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PER dT BRCTTfERS PUBLISHER.^
>RK AND LONDON
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MACKINAC AND
LAKE STORIES
By
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
3
Copyright, 1899, by Harphu & Bbotukbb.
AH right* rtttrvtd.
TO
/1U»» IDcac Bauflbter
HAZEL
THE COMPANION OF ALL MY JOURNEYS
CONTENTS
PAOI
Marianson 1
The Black Feather 20
The Cobbler in the Devil's Kitchen 84
The Skeleton on Round Island , . 54
The Penitent of Cross Village 69
The King op Beaver 89
Beaver Lights 118
A British Islander 187
The Cursed Patois 151
The Mothers of Honore 170
The Blue Man 187
The Indian on the Trail 203
ILLUSTRATIONS
"that was the moment op life" Frontispiece
"SHE LAY BREATHING LIKE AN INFANT" . , . Facing p. 4
THE TRAIN-AU-GALI8B " 56
"'I THINK THE CAMP GO AROUND AND AROUND
ME'" " 60
" ' I HAVE ALWAYS PRAYED THIS PRAYER ALONE ' " " 102
" it's BROTHER STRANG SRUENADING " .... " 104
"'you WILL GIVE YOURSliLF TO ME NOW?'". . " 110
" 'LET ME LOOSE !' STRUGGLED EMELINE" . . . " 114
I WAS STARTLED TO SEE HER BUSH AT THE
CAPTAIN " 140
THE QUARTERS *' 144
" HE APPEARED AT THE DOOK, AND IT WAS HON-
ORil" " 186
MARIANSON
WHEN the British landed on the west side
of Mackinac Island at three o'clock in
the morning of July 17, 1812, Canadians
were ordered to transport the cannon. They had
only a pair of six-pounders, but these had to be
dragged across the long alluvial stretch to heights
which would command the fortress, and sand, rock,
bushes, trees, and fallen logs made it a dreadful
portage. Voyageurs, however, were men to accom-
plish what regulars and Indians shirked.
All but one of the hundred and sixty Canadians
hauled with a good will on the cannon ropes. The
dawn was glimmering. Paradise hid in the un-
tamed island, breathing dew and spice. The spell
worked instantly upon that one young voyageur
whose mind was set against the secret attack. All
night his rage had been swelling. He despised the
British regulars — forty-two lords of them only be-
ing in this expedition — as they in turn despised his
class. They were his conquerors. He had no de-
sire to be used as means of pushing their conquest
further. These islanders he knew to be of his own
race, perhaps crossed with Chippewa blood.
▲ t
MARIANSON
Seven hundred Indians, painted and horned for
war, skulked along as allies in the dim morning twi-
light. He thought of sleeping children roused by
tomahawk and scalping-knife in case the surprised
fort did not immediately surrender. Even then,
how were a few hundred white men to restrain
nearly a thousand savages ?
The young Canadian, as a rush was made with
the ropes, stumbled over a log and dropped behind
a bush. Ilis nearest companions scarcely noticed
the desertion in +heir strain, but the officer in-
stantlv detailed an Indian.
" One of you Sioux bring that fellow back or
bring his scalp."
A Sioux stretched forward and leaped eagerly
into the woods. All the boy's years of wilderness
training were concentrated on an escape. The
English officer meant to make him a lesson to the
other voyageurs. And he smiled as he thought of
the race he could give the Sioux. All his arms ex-
cept his knife were left behind the bush ; for fleet-
ness was to count in this venture. The game of
life or death was a pretty one, to be enjoyed as he
shot from tree to tree, or like a noiseless-hoofed
deer made a long stretch of covert. lie was alive
through every blood drop. The dewy glory of
dawn had never seemed so great. Cool as the
Sioux whom he dodged, his woodsman's eye gath-
ered all aspects of the strange forest. A detached
rock, tall as a tree, raised its colossal altar, surpris-
ing the eye like a single remaining temple pillar.
%
MARIANSON
Old logs, scaled as in a coat of mail, testified to the
humidity of this lush place. The boy irod on
sweet white violets smelling of incense.
The M^ooded deeps unfolded in thinning dusk
and revealed a line of high verdant cliffs walling
his course. He dashed through hollows where
millions of ferns bathed him to the knees. As
daylight grew — thougli it never was quite day-
light there — so did his danger. He expected to
hear the humming of an arrow, and perhaps to
feel a shock and sting and cleaving of the bolt,
and turned in recklessly to climb for the uplands,
where after miles of jutting spurs the ridge stooped
and pushed out in front of itself a round-topped
rock. As the Canadian passed this rock a yellow
flare like candle- li^ht came through a crack at its
base.
He dropped on all-fours. The Indian w\as not in
sight. He squirmed within a low battlement of
seriated stone guarding the crack, and let himself
down into what appeared to be the mouth of a cave.
The opening was so low as to be invisible just out-
side the serrated breastwork. He found himself
in a room of rock, irregularly hollow above, with
a candle burning on the stone floor. As he sat up-
right and streivcbed forth a hand to pinch off the
flame, the image of a sleeping woman was printed
on his e3^eballs so that he saw every careless ring
of fair hair around her head and every curve of
her body for hours afterwards in the dusk.
His first thought was to place himself where his
8
MARIANSON
pertion would intercept any attack at the mouth of
the cave. Knife m hand, he waited for a horned,
glittering-eyed face to stoop or an arrow or hatchet
to glance under that low rim, the horizon of his
darkness. His chagrin at having taken to a tra])
and drawn danger on a woman was poignant ; the
candle had caught him hke a moth, and a Sioux
would keenly follow. Still, no lightest step be-
trayed the Sioux's knowledge of his whereabouts.
A long time passed before he relaxed to an easy
posture and turned to the interior of the cave.
The drip of a veiled water- vein at the rear made
him conscious of thirst, but the sleeping woman
was in the way of his creeping to take a drink.
Wrapped in a fur robe, she lay breathing like an
infant, white-skinned, full-throated, and vigorous,
a woman older than himself. The consequences of
her waking did not threaten him as perilous. With-
out reasoning, he was convinced that a woman
who lay down to sleep beside a burning candle in
this wild place would make no outcry when she
awoke and found the light had drawn instead of
kept away possible cave -inhabitants. Day grew
beyond the low sill and thinned obscurity around
him, showing iho <werve of the roof to a sloping
shelf. Perspirati/ii cooled upon him and he shiv-
ered. A tire and a breakfast would have been
good things, which he had often enjoyed in danger,
llowi ng all night, and landing cannon at the end
of it, and running a league or more for life, ex-
hausted a man.
4
s
>
>
MARIANSON
The ■woman stirred, and the young voyageur
thouglit of dropping his knife back ^nto its sheath.
At the slight click she sat up, drawing in her breath.
He w^iispered : " Do not be afraid. I have not
come in here to hurt you."
She was staring at him, probably taking him for
some monster of the dark.
" Have you anything here to eat ?"
The woman resumed her suspended breath, and
answered in the same guarded way, and in French
like his: "Yes. I come to this part of the island
so often that I have put bread and meat and candles
in the cave. How did you find it? No one but
mvself knew about it."
" I saw the candle-light."
*' The candle was to keep off evil spirits. It has
been blown out. Where did you come from ?"
" From St. Joseph Island last night with the
English. They have taken the island by surprise."
She unexpectedly laughed in a repressed gurgle,
as a faun or other woods creature might have
laughed at the predicaments of men.
"I am thinking of the stupid American soldiers
— to lie asleep and let the British creep in upon
them. But have you seen my cow? I searched
everywhere, until the moon went down and I was
tired to death, for ray cow."
" No, I saw no cow. I had the Sioux to watch."
"What Sioux?"
"The Indian our commandant sent after me.
Speak low. He may be listening outside."
6
MARIANSON
They themselves listened.
" If Indians have come on the island they will
kill all the cattle."
" There are the women and children and men —
even poor voyageurs — for them to kill first."
She gasped, "Is it war?"
" Yes, it is war."
" I never have seen war. Why did you couio
here ?"
" I did not want to, mademoiselle, and I de-
serted. That is why the Indian was sent after me."
" Do not call me mademoiselle. I am Marianson
Bruelle, the widow of Andre Chenier. Our houses
will be burned, and our gardens trampled, and our
boats stolen."
" Not if the fort surrenders."
Ao^ain thev barkened to the outside world in
suspense. The deserter had expected to hear can-
non before sunlight so slowly crept under the cave's
lip. It was as if the)'^ sat witliin a colossal skull,
broad between the ears but narrowing towards the
top, with light coming through the parted m >uth.
Accustomed to the soft twilight, the two could see
each other, and the woman covertly put her dress
in order while she talked.
More than fearlessness, even a kind of maternal
passion, moved her. She searched in the back of
the cave and handed her strange guest food, and
gathered him a birch cup of water from the drip-
ping rock. The touch of his fingers sent a new
vital thrill through her. Two may talk together
6
MARIANSON
under the same roof for many years, yet never
really meet; and two others at first speech are old
friends. She did not know this young voyageur,
yet she began to claim him.
lie was so tired that the tan of his cheek turned
leaden in the cave gloom. She rose from her bear-
skin and spread it for him, when he finished eating.
" You cannot go out now," he whispered, when
he saw her intention. " The Sioux is somewhere
in the woods watching for me. The Indians came
on this island for scalps. You will not be safe,
even in the fort, until the fight is over, or until
night comes again."
Marianson, standing convinced by what he said,
was unable to take her eyes off him. Mass seemed
always irksome to her in spite of the frequent
changes of posture and her conviction that it was
good for her soul. She was at her happiest plung-
ing through woods or panting up cliffs which
squaws dared not scale. Yet enforced hiding with
a stranger all day in the cave was assented to by
this active sylvan creature. She had not a word
to say against it, and the danger of going out was
her last thought. The cavern's mouth was a very
awkward opening to crawl through, especially if
an Indian should catch one in the act. There was
nothing to do but to sit down and wait.
A sigh of pleasure, as at inhaling the spirit of a
flower, escaped her lips. This lad, whose presence
she knew she would feel without seeing if he came
into church behind her, innocent of the spell he
7
MARIANSON
was casting, still sat guarding the entrance, though
the droop of utter weariness relaxed every posture.
Marianson bade him lie down on the fur robe, and
imperiously arranged her lap to hold his head.
" I am maman to you. I say to you sleep, and
you shall sleep."
The appealing and thankful eyes of the boy
were closed almost as soon as he crept upon the
robe and his head sunk in its comfortable pillow.
Marianson braced her back against the wall and
dropped her hands at her sides. Occasionally she
glanced at the low rim of light. No Indian could
enter without lying flat. She had little dread of
the Sioux.
Every globule which fell in darkness from the
rock recorded, like the sand grain of an hour-glass,
some change in Marianson.
" I not care for anybody, me," had been her
boast when she tantalized soldiers on the village
street. Her gurgle of laughter, and the hair blow-
ing on her temples from under the blanket she
drew around her face, worked havoc in Mackinac.
To her men were merely useful objects, like cows,
or houses, or gardens, or boats. She hugged the
social liberty of a woman who had safely passed
through matrimony and widowhood. Married to
old Andre Chenier by her parents, that he might
guard her after their death, she loathed the thought
of another wearisome tie, and called it veneration
of his departed spint. He left her a house, a cow,
and a boat. Accustomed to work for him, she
8
MARIANSON
found it much easier to work for herself when he
was gone, and resented having young naen hang
around desiring to settle in her house. She laughed
at every proposal a father or mother made her.
No family on the island could get her, and all
united in pointing her out as a bad pattern for
young women.
A bloom like the rose flushing of early maiden-
hood came over Marianson with her freedom. Iso-
lated and daring and passionless, she had no con-
ception of the scandal she caused in the minds of
those who carried the burdens of the community,
but lived like a bird of the air. Wives who bore
children and kept the pot boiling found it hard to
see her tiptoeing over cares which swallowed them.
She did not realize that maids desired to marry and
she took their lovers from them.
But knowledge grew in her as she sat holding the
stranger's head in her lap, though it was not a day
on which to trouble one's self with knowledge.
There was only the forest's voice outside, that
ceaseless majestic hymn of the trees, accompanied
by the shore ripple, which was such a little way
off. Languors like the sweet languors of spring
came over her. She was happier than she had ever
been before in her life.
" It is delicious," she thought. " I have been in
the cave many times, but it will never be like this
again."
And it was a strange joy to find the touch of a
human being something to delight in. There was
9
MARIANSON
sweet wickedness in it ; penance might have to fol-
low. What would the cure sa3Mf he saw her? To
amuse one's self with soldiers and islanders was
one tiling ; to sit tranced all day in a cave with a
stranger must be another.
There was a rough innocence in his relaxed body
— beautiful as the virgin softness of a girl. Under
the spell of his unconscious domination, she did
not care about his past. Iler own past was noth-
ing. She had arrived in the present. Time stood
still. His face was turned towards her, and she
studied all its curves, yet knew if he had other
features he would still be the one person in the
world who could so draw her. What was the
power? Had women elsewhere felt it? At that
thought she had a pang of anguish and rage alto-
gether new to her. Marianson was tender even
in her amusements ; her benevolence extended to
dumb cattle ; but in the hidden darkness of her
consciousness she found herself choosing the Sioux
for him, rather than a woman.
Once he half raised his head, but again let it
sink to its rest. Marianson grew faint ; and as
the light waned at the cave mouth she remem-
bered she had not eaten anything that day. The
fast made her seem fit to say prayers, and she
said all she knew over his head, like a mother
brooding.
He startled her by sitting up, without warning,
fully roused and alert.
" What time is it ?" inquired the boy.
10
MARIANSON
" Look at the door. The sun has long been be-
hind the trees."
" Have I slept all day ?"
" Perhaps."
" And have you heard no sound of battle ?"
"It has been still as the village street during
mass."
" What, then, have they done, those English ?
They must have taken the fort Avithout firing a
gun. And the Sioux — you have not seen him ?"
" Nothing has passed the cave door, not even a
chipmunk."
He stretched his arms upward into the hollow,
standing tall and well made, his buckskin shirt
turned back from his neck.
" I am again hungry."
" I also," said Marianson. " I have not eaten
anything to-day."
Her companion dropped on his knees before her
and took out of her hands the food she had ready.
His face expressed shame and compunction as he
fed her himself, offering bites to her mouth with
gentle persistence. She laughed the laugh peculiar
to herself, and pushed his hand back to his own lips.
So they ate together, and afterwards drank from
the same cup. Marianson showed him where the
drops came down, and he gathered them, smiling at
her from the depths of the cave. They heard the
evening cawing of crows, and the waters rushing
with a wilder wash on the beach.
" I will bring more bread and meat when I come
11
MARIAl^SON
back," promised Marianson — " unless the English
have burned the house."
" No. When it is dark I will leave the cave my-
self," said the voyageur. "' Is there any boat near
by that I can take to escape in from tlie island ?"
" There is my boat. But it is at the post."
" How far are we from the post ?"
"It is not so far if one might cross the island ;
but to go by the v/est shore, which would be safest,
perhaps, in time of war, that is the greater part of
the island's girth."
They drew near together as they murmured, and
at intervals he held the cup to her lips, making up
for his forgetfulness when benumbed with sleep.
" One has but to follow the shore, however," said
the boy. " And where can I find the boat ?"
" You cannot find it at all."
" But," he added, with sudden recollection, " I
could never return it again."
Marianson saw on the cave's rough wall a vision
of her boat carrying him away. Her own little
craft, the sail of which she knew how to trim — her
bird, her flier, her food-winner — was to become her
robber.
" When the war is over," she ventured, " then
you might come back."
He began to explain difficulties like an honest
lad, and she stopped him. " I do not want to know
anything. I want you to take my boat."
He put the cup down and seized her hands and
kissed them. She crouched against the cave's side,
12
MARIANSON
her eyes closed. If he was only grateful to her for
bread and shelter and means of escape, it was little
enough she received, but his warm touch and his
lips on her palms — for he kissed her palms — made
her none the less dizzy.
" Listen to me," said Marianson. " If I give you
my boat, you must do exactly as I bid you."
" I promise."
" You must stay here until I bring it to you. I
am going at once."
" But you cannot go alone in the dark. You are
a woman — you will be afraid."
" Never in my life have I been afraid."
" But there are Indians on the war-path now."
" They will be in camp or drunk at the post.
Your Sioux has left this part of the island. He
may come back by morning, but he would not camp
away from so much plunder. Sioux cannot be
unlike our Chippewas. Do you think," demanded
Marianson, " that you will be quite, quite safe in
the cave ^"
Her companion laughed.
" If I find the cave unsafe I can leave it ; but you
in the dark alone — you must let me go with you."
" No ; the risk is too great. It is better for me
to go alone. I know every rock, every bend of the
shore. The pull back around the island will be
hardest, if there is not enough wind."
" I go with you," decided the boy.
" But you gave me your promise to do exactly as
I bade you. I am older than you," said Marianson.
13
MARIANSON
" I know what is best, and tlat is that you remain
here until I come. Swear to me that vou will."
He was silent, beseeching]: her with his eves to
relent. Then, owning her right to dominate, he
pledged her by the name of his saint to do as she
required.
Their forced companionship, begun at daylight,
was ending as darkness crept through the cavern's
mouth. They waited, and those last moments of
silence, while they leaned to look closely at each
other with the night growing between them, were
a benediction on the day.
Marianson stooped to creep through the cavern's
mouth, but once more she turned and looked at
him, and it was she herself w^ho stretched appealing
arras. The boy's shyness and the woman's aversion
to men vanished as in fire. They stood together in
the hollow of the cave in one long embrace. He
sought her mouth and kissed her, and, sutfocating
with joy, she escaped thi'ough the low door.
Indifferent to the Indian who niifflit be doire-iner
her, she drew her strip of home-si)un around her
face and ran, moccasined and deft-footed, over the
stones, warm, palpitating, and laughing, full of phys-
ical hardihood. In the woods, on her left, she
knew there were rocks splashed with stain black as
ink and crusted with old lichens. On her ricfht
white-caps were running before the west wind and
diving like ducks on the strait. She crossed the
threads of a brook ravelling themselves from den-
sity. For the forest was a mask. But Marianson
U
MARIANSON
knew well the tricks of that brook — its pellucid
shining on pebbles, its cascades, its hidings under-
ground of all but a voice and a crystal pool. Wet
to her knees, she had more than once followed it to
its source amid such greenery of moss and logs as
seemed a conflagration of verdure.
The many points and bays of the island sped be-
hind her, and cliffs crowded her to the water's edge
or left her a dim moving object on a lonesome
beach. Sometimes she heard sounds in the woods
and listened ; on the other hand, she had the com-
panionship of stars and moving water. On that
glorified journey Marianson's natural fearlessness
carried her past the Devil's Kitchen and quite near
the post before she began to consider how it was
best to approach a place which might be in the
hands of an enemy. Her boat was tied at the dock.
She had the half-ruined distillery yet to pass. It
had stood under the cliff her lifetime. As she drew
nearer, cracks of lifflit and a hum like the droning;
of a beehive magically turned the old distillery into
a caravansary of spirits.
Nothing in her long tram]) had startled her like
this. It was a relief to hear the click of metal and
a strange-spoken word, and to find herself face to
face with an English soldier. He made no parley,
but marched her before him ; and the grateful noise
of squalling babies and maternal protests and
Maman Pelott's night lullaby also met her as they
proceeded towards the distillery.
The long dark shed had a chimney-stack and its
W
MARIANSON
many-coiled still in one end. Beside that great bot-
tle-shaped thing, at the base of the chimney, was
an open fireplace piled with flaming sticks, and
this had made the luminous crevices. All Mackinac
village was gathered within the walls, and Marian-
son beheld a camp supping, putting children to bed
on blankets in corners, sitting and shaking fingers
at one another in wrathful council, or running about
in search of lost articles. The cure was there, keep-
ing a restraint on his people. Clothes hung on
spikes like rows of suicides in the weird light.
Even fiddlers and jollity were not lacking. A
heavier race would have come to blows in that
strait enclosure, but these French and half-breeds,
in danger of scalping if the Indians proved turbu-
lent, dried their eyes after losses, and shook their
legs ready for a dance at the scraping of a violin.
Little Ignace Pelott was directly pulling at Mari-
anson's petticoat to get attention.
" De Ingins kill our 'effer," he lamented, in +he
mongrel speech of the quarter-breed. " Dey didn't
need him ; dey have plenty to eat. But dey kill
our 'efl^er and laugh."
" My cow, is it also killed, Ignace f '
Marianson's neighbors closed around her, unsur-
prised at her late arrival, filled only with the gen-
eral calamity. Old men's pipe smoke mingled with
odors of food ; and when the English soldier had
satisfied himself that she belonged to this caldron
of humanity, he lifted the cornei s of his nose and
returned to open air and guard duty.
16
MARIANSON
The fort had been surrendered without a shot, to
save the lives of the villagers, and they were all
hurried to the distillery and put under guard.
They would be obliged to take the oath of alle-
giance to England, or leave the island. Michael
Dousman, yet held in the enemy's camp, was fierce-
ly accused of bringing the English upon them.
No, Marianson could not go to the village^ or even
to the dock.
Everybody offered her food. A boat she did
not ask for. The high cobwebby openings of the
distillery looked on a blank night sky. Marianson
felt her happiness jarred as the wonderful day came
to such limits. The English had the island. It
might be searched for that young deserter waiting
for her help, and if she failed to get a boat, what
must be his fate ?
She had entered the west door of the distiller3^
She found opportunity to slip out on the east side,
for it was necessary to reach the dock and get a
boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at
any cost she would have, and one was sent her — as
to the fearless and determined all their desires are
sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks,
bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of
the void of the lake a keel ran upon pebbles.
So easy had been the conquest of the island, the
British regular found his amusement in his duty,
and a boat was taken from the dock to save half a
mile of easy marching. It stood empty and wait-
ing during a lux minute, while the responsibility of
B 17
MARIANSON
guarding was shifted ; but perhaps being carelessly
beached, though there was no tide on the strait, it
drifted away.
Marianson, who had helped it drift, lay flat on
the bottom and heard the rueful oaths of her
enemies, forced to march back to the post. There
was no sail. She steered by a trailing oar until
lighted distiller}'- and black cliff receded and it was
safe for her to fix her sculls and row with all her
might.
She was so tired her heart physically ached when
she slipped through dawn to a landing opposite
the cave. There would be no more yesterdays,
and there would be no time for farewells. The
wash which drove her roughly to mooring drove
with her the fact that she did not know even the
name of the man she was about to give up.
Marianson turned and looked at the water he
must venture upon, without a sail to help him. It
was not all uncovered from the night, but a long
purple current ran out, as if God had made a sud-
den amethyst bridge across the blue strait.
E.(;luctant as she was to call him from the cave,
she dared not delay. The breath of the virgin
woods was overpoweringly sweet. Her hair clung
to her forehead in moist rings, and hev cheeks were
pallid and wet with mist which rose and rose on all
sides like clouds in a holy picture.
He was asleep.
She crouched down on cold hands and saw that.
He had waited in the cave as he promised, and had
18
MARIANSON
fallen asleep. His back was towards her. Instead
of lying at ease, his body was flexed. Her enlarg-
ing pupils caught a stain of red on the bear-skin,
then the scarlet tonsure on his crown. He was
asleep, but the Sioux had been there.
The low song of wind along that wooded ridge,
and the roar of dashing lake water, repeated their
monotone hour after hour. It proved as fair a Cay
as the island had ever seen, and when it was near-
ly spent, Marianson Bruelle still sat on the cave
floor holding the dead boy in her arms. Heart-
uprooting was a numbness, like rapture. At least
he could not Jeave her. She had his kiss, his love.
She had his body, to hide in a grave as secret as
a flower's. The cure could some time bless it,
but the English who had slain him should never
know it. As she held him to her breast, so the
sweet processes of the woods should hold him, and
make him part of the island.
THE BLACK FEATHER
OVER a hundred voyageurs were sorting furs
in the American Fur Company's yard, un-
der the supervision of the clerks. And
though it was hard labor, lasting from five in the
morning until sunset, they thought lightly of it as
fatigue duty after their eleven months of toil and
privation in the wilderness. Fort Mackinac was
glittering white on the heights above them, and
half-way up a paved ascent leading to the sally-port
sauntered 'Tite Laboise. All the voyageurs saw
her ; and strict as was the discipline of the yard,
they directly expected trouble.
The packing, however, went on with vigor.
Every beaver, marten, mink, musk-rat, raccoon,
lynx, wild -cat, fox, wolverine, otter, badger, or
other skin had to be beaten, graded, counted, tal-
lied in the compan3^'s book, put into press, and
marked for shipment to John Jacob Astor in New
York. As there were twelve grades of sable, and
eight even of deer, the grading, which feil to the
clerks, was no light task. Heads of brigades that
had brought these furs from the wilderness stood by
to challenge any mistake in the count. It was the
20
THE BLACK FEATHER
height of the fur season, and Mackinac Island was
the front of the world to the two or three thousand
men gathered in for its brief summer.
Axe strokes reverberated from Bois Blanc, on the
opposite side of the strait, and passed echoes from
island to island to the shutting down of the horizon.
Choppers detailed to cut wood were getting boat-
loads ready for the leachers, who had hulled corn
to prepare for winter rations. One pint of lyed
corn with from two to four ounces of tallow was
the daily allowance of a voyageur, and the endur-
ance which this food gave him passes belief.
^Itienne St. Martin grumbled at it when he came
fresh from Canada and pork eating. " Mange' -du-
lard," his companions called him, especially Charle'
Charette, who was the giant and the wearer of the
black feather in his brigade of a dozen boats. Huge
and innocent primitive man was Charle' Charette.
He could sleep under snow-drifts like a baby, carry
double packs of furs, pull oars all day without tir-
ing, and dance all night after hardships which
caused some men to desire to lie down and die.
The summer before, at nineteen years of age, this
light-haired, light-hearted voyageur had been mar-
ried to 'Tite Laboise. Their wedding festivities
lasted the whole month of the Mackinac season.
His was the Wabash and Hlinois River outfit, al Most
the last to leave the island ; for the Lake Superior,
Upper and Lower Mississippi, Lake of the Woods,
and other outfits were obliged to seek Indian hunt-
ing-grounds at the earliest breath of autumn.
21
THE BLACK FEATHER
"When the Illinois brigade returned, his wife, who
had stood weeping in the cheering crowd while his
companions made islands ring with the boat-song at
departure, refused to see him. lie went to the
house of her aunt Laboise, where she lived. Made-
moiselle Laboise, her half-breed cousin, met him.
This educated young lady, daughter of a French
father and Chippewa mother, was dignified as a
nun in her dress of blue broadcloth embroidered
with porcupine quills. She was always called
Mademoiselle Laboise, while the French girl was
called merely 'Tite. Because 'Tite was married, no
one considered her name changed to Madame
Charette. To her husband himself she was 'Tite
Laboise, the most aggravatmg, delicious, unaccount-
able creature in the Northwest.
" She says she will not see you, Charle'," said
Mademoiselle Laboise, color like sunset vermilion
showing in the delicate aboriginal face.
" What have I done?" gasped the voyageur.
Mademoiselle lifted French shoulders with her
father's gesture. She did not know.
"Did I expect cO be treated this way?" shouted
the injured husband.
" Who can ever tell what 'Tite will do next?"
That was the truth. No one could tell. Yet
her flightiest moods were her most alluring moods.
If she had not been so pretty and so adroit at dodg-
ing whippings when a child, 'Tite Laboise might
not have set Mackinac by the ears as often as she
did. But her husband could not comfort himself
fi2
THE BLACK FEATHER
with this thought as he turned to the shop of
madame her aunt, who was also a trader.
