.”
He set his bale down as if it were a challenge.
Points of light sprung into Tonty’s eyes and the blood in his face showed its quickening.
“Monsieur,” he spoke, “if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”
“Monsieur,” spoke Tonty, “if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”—Page 32.
“Jacques le Ber is a noble of the colony,” declared Du Lhut, with the derisive freedom this great ranger and leader of coureurs de bois assumed toward any one; “for hath he not purchased his patent of King Louis for six thousand livres? But look you, my cousin Tonty, if the king allowed not us colonial nobles to engage in trade he would lose us all by starvation; for scarce a miserable censitaire on our lands can pay us his capon and pint of wheat at the end of the year.”
“I will answer to you, monsieur,” said Jacques le Ber to the soldier, ”that La Salle is the enemy of the colony, and the betrayer of them that have been his friends.”
Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty’s arms. Du Lhut then dragged him with expostulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Frontenac’s strict orders that all quarrels should be suppressed during the beaver fair, and as the young man’s furious looks still sought the merchant, reminding him of the harm he might do La Salle by an open quarrel with Montreal traders.
“I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as thou art—I tell you it will not do,” declared Du Lhut.
“Let the man keep his distance, then!”
“Why, you hot-blooded fellow! why do you take these Frenchmen so seriously?”
“Sieur de la Salle is my friend. I will strike any man who denounces him.”
“Oh, come out toward the mountain. Let us make a little pilgrimage,” laughed Du Lhut. “We must cool thee, Tonty, we must cool thee; or La Salle’s enemies will lie in one heap the length of Montreal, mowed by this iron hand!”
As Jacques le Ber carried forward his bale, Father Hennepin walked beside him dealing forth good-natured remonstrance with fat hands and out-turned lips.
“My son, God save me from the man who doth nurse a grievance. Your case is simply this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and it is now called Fort Frontenac. He put you and associates of yours in charge, and you had profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recommendation to the king, Sieur de la Salle was made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly chewed to the poisoning of thy immortal soul.”
“You churchmen all—Jesuits, Sulpitians, or Récollets—are over zealous to domineer in this colony,” spoke Jacques le Ber, through the effort of carrying his bale.
“My son,” said Father Hennepin, swelling his stomach and inflating his throat, “why should I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue, if I felt no zeal for saving souls?”
“I spoke of domineering,” repeated the angry merchant.
“And touching Monsieur de la Salle,” said Father Hennepin, “I exhort thee not to love him; for who could love him—but to rid thyself of hatred of any one.”
“Father Hennepin has not then attached himself to La Salle’s new enterprise?”
“I have a grand plan of discovery of my own,” said the friar, deeply, rolling his shaven head, “an enterprise which would terrify anybody but me. The Sieur de la Salle merely opens my path. I will confess to thee, my son, that in youth I often hid myself behind the doors of taverns—which were no fit haunts for men of holy life—to hearken unto sailors’ tales of strange lands. And thus would I willingly do without eating or drinking, such burning desire I had to explore new countries.”
The Father did not observe that Jacques le Ber had reached his own booth and was there arranging his goods regardless of explorations in strange lands, but walked on, talking to the air, his out-thrust lips rounding every word, until some derisive savage pointed out this solo.
Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place in the governor’s council, thinking wrathfully of his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all do, upon the affronts and hindrances of the present, rather than on his prospect of founding a strong and worthy family in the colony.
IV.
A COUNCIL.
The North American savage, with an unerring instinct which republics might well study, sent his wisest men to the front to represent him.
A great circle of Indians, ranged according to their tribes, sat around Frontenac when the stone windmill trod its noon shadow underfoot. Te Deum had been sung in the chapel, and thanks offered for his safe arrival. The principal men of Montreal, with the governor’s white and gold officers, sat now within the circle behind his chair.
But Frontenac