It had surprised the Indian widow, who betrothed
her own daughter to the commandant of the fort,
that her husband's niece would have nobody but
that big voyageur (jharle' Charette. Though in
those days of the young century a man might become
anything; for the West was before him, an empire,
and woodcraft was better than learning. Madame
Laboise accepted her niece's husband with kindness.
Her house was among the most hospitable in Macki-
nac, and she was chagrined at the reception the
young man had met.
He sat down on her counter, whirling his cap
and caressing the black feather in it. The gentle
Chippewa woman could see that his childish pride
in this trophy was almost as great as his trouble.
"What had 'Tite lacked? he wanted to know. Had
he not good credit at the stores? Tonnerre! — 'f
madame would pardon him — was not his entire
year's wage at the girl's service ? Had he spent
money on himself, except for tobacco and necessary
buckskins? Madame knew a voyageur was allowed
to carry scarce twenty pounds of baggage in the
boats.
Did 'Tite want a better man? Let madame look
at the black feather in his cap. The crow di i not
fly that could furnish a quill he could not take from
any man in his brigade. Charle' threw out the arch
of his beautiful torso. And he loved her. Madame
knew what tears he had shed, what serenades he had
33
THE BLACK FEATHER
played on his fiddle under 'Tite's window, and how
he had outdanced her other partners. He dropped
his head on his breast and picked at the crow's
feather.
The widow Laboise pitied hira. But who could
account for 'Tite's whims? "When she heard the
boats were in sight she was frantic with joy. I
myself," asserted madame, " saw her clapping her
hands when we could catch the song of the return-
ing voyageurs. It was then ' Oh, my Charle'! my
Charle'!' But scarce have the men leaped on the
dock when off she goes and locks the door of her
bedroom. It is 'Tite. I can say no more."
"What offended her?"
" I know of nothing. You have been as good a
husband as a voyageur could be. And Mackinac
is so dull in winter she can amuse herself but little.
It was hard for her to wait j'^our return. Now she
will not look at you. It is very silly."
What would Madame Laboise advise him to do?
Madame would advise him to wait as if nothing
had occurred. The cure would admonish 'Tite if
she continued her sulking. In the mean time hv.
must content himself with tenting or lodging among
his fellow-voyageurs.
Of the two or three thousand voyageurs and
clerks, one hundred lived in the agency house, five
hundred were accommodated in barracks, but the
majority found shelter in tents and in the houses of
the villagers. Every night of the fur-trading month
there was a ball in Mackinac, given either by the
24
THE BLACK FEATHER
householders or their guests; and it often happened
that a man spent in one month all he had earned
by his year of tremendous and far-reaching toil.
But he had society, and what was to him the cream
of existence, while it lasted. He fitted himself out
with new shirts and buckskins, sashes, caps, neips,
and moccasins, and when he was not on duty
showed himself like a hero, knife in sheath, a weath-
er-browned and sinewy figure. To dance, sing,
drink, and play the violin, and have the scant dozen
white women, the half-breeds, and squaws of Macki-
nac admire him, was a voyageur's heaven — its brief
duration being its charm. For he was a born
woodsman and loved his life.
Charle' Charette did not care where he lodged.
Neither had he any heart to dance, until he looked
through the door of the house where festivities be-
gan that season and saw 'Tite Laboise footing it
with Etienne St. Martin. Parbleu ! "With Etienne
St. Martin, the squab little lard-eater whose brother,
Alexis St. Martin, had been put into doctors' books
on account of having his stomach partly shot away,
and a valve forming over the rent so that his diges-
tion could be watched. It was disgusting. 'Tite
would not speak to her own husband, but she would
come out before all Mackinac and dance with any
other voyageurs who c wded about her. Charle'
sprang into the house hii .self, and without looking
at his wife, hilariousl}^ led other women to the best
places, and danced with every sinuous and graceful
curve of his body. 'Tite did not look at him. From
26
THE BLACK FEATHER
the corner of his eye he noted how perfect she was,
the fiend ! and how well she had dressed herself on
his money. All the brigades knew his trouble by
that time, and an easy breath was drawn by his en-
tertainers when he left the house with knife still
sheathed. In the wilderness the will of a brigade
commander was law ; but when the voyageur was
out of the Fur Com| any's yard in Mackinac his
own will was law.
One of the cautious clerks suggested that Charle'
and Etienne be separated in their work, since it was
likely the husband might quarrel with 'Tite Laboise's
dancing partner.
" Turn 'em in together, man," chuckled the Scotch
agent, liobert Stuart, who had charge of the out-
side work. " Let 'em fight. Man Gurdon, I havena
had any sport with these wild lads since the boats
came in."
But the combatants he hoped to see worked
steadily until afternoon without coming to the
grip. They had no brute Anglo-Saxon antagonism,
and being occupied with dilferent bales, did not
face each other.
The triple row of Indian lodges baskod on the
incurved beach, where a thousand Indians had
gathered to celebrate that vivid month. Night
and day the thump of their drums and the monot-
onous chant of their dances could be heard above
the rush and whisper of blue water breaking on
pebbles.
Lake Alichigan was a deep sapphire color, and
26
THE BLACK FEATHER
from where she stood below the sally-port 'Tite
Laboise could see the mainland's rim of beach and
slopes of forest near and distinct in transparent
light. And she could hear the farthest shaking of
echoes from island to island like a throb of some
sublime wind instrument. The whitewashed block-
house at the west angle of the fort shone a marble
turret. There was a low meadow between the Fur
Company's yard and pine heights. Though no salt
tang came in the wind, it blew sweet, refreshing
the men at their dog-chiy labor. And all the spell
of that island, which since it rose from the water it
has held, lay around them.
Etienne St. Martin picked up a beaver-skin, and
in the sight of 'Tite Laboise her husband laid hold
of it. ,
" Kelease that, Mange'-du-lard," he said.
" Eh bien !" respoiuled Etienne, knowing that he
was challenged and tlie e^'es of the whole yard wore
on him. " This fine crow he claims all Mackinac
because he carries a black feather in his cap. Tliere
are black feathers in other brigades."
" But you never wore one in any brigade."
They dropped the skin and faced each other, feel-
ing the fastenings of their belts. Old Robert
Stuart slipped up a window in the office and
grinned slyly out at the men surging towards that
side of the yard. lie would not usually permit a
breach of discipline. l>ut the winter had been so
long !
'' Myself I have no need of black feathers."
27
THE BLACK FEATHER
Etienne gave an insolent cast of the eye to the
height where 'Tite Laboise stood.
Charle', magnificent of inches, scorned his less-
developed antagonist.
" Eh, man Gurdon," softly called old Eobert
Stuart from his window, " set them to it, will ye ?
The lads will be jawing till the morn's morn."
This equivocal order had little effect on the or-
dained course of a voyageur's quarrel.
" These St. Martins without stomachs, how is a
man to hit them? — pouf !" said Charle', and Etienne
felt on his tender spot the cruel allus.on to his
brother Alexis, whose stomach had been made
public property. He began to shed tears of wrath.
"I will take your scalp for that! As for the
black feather, I trample it under my foot !"
" Let me see you trample it. And my head is
not so easily scalped as your brother's stomach."
All the time they were dancing around each
other in graceful and menacing feints. But now
they chnohed, and Charle' Charette, when the
struggle had lasted two or three minutes, took his
antagonist like a puppy and flung him revolving to
the ground. He hitched his belt and glanced up
towards the sally-port as he stood back laughing.
Etienne was on foot with a tiger's bound. He
had no chance with the wearer of the black feather,
as everybody in the yard knew, and usually a beat-
en antagonist was ready to shake hands after a few
trials of strength. But he seized one of the knives
used in opening packs and struck at the victor's
28
THE BLACK FEATHEfe
side. As soon as he had struck and the bloody knife
came back in his hand he crouched and rolled his
eyes around in apology. No man was afraid of
sheddino^ blood in those ^ 'S, but he felt he had
gone too far — that his quarrel was not sufficiently
grounded. He heard a woman's scream, and the
sliarp checking exclamation of his master, and felt
himself seized on each side. There was much con-
fusion in his mind and in the yard, but he knew
'Tite Laboise flew through the gate and past him,
and he tried to propitiate her by a look.
"Pig!" she projected at him like a missile, and
he sat down on tlie ground between the guards who
were trying to hold him up and wept copiously.
"I didn't want to have trouble with that
Charle' Charette and that 'Tite Laboise," explained
Etienne. "And I don't want any black feather.
It was mv brother's stomach. On account of my
bro*^,her's stomach I have to light. If they do not
let my brother's stomach aione, I will have to kill
the whole brigade."
But Charle' Charette walked into the Fur Com-
pany's building feeling nothing but disdain for the
puny stock of St. Martin, as he held out his arm
and let the blood drip from a little wound that
stained his calico shirt-sleeve. The very neips
around his ankles seemed to tingle with desire to
kick poor Etienne.
It was not necessary to send for the surgeon of
the fort. Ilobort Stuart dressed the wound, salv-
ing it with the rebukes which he knew discipline
. 29
THE BLACK FEATHER
demanded, and making them as strong as his own
enjoyment had been. He promised to break the
head of every voyageur in the yard with a board if
{mother quarrel occurred. And he pretended not
to see the culprit's trembling wife, that little besom
whose caprices had set the men by the ears ever
since she was old enough to know the figures of a
dance, yet for whom he and Mrs. 8tuart had a
warm corner in their iiearts, Siie had caused the
first fracas of the season, moreover. He went out
and slammed the office door, ordering the men
away from it.
" Bring me yon Etienne St. Martin," command-
ed Mr. Stuart, preparing his arsenal of strong lan-
guage. " I'll have a word with yon carl for this."
The noise of the one-sided conflict could be heard
in the office, but 'Tite remained as if she heard
nothing, with her head and arms on the desk. Her
husband took up the cap with the black feather,
which he had thrown off in the presence of his su-
perior. He rested it against his side, his elbow
pointing a triangle, and waited aggressively for her
to speak. The back of her pretty neck and fine
tendrils of curly hair ruffied above it were very
moving; but his heart swelled indignantly.
" 'Tite Laboise, why did you shut the door in
my face when I came back to you after a year's
absence?"
She answered faintly, "Me, I don't know."
"And dance with Etienne St. Martin until I am
obliged to whip him?"
80
THE B1.ACK FExVTHER
" Me, I don't know."
" Yes, you do know. You have concealments,"
he accused, and she made no defence. " This is the
case : you run to the dock to see the boats come
in ; you are joyful until you watch me step ashore;
I look for 'Tite ; her back is disappearing at the
corner of the street. Eh bien ! I say, she would
rather meet me in the house. I fly to the house.
My wife refuses to see me."
'Tite made no answer.
" What have I done ?" Charle' spread his hands.
" My commandant has no complaint to make of me.
It is Charle' Charette who leads on the trail or
breaks a road where there is none, and carries the
heaviest pack of furs, and pulls men out of the
water when they are drowning; it is Charle' Cha-
rette who can best endure fasting when the rations
run low, and can hunt and bring in meat when other
voyageurs lie exhausted about tlie camp-fire. I am
no little lard-eater from Caiuida, brother to a man
with a stomach having no lid. Look at that."
Charle' shook the decorated cap at her. "I wear
tlie black feather of my brigade. That means that
I am the best man in it."
His wife reared her head. She was like the wihl
sweet-brier roses which crowded alluvial strips of
the island, fragrant and pink and bristhng. " Yes,
monsieur, that black feather — regard it. Me, I am
sick of that black featlier. You say I have con-
cealments. I have. All winter I go lonely. The
ice is massed on the lake ; the snow is so deep, the
81
THE BLACK FEATHER
wind is keener than a knife ; I weep for my hus-
band away in tho wilderness, believing he thinks
of me. Eh bien ! he comes back to Mackinac. It
is as you say : I fly to meet him, my breath chokes
me. But my husband, what does he do ?" She
looked him up and down with wrathful eyes. " He
does not see 'Tite. He sees nothing but that black
feather in his cap that he must take off and show
to Monsieur Ramsay Crooks and Monsieur Stuart
— while his wife suffocates."
Charle' shrunk from his height, and his mouth
opened like a fish's. " But I thought you would be
proud of it."
" Me, what do I care how many men you have
thrown down ? You do not like me an}'^ better be-
cause you have thrown down all the men in your
brigade."
" She is jealous — jealous of a feather !"
Humbled as he was by her tongue, the young
voyageur felt delighted at giving his wife so trivial
a rival.
He settled his belt and approached her and
bowed. "Madame, permit me to offer you this
black quill, which I have won for your sake, and
which I boasted of to my masters that they might
know you have not thrown yourself away on the
poorest creature in Mackinac. Destroy it, ma-
dame. It was only the poor token of my love for
you."
Graceful and polite as all the voyageurs were,
Charle' Charette was the prince of them with his
33
THE BLACK FEATHER
big sweet presence as he bent. 'Tite flew at him
and flung her arms around his neck. After the
manner of Latin peoples, they instantly shed tears
upon each other, and the black feather was crushed
between their breasts.
THE COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S
KITCHEN
EARLY in the Mackinac summer Owen Cun-
ning took his shoemaker's bench and all his
belongings to that open cavern on the beach
called the Devil's Kitchen, which was said to de-
rive its name from former practices of the Indians.
They roasted prisoners there. The inner rock re-
tained old smoke-stains.
Though appearing a mere hole in the cliff to
passing canoe-men, the Devil's Kitchen was really
as large as a small cabin, rising at least seven feet
from a floor which sloped down towards the water.
Overhead, through an opening which admitted his
body, Owen could reach a natural attic, just large
enough for his bed if he contented himself wnth
blankets. And an Irishman prided himself on
being tough as any French voyageur who slept
blanketed on snow in the winter wilderness.
The rock w^as full of pockets, enclosing pebbles
and fragments. B}^ knocking out the contents of
these, Owen made cupboards for his food. As for
clothes, what Mackinac- Islander of the working-
34
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
class, in those days of the Fur Company's prosper-
ity, needed more than he had on? When his
clothes wore out, Owen could go to the traders'
and buy more. He washed his other shirt in the
lake at his feet, and hung it on the cedars to dry
by his door. "Warm evenings, when the sun had
soaked itself in limpid ripples until its crimson
spread through them afar, Owen stripped himself
and went bathing, with strong snorts of enjoyment
as he rose from his plunge. The narrow lake rim
was littered with fragments which had once filled
the cavern. Two large pieces afforded him a table
and a seat for his visitors.
Owen had a choice of water for his drinking.
Not thirty feet away on his right a spring burst
from the cliff and gushed through its little pool
down the beach. It was cold and delicious.
In the east side of the Kitchen was a natural
tiny fireplace a couple of feet high, screened by
cedar fohage from the lake wind. Here Owen
cooked his meals, and the smoke was generally car-
ried out from his flueless hearth. The straits were
then full of fish, and he had not far to throw his
lines to reach deep water.
Dependent on the patronage of Mackinac village,
the Irishman had chosen the very shop which would
draw notice upon himself. His customers tramped
out to him along a rough beach under the heights,
which helped to wear away the foot-gear Owen
mended. They stood grinning amiably at his snug
quarters. It was told as far as Drummond Island
_ 35
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
and the Sault that a cobbler lived in the Devil's
Kitchen on Mackinac.
He was a happy fellow, his clean Irish skin
growing rosier in air pure as the air of mid-ocean.
The lake spread in variegated copper lights almost
at his feet. lie did not like Mackinac village in
summer, when the engages were all back, and Ind-
ians camped tribes strong on the beach, to receive
their money from the government. French and
savages shouldered one another, the multitude of
them making a great hubbub and a gay show of
clothes like a fair. Every voyageur was sparring
with every other voyageur. A challenge by the
poke of a fist, and lo ! a ring is formed and two are
fighting. The whipped one gets up, shakes hands
with his conqueror, and off they go to drink to-
gether. Owen despised such fighting. His way
was to take a club and break heads, and see some
blood run on the ground. It was better for him
to dwell alone than to be stirred up and left un-
satisfied.
It was late in the afternoon, and the fresh smell
of the water cheered him as he sat stitching on a
pair of deer-hide shoes for one Leon Baudette, an
engage, who was homesick for Montreal. The
lowering sun smote an hour-glass of light across
the strait which separated him from St. Ignace on
the north shore, the old Jesuit station. Mother-
of-pearl clouds hung over the southern mainland,
and the wash of the lake, which was as pleasant as
silence itself, diverted his mind from a distant
COBBLEPw IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
thump of Indiuu drums. lie knew how laz}'^, naked
warriors lay in their lodges, bumping a mallet on
stretched deer-hide and droning barbarous raono-
tones while they kicked their heels in a^r. If he
despised anything more than the way the French
diverted themselves, it was the way the Indians
diverted themselves.
Without a sound there came into Owen's view
on the right an Indian girl. He was at first taken
by surprise at her coming over the moss of the
spring. The shaggy cliff, clothed, like the top of
his cave, with cedars, white birch, and pine, afforded
no path to the beach in that direction. All his
clients approached by the lake margin at the left.
Then he noticed it was Blackbird, a Sac girl, who
had been pointed out to his critical eye the previous
summer as a beauty. Owen admitted she was not
bad-looking for a squaw. Her burnished hair,
which had got her the name, was drawn down to
cheeks where copper and vermilion infused the skin
with a wonderful sunset tint. She was neatly and
precisely dressed in the woman's skirt and jacket
of her tribe, even her moccasins showing no trace
of the scramble she must have had down some
secret cliff descent in order to approach the cob-
bler unseen.
He greeted her with the contemptuous affability
which an Irishman bestows upon a heathen. Black-
bird was probably a good communicant of some
wilderness mission, but this brought her no nearer
to a son of Ireland.
37
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
"Good-day to the quane! And what may she
be wanting the day?"
Blackbird's eyes, without the snake-restlessness
of her race, dwelt unmoving upon him. Owen sur-
mised she could not understand his or any other
kind of English, being accustomed to no tongue but
her own, except the French which the engages
talked in their winter camps. She stood upright
as a pine without answering.
It flashed through him that there might be trouble
in the village ; and Blackbird, having regard for him,
as we think it possible any human being may have
for us, was there to bid him escape. With coldness
around the roots of his hair, he remembered the
massacre at Fort Michilimackinac — a spot almost
in sight across the strait, where south shore ap-
proaches north shore at the mouth of Lake Michigan.
He laid down his boot. His lips dropped apart,
and with a hush of the sound — if such a sound can
be hushed — he imitated the Indian war-whoop.
Blackbird did not smile at the uncanny screech,
but she relaxed her face in stoic amusement, reliev-
ing Owen's tense breathing. There was no plot.
The tribes merely intended to draw their money,
get as drunk as possible, and depart in peace at the
end of the month with various outfits to winter
posts.
" Uegorra, but that was a narrow escape!" sighed
Owen, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He was
able to detect the deference that Blackbird paid
him by this visit. He sat on his bench in the
38
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
Kitchen, a sunny idol in a shrine, indifferent to the
effect his background gave him.
His mouth puckered. He put up his leather
stained hand coyly, and motioned her unmoving
figure back.
" Ah, go 'way ! Wasn't it to escape you and the
likes of you that I made me retrate to the shore?
Nayther white, full haythen, half, nor quarther
nade apply. To come makin' the big eyes at me,
and the post swarmin' wid thim that do be ready
to marry on any woman at the droppin' of the hat!"
Mobile blue water with rip|)le and wash made a
background for the Indian girl's dense repose. She
could by lifting her e3^es see the pock-marked front
of Owen's Kitchen, and gnarled roots like exposed
ribs in the shaggy heights above. But she kept
her eyes lowered; and Owen stuck his feet under
his bench, sensitive to defects in his foot-wear,
which an artist skilled in making and mending
moccasins could detect.
Blackbird moved forward and laid a shining dot
on the stone he used as his table; then, without a
word, she turned and disappeared the way she
came, over the moss of the spring rivulet.
Owen left his bench and craned after her. He
did not hear a pebble roll on the stony beach or a
twig snap among foliage.
"Begorra, it's the wings of a say -gull!" said
Owen, and he took up her offering. It was a tiny
gold coin. Mackinac was full of gold the month
the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from
39
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
Washington, under the escort of soldiers, to the
United States Agency, a-nd was weighed out to each
red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his
due proportion, and immediately grasped from the
improvident by mei'chants, for a little pork, a little
whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin
with a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from
neck or ear; the precious trinket of a girl. On one
side was rudely scratched the outline of a bird.
" Begorra!" said Owen. He hid it in one of the
rock pockets, a trust in a savings-bank, and sat
down again to work, trying to discover Blackbird's
object in offering tribute to him.
About sunset he lighted a fire in his low grate to
cook his supper, and put the finished boots in a re-
mote corner of the cave until he should get his pay.
As he expected, Leon Baudette appeared, picking
a barefooted way along the beach, with many com-
plimentary greetings. The war}^ cobbler stood be-
tween the boots and his client, ind responded with
open cordiality. A voyageur who gave flesh and
bone and sometimes life itself for a hundred dollars
a year, and drank that hundred dollars up during
his month of semi-civilization on Mackinac, seldom
liatl much about him with which to pay for his
necessary mending.
Leon Baudette swore at the price, being a dis-
contented engage. But the foot-wear he was obliged
to have, being secretly determined to desert to
Canada before the boats went out. You may see
bis name marked as a deserter in the Fur Company's
40
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
books at Mackinac Island. So, reluctantly counting
out the money, he put on his shoes and crossed his
legs to smoke anil chat, occupying the visitor's seat.
Owen put his kettle to boil, and sat down also to
enjoy society; for why should man be hurried?
He learned how many figiits had been fought
that day; how many bales of furs were packed in
the Company's yard; that fitienne St. Martin was
tr3'ing to ship with the Northern instead of the
Illinois Brigade, on account of a grudge against
Charle' Charette. lie learned that the Indians were
having snake and medicine dances to cure a con-
sumptive chief. And, to his surprise, he learned that
he was considered a medicine-man among the tribes,
on account of his living unmolested in the Devil's
Kitchen.
" O oui," declared Leon. " You de wizard. You
only play you mend de shoe; but, by gar, you make
de poor voyageur pay de same like it was work! I
hear dey call you Big AEedicine of de Cuisine Diable."
Owen was compelled to smile with pleasure at his
importance, his long upper lip lifting its unshaven
bristles in a white curd.
'' Do ye moind, Leen me boy, a haythen Injun
lady by the name of Bhickbird ?"
"Me, I know Blackbird," responded Leon Bau-
dette.
"Is the consoompted chafe that they're makin'
the snake shindy for married on her ?''
" No, no. Blackbird she wife of Jean Magliss in
de winter camps."
a
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
" John McGillis? Is it for marry in' on a hay then
wife he is?"
" O OLii. Two wives. One good Cat'olique. Jean
Magliss, he dance every night now with Amable
Morin's girh The more weddings, the more dancing.
Me," Leon shrugged, " I no want a woman eating
my wa^es in. Maclcinac. A squaw in the winter
camps — *t assez."
"Two wives, the bog-trotter!" gulped Owen.
"John McGillis is a blayguardi"
" Oui, what you call Irish," assented Leon ; and
he dodged, but the cobbler threw notliing at him.
Owen marked with the awl on his own leather apron.
" First a haythen and then a quarther-brade," he
tallied against his countryman. " He will be takin'
his quarther-brade to the praste before the boats go
out?"
Leon raised fat eyebrows. " Amable Morin, he
no fool. It is six daughters he has. O oui; the
marriage is soon made."
" And the poor haythen, what does she do now?"
"BlackbiM? She watch Jean ]\Iagliss dance.
Then she leave her lodge and take to de ])ine wood.
Blackbird ver fond of what you call de Irish."
Owen was little richer in the gift of expression
than the Indian woman, but he could feel the
traged}'^ of her unconfirmed marriage. A squaw
was taken to her lord's wigwam, and remained as
long as shQ pleased him. He could divorce her
with a gift, proportioned to his means and her
worth.
43
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
"When Leon Baudette departed, Owen prepared
and ate his supper, brewing himself some herb tea
and seasoning it with a drop of whiskey.
The evening beauty of the lake, of coasts melting
in general dimness, and that iridescent stony hook
stretched out from Round Island to grapple passing
craft, was lost on Owen. Humid air did not soften
the glower which grew and hardened on his visage
as he made his preparations for night. These were
very simple. The coals of drift-wood soon died to
Avhite ashes in his grate. To close the shop was to
stand upon the shoemaker's bench and reach for the
ladder in his attic — a short ladder that just per-
formed its office and could be hidden aloft.
Drawing his stairway after him when he had as-
cended, Owen spread and arranged his blankets.
The ghosts that rose from tortured bodies in the
Kitchen below never worked any terror in his
imagination when he went to bed. Kather, he lay
stretched in his hard cradle gloating over the stars,
his wild security, the thousand night aspects of
nature which he could make part of himself with-
out expressing. For him the moon cast gorgeous
bridges on the water; the breathing of the woods
was the breathing of a colossal brother; and when
that awful chill which precedes the resurrection of
day rose from the earth and started from the rock,
he turned comfortably in his thick bedding and
taxed sleepy eyes to catch the wanness coming over
the lake.
But instead of lying down in his usual peace
43
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
when the nest was made to suit him, Owen wheeled
and hung undecided legs over the edge of his loft.
Then lie again put down tlie ladder and descended.
He had trod the three-quarters of a mile of beach
to the village but once since the boats came in.
Now that his mind was fixed he took to it again
with a loping step, bending his body forward and
grasping his cap to butt through trailing foliage.
As he passed the point and neared the post, its
Ware and hubbub burst on him, and its torch-light
and many twinkling candles. lie proceeded beside
the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the
entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge,
evening fires were built, throwing streamers of
crimson flicker on the lake. Naked pappooses
gathered around these at pla}''. But on an open flat
betwixt encampment and village rose a lighted
tabernacle of blankets stretched on poles and up-
ricrhts; and within this the adult Indians were
crowded, celebrating the orgy of the medicine-dance.
Their noise kept a continuous roll of echoes moving
across the islands.
Owen made haste to pass this carnival of invocation
and plunge into the swarming main street of Mack-
inac, where a thousand voyageurs roved, ready to
embrace any man and call him brother and press
him to drink with them. Broad low houses with
huge chimney-stacks and dormer-windows stood
open and hospitable; for Mackinac was en fete
while the fur season lasted. One huge storage-room,
a wing of the Fur Company's building, was lighted
44
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
with candles around the sides for the nightly ball.
Squared dark joists of timber showed overhead.
The fiddlers sat on a raised platform, playing in
ecstasy. The dark, shining floor was thronged with
dancers, who, before primrose-color entirely with-
drew from evening twilight, had rushed to their
usual amusement. Half-breeds, quarter-breeds, six-
teenth-breeds, Canadian French, Americans, in
finery that the Northwest was able to command
from marts of the world, crossed, joined hands, and
whirled, the rhythmic tread of feet sounding like
the beating of a great pulse. The doors of double
timber stood open. From where he paused outside,
Owen could see mighty hinges stretching across the
whole width of these doors.
And he could see John McGillis moving among
the most agile dancers. When at last the music
stopped, and John led Amable Morin's girl to one
of the benches along the wall, Owen was conscious
that an Indian woman crossed the lighted space
behind him, and he turned and looked full at Black-
bird, and she looked full at him. But she did not
stay to be included in the greeting of John McGil-
lis, though English might be better known to her
than Owen had supposed.
John came heartily to the door and endeavored
to pull his countryman in. He was a much younger
man than Owen, a handsome, light-haired voyageur,
with thick eyelids and cajoling blue eyes. John
was the only Irish engage in the brigades. The
sweet gift of blarney dwelt on his broad red lips.
40
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
He looked too amiable and easily entreated, too
much in love with life, indeed, to quarrel with any
one. Yet as Owen answered his invitation by a
quick pass that struck his cheek, his color mounted
with zest, and he stepped out, turning up his sleeves.
" Is it a foight ye want, ye old wizard from the
Divil's Kitchen?" laughed John, still good-natured.
"It's a foight I want," responded Owen. "It's
a foight I'm shpilin' for. Come out forninst the
place, where the shlobberin' Frinch can lave a man
be, and I'll shpake me moind."
John walked bareheaded with him, and they pass-
ed around the building to a fence enclosing the Fur
Company's silent yard. Stockades of sharp-pointed
cedar posts outlined gardens near them. A smell
of fur mingled with odors of sweetbrier and loam.
Again the violins excited that throb of dancing feet,
and John McGillis moved his arms in time to the
music.
" Out wid it, Owen. I'm losin' me shport."
"John McGillis, are ye not own cousin to me by
raisin of marryin' on as fine a colleen as iver
shtepped in Ireland?"
" I am, Owen, I am."
" Did ye lave that same in sorrow, consatin' to
fetch her out to Ameriky whin yer fortune was
made?"
" I did, Owen, I did."
" Whin ye got word of her death last year, was ye
a broken-hearted widdy or was ye not?"
" I was, Owen, I was."
46
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
" John McGillis, do ye call yerself a widdy now,
or do ye not call yerself a widdy ?"
"I do, Owen, I do."
" Thin ye' re the loire," and Owen slapped his face.
For a minute there was danger of manslaughter
as they dealt each other blows with sledge fists. In-
stead of clinching, they stood apart and cudgelled
fiercely with tlie knuckled hand. The first round
ended in blood, which John wiped from his face
with a new bandanna, and Owen flung contemptu-
ously from his nose with finger and thumb. The
lax-muscled cobbler wtis no match for the fresh and
vigorous voyageur, and he knew it, but went
stubbornly to work again, saying, grimly:
" I've shpiled yer face for the gu'urls the night,
bedad."
They pounded each other Avithout mercy, and
again rested, Owen this time leaning against the
fence to breathe.
"John McGillis, are ye a widdy or are ye not a
widdy?" he challenged, as soon as he could speak.
" I am, Owen Cunnin', I am," maintained John.
"Thin I repate ye're the loire!" And once mci-e
they came to the ])rocf, until Owen lay upon the
ground kicking to keep his opponent off.
"Will I bring ye the dhrop of whiskey, Owen?"
suggested John, tenderly.
His cousin by marriage crawled to the fence and
sat up, without replying.
" I've the flask in me pouch, Owen."
" Kape it there."
47
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
" But sure if ye foight wid me ye'U dhrink Tvid
me?"
" I'll not dhrink a dhrop wid ye."
The cobbler panted heavily. " The loikes of 3^ou
that do be goin' to marry on a Frinch quarther-brade,
desavin' her, and the father and the mother and the
praste, that you do be a widdy."
" I am a widdy, Owen."
The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back,
repeating, at the top of his breath, " Ye're the loire !"
"What do ye mane?" sternly demanded John.
" Ye know I've had me throuble. Ye know I've
lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year gone.
Was the praste that wrote the letther a loire ?"
" I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye
think ye are."
John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasp-
ing him by the collar. Candle-light across the
street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not reveal
faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was
an outcome of his own inward convulsion. He be-
longed to a class in whom memory and imagination
were not strong, being continually taxed by a pres-
ent of large action crowded wMth changing images.
But when his past rose up it took entire possession
of him.
" Why didn't ye tell me this before?"
" I've not knowed it the long time meself."
" What towken have ye got?"
" Towken enough for you and me."
"Show it to me." - •
48
C0B6LER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
" I will not."
" Ye're desavin' me. Ye have no towken."
"Thin marry on yer quarther-brade if ye dare!"
To be unsettled and uninterested in his surround-
ings was John McGillis's portion during the remain-
ing weeks of his stay on the island. Half savage
and half tender he sat in his barracks and smoked
large pipes of tobacco.
He tramped out nearly every evening to the
Devil's Kitchen, and had wordy battles, which a
Frenchman would have called fights, with th<?
cobbler, though the conferences always ended by
his producing his ration and supping and smoking
there. He coaxed his cousin to show him the token,
vacillating between hope of inn)ossible news from
a wife he had every reason to believe dead, and
indignation at being made the sport of Owen's
stubbornness. Learning in the Fur Company's
office that Owen had received news from the old
country in the latest mail sent out of New York, he
was beside himself, and Amable Morin's girl was
forgotten. He began to believe he had never
thought of her.
" Sure, the old man Morin and me had some words
and a dhrink over it, was all. I did but dance wid
her and pinch her cheek. A man niver knows what
he does on Mackinac till he comes to himself in the
winter camps wid a large family on his moind."
" The blarney of your lip doesn't desave me, John
McGillis," responded his cousin the cobbler, with
grimness.
49
COBBLER IN TUE DEVIL'S KlTCHExV
" But whin will ye give me the word you've got,
Owen?"
" I'll not give it to ye till the boats go out."
"Will ye tell me, is the colleen alive, thin?"
" I've tould ye ye' re not a widdy."
" If the colleen is alive, the towken would be sint
to me."
"Thin ye've got it," said Owen.
Poor John smoked, biting hard on his pipe-stem.
Ignorance, and the helplessness of a limited man
who is more a good animal than a discerning soul;
time, the slow transmission of news, his fixed state
as a voyageur — all these things were against him.
He could not adjust himself to any facts, and his
feelings sometimes approached the melting state.
It was no use to war with Owen Cunning, whom he
was ashamed of handhng roughly. The cobbler
sat with swollen and bandaged face, talking out of
a slit, still bullvinoj him.
7 €/ CD
But the time came for his brigade to go out, and
then there was action, decision, positive life once
more. It went far northward, and was first to
depart, in order to reach winter-quarters before snow
should fly.
At the log dock the boats waited, twelve of them
in this outfit, each one a mighty Argo, rowed by a
dozen pairs of oars, and with centre-piece for step-
ping a mast. Hundreds of pounds they could carry,
and a crew of fifteen men. The tarpaulin used for
a night covering and to shelter the trading-goods
from storms was large as the roof of a house.
50
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
Quiescent on lapping water they rested, their loads
and each man's baggage of twenty or fewer pounds
packed tightly to place.
The cobbler from the Devil's Kitchen was in the
crowd thronging dock and shore. The villagers
w^ere there, saying farewells, and all the voyageurs
who were soon to go out in other brigades snuffed
as war-horses ready for the charge. The life of the
woods, which was their true life, again drew them.
They could scarcely wait. Dancing and love-making
suddenly cloyed; for a man was made to conquer
the wilderness and take the spoils of the earth.
Woodsman's habits returned upon them. The frip-
pery of the island was dropped like the withes
which bound Samson. Their companions the Ind-
ians were also making ready the canoes. Black-
bird stood erect behind the elbow of John McGillis
as he took leave of his cousin the cobbler.
"Do ye moind, Owen," exclaimed John, turning
from the interests of active life to that which had
disturbed his spirit, convinced unalterably of his
own widowed state, yet harrowed unspeakably, " ye
promised to show me that word from the old
counthry before the boats wint out."
" I niver promised to show ye any word from the
old counthry," responded Owen, having his mouth
free of bandages and both eyes for the boats.
"Ye tould me ye had a towken from the old
counthry."
" I niver tould ye I had a towken from the old
counthry."
61
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
" Ye did tell me ye had a towken."
" I have."
" Ye said it proved I was not a widdy."
"I did."
" Show me that same, thin."
" I will."
Owen looked steadily past John's shoulder at
Blackbird, and laid in John's hand a small gold coin
with a hole in it, on one side of which was rudely
scratched the outline of a bird.
John McGillis's face burned red, and many ex-
pressions besides laughter crossed it. Like a child
detected in fault, he looked shisepishly at Owen and
glanced behind his shoulder. The faithful sunset-
tinted face of Blackbird, immovable as a fixed star,
regarded the battered cobbler as it might have
regarded a great raanitou when the island was
young.
''How did you come b}?" this, Owen?"
" I come by it from one that had throuble. Has
yerself iver seen it before, John McGillis ?"
" I have."
" Is it a towken that ye're not a widdy?"
" It is."
The boats went out, and Blackbird sat in her Irish
husband's boat, on his baggage. Oars flashed, and
the commandant's boat led the way. Then the life
of the Northwest rose like a great wave — the
voyageurs' song chanted by a hundred and fifty
throats, with a chorus of thousands on the shore :
52
COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
^
Dans les chan - tiers nous hi - ver - ne - rons !
m
^-^
I^EPlE
-0-
-t:
I — I-
-N-
V ^ — ' ' — I
I
Dans les clian - tiers nous hi - ver - ne - rons !
When Owen returned to his Kitchen he found a
robe of the finest beaver folded and laid on his
shoemaker's bench.
"Begorra!" observed the cobbler, shaking it out
and rubbing it against his cheek, " she has paid rae
a beaver-shkin and the spalpeen wasn't worrth it.
But she can kape him now till she has a moind to
turn him out herself. Whin a man marries on a
haythen, wid praste or widout praste, let him shtick
to his haythen."
THE SKELETON ON EOUND
ISLAND
On the \^th day of March, 1897, Tgnace Pelott died at Mack-
inac Island, aged ninety-three years.
The old quarter-breed, son of a half-breed Chippeica mother and
French father, took icith him into silence much icilderness lore of
tJie Northwest He was full of stories when warmed to recital,
though at the beginning of a talk his gentle eyes dwelt on the listener
with anxiety, and he tapped his forehead — " So many things gone
from there!" His habit of saying " Oh God, yes," or " Oh God,
no," was not in the least irreverent, but simply his mild icay of
using island English.
While water lapped the beach before his door and the sun smote
sparkles on the strait, he told about this adventure across the ics,
and his hearer has taken but few liberties with tlie recital.
I AM to carry Maraselle Kosalin of Green Bay
from Mackinac to Cheboygan that time, and
it is the end of March, and the wind have turn
from east to west in the morning. A man will go
out with the wijid in the east, to haul wood from
Boblo, or cut a hole to fish, and by night he cannot
get home — ice, it is rotten; it goes to pieces quick
when the March wind turns.
I am not afraid for me — long, tall fellow then ;
eye that can see to Point aux Pins; I can lift more
54
THE S .ii^LETON OX liOUNM) ISLAND
than any other man thj't goes in the boats to Green
B;iy or the Soo; can swim, run on snow-shoes, go
without eating two, three clays, and draw my belt
in. Sometimes the ice-Moes carry me miles, for they
all go east down the lakes when they start, and I
have landed the other side of Drummond. But
when you have a woman with you — Oh God, yes,
that is different.
The way of it is this: I have brought the mail
from St. Ignace with my traino — you know the
train-au-galise — the birch sledge with dogs. It is
flat, and turn up at the front like a toboggan. And
I have take the traino because it is not safe for a
horse; the wind is in the west, and the strait bends
and looks too sleek. Ice a couple of inches thick will
bear up a man and dogs. But this old ice a foot
thick, it is curning rotten. 1 have come from St.
Ignace early in the afternoon, and the people crowd
about to get their letters, and there is j\[amselle
Rosalin crying to go to Cheboygan, because her
lady has arrive tiiero sick, and has sent the letter a
week ago. Her friends say:
"It is too late to go to-day, and the strait is
dangerous."
She sav: ''I make a bundle and walk. I must
go when my lad}' is sick and her husband the lieu-
tenant is away, and she has need of me."'
Mamselle's friends talk and she cry. She runs
and makes a little bundle in the house and comes
out ready to walk to Cheboygan. There is nobody
can prevent her. Some island i)eople are descend
55
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
from noblesse of France. But none of them have
travel like Mamselle liosalin with the officer's wife
to Indiana, to Chicago, to Detroit. She is like me,
French.* Tlie girls use to turn their heads to see
me walk in to mass; but I never look grand as
Mamselle Rosalin when she step out to that ice.
I have not a bit of sense; I forget maman and
my brothers and sisters that depend on me. I run
to Mamselle Rosalin, take off my cap, and bow from
my head to my heel, like you do in the dance. I
will take her to Cheboygan with my traino — Oil
God, yes! And I laugh at the wet track the sledge
make, and pat my dogs and tell them they are not
tired. I wrap her up in the fur, and she thank me
and tremble, and look me through with her big black
eyes so that I am ready to go down in the strait.
The people on the shore hurrah, though some of
them cry out to warn us.
" The ice is cracked from Mission Point to the
hook of Round Island, Ignace Pelott !''
"I know that," I say. "Good-day, messieurs!"
The crack from Mission Point — under what you
call Robinson's Folly — to the hook of Round Island
always comes first in a breaking up; and I hold my
breath in my teeth as I skurry the dogs across it.
The ice grinds, the water follows the sledge. But
the sun is so far down in the southw^est, I think
"The wind will grow colder. The real thaw will
not come before to-morrow."
* The old fellow would not own the Chippewa.
56
«
^
d
►
SB
H
TPIE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
I am to steer betwixt the east side of Round
Island and Boblo. When we come into the shadow
of Boblo we are chill with damp, far worse than
the clear sharp air that blows from Canada. I lope
beside the traino, and not take my eyes off tlie
course to Cheboygan, except that I see the islands
look blue, and darkness strctcliing before its time.
The sweat drop off my face, yet I feel that wind
through my wool clothes, and am glad of the shelter
between Boblo and Round Island, for the strait
outside will be the worst.
There is an Indian burying-ground on open land
above the beach on that side of Round Island. I
look up when the thick woods are pass, for the sun-
set ouirht to show there. But what I see is a skele-
n
ton like it is sliding down hill from the graveyard
to the beacli. It does not move. The earth is wash
from it, and it hangs staring at me.
I cannot tell how that make me feel! I laugh,
for it is funny ; but I am ashame, like my father is
expose and Mamselle Rosalin can see him. If I do
not cover him again I am disgrace. 1 think I will
wait till some other day when I can get back from
Cheboygan; for what will she say if I stop the
traino when we have such a long journey, and it is
so near night, and the strait almost ready to move?
So I crack the whip, but something pull, pull! I
cannot go on! I say to myself, " The ground is
froze; how can I cover up that skeleton without
any shovel, or even a hatchet to break the earth?"
But something pull, pull, so I am oblige to stop,
57
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
and the dogs turn in without one word and drag
the sledge up the beach of Round Ishin(L
" What is the matter?" says MainscUe Rosalin.
She is out of the sledge as soon as it stops.
I not know what to answer, but tell her I have
to cut a stick to mend my whip-handle. I think I
will -cut a stick and rake some earth over the skele-
ton to cover it, and come another day with a shovel
and dig a new grave. The dogs lie down and pant,
and she looks through me with her big eyes like
she beg me to hurry.
But there is no danger she will see the skeleton.
We both look back to Mackinac. The island have
its hump up against the north, and the village in its
lap around the bay, and the Mission eastward near
the cliff; but all seem to be moving ! We run along
the beach of Hound Island, and then we see the
channel between that an 1 Boblo is moving too, and
the ice is like wet loaf-sugar, grinding as it floats.
We hear some roars away off, like cannon when
the Americans come to the island. My head swims.
I cross myself and know why something pull, pull,
to make me bring the traino to the beach, and I am
oblige to that skeleton who slide down hill to warn
me.
When we have seen Mackinac, we walk to the
other side and look south and southeast towards
Cheboygan. x\ll is the same. The ice is moving
out of the strait.
" We are strand on this island !" says Mamselle
Rosalin. "Oh, what shall we do?"
58
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
I tell her it is better to be prisoners on Round
Island than on a cake of ice in the strait, for I have
tried the cake of ice and know.
" We will camp and build a fire in the cove
opposite Mackinac," I say. "Maman and the
children will see the light and feel sure we are
safe."
" I have done wrong," says she. " If you lose
your life on this journey, it is my fault."
Oh God, no! I tell her. She is not to blame for
anything, and there is no danger. I have float
many a time when the strait breaks up, and not save
my hide so dry as it is now. We only have to stay
on Round Island till we can get off.
"And how long will that be?" she ask.
I shrug my shoulders. There is no telling. Some-
times the strait clears very soon, sometimes not.
Maybe two, three days.
Rosalin sit down on a stone.
I tell her we can make camp, and show signals to
Mackinac, and when the ice permit, a boat will be
sent.
She is crying, and I say her lady will be well.
No use to go to Cheboygan anyhow, for it is a week
since her lady sent for her. But she crj^ on, and I
think she vish I leave her alone, so I say I will get
wood. And I unharness the dogs, and run along
the beach to cover that skeleton before dark. I look
and cannot find him at all. Then I go up to the
graveyard and look down. There is no skeleton
anywhere. I have seen his skull and his ribs and
m
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
his arms and legs, all sliding down liill. But he is
gone!
The dusk close in upon the islands, and I not know
what to think — cross myself, two, three times; and
wish we hatl land on Boblo instead of Round Island,
though there are wild beasts on both.
But there is no time to be scare at skeletons that
slide down and disappear, for Mamselle Rosalin
must have her cam)) and her place to sleep. Every
man use to the bateaux have always his tinder-box,
his knife, his tobacco, but I have more tjjan that;
I have leave Mackinac so quick I forget to take out
the storekeeper's bacon that line the bottom of the
sledge, and Mamselle Rosalin sit on it in the furs!
AVe have plenty meat, and I sing like a voyageur
while I build the fire. Drift, so dry in summeryou
can light it with a coal from your pi])e, lay on the
beach, but is now winter-soaked, and I make a fire-
[)lace of logs, and cut pine branches to help it.
It is all thick woods on Round Island, so close it
tear you to pieces if 3'ou tiy to break through; only
four-footed things can crawl there. When the lire
is blazin^ up I take my knife and cut a tunnel like
a little room, and pile plenty evei'green branches.
This is to shelter Mamselle Rosalin, for the night is
so raw she shiver. Our tent is the sky, darkness,
and clouds. But I am happy. I unload the sledge.
Tiie bacon is wet. On long sticks the slices sizzle
and sing while I toast them, and the dogs come close
and blink by the fire, and lick their chops. Rosalin
laugh and 1 laugh, for it smell like a good kitchen-
GO
I TUINK THK CAMP GO AROUND AND AUOUND MK
THE SKELETON ON KOUND ISLAND
and we sit and eat nothing but toasted meat — better
than lye corn and tallow that you have when you
go out with the boats. Then I feed the dogs, and
she walk with me to the water edge, and we drink
with our hands.
It is my house, when we sit on the fur by the fire.
I am so light I want my fiddle. I wish it last like
a dream that Mamselle Rosalin and me keep house
together on Round Island. You not want to go to
heaven when the one you think about all the time
stays close by you.
But pretty soon I want to go to heaven quick.
I think I jump in the lake if maman and the chil-
dren had anybody but me. When I liglit my pipe
she smile. Then her great big eyes look off towards
Mackinac, and I turn and see the little far-away
lights.
" They know we are on Round Island together,"
I say to cheer her, and she move to the ed^^e of the
fur. Then she say " Good-night," and get up and
go to her tunnel-house in the bushes, and I jump up
too, and spread the fur there for her. And I not
get back to the fire before she make a door of all
the branches I have cut, and is hid like a squirrel.
I feel I dance for joy because she is in my camp for
me to guard. But what is that? It is a woman
that cry out loud by herself! I understand now
why she sit down so hopeless when we first land.
I have not know much about women, but I under-
stand how she feel. It is not her ladv, or the dark,
or the ice break up, or the cold. It is not Ignace
THE SKELETON ON KOUNl) ISLAND
Pelott. Tt is the name of being prison on liouncl
Island witli a man till the ice is out of the straits.
She is so shame she want to die. I think I will kill
myself. If Mamselle liosalin cry out loud once
more, I plunge in the lake — and then what become
of maman and the children?
She is quieter; and I sit down and cannot smoke,
and the dogs pity me. Old Sauvage lay his nose
on my knee. I do not say a word to him, but I pat
him, and we talk with our eyes, and the briglit camp-
fire shows each what the other is say.
"Old Sauvage," I tell him," I am not good man
like the priest. I have been out with the boats,
and in Indian camps, and I not had in my life a
chance to marry, because there are maman and the
children. But you know, old Sauvage, how I have
feel about Mamselle Ilosalin, it is three vears."
Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and an-
swer he know.
" I have love her like a dog that not dare to lick
her hand. And now she hate me because I am shut
on Round Island with her while the ice goes out.
I not good man, but it prett}^ tough to '^tand that."
Old Sauvage hit his tail on the ground and say,
" That so." I hear the water on the gravel like it
sound when we find a place to drink j then it is
plenty company, but now it is lonesome. The water
Ray to people on Mackinac, "Rosalin and Ignace
Pelott, they are on Round Island." What make
you proud, maybe, when you turn it and look at it
the other way, make you sick. But I cannot walk
63
THE SKELETON ON ROUNi: ISLAND
tho broken ice, and if I could, she would l)e lef alone
with the doo's. 1 think I will build another camp.
But soon there is a shaking in the bushes, and
Sauvage and his sledgemates bristle and stand up
and show their teeth. Out comes Mamselle Rosalin
with a scream to the other side of the fire.
I hav^e nothing except my knife, and I take a
chunk of burning wootl and go into her house.
Maybe I see some green eyes. I have handle vild-
cat skin too much not to know that smell in the
dark.
I take all the branches from Eosalin's house and
pile them by the fire, and spread the fur robe on
them. And I pull out red coals and put more logs
on before I sit down away off between her and the
spot where she hear that noise. If the graveyard
was over us, I would expect to see that skeleton
once more.
"What was it?" she whisper.
I tell her maybe a stray wolf.
" Wolves not eat people, mamselle, unless they
hunt in a pack ; and they run from fire. You know
what M'sieu' Cable tell about wolves that chase him
on the ice when he skate to Cheboygan? He come
to great wide crack in ice, he so scare he jump it
and skate right on ! Then he look back, and see
the wolves go in, head down, every wolf caught and
drown in the crack. It is two days before he come
home, and the east wind have blow to freeze that
crack over — and there are all the wolf tails, stick up,
froze stiff in a row ! He bring them home with him
63
THE SKELETON ON KOUND ISLAND
— but los them on the way, though he show the
knife that cut them off !"
" I have hear that," saj's Kosalin. " I think he
He."
" lie say he take his oat on a book,'' I tell her, but
we both laugh, and she is curl clown so close to the
lire her clieeks turn rosy. For a camp-fire will heat
the air all around until the world is like a big dark
room; and we are slielter from the wind. I am
glad she is begin to enjoy herself. And all the time
I have a hand on ni}' knife, and the cold chills down
my back where that hungrj^ vild-cat will set his
claws if he jump on me; and I cannot turn around
to face him because Hosalin thinks it is nothing but
a cowardly wolf that sneak away. Old Snuvage is
uneasy and come to me, his fangs all expose, but I
drive him back and listen to the bushes behind me.
" Sing, M'sieu' Pelott," says Kosalin.
Oh God, yes! it is easy to sing with a vild-cat
watch you on one side and a woman on the other !
" But I not know anything except boat songs."
" Sing boat songs."
So I sing like a bateau full of voyageurs, and
the dark echo, and that vild-cat must be astonish.
When you not care what become of you, and your
head is light and 3"our hear*^ like a stone on the beach,
you not mind vild-cats, but sing and laugh.
I cast my eye behin sometimes, and feel my knife.
It moke me smile to think what kind of creature
come to my house in the wilderness, and I say to
myself : " Hear my cat purr I This is the only time
64
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
I will ever have a home of my own, and the only
time the woman I want sit beside my fire."
Then I ask Rosalin to sing to me, and she sing
" .Malbrouck," like her father learn it in Kebec. She
watch me, and I know her eyes have more danger
for me than the vild-cat's. It ought to tear me to
pieces if I forget maman and the children. It ought
to be scare out the bushes to jump on a poor fool
like me. But I not stop entertain it — Oh God, no!
I say things that I never intend to say, like they
are pull out of my mouth. When your heart has
ache, sometime? it break up quick like the ice.
" There is Paul Pepin," I tell her. " He is a happy
man; he not trouble himself with anybody at all.
His father die; he let his mother take care of her-
self. He marry a wife, and get tired of her and turn
her off with two children. The priest not able to
scare him; h smoke and take his dram and enjoy
life. If I was Paul Pepin I would not be torment."
" But you are not torment," says Rosalin. '' Every-
body speak well of you."
"Oh God, yes," I tell her; "but a man not live
on the breath of his neighbors. I am thirty years
old, and I have take care of my mother and brothers
and sisters since I am fifteen. I not made so I can
leave them, like Paul Pepin. He marry when he
please. I not able to marry at all. It is not far I
can go from the island. I cannot get rich. My
work must be always the same."
" But why you want to marry?" says Rosalin, as
if that surprise her. And I tell her it is because I
B ^ 65
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
have seen Eosalin of Green Bay; and she laugh.
Then I think it is time for the vild-cat to jump. I
am thirty 3'ears old, and have nothing but what I
can make with the boats or my traino; tlie chil-
dren are not grown; my mother depend on me;
and I have propose to a woman, and she laugh
at me !
But I not see, while we sing and talk, that the
fire is burn lower, and old Sauvage has crept around
the camp into the bushes.
That end all my courtship. I not use to it, and
not have any business to court, anyliow. I drop
my head on my breast, and it is like when I am little
and the measle go in. Paul Pepin he take a woman
by the cliin and smack her on the lips. The women
not laugh at him, he is so rough. I am as strong
as he is, but I am afraid to hurt; I am oblige to
take care of what need me. And I am tie to things
I love — even the island — so that I cannot get
away. •
" I not want to marry," says Rosalin, and I see
her shake her head at me. " I not think about it at
all."
" Mamselle," I say to her, " you have not any
inducement like I have, tliat torment you three
years."
" IIow you know that?" she ask me. And then
her face change from laughter, and she spring up
from the bhinket couch, and 1 think the camp go
around and around me — all fur and eyes and claws
and teeth — and I not know what I am doing, for
66
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
the dogs are all over me — yell — yell — yell; and then
I am stop stabbing, because the vild-cat has let go
of Sauvage, and Sauvage has let go of the vild-cat,
and I am looking at them and know they are both
dead, and I cannot help him any more.
You are confuse by such things where there is
noise, and howling creatures sit up and put their
noses in the air, like they call their mate back out
of the dark. I am sick for my old dog. Then I am
proud he has kill it, and wipe my knife on its fur,
but feel ashame that I have not check him driviiiiz;
CD
it into camp. And then Rosalin throw her arms
around my neck and kiss me.
It is many years I have tell Uosalin she did that.
But a woman will deny what she know to be the
trut. I have tell her the courtship had end, and
she begin it again herself, and keep it up till the boats
take us off Round Island. The ice not run out so
quick any more now like it did then. My wife say
it is a long time we waited, but when I look back
it seem the shortest time I ever live — only two
days.
Oh God, yes, it is three years before I marry the
woman that not want to marry at all; then my
brothers and sisters can take care of themselves,
and she help me take care of maman.
It is when my boy Gabriel come home from the
war to die that I see the skeleton on Round Island
again. I am again sure it is wash out, and I go
ashore to bury it, and it disappear. Nobody but
me see it. Then before Rosalia die I am out on the
67
THE SKELETON ON ROUND ISLAND
ice-boat, and it give me warning. I know what it
mean; but you cannot always escape misfortune.
I cross myself when I see it; but I find good luck
that first time I land; and maybe I find good luck
every time, after I have land.
THE PENITENT OF CROSS
VILLAGE
THE cross cast its shadow around its feet, so
high noon stood over Cross Village. It was
behind the church, rising above the gable,
of silver -colored wood stained by weather to an
almost phosphorescent glint. Seen from the lake
the cross towered the most conspicuous thing on the
bluff. A whitewashed fence stretched between it
and the cliff, and on this fence sat Moses Nazage-
bic, looking across Lake Michigan.
He heard a soft tap on the ground near him and
knew that his wife's grandmother had come out to
walk there. She was the only villager, except his
wife, whose approach he could endure. His wife
stood some distance apart, protecting him, as
Miriam protected the first Moses. Other women,
gathered in the grove along the bluff to spread the
festival mid-day meal, said to one another.
"Moses has now mourned a week for Frank
Chibam and his shipwrecked boat and the white
men. "We shall miss Lucy's fish-pie this year."
" It was at last year's festival that Frank began
69
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VI'LLAGE
to notice Catharine. They were hke one family,
those four and the grandmother, especially after
Moses and Frank bought the sail -boat together.
No wonder the ])oor fellow sits on the fence and
savs nothino: while the tribes are racinfi: horses."
" But it is worst for poor Catharine, who was to
have been a bride. See her sit like a stone in the
sun ! It is little any one can say to comfort Cath-
arine."
The women, who knew no English, used soft
Chippewa or Ottawa gutturals. The men who
ventured on the conquerors' language used it shorn
and contracted, as white children do.
The annual festivities of the Cross Village were
at their height. Yells and the tumultuous patter
of racing hoofs fell on Moses' ear. A trial of
horse speed was now in progress; and later in the
day would come a trial of agility and endurance in
the Ottawa and Chippewa dances. The race-course
was the mile-long street, beginning at the old chapel
and ending at the monastery. Young Indians,
vividly clad in red calico shirts and fringed leg-
gings, leaned over their horses' necks, whipping
and shouting. Dust rose behind the flying caval-
cade, and spectators were obliged to keep close to
the small carved houses or risk being run down.
Y'oung braves denied the war-path were obliged
to give themselves unbridled range of some sort.
The monastery brethren had closed their white-
washed gates, not because they objected to the
yearly fete, nor because custom made the monastery
70
THE P E N I T E N T OF C II S S \' 1 L L A G E
the goal in horse-rucing, but because there was in
the festivities an abandoned spirit to be dealt with
only by the parish priest. On ordinary days the
brethi'en were glad to show those beneficial death's
heads with which their departed prior had orna-
mented the inner walls of his tomb before he came
to use it. The village knew it had been that ffood
prior's habit to sit in a coffin meditating, while he
painted skulls and cross-bones in that roofed en-
closure which was to be his body's last resting-
place. Young squaws and braves often peeped at
the completed grave and its surrounding sj^nbols
of mortality. It was as good as a Chippewa ghost-
story.
The priest let himself be seen all the morning.
Without speaking a word, he was a check upon the
riotous. Ottawa and Chippewa had a right to
commemorate some observances of their forefathers.
He always winked at their dances. And this day
the one silent Indian on the fence troubled him
more than all the barbaric horsemen.
Moses' wife had been to him. Lucy was very
indignant at her cousin Catharine. Moses neither
ate nor slept, and he groaned in the night as if he
had toothache. lie would not talk to her. The
good father might not believe it, but Catharine
was putting a spell on Moses, in revenge for Frank
Chibam. Catharine blamed Moses for everything
— the shipwreck, the drowning, perhaps even for
the storm. She hounded him out of the house and
then she hounded him in again, by standing and
71
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
looking at him with fixed gaze. It was more than
flesh could bear. The father must see that Moses
and Lucy would have to leave Cross Vihage and
go to the Cheneaux or Mackinac, taking the grand-
mother with them. It would be hard for Moses to
live without a boat. But then, Lucy demanded
triumphantly, what would Catharine do r^thout a
man or any relation left in the house?
The priest looked from Catharine, motionless as
a rock in the sun by the church gable, to Moses on
the fence with his back towards her. The grand-
mother, oblivious to both, felt her way along the
ground with a stick, and Lucy watched, nearer the
grove. These four had occupied one of the small
unpainted wooden houses as a united family. It
was a sorrow to the priest that they might now be
divided, one of them bearing an unconfessed trouble
on his mind. For if Moses Nazagebic was as in-
nocent as his wife Lucy believed him to be of the
catastrophe which he said had happened on Lake
Superior, he would not fly from poor Catharine as
from an avenger.
There were fences of silver flattened out on the
water; farther from shore flitted changeable bars
of green and rose and pale- blue, converging until
they swept the surface like some colossal peacock's
tail. The grandmother stumping with her stick
came quite near the cliff edge and stopped there.
She was not blind or deaf, but her mind had
long been turned inward and backward. She saw
daily happenings as symbols of what had been.
73
THE pp:nitent of cross village
She knew more tribal lore than any other Indian
of Cross Village ; and repeated, as she had repeated
a hundred times before when scanning the log dock
with its fleet of courtesying boats, the steep road,
and the strip of sand below :
" Down there was the first cross set up, many
years ago, by a man who came here in a large
boat moved by wings like the wings of a gull. The
man had a white face and long hair the color
of the sun. When he first landed he fell on his
knees and then began to count a string of beads.
Then he sang a song and called the other men,
some of whom were Indians, from the boat. They
cut down trees, and he made them set up a large
cross at the foot of the bluff. Since then that
strip of sand has been sacred, though the cross is
gone and a new one is set here by our priest."
The old squaw indicated with her stick the silver-
colored relic behind Moses Nazagebic. Her gut-
tural chant affected none of her hearers, except
that Catharine frowned at a sight which could
divert Moses. The Ottawas and Chippewas are a
hard-featured people. Catharine was, perhaps, the
handsomest product of an ill-favored village. Hag-
gard pallor now encroached on the vermilion of her
cheek. She wore an old hat of plaited bark pulled
down to her eyes, and her strong black hair hung
in two neglected braids; The patience of aboriginal
womanhood was not stamped on her as it was on
Lucy. A panther could look no fiercer than this
lithe young Indian girl, whose bridal finery was
73
THE I'ENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
hid in tlie liousc Jiiul whose banns had been pub-
Hshed in the mission churcli.
Trying to gra])plo witli the trouble of Moses
Nazagebic and Catharine, the priest also stood
gazing at the dock, where chihh'en usually played,
tumbling in to swim or be drawn out, only more
rostiato for the bath. The children were now
gathered in the grove or along the race -course.
Nothing moved below except lapping water. It
was seldom that these lake - going people left
their landing - place so deserted. Gliding down
from the north where tlie cliff had screened it from
view, came a small schooner. The priest, shaded by
his broad hat, watched the passing craft with barely
conscious recognition of it as an object until hand-
kerchiefs fluttered from the deck and startled him.
The tall silver -white cross was so conspicuous
that any one standing near it must be observed.
The priest shook his handkerchief in reply. He
had many friends along the coast and among the
islands. But his long sight caught some familiar
guise which made him directly signal and entreat
with wide peremptory sweeps of the arm.
" Moses," commanded the priest, " you must un-
fasten a boat and go with me. There are people
on board yonder that I want to see."
No other man being at hand, the request was a
natural one, and Moses had been used to respond-
ing to such needs of the priest. But he cast a
quick look at the black robe and sat sullenly until
a stern repetition compelled him.
74
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
The priest had continued his signals, and the,
schooner came about and waited. It was not a
long pu]l. Moses, rowing with his back towards
tlio schooner, watched the face of his spiritual
father.
"That will do," said the priest, and almost in
stantly some one on the schoonei' deck hailed him :
"Good-day, your reverence! What can we do
for you ?"
And another voice that Moses knew well shout-
ed :
"Hello, Moses, is tiiat you? Where's Frank?
Did you get back all right with the sail-boat?"
The Indian cowered over his oars without an-
swering or turning his head.
" I have come out," answered the priest, " to
satisfy myself that I really see you here alive. We
heard you were shipwrecked and drowned in Lake
Superior."
" Shipwrecked, your reverence! What nonsense!
We had a fine voyage and dismissed the men at
the Sault. But since then we decided to make an-
other cruise to the head of Lake Michigan, and
hired another skipper. There is Moses in the boat
with you, and Frank came home with him. They
knew we were not shipwrecked."
" Will you land at Cross Village?"
"No, your reverence. We only tacked in to
salute the cross in passing."
" But where shall I find you if I have urgent
business with you?"
75
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
" At Little Traverse Bay; We cannot stop
here."
The schooner was drifting away broadside, and
the voice of the speaker came across a widening
swell of water. Then she came up into her course,
cutting a breastwork of foam in front of her as she
passed on southward. With pantomime saluta-
tions the priest and the two men who had hired
Moses Nazagebic and Frank Chibam took leave of
each other.
It had been a brief conference, but Moses rowed
back a convicted criminal. He did not look at his
conscience - keeper in the end of the boat. His
high-cheeked face seemed to have had all individu-
ality blotted out of it. Dazed and blear-eyed, he
shipped his oars and tied the boat to its stake. A
great noise of drumming and shouting came from
the grove above, for the dances were soon to begin.
The steep road was a Calvary height to Moses.
He dragged his feet as he climbed and stumbled
in the deep sand; he who was so lithe of limb and
nimble in any action. He had felt Catharine's eyes
on his back like burning-glasses as he sat on thr
fence. They reflected on him now in one glare all
the knowledge that the priest had gained of his
crime. It was easier to follow to instant confession
than to stay outside longer where Catharine could
watch him. His wife's grandmother passed him,
tapping along the fence and repeating again the
legend of the first cross in Cross Village. Even in
that day men who had slain their brothers were
76
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
expected to give satisfaction to the tribe. It was
either a life for a life or the labor of long hunting
to solace a bereaved familv.
He knelt down in the place where he had often
confessed such little sins as lying or convivial
drunkenness. How slight and innocent these of-
fences seemed as the hopeless weight of this bur-
den crushed him. The stern yet compassionate
face over him exacted every word.
The priest remembered that this had not been a
bad Chippewa. He had lived a steady, honest life
in his humble station, keeping the three women
well provided with such comforts as they needed ;
he had fished, he had labored at wood-chopping,
and in the season helped Lucy fill her birch-bark
raococks with maple sugar for sale at the larger set-
tlements. The anguish of Cain was in the man's
eyes. Natural life and he had already parted
company. The teeth showed between his relaxed
lips.
" Moses Nazagebic," said the priest, disregarding
formula and dealing with the primitive sinner,
" what have you done with Frank Chibam?"
" Father, I kill him."
The brief English which the Indian men mas-
tered and used in their trading at the settlements
was Moses' refuge in confession. To profane his
native language with his crime seemed the last
enormity of all.
" It was a lie that there was a wreck in Lake
Superior ?■ '
77
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
" Yes, father."
" It was a lie that you lost your sail-boat ?"
" Yes, father."
"Did you intend to kill Frank?"
Moses swallowed as if his throat were closing.
" No — no ! We both drunk. We quarrel ; Frank
sitting on edge of boat. I come up behind and hit
him with oar. I knock him into the water."
"This was after the white men left you?"
" Yes, father. We have our money. We get
drunk at Sault.''
" Where is his body?"
"In St. Mary's River. Not far above Drum-
mond Island."
"Are you sure he was drowned?"
"Oh, sure!" Moses' jaw dropped. "Frank he
go down like a stone; and his spirit follow me ever
since. His spirit tell Catharine. His spirit drive
these men back so Cross Village know the truth.
Good name, Chibam — that mean spirit. It fol-
low me all the time. I get no rest till that spirit
satisfied."
" My unhappy son, you must confess and give
yourself up to justice."
"Justice no good. Justice hang. Frank Chi-
bam want me go down like stone. Frank Ciiibam
drive me back where he went down. But I not
have my boat. Next thing Frank Ohibam send
me boat."
" What did you do witli Frank's and yours?"
" I leave it at Drumraond Island, with Chippe-
78
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
wa there ; and tell him to give it to nobody bui
Frank Chibam. I never set foot on that boat
again — Frank's spirit angrier there than anywhere
else."
" But how did you come home?"
"I get other Chippewa at Drummond to bring
me to Mackinac. Then I get Chippewa at Mack-
inac to bring me to Cross Village. I tell last
Chippewa I had a shipwreck. After Frank drowned
I not know what to do. I had to come home. I
thought if I said the boat was wrecked my people
might believe me. I have to see Lucy." His
bloodshot eyes piteonsly sought the compassion of
his confessor. One moment's lapse into a brutal
frenzy which now seemed some other man's had
changed all things for him.
Never before had penitent come to that closet in
such despair. Moses had repented through what
seemed to him a long nightmare of succeeding
days. There was no hope for him. lie was called
a Christian Indian, but the white man's consola-
tions and ideas of retribution were not the red man's.
He heard the priest arrange a journey for him
to give himself up to the law. The priest was a
wise man, but this was uselesslv cloo^ffino: the
wheels of fate. He did not want to sit in a jail
with Frank Chibain's spirit. Such company was
bad enough in the open sunlight. It was plain
that neither Frank nor Catharine would be ap-
peased by any offering short of their full measure
of vengeance.
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
Having settled it that Moses' penance for his
crime must be to give himself up to the law, the
priest left him in the chapel and went out to press
some sail-boat into service. It would be almost
impossible to take any Indian from tlie festivities.
The death of the most agile dancer and the with-
drawal of the most ardent horse -racer had \ery
mildly checked the usual joy.
Moses in his broken state was, perhaps, capable
of sailing a boat, but it would be wiser to have an-
other skipper aboard in crossing the strait to
Mackinac.
It was fortunate, on the other hand, that the
fete had prevented fishermen from hailing the
passing schooner. The men were known by all
the villagers, having stayed at the Cross Village
inn, a place scarcely larger than a Chippewa cabin,
kept by the only white family. These tribe rem-
nants were gentle in their semi-civilization, yet the
priest dreaded to think what might become of
Moses if they discovered his lie and denied him
the indulgence accorded to accidental man -kill-
ers.
To borrow a sail-boat would be easy enough
while sympathy lasted for his penitent. He re-
membered also that Lucy could help sail it, and it
would be best to take her to Mackinac for the part-
ing with her husband.
The cross was stretching its afternoon shadow,
and wind sweet with the moisture of many tossing
blue miles flowed across the bluff. There never
80
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
had been a fairer day for the }' early dances. Under
his trouble the priest was conscious of trivial self-
reproach that he had not told the passers it was
fete day. But he reflected that few coukl love this
remote little aboriginal world as he loved it, in joy
or tragedy. The glamour of the North was over
it through every season. At bleak January-end, in
wastes of snow, the small houses were sealed and
glowing with fires, and sledges creaked on the crust,
while the shout of Indian children could be heard.
Then the ice-boat shot out on the closed strait
above and veered like a spirit from point to point,
almost silent and terribly swift. On mornings after
there had been a dry mist from the lake, this whole
world was bridal -white, every twig loaded with
frost blooms, until the far-reaching glory gave it a
tropical beauty and lavishness and the frost fell
like showers of flower petals.
His people stood respectfully out of his way as
he entered the grove. The "throb, throb" and
" pat, pat " of drum and feet were farther off, where
young men were dancing in a ring. He could
see their lithe bodies sway between tree boles.
Old squaws sat with knees up to their chins, and '
old men smoked, pressing close to the spectacle.
The priest was sensitive enough to feel a stir of
uneasiness at his invasion of the aboriginal temple,
and he was not long in having a boat put at his
disposal.
The next thing was to induce Moses and Lucy to
accompany him quietly down to the dock. He
F 81
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
spoke to Lucy at her door. She sat in dull dejec-
tion, her basket-work and supply of sweet grass on
the floor beside her.
" Come, Lucy ! I have business in Mackinac, and
Moses and you must take me there."
" Did that schooner bring you news, father ?"
'' Yes."
" But it is late."
"We mav remain there tc-nio^ht. Take such
things with you as your husband might need for a
week."
Lucy obediently put her basket-work away and
prepared for the journey. She was conscious of
triumph over Catharine, from whom the priest was
about to rescue Moses. She put on her best sweet-
grass hat and made up her bundle.
The priest brought Moses out of the chapel with
a pity and tenderness that touched Lucy, and the
three went down the steep road. Iler grandmother
was sitting in the sun by the gable and did not
notice them. The old woman was telling herself
the story of Kanabojou. The sa'1-boat which they
were to take was anchored off the end of the dock.
Moses x'ov/t d out after it and brought it alongside.
He was ^^usy raising the sails and the priest and
Lucy had already taken their seats when the little
craft answered to a light bound over the stern, and
Catharine sat resolutely down, looking at Moses
Nazagebic.
Moses let the sails fall and leaped out. He tied
the rope to the dock.
83
THE PENITKXT OF CROSS VILLAGE
"Get into the boat again, Moses!" commanded
the priest. " And Catharine, you go back !"
Moses shook his head. His spirit was broken,
but it was a ph3'sical impossibihty for him to sail a
boat to Mackinac with Catharine aboard.
The priest knew he might as well attempt to
control gulls. French clamor or Anglo-Saxon
brutality would be easy to persuade or compel, in
comparison with this dense aboriginal silence. He
took patience and sat still, reading his breviary.
The boat ground softly against logs, and Lucy
hugged her bundle, determined on the journey.
Moses remained with his back to them, danolina-
his legs over the end of the dock. Catharine kept
her place, grasping the edges of the craft. It was
plain if Moses Nazagebic went to Mackinac it
would be in the hands of officers sent to brinir him
at a later period. So the day dropped down in
splendor, lake and sky becoming one dazzle of gold
so bright the eye might not dwell on it. The
party of four returned, and Catharine walked last
up the hill. Religion and penance were nothing
to a Chippewa girl who had distinct intentions of
vengeance.
She kept an eye on her victim while she milked
the cows as they came from the woods to keep
their nightly appointment. The priest owned some
lack in himself that he could not better handle the
destinies around him. They hurt him, as rock
would bruise tender flesh.
Barbaric instrumentation and shouting did not
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
keep him awake after darkness closed in. He
would have lain awake if a dog had not stirred in
Cross Village. He heard the wind change and
strike the east side of his house with gusts of rain.
Fires must die down to wet ashes in the grove. He
knew the cross stood white and tall in scudding
mist, and on the crosses in the cemetery chaplets
and flowers made of white rags hung bedraggled.
He foresaw the kind of day which would open be-
fore his poor penitent and be a symbol of the life
that was to follow.
It was the priest himself who introduced Moses
to this day, opening the door and standing unheed-
ing under the overflow of the eaves. The hiss of
rain could be heard, and daylight penetrated re-
luctantly abroad. Moses sat drooped forward with
his elbows on his knees by the open fire. Lucy
hurried to answer the summons, believing the
priest had found some knew haven for Moses while
her cousin was out of the house.
But there stood Catharine behind the priest, the
spell of her fierceness broken, and at her side was
Frank Chibam, undrowned and amiably grinning,
his dark red skin stung by the weather, indeed, but
otherwise little changed by vrater.
" Tell Moses I want him!" said the priest. " And
Catharine, you go into the house!"
This time Catharine rimbly obeyed. As for
Lucy, she made no outcry. She merely satisfied
herself it was Frank Chibam before hurrying her
husband to the spectacle.
84
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
Moses stepped out bareheaded into the rain, and
his jaw dropped. The priest closed the door be-
hind him.
Frank took his hand. Moses felt the young
man's firm sinew and muscle. lie looked piteous-
\y at the priest, his head sagging to one side, his
face working in a spasm.
" I should have prepared him, Frank. This
comes too suddenly on him."
They took Moses between them and walked
with him along the fence at the foot of the cross.
The raindrops moved down his face like tears. He
did not speak, but listened with a child's intent-
ness, first to one and then to the other, leaning his
arm on his partner's shoulder.
" I don't understand why he was so certain he
had killed you, Frank. lie told me he struck you
with an oar and saw you go down in the water like
a stone."
" Whiskey, father," explained Frank in trader's
brief English. " Plenty very bad whiskey. It
make me sick for a week. The boom knocked us
both down, and I fell into the water. The fisher-
man from one of the little islands who pull me out
say that. Moses, he drunker than me; he too
drunk to bring the boat home."
" The poor fellow told lies to cover the crime
he thought he had committed. He has suffered,
Frank. And I have suffered. "VVe will say nothing
about Catharine. Why didn't you come sooner?"
" I take the boat and go fishing. I say, ' Moses,
85
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
that lazy Chippewa, leave the boat for me to bring
home; 1 make him wait for it/"
" Did you quarrel at all ?"
" Maybe so," said Frank. " Whiskey not let you
remember mucli. But I could kill Moses easier
than he could kill me."
"lie has suffered enough. But you, my son,
ought to do heavy penance."
" Not put off wedding ?" suggested Frank, un-
easily.
" 1 had not thought of unusual methods; it might
be good discipline for Catharine, too. But we have
lost enough cheer on your account."
" I never spend my money for whiskey any more,
father. If some man ask me to take a drink, I
drink with him, but not get drunk — no."
Moses laughed, his face shortening in horizontal
lines.
" That Frank Chibara. Frank make me pay for
all the whiskey, lie not drowned. I not kill him.
llis spirit only an evil dream."
" The evil dream is now past, Moses," said the
priest.
" Wake up, my brother!" said Frank in Chippe-
wa. " I have a boatful of fish. You must come
and help me with them. The good father will go
back to his books when he sees you are yourself
once more."
Under the rain- cloud the lake had turned to
blue-black velvet water pricked with thousands of
tossing w^hite-caps. Near shore it seemed full of
86
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
submerged smoke. And the rack tore itself, drag-
ging low across the west. Moses, remembering
the last sunset and its sickening splendors, felt that
he had never seen so fine a day. He woiked bare-
headed and ^vith his sleeves above his elbows among
the fish. Gulls were flying, each making a bur-
nished white glare against that background of
weather. Looking up, the Chippewa could see the
cross at the top of the bluff, standing over him in
holy benediction. lie felt lighter-bodied than a
gull. And the anguish of that wretch who had
sat on the fence believing himself a murderer was
forgotten.
In the house his wife was exacting what in elder
times would have been typified by an intricate
piece of wampum, from her repentant cousin. Cath-
arine brought in wood and carried water. Cath-
arine was not permitted to make the great fish-j)ie,
but could only look on. She served humbly. She
had wronged her kinspeople by evil suspicion, and
must make atonement. No words were lost be-
tween her and Lucy. She must lay her hand upon
her mouth and be tasked until the elder woman
was appeased. It was not the way of civilized
women, but it was the aboriginal scheme, which
the priest found good.
Lucy was not yet ready to demand the truth
about the two white men and the shipwrecked
boat Her entire mind was given to humbling
Catharine and impressing upon that forward 3'oung
squaw that her husband was in no way accountable
87
THE PENITENT OF CROSS VILLAGE
for the disappearance and vagrancy of Frank
Chi bam.
The grandmother basked at the hearth corner
while this silent retribution went on unseen. She
was repeating again the story of the first cross in
Cross Village. She did not know that anything
had happened in the house.
THE KING OF BEAYER
SUCCESS was the word most used by the King
of Beaver. Though he stood before his
people as a prophet assuming to speak reve-
lations, executive power breathed from him. He
was a tall, golden-tinted man with a head like a
dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard
and mustache which did not conceal a mouth cut
thin and straight. He had student hands, long
and well kept. It was not his dress, though that
was careful as a girl's, which set him apart from
farmers listening on the benches around him, but
the keen light of his blue eyes, wherein shone the
master.
Emeline thought she had never before seen such
a man. He had an attraction which she felt loath-
some, and the more so because it drew some part of
her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his,
and she resented that kinship, trying to lose herself
among farmers' wives and daughters, who listened
to their P ophet stolidly, and were in no danger of
being naturally selected by him. This moral terror
Emeline could not have expressed in words, and she
hid it like a shame. She also resented the subser-
89
THE KING OF BEAVER
vience of her kinspeople to oneno greater than her-
self. Her stock had been masters of men.
As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the
circle he encountered this rebel defying his assump-
tion, and paused in his speaking a full minute, the
drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being
shifted and rearranged on the table. Then he began
again, the dictatorial key transposed into melody,
ilis covert message was to the new maid in the
congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a
web. lie wrapped her around and around with
beautiful sentences. As Speaker of the State
Legislature he had learned well how to handle men
in the mass, but nature had doubly endowed him
for entrancing women. The spiritual part of James
Strang, King and Prophet of a peculiar sect, ap-
pealed to the one best calculated to appreciate him
during the remainder of his exhortation.
The Tabernacle, to which Beaver Island Mormons
gathered ever}'^ Saturda}'^ instead of every Sunday,
was yet unfinished. Its circular shape and vaulted
ceiling, panelled in the hard woods of the island,
had been planned by the man who stood in the
centre. Man}'' openings under the eaves gaped
windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from
a July sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing
fragrance from their own fields and gardens. They
seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and
hickor}'^; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked,
was not lacking. The}"^ sat on benches arranged in
circles around a central platform which held the
90
THE KIXG OF BEAVER
Prophet's chair and tjible. This was liis simple
plan for making his world revolve around him.
Roxy Cheeseman, Emeline's cousin, was stirred
to restlessness by the Prophet's unusual manner,
and shifted uneasil}'' on the bench. Her short,
scarlet-cheeked face made her a favorite among the
young men. She had besides this attraction a small
waist and foot, and a father who was verv well off
indeed for a Beaver Island farmer. Roxy's black
eyes, with the round and unwinking stare of a bird's,
were fixed on King Strang, as if she instinctively
warded off a gaze which by swerving a little could
smite hui.
But the Prophet paid no attention to any one
when the meeting was over, his custom being to
crush his notes in one hand at the end of his pero-
ration, and to retire like a priest, leaving the dis-
persing congregation awed by his rapt face.
The two cousins walked sedately along the street
of St. James village, while their elders lingered
about the Tabernacle door shaking hands. That
primitive settlement of the early '5(Vs consisted of
a few houses and log stores, a mill, the Tabernacle,
and long docks, at which steamers touched perhaps
once a week. The forest ])artially encircled it. A
few Gentiles, making Saturday purchases in a shop
kept by one of their own kind, glanced with dislike
at the separating Mormons. The shouts of Gentile
children could also be heard at Saturday play.
Otherwise a Sabbath peacefulness was over the
landscape. Beaver Island had not a rugged coast-
91
THE KING OF BEAVER
line, though the harbor of St. James Avas deep and
good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather
than hills.
Emeline and Koxy walked inland, with their
backs to the harbor. In summer, farmers who
lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through the
woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.
The last house on the street was a wooden build-
ing of some pretension, having bow-windows and a
veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded gar-
den. It was very unlike the log -cabins of the
island.
" He lives here," said Eoxy.
Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She un-
derstood, and her question was —
" How many with him ?"
" All of them — eight. Seven of them stay at
home, but Mary French travels with him. Didn't
you notice her in the Tabernacle — the girl with
the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform V^
" Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his
wives ?"
Koxy waited until they had struck into the woods
path, and then looked guardedly behind her.
"Mary French is the youngest one. She was
sealed to the Prophet only two years ago ; and
last Avinter she weni avelling with him, and we
heard she dressed in mt I's clothes and acted as his
secretary."
" But why did she do that when she was his wife
according to your religion ?"
92
THE KING OF BEAVER
" I don't know," responded Roxy, mysteriously.
" The Gentiles on the mainland are very hard on
us."
They followed the track between fragrant grape-
vine and hickor}'^, and the girl bred to respect po-
lygamy inquired —
" Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin
Emeline T
"No, I don't," retorted the girl bred to abhor it.
" Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what
he wants them to. Mary French was a Gentile's
daughtt " the proudest girl that ever stepped in St.
James. She didn't live on the island ; she came
here tc visit. And he got her. What's the mat-
ter. Cousin Emeline ?"
" Some one trod on my grave ; I shivered. Cousin
Roxy, I want to ask you a plain question. Do you
like a man's having more than one wife?"
"No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But
he was obliged to marry again, or get into trouble
with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is very
good about the house, and minds mother. The
revelation may be plain enough, but I am not the
kind of a girl," declared Roxy, daringly, as one
might blaspheme, "that cares a straw for the
revelation."
Emeline took hold of her arm, and they ^valked
on with a new sense of companionship.
" A great many of the people feel the same way
about it. But when the Prophet makes them un-
derstand it is part of the faith, they have to keep
.93
THE KING OF BEAVER
the faith. T am a reprobate . myself. But don't
tell father," appealed Koxy, uneasily. " He is an
elder."
'* My uncle Cheeseman is a good man," said
Emeline, finding comfort in this fact. She could
not explain to her cousin how hard it had been for
her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mor-
mons. Her uncle had insisted on giving his orphan
niece a home and the protection of a male relative,
at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had
been brought up. In that day no girl thought of
living without protection. Emeline had a few
thousand dollars of her own, but her money was
invested, and he could not count on the use of
it, which men assumed a right to have when help-
less women clustered to their hearths. Her uncle
Cheeseman was undeniably a good man, whatever
might be said of his religious faith.
" I like father myself," assented Hoxy. " He is
never strict with us unless the Prophet has some
revelation that makes him so. Cousin Emeline, I
hope you won't grow to be taken up with Brother
Strang, like Mary French. I thought he looked at
you to-day."
Eraeline's face and neck were scarlet above her
black dress. The Gentile resented as an insult
what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful
to herself ; though there was not 'i family of that
faith on the island who would not have felt honored
in giving a daughter to the Prophet.
" I hate him !" exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage
94
thp: king of beaver
mingled with a kind of sweet and sickening pain.
"I'll never go to his churcii again."
" Father wouldn't like that, Cousin Emeline," ob-
served Roxy, though her heart leaped to such un-
shackled freedom. " He says we mustn't put our
hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody
knows that Brother Strang is the only person who
can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the island.
They have persecuted us ever since the settlement
was made. But they are afraid of him. They can-
not do anything with him. As long as he lives he
is better than an army to keep our lands and homes
for us."
" You are in a hard case betwixt Gentiles and
Prophet," laughed Emeline.
Yet the aspects of life on Beaver Island keenly
interested her. This small world, fifteen miles in
length by six in breadth, was shut off by itself in
Lake Michigan, remote from the civilization of
towns. She liked at first to feel cut loose from
her past life, and would have had the steamers
touch less often at St. James, diminishing their
chances of bringing her hateful news.
There were only two roads on the island — one
extending from the harbor town in the north end
to a village called Galilee at the extreme southeast
end, the other to the southwest shore. Along these
roads farms were laid out, each about eighty rods
in width and a mile or two in length, so that neigh-
bors dwelt within call of one another, and the col-
ony presented a strong front. The King of Beaver
95
THE KING OF BEAVER
could scarcely have counselled a better division of
land for the linking of families. On one side of
the Cheesemans had dwelt an excellent widow with
a bag chii. and she became Elder Cheeseman's
second wife. On the other side were the Went-
worths, and Billv Wentworth courted Roxv across
the fence until it appeared that wives might con-
tinue passing over successive boundary lines.
The billowy land was green in the morning as
paradise, and Emeline thouglit every day its lights
and shadows were more beautiful than the day be-
fore. Life had paused in her, and she was glad to
rest her eyes on the horizon line and take no
thought about any morrow. She lielped her cousin
and her legal and Mormon aunts with the children
and the cabin labor, trying to adapt herself to their
habits. But her heart-sickness and sense of fitting
in her place like a princess cast among peasants put
her at a disadvantage when, the third evening, the
King of Beaver came into the garden.
He chose that primrose time of day when the
world and the human spirit should be mellowest,
and walked with the farmer between garden beds
to where Emeline and Roxy were tending flowers.
The entire loamy place sent up incense. Emeline
had felt at least sheltered and negatively happy
until his voice modulations strangely pierced her,
and she looked up and saw him.
He called her uncle Brother Cheeseraan and her
uncle called him Brother Strang, but on one side
was the mien of a sovereign and on the other the
96
THE KING OF BEAVER
deference of a subject. Again Emeline's blood rose
against him, and she took as little notice as she
dared of the introduction.
The King of Beaver talked to Roxy. Billy
Wentworth came to the line fence and made a face
at seeing him helping to tie up sweet-peas. Tlicn
Billy climbed over and joined Emeline. They ex-
changed looks, and each knew the mind of the
other on the subject of the Prophet.
Billy was a good safe human creature, with the
tang of the soil about him, and no wizard power of
making his presence felt when one's back was
turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed tow-
ards him, and talked about his day's work and the
trouble of ploughing with oxen. She was delicately
and sensitively made, with a beauty which came
and went like flame. Her lips were formed in
scari^t on a naturally pale face. Billy Wentworth
considered her weakly. He preferred the robust
arm outlined by Roxy's homespun sleeve. And yet
she had a sympathetic knowledge of men which he
felt, without being able to describe, as the most
delicate flattery.
The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She
knew she could not escape the interview, and con-
tinued tying vines to the cedar palisades while the
two young islanders drew joyfully away to another
part of the garden. The stable and barn-yard were
between garden and cabin. Long variegated fields
strelohed off in bands. A gate let through the
cedar pickets to a pasture where the cows came up
a 97
THE KING OF BEAVER
to be milked. Bees gathering to their straw domes
for the night made a purring hum at the other end
of the garden.
" I trust you are here to stay," said Emehne's
visitor.
" I am never going back to Detroit," she an-
swered, lie understood at once that she had met
grief in Detroit, and that it might be other grief
than the sort expressed by her black garment.
" AVe will be kind to you here."
Emeline, finishing her task, ghinced over her
shoulder at him. She did not know how tantaliz-
ingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as the
petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier
woman's rudeness in her became audacious charm.
" I like Beaver Island," she remarked, winding
the remaining bits of string into a ball. " ' Every
prospect pleases, and only man is vile.' "
" You mean Gentile man," said King Strang. " lie
is vile, but we hope to get rid of him some time."
"By breaking his fish-nets and stealing his sail-
boats? Is it true tliat a Gentile sail-boat was sunk
in Lake Galilee and kept hidden there until inquiry
ceased, and then was raised, repainted, and launched
again, a good Mormon boat?"
He linked his hands behind him and smiled at
her daring.
" How many evil stories you have heard about us!
My dear young lady, I could rejoin with truths
about our persecutions. Is your uncle Cheeseman
a malefactor?"
It
THE KING OF BEAVER
" My uncle Cheeseman is a good man."
" So are all my people. The island, like all young
communities, is infested with a class of camp-follow-
ers, and every depredation of these fellows is charged
to us. But we shall make it a garden — we shall
make it a garden."
"Let me train vines over the whipping-post in
your garden," suggested Emeline, turning back the
crimson edge of her lip.
'' You have heard that a man was publicly whipped
on Beaver Island — and he deserved it. Have you
heard also that I myself have been imprisoned by
outsiders, and my life attempted more than once?
Don't you know that in war a leader must be stern
if he would save his people from destruction? Have
you never heard a good thing of me, my child?"
Emeline, facing her adversary, was enraged at the
conviction which the moderation and gentleness of
a mart^'^r was able to work in her.
" Oh yes, indeed, I have heard one good thing of
you — your undertaking the salvation of eight or
nine wives."
" Not yet nine," he responded, humorously. " And
I am glad you mentioned that. It is one of our
mysteriis that you will learn later. You have
helped me greatly by such a candid unburdening
of your mind. For you must know that you and
I are to be more to each other than strangers. The
revelation was given to you when it was given to
me in the Tabernacle. I saw that."
The air was thickening with dusky motes. EmC'
. 99
THE KING OF BEAVER
line fancied that living dark atoms were pressing
down upon her from infini*^y.
" You must know," she said, with determination,
"that I came to Beaver Island because I hated
men, and expected to see nothing but Mormons
here — "
"Not counting them men at all," indulgently
supplemented the Xing of Beaver, conscious that
she was struggling in the most masculine presence
she had ever encountered, lie dropped his voice.
"My child, you touch me as no one has touched
me yet. There is scarcely need of words between
us. I know what 1 am to you. You shall not stay
on the island if you do not wish it. Oh, you are
going to make me do my best !"
" I wish you would go away !"
'■ Some Gentile has hurt you, and you are beating
your bruised strength on me."
" Please go awa}'^ ! I don't like you. I am bound
to another man."
" You are bound to nobody but me. I have waited
a lifetime for you."
" How dare you talk so to me w^hen you have
eight wives abeady !"
" Solomon had a thousand. He was a man of God,
though never in his life was there a moment when
he took to his breast a mate. I shall fare better."
" Did you talk to them all like this?"
" Ask them. They have their little circles beyond
which they cannot go. Have you thoughts in
common with your cousin Roxy?"
100
THE KING OF BEAVER
" Yes, very many," asserted Emeline, doggedly.
"I am just like Cousin Koxy."
" You have no mind beyond the milking and
churning, the sewing and weaving f
"No, I have no mind beyond them."
"I kissj^our hands — these little hands that were
made to the finest uses of life, and that I shall fUl
with honors."
" Don't touch me," warned Emeline. " They can
scratch !"
The King of Beaver laughed aloud. "With con-
tinued gentleness he explained to her : " You will
come to me. Gentile brutes may chase women like
savages, and maltreat them afterwards; but it is
different with you and me." He brought his hands
forward and folded them upright on his breast.
"I have alwa3^s prayed this prayer alone and as a
solitary soul at twilight. For the first time I shall
speak it aloud in the presence of one who has often
thought the same prayer: O God, since Thou hast
shut me up in this world, 1 will do the best I can,
without fear or favor. When my task is done, let
me out!"
He turned and left her, as if this had been a
benediction on their meeting, and went from the
garden as he usually went from the Tabernacle.
Emeline's heart and eyes seemed to overflow with-
out any volition of her own. It was a kind of
spiritual effervescence which she could not control.
She sobbed two or three times aloud, and imme-
diately ground her teeth at his back as it passed out
101
THE KING OF BEAVER
of sight. Billy and Roxy were so free from the
baleful power that selected her. They could chat
in peace under the growing darkness, they who had
home and families, while she, without a relative
except those on Beaver Island, or a friend whose
duty it was to shelter her, must bear the shock of
that ruinous force.
The instinct that no one could help her but her-
self kept her silent when she retired with Eoxy to
the loft-chamber. Primitive life on Beaver Island
settled to its rest soon after the birds, and there was
not a sound outside of nature's stirrings till morn-
ing, unless some drunken fishermen trailed down
the Galilee road to see what might be inflicted on
the property of sleeping Mormons.
The northern air blew fresh through gable win-
dows of the attic, yet Emeline turned restlessly on
her straw bed, and counted the dim rafters while
Roxy slept. Finally she could not lie still, and
slipped cautiously out of bed, feeling dire need to
be abroad, running or riding with all her might.
She leaned out of a gable window, courting the
moist chill of the starless night. "While the hidden
landscape seemed strangely dear to her, she was
full of unspeakable homesickness and longing for
she knew not what — a life she had not known and
could not imagine, some perfect friend who called
her silently through space and was able to lift her
out of the entanglements of existence.
The regular throbbing of a horse's feet approach-
ing along the road at a brisk walk became quite
103
a
>
rr.
K
O
THE KING OF BEAVER
distinct. Emelinp/s sensations were suspended while
she listened. From the direction of St. James she
saw a figure on horsebacli coming between the dusky
])arallel fence rows. Tiie sound of walking ceased
in front of the house, and presently another sound
crept barely as high as the attic window. It was
the cry of a violin, sweet and piercing, like some
celestial voice. It took her unawares. She fled
from it to her place beside Roxy and covered her
ears with the bedclothes.
Roxy turned with a yawn and aroused from sleep.
She rose to her elbow and drew in her breath,
giggling. The violin courted like an angel, llnding
secret approaches to the girl who lay rigid with her
ears stopped.
"Cousin Emeline!" whispered Roxy, "do you
hear that?"
"What is it?" inquired Emeline, revealing no
emotion.
" It's Brother S.trang serenading."
" IIow do you know?"
" Because he is the only man on Beaver who can
play the fiddle like that." Roxj'^ gave herself over
to unrestrained giggling. "A man fifty years
old !"
" I don't believe it," responded Emeline, sharply.
"Don't believe he is nearly fifty? He told his
age to the elders."
" I haven't a word of praise for him, but he isn't
an old man. He doesn't look more than thirtv-five."
4/
"To hear that fiddle you'd think he wasn't
103
THE KING OF BEAVER
twenty," chuckled Roxv. " It's the first time Broth-
er Strang ever came serenading down tliis road."
He did not stay long, but went, trailing music
deliciously into the distance. Emeline knew how
he rode, with the bridle looped over his bow arm.
She was quieted and lay in peace, sinking to sleep
almost before the faint, far notes could no longer be
heard.
From that night her uncle Cheeseman's family
changed their attitude towards her. She felt it as
a Avithdrawal of intimacy, though it expressed
reverential awe. Especially did her Mormon aunt
Mahala take little tasks out of her hands and wait
upon her, while her legal aunt looked at her curious-
ly. It was natural for Rox}'^ to talk to Billy Went-
worth across the fence, bu; it was not natural for
them to share so much furtive laughter, which
ceased when Emeline approached. Uncle Cheese-
man himself paid more attention to his niece and
spent much time at the table explaining to her the
Mormon situation on Beaver Island, tracing the
colony back to its secession from Brigham Young's
party in Illinois.
" Brother Strang was too large for them," said
her uncle. " He can do anything he undertakes to
do."
The next Saturday Emeline refused to go to the
Tabernacle. She gave no reason and the family
asked for none. Her capi'ices were as the gambols
of the paschal lamb, to be indulged and overlooked.
Roxy offered to stay with her, but she rejected
104
H
t:
c
p:
>■
c
hi
C
THE KING OF BEAVER
companionship, promising her uncle and aunts to
lo?k herself within the cabin and hide if she saw
men approaching from any direction. The dry was
sultry for that climate, and of a vivid clearness, and
the sky dazzled. Emeline had never met any terri-
fying Gentiles during her stay on the island, and
she felt quite secure in crossing the pasture and
taking to the farm woods beyond. Her uncle's cows
had worn a path which descended to a run with
partially grass-lined channel. Beaver Island was
full of brooks and springs. The children had placed
stepping-stones across this one. She was vaguely
happy, seeing the water swirl below her feet, hear-
ing the cattle breathe at their grazing; though in
the path or on the log which she found at the edge
of the woods her face kept turning towards the
town of St. James, as the faces of the faithful turn
toward?. Mecca. It Avas childish to think of escaping
the King of Beaver by merely staying away from
his exhortations. Emeline knew she was only
parleying.
The green silence should have helped her to think,
but she found herself waiting — and doing nothing
but waiting — for what might happen next. She
likened herself to a hunted rabbit palpitating in
cover, unable to reach any place of safety yet
grateful for a moment's breathing. Wheels rolled
southward along the Galilee road. Meeting was
out. She had the caprice to remain where she was
when the family wagon arrived, for it had been too
warm to walk to the Tabernacle. Roxy's voice
105
TIIR KING OF BEAVER
called lier, and as she answered, Roxy skipped
across the brook and ran to her.
" Cousin Emcline," the breathless girl announced,
" here comes Mary French to see you !"
Emehne stiffened upon the log.
"Where?"
Roxy glanced behind at a figure following her
across the meadow.
"What does she want of me?" inquired Emeline.
" If she came home with the family, it was not
necessary to call me."
" She drove by herself. She says Brother Strang
sent her to you."
Emeline stood up as the Prophet's youngest wife
entered that leafy silence. Roxy, forgetting that
these two had never met before, slipped away and
left them. They looked at each other.
"How do you do, Mrs. Strang?" spoke Emeline.
" How do you do, Miss Cheeseman?" spoke Mary
French.
"Will you sit down on this log?"
" Thank you."
Mar}?^ French had more flesh and blood than Eme-
line. She was larger and of a warmer and browner
tint — that type of brunette with startling black
hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and
with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a
bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled.
From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple
woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her
garment was a transparent texture over white, and
toe
THE KING OF BEAVER
she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her
head. She had left her bonnet in her conveyance.
" My husband," said Mary French, quiet and
smiling, '"sent nie to tell you that you will be wel-
comed into our family."
Emeline looked her in the eyes. The Prophet's
wife had the most unblenching smiling gaze she had
ever encountered.
" I do not wish to enter your family. I am not
a Mormon."
" He will make you wish it. I was not a Mor-
mon."
They sat silent, the trees stirring around them.
" I do not understand it," said Emeline. " How
can you come to me with such a message?"
" I can do it as you can do it when your turn
comes."
Emeline looked at Mary French as if she had been
stabbed.
" It hurts, doesn't it?" said Mary French. " But
wait till he seems to you a great strong archangel
— an archangel w^tlj only the weakness of dabbling
his wings in the dirt — and you will withhold from
him nothing, no one, that may be of use to him.
If he wants to put me by for a while, it is his will.
You cannot take my place. I cannot fill yours."
"Oh, don't!" gasped Emeline. "I am not that
sort of woman — I should kill!"
" That is because you have not lived with him.
I would rather have him make me suffer than not
have him at all."
107
THE KING OF BEAVER
" Oh, don't! I can't bear it! Help me!" prayed
Emeline, stretching- her hands to the wife.
Mary French met her with one hand and the
unflinching smile, ller flesh was firm and warm,
while Emeline's was cold and quivering.
" You have never loved anybody, have you?"
" No."
"But you have thought you did?"
" I was engaged before I came here."
" And the engagement is broken 2"
" We quarrelled."
Mary French breathed deeply.
" You will forget it here. He can draw the very
soul out of your body."
"He cannot!" flashed Emeline.
" Some one will kill him yet. He is not under-
stood at his best, and he cannot endure defeat of
any kind. When you come into the family you
must guard him from his enemies as I have constant-
ly guarded him. If you ever let a hair of his head
be harmed — then I shall hate you!"
" Mrs. Strang, do you come here to push me too?
My uncle's family, everything, all are closing around
me! Why dor t you help me? I loatha — I loathe
your husband !"
Mary French rose, her smile changing only to
express deep tenderness.
" You are a good girl, dear. I can myself feel
your charm. I w^as not so self-denying. In my
fierce young girlhood I would have removed a
rival. But since you ask me, I will do all I can
108
THE KING OF BEAVER
for you in the way you desire. My errand is
done. Good-by."
" Good-by," said Emeline, restraining herself.
She sat watching tlie ehistic shape under the
parasol move with its shadow across the field. She
had not a doubt until Mary French was gone; then
the deep skill of the Piophet's wife with rivals
sprung out like a distortion of nature.
Emeline had nearly three weeks in which to in-
trench herself with doubts and defences. She felt
at first surprised and relieved. When her second
absence from the Tabernacle was passed over in
silence she found in her nature an unaccountable
pique, which steadly grew to unrest. She ventured
and turned back on the woods path leading to St.
James many times, each time daring farther. The
impulse to go to St. James came on her at waking,
and she resisted through busy hours of the day.
But the family often had tasks from w^hich Emeline
was free, and when the desire grew unendurable she
knelt at her secluded bedside in the loft, trying to
bring order out of her confused thoughts. She re-
viewed her quarrel with her lover, and took blame
for his desertion. The grievance which had seemed
so great to her before she came to Beaver Island
dwindled, and his personality with it. In self-de-
fence she coaxed her fancy, pretending that James
Arnold was too good for her. It ^vas well he had
found it out. But because he was too good for her
she ought to go on being fond of him at a safe
distance, undetected by him, and discreetly cherish-
109 ^
TIIK KING OF BEAVEll
iufi; liis laroe blond image as her ideal of manhood.
If slic had not been bred in horror of (Catholics, tiio
cloister at this time would iiave occurred to her as
her only safe refuge.
These secret rites in her bedroom being ended,
and Koxy diverted from lier movements, slie sli{)j)ed
off into the woods i)alli, sometimes running breath-
lessly towards St. James.
The im})etus which carried Emeline increased
with each journey. At first she was able to check
it in the woods depths, but it finally drove her until
the village houses were in sight.
When this at last happened, and she stood gazing,
fascinated, down the tunnel of forest path, the
King of Beaver spoke behind her.
Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush,
to make it a support and a veil.
'^ Have I been a patient man?" he inquired, stand-
ing between her and her uncle's house. "I waited
for you to come to me." '
" I am obliged to go somewhere," said Emeline,
pluckino^the leaves and unsteadilv shifting" her eves
about his feet. " I cannot stay on the farm all the
time." Through numbness she felt the pricking of
a sharp rapture.
The King of Beaver smiled, seeing betraj'ed in
her face the very vertigo of joy.
"You will give yourself to me now?" he winning-
ly begged, venturing out-stretched hands. "You
have felt the need as I have? Do you think the
days have been easy to me? When you were on
110
YOU WILL GIVE YOURSELF TO ME N0\ ' V
THE KIXG OF BEAVER
your knees I was on my knees too. Every day
you came in this direction I came as far as I dared,
to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?"
" No," said Emeline.
He was making her ask herself that most insidious
question, " Why could not the other have been like
this?"
" Tell me — can you say, ' I hate you,' now?"
" No," said Emeline.
" I have grown to be a better man since you said
you hated me. The miracle cannot be forced.
Next time?" lie spoke wistfully.
"No," Emeline answered, holding to the bush.
She kept her eyes on the ground while he talked,
and glanced up when she replied. He stood with
liis hat off. The flakes of sun touched his head and
the fair skin of his forehead.
He moved towards Emeline, and she retreated
around the bush. Without hesitating he passed,
making a salutation, and went on by himself to
St. James. She watched his rapid military walk
furtively, her eyebrows crouching, her lips rippling
with passionate tremors. Then she took to flight
homeward, her skirts swishing through the woods
with a rush like the wind. The rebound was as
violent as the tension had been.
There were few festivities on Beaver Island, the
Mormon families living a pastoral life, many of
them yet taxed by the struggle for existence. Crops
shot up rank and strong m the short Northern
summer. Soft cloud masses sailed over the island,
lU
THE KING OF BEAVER
and rain-storms marched across it with drums of
thunder which sent reverberations along the water
world. Or fogs rolled in, mutlling and obliterating
homesteads.
Emeline stayed in the house, busying herself with
the monotonous duties of the family three days.
She was determined never to go into the woods path
again without Ilox3^ The fourth day a gray fog
gave her no choice but imprisonment. It had the
acrid tan^^ of smoke from lires burninor on the main-
land. About nightfall the west wind rose and blew
it back, revealing a land mantled with condensed
drops.
Emeline put on her hat and shawl to walk around
in the twilight. The other young creatures of the
house were glad to be out also, and Roxy and Roxy-s
lover talked across the fence. Emeline felt fortified
against the path through the woods at night; yet
her feet turned in that direction, and as certainly
as water seeks its level she found herself on the
moist elastic track. Cow-bells on the farm sounded
fainter and farther. A gloom of trees massed
around her, and the forest gave up all its perfume
to the dampness.
At every step she meant to turn back, though a
recklessness of night and of meeting the King of
Beaver grew upon her. Thus, without any reason-
able excuse for her presence there, she met Mary
French.
"Is that you, Miss Cheeseraan f panted the Proph-
et's youngest wife.
lid
THE KING OF BEAVER
Emeline confessed her identity.
" I was coming for you, but it is fortunate you
are so far on the way. There is a steamboat at the
dock, and it will go out in half an hour. I could
not get away sooner to tell you." Mary French
breathed heavily from rum. t. " When the steam-
boat came in the captain sent for my husband, as
the captains always do. I went with him: he
knows how I dread to have him go alone upon a
boat since an attempt was made last j^ear to kidnap
him. But this time there was another reason, for
I have been watching. And sure enough, a 3'oung
man was on the steamboat inquiring where he
could find you. His name is James Arnold. The
captain asked my husband to direct him to you.
You will readily understand why he did not find
you. Come at once !"
*' I will not," said Emeline.
"But vou wanted me to help vou, and I have
been trving; to do it. AVe easilv learned bv letter
from our friends in Detroit who your lover was.
Mv husband had me do that* he wanted to know.
Then without his knowledge I stooped to write an
anonymous letter."
" To James Arnold ?"
"Yes."
"About mer
" About you."
"What did you tell him?"
" I said you were exposed to great danger on
Beaver Island, among the Mormons, and if you had
H 113
THE KING OF BEAVER
any interested friend it ^ytls time for him to inter-
fere."
"And that brought him here?"
"I am sure it did. He was keenly disappointed
at not finding you."
"But why didn't he come to the farm?"
" My husband prevented that, lie said you were
on Beaver Island three or four weeks ago, but you
were now in the Fairy Isle. It was no lie. He
s])oke in parables, but the other heard him literally.
We let him inquire of people in St. James. But
no one had seen you since the Saturday 3'ou came
to the Tabernacle. So he is fj^oino' back to Mackinac
to seek you. Your life will be decided in a quarter
of an hour. Will you go on that steamboat?"
" Tlirow myself on tiie mercy of a man who dared
— dared to break his engagement, and who ought
to be punished and put on probation, and then re-
fused! No, I cannot!"
"The ininutes are slipping away."
" Besides, I have nothing with me but the clothes
I have on. And my uncle's family — think of my
uncle's family !"
" You can write to your uncle and have him send
your baogno'e. I dare not carrv anv messages.
But I thought of what 3'ou would need to-night,
and put some tilings and some money in this satchel.
They were mine. Keep them all."
Emeline took hold of the bag which Mary French
shoved in her hand. Their faces were indistinct to
each other.
lU
LET ME loose!' STUUGGLED EMELINE "
THE KING OF BEAVER
" For the first time in my life I have deceived my
husband !"
"Oh, what shall I do — what shall I do?" cried
the girl.
A steamer whistle at St. James dock sent its bel-
low rebounding from tree to tree in the woods.
Emeline seized Mary French and kissed her violently
on both cheeks. She snatched the bag and flew
towards St. James.
" Stop !" commanded the Prophet's wife.
She ran in pursuit, catching Emeline by the
shoulders.
"You sha'n't go! What am I doing? Maybe
robbing him of what is necessary to his highest
success! I am a fool — to think he might turn back
to me for consolation when you are gone — God for-
give me such silly fondness! I can't have a secret
between him and myself — I will tell him! You
shall not go — and cause him a mortal hurt! Wait!
— stop! — the boat is gone! It's too late!"
" Let me loose !" struggled Emeline, wrenching
herself away.
She ran on through the woods, and Mary French,
snatching at garments which eluded her, stumbled
and fell on the damp path, gathering dead leaves
under her palms. The steamer's prolonged bellow
covered her voice.
Candles were lighted in St. James. The Taber-
nacle spread itself like a great circular web dark
with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running
across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it
115
THE KING OF BEAVER
in. The bell was ringing and the boat was already
in motion. It sidled and backed away from its
moorings.
Eraeline knelt panting at the rail on the forward
deck. A flambeau fastened to the wharf bowed its
light to the wind as the boat swung about, showing
the King of Beaver smiling and waving his hand in
farewell. He did not see Emeline. His farewell
was for the man whom he had sent away without
her. His golden hair and beard and blue eyes
floated into Emeline's past as the steamer receded,
the powerful face and lithe figure first losing their
identity, and then merging into night. What if it
was true that she was robbing both him and herself
of the best life, as Mary French was smitten to be-
lieve at the last moment? Her Gentile gorge rose
against him, and the traditions of a thousand years
warred in her with nature ; yet she stretched her
hands towards him in the darkness.
Then she heard a familiar voice, and knew that
the old order of things was returning, while Beaver
Island, like a dream, went silently down upon the
waters.
Some years later, in the '50's, Emeline, sitting
opposite her husband at the breakfast-table, heard
him announce from the morning paper :
" Murder of King Strang, the Mormon Prophet
of Beaver Island." All the details of the affair,
even the track of the bullets which crashed into
that golden head, were mercilessly printed. The
reader, surprised by a sob, dropped his paper.
116
THE KING OF BEAVER
" What ! Are you crying, Mrs. Arnold ?"
" It was so cruel I" sobbed Emeline. " And Billy
"Went worth, like a savage, helped to do it!"
" He had provocation, no doubt, though it is a
horrid deed. Perhaps I owe the King of Beaver
the tribute of a tear. He befogged me considerably
the only time I ever met him."
" You see only his evil. But I see what he was
to Mary French and the others."
"His bereaved widows?"
" The ones who believed in his best."
BEATER LIGHTS
A MAGNIFICENT fountain of flame, visible
far out on the starlit lake, spurted from the
north end of Beaver Island. It was the
tem})le, in which the Mormon people had wor-
shipped for the last time, sending sparks and illu-
mined vapor to the zenith. The village of St.
James was partly in ashes, and a blue pallor of
smoke hung dimly over nearly every hill and hollow,
for Gentile fishermen crazed with drink and power
and long arrears of grievances had carried torch and
axe from farm to farm. Until noon of that day all
householding families had been driven to huddle
with their cattle around the harbor dock and forced
to make pens for the cattle of lumber which had
been piled there for transportation. Unresisting
as sheep they let themselves be shipped on four
small armed steamers sent by their enemies to carry
them into exile. Not one of the twelve elders who
had received the last instructions of their murdered
king rose up to organize ai-y defence. Scarcely a
month had passed since his wounding unto death,
and his withdrawal, like Arthur, in the arms of
weeping women to that spot in Wisconsin where
118
BEAVER LIGUTS
he had found his sacred Vorec plates or tables of the
hiw. Scarcely two weeks had passed since news
came back of his burial there. And already the
Mormon settlement was swept off Jie[iver Island.
Used to border warfai'e and to following their
dominating prophet to victory, they yet seemed
unable to strike a blow without him. Such non-
resistance procured them nothing but contempt.
They even submitted to being compelled to destroy
a cairn raised over the grave of one considered a
malefactor, carrying the heap stone by stone to
throw into the lake, Gentiles standing over them
like Egyptian masters.
Little waves ran in rows of light, washing against
the point on the north side of the landlocked har-
bor. A primrose star was there struggling aloft at
the top of a rough rock tower. It was the fish-oil
flame of Beaver lamp, and the keeper sat on his
doorsill at the bottom of the light-house with his
wife .beside him.
The lowing of cattle missing their usual evening
tendance came across from the dock, a mournful
accompaniment to the distant roaring of fire and
falling of timbers.
" Do you realize, Ludlow," the young woman in-
quired, slipping hei* hand into her husband's, "that
I am now the only Mormon on Beaver Island ?"
"You never were a verj^^ good Mormon, Cecilia.
You didn't like the breed any better than I did,
though there were good people among them."
"Will they lose all their cattle, Ludlow f'
119
BEAVER LIGHTS
" The cattle are safe enough," he laughed. " The
men that are doing this transporting will take the
cattle. None of our Mormon friends will ever see
a hoof from Beaver Island again."
" But it seems robbery to drive them off and seize
their property."
" That's the way King Strang took Beaver from
the Gentiles in the first place. Mormons and Gen-
tiles can't live together."
'' We can."
" I told you that you were a poor Mormon, Cecilia.
And from first to last I opposed my family's enter-
ing the community. Tithes and meddling sent my
father out of it a poor man. But I'm glad he went
before this ; and your people, too."
She drew a deep breath. " Oh yes! They're safe
in Green Bay. I couldn't endure to have them on
those steamers going down the lake to-night. What
will become of the community, Ludlow?"
" God knows. They'll be landed at Chicago and
turned adrift on the world. I'm glad they're away
from here. I've no cause to love them, but I was
afraid they would be butchered like sheep. Your
father and my father, if they had still been elders
on the island, wouldn't have submitted, as these
folks did, to abuse and exile and the loss of every-
thing they had in the world. I can't understand
it of some of them. There was Jim Baker, for in-
stance ; I'd have sworn he would fight."
"1 can understand why he didn't. He hasn't
taken any interest since his second marriage."
130
BEAVER LIGHTS
" Now, that was a nice piece of work! I always
liked Jim the best of any of the young men until
he did that. And what inducement was there in
the woman?"
The light-house keeper's wife fired up. ""What
inducement there was for him ever to marry Ro-
sanne I couldn't see. And I know Elizabeth Aiken
lo/ed him when we were girls together."
" And didn't Rosanne?"
" Oh — Rosanne! A roly-poly spoiled young one,
that never will be a woman! Elizabeth is noble."
" You're fond of Elizabeth because she was wit-
ness to our secret marriage when King Strang
wouldn't let me have you. I liked Jim for the
same reason. Do you mind how we four slipped
one at a time up the back stairs in my father's house
that night, while the young folks were dancing be-
low?"
" I mind we picked Elizabeth because Rosanne
would be sure to blab, even if she had to suffer her-
self for it. How scared the poor elder was !"
" We did him a good turn when we got him to
marry us. He'd be on one of the steamers bound
for nowhere, to-night, instead of snug at Green Bay,
if we hadn't started him on the road to what King
Strang called disaffection."
The light-house keeper jumped up and ran out on
the point, his wife following him in nervous dread.
"What is the matter, Ludlow?"
Their feet crunched gravel and paused where rip-
ples still ran in, endlessly bringing lines of dimmer
121
BEAVER LIGHTS
and dimmer light. A rocking boat was tied to a
stake. Anchored and bare-masted, farther out in
the mouth of the bay, a fishing smack tilted sliglit-
\y in rhythmic motion. Wliile they stood a touch
of crimson replaced the sky light in the water, and
great blots like blood soaking into the bay were
reflected from the fire. The burning temple now
seemed to rise a lofty tower of flame against the
horizon. Figures could be seen passing back and
forth in front o-f it, and shouts of fishermen came
down the peninsula. The King's printing-office
where the Northern Islander was once issued as a
daily had smouldered down out of the way. It was
the first place to which tliey had set torch.
" I thought 1 heard some one running up the sail
on our sail-boat," said the light-house keeper. " No
telling what these fellows may do. If they go to
meddling wath me in my little Government office,
they'll lind me as stubborn as the Mormons did."
" Oh, Ludlow, look at the tabernacle, like a big
red-hot cheese-box on the high ground I Tliink of
the coronation there on the first King's Day!"
Tl>e light-house keeper's wife was again in im-
agination a long-limbed girl of fifteen, crowding
into the temple to witness such a ceremony as was
celebrated on no other spot of the New World.
The King of Beaver, in a crimson robe, walked the
temple aisle, followed by his council, his twelve
elders, and seventy ministers of the minor order.
In the presence of a hushed multitude he was
anointed, and a crown with a cluster of projecting
122
BEAVER LIGHTS
stars was set on his golden head. Hails and shouts,
music of marching singers and the strewing of
flowers went before him into the leafy July woods.
Thus King's Day was established and annually ob-
served on the 8th of July. It began with burnt-
offerings. The head of each family was required
to bring 9, chicken. A heifer was killed and care-
fully cut up without breaking a bone; and, while
the smoke of sacrifice arose, feasting and dancing
began, and lasted until sunset. Firstlings of flocks
and the first-fruits of orchard and field were or-
dained the King's; and he also claimed one-tenth
of each man's possessions. The Mosaic law was set
up in Beaver Island, even to the stoning of rebellious
children.
The smoke of a sacrificed people was now reeking
on Beaver. This singular man's French ancestry
— for he was descended from Henri de L'Estrange,
who came to the New World with the Duke of
York — doubtless gave him the passion for pictu-
resqueness and the spiritual grasp on his isolated
kingdom which keeps him still a notable and unfor-
gotten figure.
" It makes me feel bad to see so much destruction,"
the young man said to his wife; " though I offered
to go with Billy Went worth to shoot Strang if no-
body else was willing. I knew I was marked, and
sooner or later I would disappear if he continued
to govern this island. But with all his faults he
was a man. He could fight; and whip. He'd have
sunk every steamer in the harbor to-day."
133
BEAYER LIGHTS
"It's heavy on my heart, Ludlow — it's dreadful!
Neighbors and friends that we shall never see
again !"
The young man caught his wife by the arm.
They both heard the swift beat of footsteps flying
down the peninsula. Cecilia drew in her breath
and crowded against her husband. A figure came
into view and identified itself, leaping in bisected
draperies across an open space to the light-house
door.
"Why, Kosanne!" exclaimed the keeper's wife.
She continued to say "Why, Rosanne! Why, Ro-
sanne Baker!" after she had herself run into the
house and lighted a candle.
She set the candle on the chimney. It showed
her rock-!)uilt domicile, plain but dignified, like the
hollow of a cavern, with blue china on the cupboard
shelves ard a spinning-wheel standing by the north
wall. A corner staircase led to the second story
of the towev, and on its lowest step the fugitive
dropped down, weeping and panting. She was pe-
culiarlv dressed in the calico bloomers which the
King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women
of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little feet, cased
in strong shoes, aj^peared below the baggy trousers.
The upper part of her person, her almond eyes,
round curves and features were full of Oriental
suggestions. Some sweet inmate of a harem might
so have materialized, bruising her soitness against
the hard stair.
"Why, Rosanne Baker!'' her hostess reiterated.
BEAVER LIGHTS
Cecilia did not wear bloomers. She stood erect in
petticoats. " I thought you went on one of the
boats!"
" I didn't," sobbed Rosanne. " When they were
crowding us on I slipped among the lumber piles
and hid. I've been hid all day, lying flat be-
tween boards — on top where they couldn't see
me."
" Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too!
And you haven't had anything to eat?"
"I don't want to eat. I'm only frightened to
death at the wicked Gentiles burning the island.
I couldn't stay there all night, so I got down and
ran to your house."
"Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne,
Where's your husband?"
The trembling creature stiffened herself and
looked at Cecilia out of the corners of her long
eyes. "lie's with Elizabeth Aiken."
The only wife of one husband did not know how
to take hold of this subject.
"But your father was there," she suggeste<l.
" How could you leave your father and run the risk
of never seeing him again?"
" I don't care if I never see him again. He said
he was so discouraged he didn't care what became
of any of us."
Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic
affection further, but she saw that four step-mothers
could easily be given up. She turned helplessly to
her husband who stood in the door.
125
BEAVER LIGHTS
"Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall
we do^"
" Put her to bed."
" Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you
to-morrow ?"
" There are two good guns on the rack over the
chimney. I don't think anybody will hurt me or
her either, to-morrow."
" Rosanne, my dear," said Cecilia, trying to lift
the relaxed soft body and to open the stairway door
behind her. " Come up with me right off. I think
you better be where people cannot look in at us."
liosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, cling-
ing to her friend. When they disappeared the
young man heard her through the stairway en-
closure sobbing with convulsive gasps:
"I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would
kill Elizabeth Aiken! I hate her — I hate her!"
The lighthouse -keeper sat down again on his
doorstep and faced the prospect of taking care of a
homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that his
wife had not Avarraly enough welcomed her or met
the situation with that recklessness one needed on
Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to burn
lower, brands streaming away in the current which
a fire makes. It was strange to be more conscious
of inland doings than of that vast ur salted sea so
near him, which moistened his hair with vaporous
drifts through the darkness. The garnet redness
of the temple shed a huger amphitheatre of shine
around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his
126
BEAVER LIGHTS
lips, lie was considering that drunken fishermen
might presently begin to rove, and he would be
wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his
candle, when by stealthy approaches around the
lighthouse two persons stood before him.
" Is Ludlow here ?" inquired a voice which he
knew.
" I'm here, Jim ! Are all the Mormons coming
back ?"
" Is Tvosanne in your house ?"
" Rosunne is here ; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come
inside, Jim. Have you Elizabeth with you ?"
" Yes, I have Elizabeth with me."
The three entered together. Ludlow shut the
door and dropped an iron bar across it. The young
men standing opposite were of nearly the same age ;
but one w^as fearless and free and the other harassed
and haffffard. Out-door labor and the skill of the
fisheries had given to both depth of chest and clean,
muscular limbs. But James Baker had the des-
perate and hunted look of a fugitive from justice.
lie was fair, of tiie strong-featured, blue -eyed type
that has pale chestnut-colored hair clinging close
to a well-domed head.
" Yes, Eosanne is here," Ludlow repeated. " Now
Avill you tel' me how you got here ?"
" I rowed back in a boat."
" Who let vou have a boat?"
" There were sailors on the steamer. After I
found Rosanne was left behind I would have had a
boat or killed the man that prevented me. I had to
127
BEAVER LIGHTS
wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your
wife would take care of her. I told myself that
when I couldn't find any chance to land in St.
James's Bay until sunset."
" She's been hiding in the lumber on the dock all
day."
" Did any one hurt her?''
" Evidently not."
The Mormon husband's face cleared with a con-
vulsion which in woman would have been a reliev-
ing burst of tears.
" Sit down, Elizabeth," said the lighthouse-keep-
er. " You look fit to fall."
" Yes, sit down, Elizabeth," James Baker re-
peated, turning to her with secondary interest. But
she remained standing, a tall Greek figure in
bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack
was an accident of which the eye took no account.
She had pushed her soft brown hair, dampened by
the lake, behind her ears. They showed delicately
against the two shining masses, ller forehead and
chin were of noble and courageous shape. If there
was fault, it was in the breadth and height of
brows masterful rather than feminine. She had
not one delicious sensuous charm to lure maji. Her
large eyes were blotted with a hopeless blankness.
She waited to see what would be done next.
" Now I'll tell you," said Baker to his friend, with
decision, " I'm not going to bring the howling Gen-
tiles around you."
" I don't care whether they come or not."
138
BEAVER LIGHTS
" I know you don't. It isn't necessary in such a
time as this for you and me to look back."
"I told you at the time I wouldn't forget it,
Jim. You stood by me when I married Cecilia in
the teeth of the Mormons, and I'll stand by you
through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat's out
yonder, and it's yours as long as you want it ; and
we'll provision it."
" That's what I was going to ask, Ludlow."
" If I were you I'd put for Green Bay. Old
neighbors are there, my father among them."
*' That was my plan !"
" But," Ludlow added, turning his thumb over
his shoulder with embarrassment, " they're all Gen-
tiles in Green Bay."
" Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I
told her the truth before God. We've agreed to
live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any wife but
Rosanne, and I don't want any wife but Eosanne
now. You don't know how it happened ; I was
first of the young men called on to set an example.
Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear that
it was impossible to resist. He might have threat-
ened till doomsday. But I don't know what he did
with mo. I told him it wasn't treating Elizabeth
fair. Still, I married her according to Saints' lav> ,
and I consider myself bound by my pledge to pro-
vide for her. She's a good girl. She has no one to
look to but me. And I'm not going to turn her off
to shift for herself if the whole United States mus-
ters against me."
I 139
BEAVER LIGHTS
" Now you talk like a man, I think better of you
than I have for a couple of weeks past."
" It ought to make me mad to be run off of
Beaver. But I couldn't take any interest. May I
see Rosanne ?"
" Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put
her to bed. The walls and floors are thick here or
she would have heard your voice."
" Poor little Rosanne ! It's been a hard day for
her."
The young Mormon paused before ascending.
" Ludlow, as soon as you can give me a few things
to make the women comfortable for the run to
Green Bay, I'll take them and put out."
" Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what
they need."
Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth
silently but most tenderly the lighthouse -keeper
stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided
rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his
feet and remarked :
"It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think
we're goino; to have fair weather."
" I tliink we are," she answered.
Hurried preparations were made for the voyage.
Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes
and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a
young couple not rich but open-handed. The light-
house-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the
mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs
when the crunching of many feet on gravel was
130
BEAVER LIGHTS
heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at
one of the windows.
At the same instant he put Elizabeth and CeciHa
in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding
down three steps at once, into the room.
Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the
candle as lie reached for his weapons.
" Now you stand back out of sight and let me
talk to them," he said to the young Mormon, as an
explosive clamor began. " They'll kill you, and
they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything
against me, tlie drunkest of them know better than
to shoot down a government ofRcer. I'm going to
open this window."
A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-
bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at
the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way
through the window.
"Get off of the flower-bed," said Ludlow, drop-
ping the muzzle of his gun on the sill. " You're
tramping down my wife's flowers."
" It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after hav-
ing, Ludlow. We seen them shlipping in here !"
" It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own da-
cent wife that hard to come at, by raison of King
Strang !"
"Augh! thim bloomers! — they do be makin' me
sthummick sick !"
" What hurts you worst," said Ludlow, " is the
price you had to pay the Mormons for lish bar-
rels."
181
BEAVER LIOIITS
The mob groaned and hooted. " Wull ye give
us out the divil forninst there, or wull ye take a
broadside tlirough the windy ?"
" I haven't anv devil in the house."
" It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He w^or seen,
and his women."
" Jim J>aker is here. But he's leaving the island
at once with the women."
" He'll not lave it alive."
"You, Pat Corrigan," said Ludlow, pointing his
linger at the torch-bearer, " do you remember the
morning you and your mate rowed in to the light-
house half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed
you ?"
"Dolmoindit? I do !"
" Did I let the Mormons take you then ?"
" No, bedad."
" When King Strang's constables came galloping
down here to arrest you, didn't I run in water to
my waist to push you off in your boat V
" You did, bedad !"
*' I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give
this family up to you. They're not doing you any
harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.''
" But the two wives of him," argued Pat Cor-
rigan.
"How many wives and children have you f
"Is it 'how many wives,' saj^s the haythen !
"Wan wife, by the powers; and tin childer."
" Haven't you about as large a family as you can
take care of ?"
133
BP]AVEK LIGHTS
" Be<^obs, T havG."
"Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon
wife and provide for her? Somebody has to. If
you won't let him do it, perliaps you'll do it your-
self."
" No, bedad !"
"Well, then, you'd better go about your business
and let him alone. I don't see that we have to
meddle with these things. Do you'i"
The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-
naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause
and arrested in the very act of returning evil for
good.
"I tould you Ludlow was the foine man," said
the torch -bearer to his confederates.
" There's no harm in you boys," pursued the fine
man. " You're not making a war on women."
" We're not. Thrue for you."
" If 3^ou feel like having a wake over the Mor-
mons, why don't vou get more torches and make a
])rocession down the Galilee road ? You've done
about all you can on Mount Pisgah."
As they began to trail away at this suggestion
and to hail him with pai'ting shouts, Ludlow shut
the window and laughed in the dark room.
" I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all
the five lakes on Beaver. But they may change
their minds before they reach the sand-hills. We'd
better load the boat right ofif, Jim."
In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and
found Elizabeth waiting at the foot. They could
133
BEAVER LIGHTS
see each other only by starliglit. They were alone,
for tlie others had gone out to the boat.
" Are you williug for me to go, Rosanne?" spoke
Elizabeth. Her sweet voice was of a low pitch,
unhurried and steady. " James says he'll build me
a little house in ^''our yard."
" Oh, Elizabeth !"
Rosanne did not cry, "I cannot hate you !" but
she threw herself into the arms of the larirer, more
patient woman whom she saw no longer as a rival,
and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth
kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.
The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness,
shone behind Elizabeth like the lires of the stake as
she and Cecilia Avalked after the others to the boat.
Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the in-
dignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose
legal rights were not even recognized by the society
into which she would be forced. The world was
not open to her as to a man. In that day it would
have stoned her if she ventured too far from some
protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who
could tramp winter snows and were not despised
for their brief marriages may have flashed through
Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man
lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was
on lire. Why in all the swarming centuries of
human experience had the lot of a creature with
such genius for loving been cast where she was
utterly thrown away ?
Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal
134
BEAVER LIGHTS
she walked in the footsteps of 11111^3^8 behind the
piiir of reunited lovers.
"Take care, Kosaniie. Don't stumble, darling!"
said the man to whom Elizabeth had been married
by a law she respected until a higlier law unhus-
banded her.
Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand
and its withdrawal without touching him as he
lurched over a rock.
lie put his wife tenderly in the boat and then
turned with kind formalit}' to Elizabeth ; but Lud-
low had helped her.
"Well, bon voyage," said the lighthouse-keeper.
" Mind you run up the lantern on the mast as soon
as you get aboard. I don't think there'll be any
chase. The Irish have freed their minds."
" I'll send your fishing boat back as soon as I can,
Ludlow."
"Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give
him news of us and our love to all the folks. He
will be anxious to know the truth about Beaver."
" Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne !"
"Good-bye, Cecilia!"
A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of ad-
justed oars and the rush of water on each side of a
boat's course, marked the fugitives' progress tow-
ards the anchored smack.
Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and
watching the smoke of her past go up from a looted
island, Elizabeth had the sense of a great company
around her. The uninstructed girl from the little
135
BEAVER LIGHTS
kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls wait-
ing and loving in hopeless silence and marching re-
sistlessly as the stars to their reward. For there is
a development like the unfolding of a god for those
who suffer in strength and overcome.
A BRITISH ISLANDER*
WELL, I v:ish you could have been here
in Mrs. Gunning's day. She was the
oddest woman on Mackinac. Not that
she exerted herself to attract attention. But she was
such a character, and her manners were so astonish-
ing, that she furnished perennial entertainment to
the few families of us constituting island society.
She was an English woman, born in South Af-
rica, and married to an American army surgeon,
and had lived over a large part of the world before
coming to this fort. She had no children. But her
sister had married Dr. Gunning's brother. And
the good-for-nothing pair set out to follow the
English drum-beat around the world, and left a child
for the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana
Gunning was so deaf she could not hear thunder.
But she was quits with nature, for all that; a won-
derfully alluring kind of girl, with big brown eyes
that were better than ears, and that could catch
the meaning of moving lips. It seemed to strangers
* This story is set down exactly as it was told by the Island
Chronicler.
187
A BRITISH ISLANDER
that she merely evaded conversation ; for she had a
sweet voice, a little drawling, and was witty when
she wanted to speak. Juliana couldn't step out of
the surgeon's quarters to walk across the parade-
ground without making every soldier in the fort
conscious of her. She was well- shaped and tall,
and a slight pitting of the skin oidy enhanced the
charm of her large features. She used to dress an-
like anybody else, in foreign things that her aunt
gave her, and was alwaj*^ carrying different kinds
of thin scarfs to throw over her face and tantalize
the men.
Everybody knew that Captain Markley would
marry her if he could. But along comes Dr. Mc-
Curdy, a wealthy widower from the East, and
nothing will do but he must hang about Mack-
inac week after week, pretending to need the climate
— and he weighing nearly two hundred — to court
Juliana Gunning. The lieutenant's wife said of
Juliana that she would flirt with a half-breed if
nothing better offered. But the lieutenant's wife
was a homely, jealous little thing, and could never
have had all the men hanging after her. And if
she had had the chance she mio:ht have been as aff-
gravati ng about making up her mind between two
as Juliana was.
"We used to think the girl very good-natured.
But those three people made a queer family. Dr.
Gunning was the remnant of a magnificent man,
and he always had a courtly air. lie paid little
attention to the small affairs of life, and rated
138
A BRITISH ISLANDER
moiie}'' as nothing-. Dr. Gnnniiig had liis peculiar-
ities; but I am not teUing you about liim. lie
was a kind man, and would cross the strait in any
weather to attend a sick half-breed or any otlier
ailing creature, who probably never paid him a
cent. lie was fond of the island, and quite satis-
fied to spend his life here.
The day I am telling you about, Mrs. Gunning
had driven with me into the village to make some
calls. She was very punctilious about calling upon
strangers. If she intended to recognize a new-
comer she called at once. We drove around to
the rear of the fort and entered at the back sally-
port, where carriages always enter; but instead of
letting me put her down at the surgeon's quarters,
she ordered the driver to stop in the middle of the
parade-ground. Then she got out and, with never
a word, marched down the steps to Captain Markley,
where he was leaning against the front sally-port,
looking below into the town. I didn't know what
to do, so I sat and waited. It was the loveliest
autumn morning you ever saw. I remember the
beeches and oaks and maples were spread out like
banners to the verv height of the island, all crim-
son and yellow sj)lashes in the midst of evergreens.
There had been an awful stoi'm the night before,
and you could see down the sallyport how drenched
the fort garden was at the foot of the hill.
Captain Markley had a fearfully depressed look.
lie was so down in the mouth that the sentinels
noticed it. I saw the one in front of the western
A BRITISH ISLANDER
block-house stick his tongue in his clieek and wink
at one pacing below. We heard afterwards that
Captain Markley had been out alone to inspect
target -ranges in the pine woods, and almost ran
against Juliana Gunning and Dr. AlcCurdy sitting
on a log. Before he could get out of the wa}^ he
overheard the loudest proposal ever made on Mack-
inac. It used to be told about in mess, though
how it got out Captain Markley said he did not
know, unless they heard it at the fort.
" I have brought you out here," the doctor
shouted to Juliana, as loud as a cow lowing, "to
tell you that I love you! I want you to be my
wife!"
She behaved as if she didn't hear — I think that
minx often had fun with her deafness — and inclined
her head to one side.
So he said it all over again.
" I have brought you to this secluded spot to tell
you that I love you! I want you to be my wife!"
It was like a steamer bellowing on the strait.
Then Juliana threw her scarf over her face, and
Captain Markley broke away through the bushes.
Mrs. Gunning never said a word to me about
either of the suitors. It wasn't because she didn't
talk, for she was a great talker. We had to post-
pone a card-party one evening, on account of the
continuous flow of Mrs. Gunning's conversation,
which never ceased until it was time for refresh-
ments, there being not a moment's pause for the
tables to be set out.
140
-^t^'- .-■ -
I WAS STAHTLED TO SF-.K HKU lUSir AT TIIK CAPTAIN
A BRITISH ISLANDER
I was startled to see her rush down at Captain
Markle}^ brandishing her parasol as if she were
going to knock him down. I thought if she had
any preference it would be for an army man; for
you know an army woman's contempt of civilian
money and position. Array women continually
want to be moving on; and they hate bothering
with household stuff, such as we prize.
Captain Markley did look poor-spirited, drooping
against the sally-port, for a man who in his uniform
was the most conspicuous figure to Mackinac girls
in a ball-room. Maybe if he had been courting
anything but a statue he might have made a better
figure at it. Juliana was worse than a statue,
though; for she could float through a thousand
graceful poses, and drive a man crazy with her eyes.
He wasn't the lover to go out in the woods and
shoot a proposal as loud as a cannon at a girl; and
it seems he couldn't get any satisfaction from hei'
by writing notes.
Mrs. Gunning was drawing off her gloves as she
marched at him with her parasol, and I remember
how her emeralds and diamonds flashed in the sun
— okl heirlooms. I never saw another woman who
had so many precious stones. She was tall, with
that robust English quality that sometimes goes
with slenderness. She and Juliana were not a bit
alike. When she walked, her feet came down pat.
I pitied Captain Markley. By leaning over the
carriage I could see him give a start as Mrs. Gun-
ning pounced at him. - -,
141
A BRITISH ISLANDER
" It's a fine day after the. storm, Captain Mark-
ley," says she; and he lifted his cap and said it was.
Then slie made a rush that I thought would drive
liim down the cliff, and whirled her parasol around
his head like sword -pla}', talking about the havoc
of the storm. She ripi)led him from head to foot
and poked at his eyes, and jabbed him, to show how
lightning struck the rocks. Captain Markley all the
time moving back and dodging; and to save my
life I couldn't help laughing, though the sentinels
above him saw it. They were i)retty well used to
her, and rolled their quids in their cheeks, and
winked at one another.
When she had all but thrown him down-hill, she
stuck the ferrule right under his nose and shook it,
and says she: " Yet it is now as fine a day as if no
such convulsion had ever threatened the island. It
is often so in this world."
He couldn't deny that, miserable as he looked.
And I thought she would let him alone and come
and say good-da}'^ to me. But no, indeed! She
took h'm b}"" the arm. Soldiers off duty were
lounging on the benches, and Captain Markley
wouldn't let them see him haled like a [)ris(mer.
He marched square -shouldered and erect; and Mrs.
Gunning sa3's to me ns they reached the carriage :
"The cnptain will help you down if you will
come with us. I am going to show him my Shang-
hai rooster,"
I thanked her, and gladly let him help me down.
I wasn't going to desert the poor fellow when Mrs.
143
A BRITISH ISLANDER
Gunning was dealing with him; and, besides, 1
wanted to see tliat rooster myself. AVe heard such
stories of the way she kept her chickens and labored
over all the domestic animals she gathered around
herself at the fort.
By ascending a steep bank on which the western
block- house stands, you know you can look down
into the drill -ground — that wide meadow behind
the fort, with quarters at the back. Mrs. Gunning
had an enclosure built outside the wall for her
chickens; and there they were, walking about,
scratching the ground, and diverting themselves as
well as they could in their clothes. She had a shed
at one end of the enclosure, and all the hens, walk-
ing about or sitting on nests, wore hoods! Holes
were made for their eyes but none for their beaks,
and the eyelets seemed tc magnify so that they
looked wrathy as they stretched their necks and
quavered in those bags. Captain Markley and I
both burst out laughing, but Mrs. Gunning explained
it all seriouslv.
" They eat their eggs," says she ; " so I tie hoods
on them until I have collected the eggs for the day."
I remember some w^ere clawing their head-gear,
trying alternate feet, and two determined hens
were trying to peck each other free. But they
were generally resigned, and we might have grown
so after the first minute, if it hadn't been for the
rooster.
Captain Markley roared, and I leaned against
the lower part of the block-house and held my
143
A BRITISH ISLANDER
sides. That long-logged, awkward, high-stepping
Sluingliai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of
clothes — all but a hat. His coat-sleeves extended
over his wings, and when lie fhipped thein to crow,
and stuck his claws out of his trousers-legs, I wept
tears on my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning talked
straight ahead without ]mying any attention to
our laughter. If it ever had been funny to her it
had ceased to be so. 8he had not brought Ca})tain
JVIarkley there to amuse him.
" Look at that Shanghai rooster now," says she.
"I brought him up from the South. I put him
among the hens and they picked all his feathers
off. He was as bare, captain, as j^our hand. He
was literally hen-pecked. First one would step up
to him and pull out a feather ; then another ; and
he, poor fool, did nothing but cower against the
fence. It never seemed to enter his brain-pan he
could put a stop to the torture. There he was,
without a feather to cover himself with, and the
cool autumn nights coming on. So I took some
gray cloth and made him these clothes. He would
have been picked to the bone if I hadn't. But
they put spunk into him. That Shanghai rooster
has found out he has to assert himself, captain, and
he does assert himself."
I saw Captain Markley turn red, and I knew he
wished the sentinel wasn't standing guard a few
feet away in front of that block-house.
She might have let him alone after she had given
him that thrust, and gone on to her house, and said
.144
t-'- ;
A liKlTlSlJ ISLANDER
good-bye in the usual way. But just as he w is help-
inf^ me down itha])pened that Juliana and Dr. Mc-
Curdy appeared through the rear sally-port, which
they must liave reached by skirting the wall instead
of crossing the drill-field. As soon as Mrs. Gunning
saw them she stiffened, and clubbed her umbrella
at Captain Markley again. He couldn't get away,
so he stood his ground.
" See that creature begin to curvet and roll her
eyes!" says Mrs. Gunning. " If the parade-ground
were full of men I think she would prance over the
parapet. At my age she may have some sense and
feeing. But I would be glad to see her in the
hands of a man who knew how to assert himself."
" May I ask," says Captain Markley, " what you
mean by a man's asserting himself, Mrs. Giuining?"
She made such a pounce at him with the parasol
that her waist began to rip in the back.
" My dear boy, I am a full-blooded Briton, and
Juliana is what you may call an English half-breed.
In the bottom of our hearts we have a hankering
for monarchy. The lion, who permits nobody else
to poach on his preserves, is our symbol. While
the vexatious child and I are not at all alike in
other things, I know she admires as much as I do
a man who asserts himself."
Though it was said Juliana Gunning could not
hear thunder, she generallj'' understood her aunt's
voice, and could tell when she was being talked about.
She came straight to her own rescue, as you might
say, and Dr. McCurdy, poor man, was very polite, but
K 145
A BRITISH ISLANDER
not cheerful. If we bad known tlien what he had
been ^^elling in the woods, we should have under-
stood better why Captain Markley seemed to pluck
up and strut at the sight of him.
I think Mrs. Gunning determined to finish the
business that very hour. She met Dr. McCurdy
with all the sweetness she could put into her man-
ner just before she intended to pounce the hardest.
" I have been showing the captain my chickens,"
she says, " and now I want to shov/ you my cows."
Dr. McCurdv thanked her, and said he would be
delighted to see the cows, but he stuck to Juliana
like a shadow. Maybe he expected the cows would
give him a further excuse for being with her. But
Mrs. Gunning cut him off there, .he gave her
keys to her niece, and says she :
" Go in the house, my dear, and set out the de-
canter and glasses, and give Captain Markley a
glass of wine to keep him until we come back. I
want to tell him something more about that
Shanghai rooster."
Juliana understood, and took the keys, and rolled
her eyes tantalizingly at Dr. McCurdy The poor
fellow made a stand, and said the cows would do
some other time, and mightn't he beg for a glass of
wine too, after his walk?
" Certainl}^, doctor, certainly," says Mrs. Gun-
ning, leading the way to the front sally-port. " We
expect you to take a glass with us. But while Ju-
liana sets out the decanter, let us look at the cows."
She hadn't mentioned me, but I didn't ?are for
146
A BRITISH ISLANDER
that, knowing Mrs. Gunning as I did. T should
have followed if she hadn't beckoned to me, for I
was as determined to see the affair through as she
vas to finish it.
We had to go down that long ])ath from the
front sally-port to the street, and then turn into
the field at the foot of tlie hill, where the fort
stables are. Mrs. Gunning talked all the time
about cattle, flourishing her parasol and flashing
her diamonds and emeralds in the sun, and telling
Dr. McCurdy she had intended to ask his opinion
about them ever since his arrival on the island.
He answered yes, and no, and seemed to be think-
ing of anythinfi^ but cattle.
Mackinac cows tinkled their bells in every thick-
et. I^ut j\[rs. Gunning's pets were brought in
morning and afternoon to clean, well-lighted stalls.
There the; stood in a row, sleek as if they had
been curried — and I have heard that she did curry
them herself — all switching natural tails except
one. And, as sure as you live, tlit^t cow had a false
tail that Mrs. Gunning had made for her !
She took hold of it and showed it to us. It did
not seem very funny to Dr. McCurdy, but he had
to listen to what she said.
"Spotty was a fine cow, but by some accident
she had lost her tail, and I got her cheaper on that
account," says Mrs. Gunning. " You don't know
how distressing it was to see her switching a
stump. So I made her a tail of whalebone and In-
dia-rubber and yarn. I knit it myself."
147
A BRITISJI ISLANDER
The poor fellow looked up at the fort and said :
" Yes. It is very interesting, Mrs. Gunning."
" I am aware," says she, " that the expedient
was never hit upon before. But Spott3''s brush is
a great success. It used to make me unhappy to
think of leaving this post. All the other cows
might iind good liomes with new owners; but
who would care for Spotty^ Since I have sup-
plied her deficiency, however, and know that the
supply can constantly be renewed, my mind is easy
about her. If you ever have to knit a cow's
tail, doctor, remember the foundations are whale-
bone and India-rubber'! and I would advise vou
to use the coarsest yarn you can find for the
brush.'"
" I will, Mrs. Gunning," he says, like a man who
wanted to lie down in the straw and die. And I
couldn't laugh and relieve myself, because it was
like lauffhin": at him.
" Now that shows," says Mrs. Gunning, and she
pounced at him and shook her parasol in his face
so vigorously that she ripped in the back the same
as a chrysalis, " how easy it is to remedy a seem-
ingly incurable injur/."
If he didn't understand her then, he did after-
wards. But he looked as if he couldn't endure it
any longer, and made for the door.
" Stop, Dr. McCurdy," says she. " You haven't
heard these cows' pedigrees."
lie stopped, and said : " How long are the pedi-
grees ?"
148
A BRITISH ISLANDER
" Here are four generations," says Mrs. Gunning —
"•'grandmother, mother, daughter, and grandehikl."
And on she went, tracing their lineage through
blooded stock for more than half an hour. She
was enthusiastic, too, and got between the doctor
and the door, and emphasized all her points with
tlie parasol. Her back kept ripping until I ought
to have told her, but I knew the man was too mad
to look at her, and she was so ha})py herself, I said,
" I will let her alone."
I had forgotten all about my half-breed driver,
sitting on the parade-ground in the waiting car-
riage. But he was enjoying himself too, vrhen we
climbed to the fort again, with a soldier lounging
on the front wheel.
AVell, as soon as I entered the little parlor that
Mrs. Gunnino: called her drawing-room — ornament-
ed with the movable knickknacks that an army
woman carries around with her, you know — I saw
that Captain IVfarkley had asserted himself. If he
hadn't asserted himself on that occasion, I do be-
lieve Mrs,, Gunning would have been done with him
forever. I never saw a man so anxious to show
that he was accepted. Of course he couldn't an-
nounce the engagement until it had been sanc-
tioned by the girl's foster-parents. But he put Juli-
ana through the engaged drill like a veteran, and
she was wonderfull}'- meek.
I suppose one British woman knows another bet-
ter than an American can. But I felt sorry for
Dr. McCurdy when he saw the state of things and
149
A BRITISH ISLANDER
took his leave, and Mrs. Gunning rubbed his defeat
on the raw.
" Ah, my dear friend," saj^s she, shaking his
liand, " we see that buds will match with buds. I
could never find it in my heart to wed a bud to a
full-blown rose."
I don't doubt that the full-blown rose, as he went
down the fort hill, cursed Mrs. Gunning's cow's tail
and all her cows' pedigrees. But she looked as
serene as if he had pledged the young couple's
health (instead of going off and leaving his wine
half tasted), and took me to see her chickens' cup-
board.
There were shelves with rows of cans and bot-
tles, each can or bottle labelled "Molly," or "Lucy,"
or " Speckle," and so on.
" 1 have discovered," Mrs. Gunning says to me,
" that one hen's food may be another hen's poison,
so I mix and prepare for each fowl what that fowl
seems to need. For instance, Lucy can bear more
meal than Speckie, and the Shanghai cock had to
be strongly encouraged. Though it sometimes
happens," says she, casting her eye back towards
the drawing-room, '• that such a fellow gets pam-
pered, and has to have his diet reduced and his
spirit cooled down again."
THE CURSED PATOIS
AS his boat shot to the camp dock of beach
/\ stones, the camper thought he heard a
^ *- child's voice behind the screen of brush.
He leaped out and drew the boat to its landing
upon a cross-piece held by two uprights in the
water, and ascended the steep path worn in leaf
mould.
There was not only a child, there was a woman
also in the camp. And Frank Puttany, his Ger-
man feet planted outward in a line, his smiling
dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creat-
ures whom he had evidently introduced, in foolish
helplessness gave his partner the usual greeting :
"Veil, Prowny."
" Hello, Puttany. Visitors ?"
Brown pulled off his cap to the woman. She
was pretty, with eyes like a deer's, with white
teeth showing between her parted scarlet lips, and
much curling hair pinned up and blowing over her
ears. She had the rich tint of a quarter- breed,
lightened in her case by a constant suffusion which
gave her steady color. She was dressed in a mixt-
ure of patches, but all were fitted to her perfect
151
THE CURSED PATOIS
shape with a Parisian elegance sensed even by
backwoodsmen. Pressed against iier knee stood
the dirtiest and chubbiest four-j^ear-old child on the
borders of Erevoort Lake — perhaps the dirtiest on
the north shore of Michigan. The Indian mixed
^vith his French had been improved on by the sun
until he was of a brick redness and hardness of
flesh ; a rosy-meated thing, like a good muskalonge.
Prown suddenly remembered the pair. They were
Joe La France's wife and child. Joe La France
was dead. Puttany had recently told him that Joe
La France left a widow^ and a baby without shelter,
and without relations nearer than Canada.
After greeting Brown the guest resumed her seat
on one of the camp-chairs, a box worn smooth by *
much use, having a slit cut in the top through
which the hand could be thrust to lift it.
The camp, in a small clearing, consisted of two
tents, both of the wedge-shaped kind. The sleep-
ing-tent was nearly filled by the bed it contained;
and this, lifted a few inches above the ground on
pole supports, was of browse or brush and straw,
covered with blankets. A square canopy of mos-
quito-netting protected it. The cooking-tent had a
foundation of logs and a canvas top. The floor was
of pure white sand. Boxes liive lockers were stored
under the eaves to hold food, and in one corner a
cylindrical camp-stove with an oven thrust its pipe ,
through a tinned hole in the roof. Plenty of iron
skillets, kettles, and pans hung above the lockers on
pegs in the logs; and the camp dinner service of
153
THE CUKSKD PATOIS
white ware, black-handled knives and forks, and
metal spoons, neatly washed, stood on a table.
Jess, the Scotch collie, who was always left to
guard the tents in their owners' absence, sat at her
usual post within the door; and she and Brown ex-
changed repressed growls at the strangers. Jess,
being freed from her chain, trotted at his heels
when he went back to the beach to clean iish for
supper. She sat and watched his deft and work-
hardened hands as he dipped and washed and drew
and scaled his spoil. He was a clean-skinned, blue-
eyed Canadian Irishman, well made and sinewy,
bright and open of countenance. His blond hair
clung in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm fore-
head. No ill-nature was visible about him, yet he
turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his part-
ner, who followed Jess and stood also watching
him.
*' Puttany, you fool! what have you brought
these cursed patois into camp for?"
" Joe La France vas my old pardner," softly
pleaded the German.
" Damn you, man, we can't start an orphan-asy-
lum and \vidovvs' home ! We'll get a bad name at
the hotels. The real good people won't have us for
guides,"
" She told me in Allanville she had no place to
stay. She did not know what to do. At the old
voman's, where Joe put her, they have need of her
bed. The old voman is too poor to keep her any
more."
153
TUE CURSED PATOIS
" I'd ha,ve done just what you did ; that's what
makes me so mad. How long is she going to
stay V
" I don't know," slieepishly responded his part-
ner.
" A Dutchman ought to have more sense than to
load up with a lot of cursed patois. Nothing but
French and Indian ! AVe'll Jaave to put the precious
dears in the sleei)ing-tent, and bunk down ourselves
with blankets in the other. Did 3'ou air the blank-
ets good this morning, Frank ?"
" They vos veil aired."
"You're a soft mark, Frank! One of us will
have to marry Joe La France's widow — that's what
it will come to!" Brown slapped the water in vio-
lent disgust, but Puttany blushed a dark and modest
red.
Men of their class rarely have vision or any kind
of foresight. They live in the present and plan no
farther than their horizon, being, like children, over-
powered by visible things. But the Irish Canadian
had lived many lives as lake sailor and lumberman,
and he had a shrewd eye and quick humor. It was
he who had devised the conveniences of the camp,
and who delicately and skilfully prepared the meals
so that the two fared like epicures ; while Puttany
did the scullery-work, and was superior only at deer-
stalking.
The perfume of coffee presently sifted abroad,
and the table was brought out and set under the
evening sky. Lockers gave up th^ir store of bread
154
THE CURSED I'ATOIS
and pastry made by the capable hands of the camp
liousokeepor. The woman, their <^uest, sat watch-
ing him move from cook-tent to table, and Puttany
lounged on the dog-kennel, whittling a stick.
" Frank," said his partner, with sudden authority,
" you take the kid down to the water and scrub
him."
"All over?" whispered Puttany, in confusion.
" No — just his hands and top, Supper is ready
to put on."
The docile mother heard her child veiling and
blubbering under generous douches while nurse's
duty was performed by one of her entertainers, and
she smiled in proof that her faith was grounded on
their ri<j:l<teousness. She Avas indeed a mere girl.
Iler short scarlet upper lip showed her teeth with
pi(juant innocence. As much a creature of the
woods as a doe, her lot had been that primitive
struggle which knows nothing about the amenities
and proprieties of civilization. This Brown could
clearly see, and he addressed her with the same pro-
tecting patronage he would have used with the
child.
" What's 3''our kid's name ?"
" Gregoire, but he call himself Gougou. Me, I
am Franyoise La France."
" Yes, I know that. You have had a hard time
since Joe died."
"I been anxion " — she clasped her hands and
looked pleadingly at him — " I been very anxion!"
" Well, you're all right now."
155
THE CURSED PATOIS
" Yon let me do de mend' ? I can sew. I use'
learn to sew when I have t'inf^ to sew on."
" JorusaleiTi ! look at them shii'ts on the line !
AVe have more clothes to sew on tlian any dude at
the hotels. And if that isn't enough, I'll make
Puttany strip and stay in the brush while you do
his clothes."
Franyoise widened her smile.
"Pve been thinking we'll have to build you a
house right over there." Her entertainer indicated
the shore behind her.
" Oppos' ?" exclaimed Franyoise, turning with
pleased interest. Even in her husband's lifetime
little thought had ever been taken for her.
" Yes, directly opposite. We cin fix it up snug
like our winter camp at the other end of the lake."
"Have you two camp?"
" Yes — a winter camp and a summer camp. But
we have stayed comfortably here in the cook-tent
until the thermometer went fourteen degrees below
zero. We'll sleep in it till we get your house done,
and you can take the tent. If there are no parties
wanting guides, we might as well begin it in the
morning."
" But," faltered Franyoise, " af terw'iles when de
ice is t'ick, and you go to de hudder camp — "
" Oh, we'll take care of you," he promised. " Y^ou
and Gougou will go with us. We couldn't leave
you on this side."
" In de dark nights," shuddered Franyoise.
"You needn't be afraid, any time. When we
156
THE cuksp:d patois
are off during the day we always leave Jess and
Jim to guard the camp. Jess is a Scotch collie and
Jim is a blood -hound. lie's there in the kennel.
Neither man nor varmint would have any chance
with them."
"I been use' to live alone when my husban' is
away, M'sieu' Brownee. I not 'fraid like you t'ink.
Lut if Gougou be cold and hongry."
"Now that's enough," said Brown, with gentle
severity. "Gougou will never be cold and hungry
again while there's a stick of wood to be cut on the
shores of this lake, or any game to bag, or a 'lunge
to spear through the ice. We get about two days'
lumbering a week down by St. Ignace. No use to
work more than two days a week," he explained,
jocosely. "That gives us enough to live on; and
everybody around here owes us from fifty to a
hundred dollars back pay for Avork, anyhow. I've
bought this ground, twenty acres of it, and another
year I'm going to turn it into a garden."
"Oh, a garden, M'sieu' Brownee! Me, I love
some garden ! I plant honion once, salade also."
" But I want to get my fences built before I put
in improvements. You know what the silver rule
is, don't you?"
"No, m'sieu'," answered Franyoise, vaguely.
She knew little of any rule.
" The silver rule is different from the golden rule.
It's ' Do your neighbors, or your neighbors will do
you.' If I don't protect myself, all the loose cattle
around Brevoort will graze over me. Every fellow
157
THE CURSED PATUIS
for himself. We can't keep the golden rule. We'd
never get rich if we did.*'
" You are rich mans V inteirogated Franyoise,
focussing her curiosity on that invisible power of
wealth.
" Millionaires," brazenly claimed the young man,
as he put an earthen-wai'c pitcher on the table.
"Set there, you thousand-dollar dish! We don't
have a yacht on the lake because we prefer small
boats, and we go out as guides to have fun with
the greenhorns. Tlie cooking at the hotels is good
enough for common hunters and lishermen who
come here from the cities to spend tlieir money,
but it isn't good enough for me. You've come to
the right place, you may make j^mr mind easy on
that."
Franyoise smiled because he tohl her to make her
mind easy, not because she understood the irony of
his poverty. To have secure shelter, and such a
table as he spread, and the prowess to achieve
continual abundant sustenance from the world,
made wealth in her eyes. She was as happy as
Gouofou when this strano^e familv, "gathered from
three or four nations, sat down to their first meal.
The sun went low like a scarlet egg, probing the
mother-of-pearl lake with a long red line of shadow,
until it wasted into grayness and so disappeared.
Then home-returning sails became spiritualized, and
moved in mist as in a dream — foggy lake and sk}^,
as one body, seeming to push in upon the land,
Fran^oise slept the sleep of a healthy woxiian,
158
THE CURSED PATOIS
with her child on her arm, until at dawn the closed
flap of the tent yielded to a bounding shape. She
opened her startled eyes to see Jim the blood-hound
at the foot of the bed, jerking the mosquito-netting,
lie growled at the interlopers, not being able in his
canine mind to reconcile their presence with his
customary duty of waking his masters in that tent.
A call and a whistle at the other side of the camp
drew him a\vay doubting. But in a day both he
and Jess had adopted the new members of the family
and walked at Gougou's heels.
Gougou existed in wonderland. He regarded the
men as great and amiable powers, who could do
what they pleased with the elements and with the
creatures of the earth. They had a fawn, which
had followed Brown home along the beach, feeding
on leaves from his hand. They had bu'^' it a sylvan
home of cedar boughs behind the camp, from which
it wandered at will. And though at first shy of
Gougou, the pretty thing was soon induced to stand
upon its hind feet and dance for bits of cake. His
Indian blood vearned towards the fawn : but Me-
thuselah, the mighty turtle, was more exciting.
Methuselah lived a prisoner in one side of the bait-
tank, from wdiich he was lifted by a rope around
his tail. He w^as so enormous that it required both
Brown and Puttany to carry him up the bank, and
as he hung from the pole the sudden projection of
his snapping head was a danger. "When he fastened
his teeth into a stick, the stick was hopelessly his
as long as he chose to keep it. He was like an
159
THE CURSED PATUlS.
elephant cased in mottled shell, and the serrated
ridffe on his tail resembled a row of hufje brown
teeth. Methuselah was a many- wrinkled turtle.
When he contracted, imbedding head in shoulders
and legs in body, revealing all his claws and show-
ing wicked little eyes near the point of his nose,
his helpless rage stirred all the Indian ; he was the
most deliciousl}'^ devilish thing that Gougou had
ever seen.
Then there was the joy of wintergi'een, which
both men brought to the child, and he learned to
forage for it himself. The fleshy dark green leaves
and red berries clustered thicklj^ in the woods. lie
and iiis mother went in ^he boat when the day was
to be given to bass or pickerel fishing, and he
learned great lessons of water-lore from the two
men. If they trusted a troll line to his baby hands,
he was in a state of beatitude. Ilis object in life
was to possess a bear cub, and many a porcupine
creeping along the beach he mistook for that desir-
able property, untd taught to distinguish quills from
fur. Gougou heard, and he believed, that all por-
cupines were old lumbermen, who never died, but
simply contracted to that shape. He furtively
stoned them when he could, reflecting that they
were tough, and delighting to see tlie quills fly.
Franyoise would sit in the camp like a picture of
still life, glowing and silent at her appointed labor.
She sewed for all of them, looking womanly and
unhurried, with a pink-veined moccasin-flower in
her hair ; while Brown, cooking and baking, rushed
160
THE CURSED PATOIS
from tent to wood-pile, his sleeves turned back from
his white, muscular arms. He lived more intensely
than any other member of the sylvan household.
His blue eyes shone, and his face was vivid as he
talked to her. He was a common man, blunted in
the finer nature by a life of hardship, yet his shrewd
spirit seized on much that less facile people like
Puttany learned slowly or not at all
Puttany and the child were often together in one
long play, broken only by the man's periods of
labor. They basked in a boat near rushes, waiting
for pickerel to strike, or waded a bog to a trout
stream at the other end of the lake, hid in a forest
full of windfalls and hoary moss and tropical
growths of brake and fern. Gougouhadnew strong
clothes and buckskin shoes. For the patois had
not been a week in camp before Brown went to St.
Ignace and brought back denim and white and
black calico, which he presented to Fran9oise.
" She ought to have a kind of second mourning,"
he explained to Puttany, who received his word on
any matter as law. " Joe La France wasn't worth
wearing first mourning for, but second mourning is
decent for her, and it won't show in the camp like
bright colors would."
The world of city-maddened people who swarmed
to this lake for their annual immersion in nature
did not often intrude on the camp. Yet the fact of
a woman's presence there could not be concealed,
and Puttany was disciplined to say to strangers,
" Dot vas my sister and her little poy."
L 161
THE CURSED PATOIS
A tiny cabin was built for Fran^oise, with the
hixuries of a puncheon floor and one glazed win-
dow. Siie inhabited it in primitive gladness, as a
child adorns a play-house, and was careful to keep
it in that trim, military state which Brown de-
manded. Fran^oise had a regard for M'sieu' Put-
tanee, who was neat and ladylike in all his doin<,''s,
and smiled amiably at her over her boy's head ; but
her veneration of M'sieu' Brownee extended beyond
the reach of humor. If he had been a priest he
could have had no more authority. She used to
watch him secretly from her window at dawn, as he
put himself through a morning drill to limber his
muscles. Some spectators might have laughed,
but she heard as seriously as if they were the
motions of her own soul his tactics with a
stick :
"Straight out — across the shoulder — under the
arm — down on the turf !"
There were days when the misty gray lake, dim
and delicious, lay veiled within its irregular shores.
Then the lowering sun stood on tree-tops, a pale red
wraith like the ghost of an Indian. And there
were days of sharp, clear shine, when Black Point
seemed to approach across the water, and any mov-
ing object could be seen in the Burning — a growth
of green springing wliere the woods had been swept
by fire. The men were often awa}'^, guiding fishing
parties from dawn until sunset, or hunting parties
from sunset half the night. Franyoise and Gou-
gou dwelt in the camp, having the dogs as their
163
THE CURSED PATOIS
protectors, though neither primitive nor civilized
life menaced them there with any danger. Some
evenings, when few affairs had crowded the day,
Brown sat like a patriarch in the midst of his family,
and took Gougou on his knee to hear bear stories.
He supervised the youngster's manners like a
mother, and Gougou learned to go down to the
washing-place and use soap when the signs were
strong for bear-dens and deer-stalking.
" I saw a bear come out on the beach once,"
Brown would tell him, " when I was stalking for
deer and had a doe and fawn in the lake. I smelt
him, but couldn't get him to turn his eyes towards
me. I killed both deer, and skinned them, and cut
up one. And that bear went into the woods and
howled for hours. I took all the venison I could
carry, but left part of the carcasses. When we
went after them in the morning, the bear had eaten
all up clean."
Bear-dens, Gougou was informed, might be found
where there was a windfall. The bearc stuffed
cracks between the fallen trees with moss, and so
made themselves a tight house in which to hiber-
nate. If you were obliged to have bear meat that
season when the game was thin, you could cut a
hole into a den, stand by it with an axe, and lop off
the inquiring head stuck out to investigate disturb-
ances. Bears had very small stomachs, but what-
ever they ate went to fat. They walked much on
their hind feet, and browsed on nuts or mast when
their hunting was not successful, being able to
163
THE CURSED PATOIS
thrive on little. Usually a father, a mother, and a
cub formed one household in one den.
Brown's mind ran on the subject of households ;
and he sometimes talked to Fran9oise about his
mother.
" My mother Gaelics like the Scotch," he said.
Fran^oise could not imagine what it was to Gaelic.
People had not Gaelic-ed on the Chaudiere, where
she was brought up until the children were obliged
to scatter from the narrow farm. But the priest
had never warned her against it, and since M'sieu'
Brownee's mother was addicted to the practice, it
must be something excellent, perhaps even religious.
She secretly invoked St. Francis, her patron saint,
to obtain for her that mysterious power of Gaelic-
ing of which M'sieu' Brownee spoke so tenderly.
So the summer passed, and frost was already
ripening to glory the ranks on ranks of dense forest
pressing to the lake borders. Brown and Puttany
rowed home through an early September evening,
lifted their boat to its cross-piece dock, and pulled
the plug out of the bottom to let it drain. There
was no sound, even of the dogs, as they flung their
spoil ashore. It \vas the very instant of moon-rise.
At first a copper rim was answered by the faintest
line in the water. Then the full reddish disk stood
upon a strong copper pillar, smooth and flawless in
a rippleless lake, and that became denuded of its
capital as the ball rose over it into the sky.
" Seems still," remarked Brown, and he ran up
the path, shaking leaf loam like dry tobacco dust
164
THE CURSED PATOIS
from the roots of ferns he had brought to Fran-
9oise. He knew at once that she and Gougou had
left the camp. He sat down on the dog-kennel
with his hands on his knees, staring at the dim
earth. Puttany went from tent to cabin, caUing
his dail}' playmate, unable to convince himself that
some unusual thing had happened, and he hoped
that Brown would contradict him when he felt com-
pelled to announce his slow discovery.
" Dey vas gone !"
" Damn you, Puttany !" exploded his partner,
" what did you bring her here for? I didn't want
to get into this ! I wanted to steer clear of women !
You knew I was soft! You knew her black eyes,
and the child that made her seem like the Virgin,
would get in their work on me !"
*' No, I didn't," said Puttany, in phlegmatic con-
sternation.
"What's the matter, Frank? Haven't we be-
haved white to this woman? Have you done any-
thing, you stupid old Dutchman," cried Brown,
collaring his partner with abrupt violence, "that
would drive her out of the camp without a word?"
" I svear, Prown}^," the other gasped, as soon as
he had breath for swearing, " 1 haf been so pohte
to her as ray own mudder."
The younger man sat down again, dropping lax
hands across his knees. A growl inside the box re-
minded him that Jim the blood -hound should be
brought to account for this disappearance.
" Come out here !" he commanded, and the lithe
165
THE CURSED PATOIS
beast crept wagging and apologizing to his side.
" What kind of a way is this for you to keep a camp
— Jess sitting in the kitchen, and you in the box,
and somebody carrying off Franyoise and the boy,
and every rag that would show they had ever been
here— and not a sound out of your cowardly head
till we come home and catch you skulking? I've a
notion to take a board and beat you to death !"
Jim lay down with an abject and dismal whine.
" Where is she ?"
Jim lifted his nose and sniffed hopefully, and his
master rose up and dragged him by the collar to
the empty cabin. It was the first time Brown had
entered that little cell since its dedication to the
woman for whom it was built. He rubbed Jim's
muzzle against the bed, and pointed to nails in the
logs v/here the clothes of the patois had hung.
"Now you lope out and find them — do you
hear ?"
Jim, crouching on his belly in acknowledgment
that his apprehension had been at fault during some
late encounter, slunk across the camp and took the
path to the hotels.
Brown turned on Puttany following at his heels:
" Frank, are you sure Joe La France is dead ?"
" Oh yes, he is det."
" Did you see him die ? Were you there when
he was buried? Was he put underground with
plenty of dirt on top of him, or did he merely drop
in the water ?"
" I vas not there."
166
THE CURSED PATOIS
"Maybo the lazy hound has resurrected. I've
seen tbeso lumbermen (Iropj)ed into tlic water and
drowned too often. You can never be sure they
won't be up drinkinj[^and fighting to-morrow unless
you run a knife through them."
" lie is a det man," aflirmed Puttany.
" Then somebody else has carried her off, and I'm
going to know all about it before I come back to
camp. If I never come back, you may have the
stuff and land. I'm in this heels over head, and I
don't care how soon things end with me."
" But, Prowny, old poy, I vill help you — "
" You stay here. This is my hunt."
Jim passed the rustic guest-houses without turn-
ing aside from the trail. Brown took no thought
of inquiring at their doors, for throughout the sum-
mer Franyoise had not once been seen at the hotels.
He did, however, hastily borrow a horse from the
stable where he was privileged, and pursuing the
blood-hound along the lake shore, he cantered over
a causeway of logs and earth which had been raised
above a swamp.
The trail was very fresh, for Jim, without swerv-
ing, followed the road where it turned at right
angles from the shore and wound inland among
stumps. They had nearly reached Allanville, a
group of log huts beside a north-shore railroad,
when Jim uttered the bay of victory.
Brown dropped from the saddle and called him
steridy back. To be hunting Fran9oise with a
blood-houud out of leash — how horrible was this!
167
THE CURSED PATOIS
Ha tied his horso to a tree and took Jim by the col-
hir, restraiiiiri'^ the creature's fierce joy of discovery.
Franyoise must be near, unless a hound whose scent
was unerring had become a fool.
What if she had left camp of her own will ? She
was so quiet, one could not be sure of her thoughts.
Brown was sure of his thouohts. lie grinned in the
lonely landscape, seeing himself as he had appeared
on recent Sundays, in his best turtle -tail neck-tie
mounted on velvet.
" I've got it bad," he confessed.
Stooping to Jim's collar while the dog whined
and strained, he passed a cabin. And there Jim re-
laxed in the search and turned around. The moon
stood high enough to make a wan fairy daylight.
Gongou, like a gnome, started from the ground to
meet them, and the dog at once lay down and
fawned at his feet.
More slowly approaching from the cabin, Browm
saw Fran^oise, still carrying in her hand the bundle
of her belongings brought from camp. In the
shadow of the house a man watched the encounter,
and a sift of rank tobacco smoke hinted the pipes
of fathers and sons resting from the day's labor on
the cabin door-sill or the sward. Voices of children
could be heard, and other dogs gave mouth, so that
Brown laid severe commands on Jim before he could
tremblingly speak to Franyoise.
" Oh, M'sieu' Brownee, I t'ink maybe you come !"
"But, Fran9oise, what made you leave?"
" It is my husban's brudder. I not know what
168
THE CURSED PATOIS
to do! He bring us to dese folks to stay all night
till do cars go."
"AVhy didn't lie show himself to us, and take
you like a man f
" Oh, M'sieu' Brownee — he say do priest hexcom-
municate me — to live — so — in do camp! It is not
my fault — and I tMnk about you and M'sieu' Tut-
taneo — and Gougou he bite his honcle, and kick and
scream !"
" Damn the uncle !" swore Brown, deeply.
"Oh, I been so anxion!" sobbed Fran(;()ise.
"We must be married right off," said Browu.
" I'll fix your brother-in-law. Fran^oise, will yoa
have me for your husband?"
"Me, M'sieu' Brownee?"
" Yes, you — you cursed sweet patois !"
"M'sieu' Brov/nee, you may call me de cursed
patois. I not know anyt'ings. But when Andr^
La France take me away, oh, I t'ink I die! Let
me honly be Fran^oise to do your mend'! I be
'appier to honly look at you dan some womans who
'ave 'usban' !"
" Fran9oise, kiss me — kiss me!" His voice broke
with a sob. " If you loved me you would have
me!"
" M'sieu' Brownee, I ado' you !"
Suddenly giving way to passionate weeping, and
to all the tenderness which nature teaches even
barbarians to repress, she abandoned herself to his
arms.
m
THE MOTHERS OF HONORE
THE sun was shining again after squalls, and
the strait showed violet, green, red, and
bronze lines, melting and intermingling each
changing second. Metallic lustres shone as if some
volcanic fountain on the lake-bed were spraying the
surface. Jules McCart^' stood at his gate, noting
this change in the weather with one eye. He was
a small, old man, having the appearance of a mum-
mied boy. His cheek-bones shone apple-red, and
his partial blindness had merely the efTect of a pro-
longed wink. Jules was keeping melancholy holi-
day in his best clothes, the well-preserved coat
parting its jaunty tails a little below the middle of
his back.
Another old islander paused at the gate in pass-
ing. The two men shook their heads at each
other.
" I went to your wife's funeral this morning,
Jules," said the passer, impressing on the widower's
hearing an important fact which might have escaped
his one eye.
'- You was at de fuuer'l? Did you see Therese?"
" Yes, I saw her."
170
THE MOTHERS OF HONORS
"Ah, what a fat woman dat was! I make some
of de peop' feel her arm. I feed her well."
The other old man smiled, but he was bound to
say,
" I'm sorry for you, Jules."
" Did you see me at de church ?"
" Yes, I went to the church."
" You t'ink I feel bad— eh ?"
" I thought you felt pretty bad."
" You go to de graveyard, too ?"
" No," admitted his sympathizer, reluctantly, " I
didn't go to the graveyard."
" But dat was de fines'. You ought see me at de
graveyard. You t'ink I feel bad at de church — 1
raise hell at de graveyard."
The friend shuffled his feet and coughed behind
his hand.
" Yes, I feel bad, me," ruminated the bereaved
man. " You get used to some woman in de house
and not know where to get anodder."
" Haven't you had your share, Jules?" inquired
his friend, relaxing gladly to banter.
" I have one fine wife, maman to Honore," enu-
merated Jules, " and de squaw, and Lavelotte's
widow, and Therese. It is not much."
" I've often wondered why you didn't take Me-
linda Cree. You've no objection to Indians. She's
next door to you, and she-knows how to nurse in
sickness, besides being a good washer and ironer.
The summer folks say she makes the best lish pies
on the island."
171
THE MOTHERS OF HONORfi
" It is de trul' !" exclaimed Jules, a new light
shining in his dim blue eye as he turned it towards
the house of Melinda Cree. The weather-worn,
low domicile was bowered in trees. Tiiere was a
convenient stile two steps high in the separating
fence, and it had long been made a thoroughfare
by the families. On the top step sat Clethera,
Melinda Cree's granddaughter. Clethera had been
Ilonore's playmate since infancy. She was a lithe,
dark girl, with more of her French father in her
than of her half-breed mother. Some needle-work
busied her hands, but her ear caught every accent
of the conference at the gate. She flattened her
lips, and determined to tell Honore as soon as he
came in with the boat. Honore was the favorite
skipper of the summer visitors. He went out im-
mediately after the funeral to earn money to apply
on his last mother's burial expenses.
When the old men parted, Clethera examined her
grandmother with stealthy eyes in a kind of aborig-
inal reconnoitring. Melinda Cree's black hair and
dark masses of wrinkles showed through a sashless
shed window where she stood at her ironing-board.
Her stoical eyelids were lowered, and she moved
with the rhythmical motion of the smoothing-iron.
Whether she had "overheard the talk, or was medi-
tating on her own matrimonial troubles, was im-
possible to gather from facial muscles rigid as
carved wood. Melinda Cree was one of the few
pure-blooded Indians on the island. If she was
fond of anything in the world, her preference had
173
THE MOTHERS OF HONORE
not declared itself, though previous to receiving her
orphaned granddaughter into her house she had
consented to become the bride of a drunken youth
in his teens. This incipient husband — before he
got drowned in a squall off Detour, thereby saving
his aged wife some outlay — visited her only when
he needed funds, and she silently paid the levy if
her toil had provided the means. He also inclined
to offer delicate attentions to Clethera, who spat at
him like a cat, and at sight of him ever afterwards
took to the attic, locking the door.
But while Melinda Cree submitted to the shackles
of civilization, she did not entirely give up the ways
of her own people. She kept a conical tent of poles
and birch bark in her back yard, in which she slept
during summer. And she was noted as wise and
skilled in herbs, guarding their secrets so jealously
that the knowledge was likely to die with her.
Once she appeared at the bedside of a dying islander,
and asked, as the doctor had withdrawn, to try her
own remedies. Permission being given, she went
to the kitchen, took some dried vegetable substance
from her pocket, and made a tea of it. A little
was poured down the sick man's throat. He revived.
He drank more, and grew better. Melinda Cree's
decoction cured him, and the chagrined doctor visit-
ed her to learn what wonderful remedy she had used.
" It was nothing but some little bushes," responded
the Indian w^oman.
" If you tell me what they are, I will pay you
fifty dollars," he pleaded.
173
THE MOTHERS OF HONORE
Melinda Cree shook her head. She continued to
repeat, as he raised the bid higher, " It was nothing
but some little bushes, doctor; it was nothing but
some little bushes."
Clethera felt the same kind of protecting tender-
ness for this self-restrained squaw that Ilonore had
for his undersized parent, Avhom he always called
by the baptismal name. Melinda had been the
wife of a great medicine-man, who wore a trailing
blanket, and white gulls' wings bound around and
spread behind his head. During his lifetime he
was often seen stretched on his back invoking the
sun. A stranger observing him declared he was
using the sigi's of Freemasonry, and must know its
secrets.
With the readiness of custom, Honore and Cle-
thera met each other at the steps in the fence about
dusk. She sat down on her side, and he sat down
on his, the broad top of the stile separating them.
Ilonore was a stalwart Saxon-looking youth in his
early twenties. Wind and weather had painted hia
large -featured countenance a rosy tan. By the
employing class Honore was considered one of the
finest and most promising young quarter-breeds on
the island.
Thr •'resh moist odor of the lake, with its incessant
wash ^ )n pebbles, came to them accompanied by
piercing veetness of wild roses. For the wind had
turned to the west, raking fragrant thickets. Dusk
was moving from eastern fastnesses to rock battle-
ments still tinged with sunset. The fort, dismantled
in
THE MOTHERS OF HONORS
of its garrison, reared a whitewashed crown against
the island's back of evergreens.
Both llonore and Clethera knew there was a
Spanish war. As summer day followed summer
day, the village seethed with it, as other spots then
seethed. A military post, even when dismantled,
always brings home to the community where it \z
situated the dignity and pomp of arms. Young
men enlisted, and Honore restlessly followed, witli
a friend from the Xorth Shore, to look at the camp.
His pulses beat with the drums. But he was carry-
ing the burden of the family; to leave Jules and
Jules's dependent wife would be deserting infants.
Clethera gave little more thought to fleets sailing
tropical seas than to La Salle's vanished Griffin on
Northern waters. It was nothing to her, for she
had never heard of it, that pioneers of her father's
blood once trod that island, and lifted up the cross
at St. Ignace, and planted outposts along the South
Shore. Bareheaded, or with a crimson kerchief
bound about her hair, she loved to help her grand-
mother spread the white clothes to bleach, or to
be seen and respected as a prosperous laundress
carrying her basket through the teeming streets.
The island was her world. Its crowds in sum-
mer brought variety enough; and its virgin winter
snows, the dog -sledges, the ice-boats, were month
by month a procession of joys.
Clethera wondered that Honore persistently went
where newspapers were read and discussed. He
stuffed them in his pockets, and pored over them
175 _ ^
THE MOTHERS OF HONORS
while waiting in his boat beside the wharf. People
would fight out that war with Spain. What thrilled
her was the boom of winter surf, piling iridescent
frozen spume as high as a man's head, and rimming
the island in a corona of shattered rainbows. And
she had an eye for summer lightning infusing itself
through sheets of water as if descending in the
downpour, glorifying for one instant every distinct
drop.
The pair sitting with the broad top step betwixt
them exchanged the smiling good-will of youth.
" I take some more party out to-night for de light-
moon sail," said Ilonore, pleased to report his pros-
perity. "It is consider' gran' to sail in de light-
moon."
" Did you find de hot fish pie?" inquired Clethera,
solicitous about man thrown on his own resources
as cook.
Honore acknowledged with hearty gratitude the
supper which Meiinda Cree had baked and her
granddaughter had carried into the bereaved house
while its inmates were out.
" They not get fish pie like that in de war. Jules,
he say it is better than poor Therese could make,"
Honore added, handsomely, with large unsuspicion.
Clethera shook a finger in his face.
" Honore McCarty, you got watch dat Jules ! I
got to watch Meiinda Simon Leslie, he have come
by and put it in Jules' head since de funer'l! I hear
it, me."
The young man's face changed through the dusk.
176
THE MOTHERS OF HONORI:
He braced his back against the fence and breathed
the deep sigh of tried patience.
" Honore, how many mothers is it you have al-
ready f '
" I have not count'," said the young man, testily.
" Count dem mothers," ordered Clethera.
"]VIaman,"he began the enumeration, reverently.
His companion allowed him a minute's silence after
the mention of that tine woman.
" One," She tallied.
" Nex'," proceeded Honore, "poor Jules is involve'
with de Ciiippewa woman."
" Two," clinched Clethera.
The Chippewa squaw was a sore theme. Slie
had entered Jules's wigwam in good faith; but
during one of his merry carouses, while both Honore
and the priest were absent, he traded her off to
a North Shore man for a horse. Long after she
tramped away across the frozen strait with her new
possessor, and all trace of her was lost, Jules had
the grace to be shamefaced about the scandal; but
he got a good bargain in the horse.
"Then there is Lavelotte's widow," continued
Honore.
" Three," marked Clethera.
Yes, there was Lavelotte's widow, the worst of
all. She whipped little Jules unmercifully, and if
Honore had not taken his part and stood before
him, she might have ended by being Jules's widow.
She stripped him of his whole fortune, four hundi'ed
dollars, when he finally obtained a separation from
M 177
THE MOTHEUS OF UO.NoUE
her. But instead of curing him, this experience
only whetted his zest for another wife.
" And there is Tiierese." Jlonore did not say,
"Last, Therese." AVhile Juh?s lived and liis wives
died, or were traded off or divorced, there would
be no last.
" It is four," declared Clethera ; and the count
was true. Ilonore had taken Jules in hand like a
father, after the adventure with Lavelotte's widow,
lie made his parent work hard at the boat, and in
winter walked hiin to and from mass literally with
hand on collar. He encouraged the little man,
moreover, with a half interest in their house on
the beach, which lon":-accumulated earnino:s of the
boat paid for. But all this care was thrown away ;
though after Jules brought Therese home, and saw
that Ilonore was not appeased by a woman's cook-
ing, he had qualms about the homestead, and secret-
ly carried the deed back to the original owner.
" I want you keep my part of de deed," he ex-
plained. " I not let some more women rob Ilono-
re. My wife, if she get de deed in her ban', she
might sell de whole t'ing!"
" Why, no, Jules, she couldn't sell your real es-
tate!" the former owner declared. "She would
only have a life interest in your share."
" You say she couldn't sell it ?"
" No. She would have nothing but a life interest."
" She have only life interest ? By gar ! I t'ink I
pay somebod}'" twenty dollar to kill her !"
But lacking both twenty dollars and determina-
178
THE MOTHERS OF HONORfi
tion, he lived peaceably with Therese until she died
a natural death, on that occasion proudly doing his
whole duty as a man and a mourner.
Kemembering these affairs, which had not been
kept secret from anybody on the island, Clethera
spoke out under conviction.
*^ Honore, it a scandal' t'ing, to get marry."
" Me, I t'ink so too," assented Honore.
" Jules McCarty have disgrace' his son I"
" Melinda Cree," retorted Honore, obliged to de-
fend his own, " she take a little 'usban' honly nine-
teen."
" She 'ave no chance like Jules ; she is oblige' to
wait and take what invite her."
The voices of children from other quarter-breed
cottages, playing along the beach, added cheer to
the sweet darkness. Clethera and Honors sat si-
lently enjoying each other's company, unconscious
that their aboriginal forefathers had courted in
that manner, sitting under arbors of branches.
'' Why do peop' want to get marry ?" propound
ed Clethera.
" I don't knov-," said Honore.
" Me, if some man hask me, I box his ear ! I
have know you all my life — but don' you never
hask me to get marry !"
" I not such a fool," heartily responded Honore.
" You and me, we have seen de folly. I not form
de habit, like Jules."
" But what we do, Honore, to keep dat Jules and
dat Melinda apart i"
179
Till.: MOTHERS OF HONORS
Thouf^h tlioy discussed many ])lans, the sequel
showed that nothing eU'ectual could be done. All
their traditions and instincts were ai»"ainst makinc:
themselves disagreeable or showing discourtesy to
their elders. The voun<ji: man's French and Irish
and Chippewa blood, and tiie young girl's French
and Cree blood exliausted all their inherited diplo-
macy. But as steadily as the waters set like a
strong tide through the strait, in spite of wind
which combed them to ridging foam, the rapid
courtship of age went on.
In carrying laundered clothing through the vil-
lage street, Melinda Cree was carefully chaperoned
by her granddaughter, and Ilonore kept Jules
under orders in the boat. But of early mornings
and late twilights there was no restraining the
twittering widower.
" Melinda 'tend to her work and is behave if
Jules let her alone," Clethera reported to Ilonore.
" But he slip around de garden and talk over de
back fence, and he is by de ironing-board de minute
my back is turn' ! If he belong to me, I could
'mos' whip him!"
" Jules McCarty," declared Plonore, with some
bitterness, " when he fix his min' to marry some
more, he is not turn' if he is hexcoramunicate' !"
Jules, indeed, became so bold that he crowded
across the stile through the very conferences of the
pair united to prevent him ; and his loud voice
could be heard beside Melinda's ironing-board, pro-
claiming in the manner of a callow young suitor.
180
TlIK MOTHERS OF IIONOKI^:
"Some peop' like separate us, Melinda, but we
not let thorn."
The conflict of ITonoro and Clethera with Jules
and Melinda ended one day in August. There had
been no domestic clamor in this silent grapple of
forces. Tlio young man used no argument except
maxims and morals and a tightening of authority ;
the young girl permitted neither neighboring maids
nor the duties of religion to lure her off guard. It
may be said of any French half-breed that he has
all the instincts of gentility except an inclination
to lying, and that arises from excessive politeness.
Ilonore came to the fence at noon and called
Clethera. In his excitement he crossed the stile
and 5tood on her premises.
" It no use, Clethera. Jules have tell me this
morning he have arrange' de marriage."
Clethera glanced behind her at the house she
called home, and thr3w herself in Ilonore's arms,
as she had often done in childish despairs. Neither
misunderstood the action, and it relieved them to
shed a few tears on each other's necks. This truly
Latin outburst being over, they stood apart and
wiped their eyes on their sleeves.
" It no use," exclaimed Clethera, " to set a good
examp' to your grandmother !"
" I not wait any longer now," announced Hon-
ore, giving rein to fierce eagerness. " I go to de
war to-day."
" But de camp is move'," objected Clethera.
" I have pass' de exam in', and I know de man to
181
THE MUTIIKltS OF UONOllfi
go to when T am ready ; he promis' to get me into
do war. Jules have tie sails up now, ready to take
me across to de train."
" But who will have do boat when you are gone,
]Ionore?"
"Jules. And he bring Melinda to de house."
" She not come. She not leave her own house.
She take hor 'usban' in."
" Then Jules must rent de house. You not de-
test poor Jules ?"
" I not detest him like de hudder one."
" Au 'voir, Clethera."
" Au 'voir, Ilonore."
They shook hands, the young man wringing him-
self away with the animation of one who goes, the
girl standing in the dull anxiety of one who stays.
War, so remote that she had heard of it indiffer-
ently, rushed suddenly from the tropics over the
island.
" Are your clothes all mend' and ready, Ilon-
ore ?"
But what thought can a young man give to his
clothes when about to wrap himself in glory? He
is politely tapping at the shed window of the Ind-
ian woman, and touching his cap in farevell and
gallant capitulation, and with long-limbed sweeping
haste, unusual in a quarter-breed, he is gone to the
docks, with a bundle under one arm, waving his
hand as he passes. All the women and children
along the street would turn out to see him go to
the war if his intention were known, and even sum-
182
THK MOTIIKItS OF IlONoll!':
mer idlers about the ])azars would look at him with
new interest.
Clethera could not imagine the moist and horrid
heat of those soutliCiru latitudes into which Ilonoro
(h^parted to throw hiuiseH'. Shil'tin<^ mists on tiie
laUe rim were no vag'ier than her conception of
her country's mi<^hty undertaking. IJut she could
feel ; and the life she had lived to that day was
wrenched up by the roots, leaving her as with a
bleeding socket.
All afternoon she drenched herself with soapsuds
in the ferocity of her washing. Jiy the time Jules
I'eturned with the boat, the lake was black as ink
under a storm cloud, with glints of steel ; a dull
bar stretched diagonally across the water. IJeyond
that a whitening of rain showed against the ho-
rizon. Points of cedars on the opposite island
pricked a sullen sky.
Clethera's tubs were under the trees. She paid
no attention to what befell her, or to her grand-
mother, who called her out of the rain. It came
like a powder of dust, and then a moving, blanched
wall, pushing islands of llattened mist before it.
Under a steady pour the waters turned dull green,
and lightened shade by shade as if diluting an in-
fusion of grass. Waves began to come in regular
windrows. Though Clethera told herself savagely
she not care for anything in de world, her Indian
eye took joy of these sights. The shower-bath
from the trees she endured without a shiver.
Jules sat beside Melinda to be comforted. He
^. . 183 .
THE MOTHERS OF H0N0R15
wept for Ilonore, and praised his boy, gasconading
with time-worn boasts.
" I got de hang of him, and now I got to part !
But do war will end, now Ilonore have gone into
it. His gran' fodder was such a fighter when de
British come to take de island, he turn' de can-
non and blow de British off. The gran' fodder of
Ilonore was a fine man. lie always keep de bes'
liquors and hy wines on his sideboaM."
When Ilonore had been gone twenty-four hours,
and Jules was still idling like a boy und riven by
his task-master, leaving the boat to rock under bare
poles at anchor on the rise and fall of the water,
Clethera went into their empty house. It contained
three rooms, and she laid violent hands on male
housekeeping. The service was almost religious,
like preparing linen for an altar. It comforted her
unacknowledged anguish, which increased rather
than diminished, the unrest of Avhich she resented
with all her stoic Indian nature.
Nets, sledge - harness, and Ilonore's every -day
clothes hung on his whitewashed wall. The most
touching relic of any man is the hat he has worn.
Ilonore's cap crowned the post of his bed like a
wraith. The room might have been a young her-
mit's cell in a cave, or a tunnel in the evergreens,
it was so simple and bare of human appointments.
Clethera stood with the broom in one hand, and
tipped forward a piece of broken looking-glass on
his shaving -shelf. A new, unforeseen Clethera,
whom she had never been obliged to deal with
184
THE MOTHERS OF HONORE
before, gave her a desperate, stony stare out of a
haggard face. She was young, her skin had not
a Une. But it was as if she had changed places
with her wrinkled grandmother, to whom the ex-
pression of complacent maidenhood now belonged.
As Clethera propped the glass again in place, she
heard Jules come in. She resumed her sweeping
with resolute strokes on the bare boards, which
would explain to his ear the necessity of her pres-
ence. He appeared at the door, and it was llonore !
It was Honore, shamefaced but laughing, back
from the war within twentv-four hours ! Clethera
heard the broom - handle strike the floor as one
hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor.
She put her palms together, without Hying into his
arms or even offering to shake hands.
"You come back?" she cried ou'^, her voice
sharpened by joy.
" The war is end','' said Honore. " Peace is de-
clare' yesterday !" lie threw his bundle down and
looked fondly around the rough \valls. "All de
peop' laugh at me because I go to war when de war
is end' !"
" They laugh because de war is end' ! I laugh
too?" said Clethera, relaxing to sobs. Tears and
cries which had been shut up a day and a night
were let loose with French abandon. Honore
opened his arms to comfort her in the old man-
ner, and although she ruslied into them, strange
embarrassment went with her. The two could not
look at each other.
185 ' -"-- '
THE MOTHERS OF IIONOllfi
"It is de 'omesick," she explained. "When you
go to war it make 'ne 'omesick."
" Me, too," owned llonore. "I never know what
it is before. I not mind de fighting, but I am glad
de war is end', account of de 'omesick!"
He pushed the hair from her wet face. The
fate of temperament and the deep tides of existence
had them in merciless sweep.
" Clethera," repr^'^iented llonore, " the rillation
is not mix' bad with Jules and Melinda."
Clethera let the assertion pass unchallenged.
"And this house, it pretty good house. You
like it well asde hudder?"
"It have no loft," responded Clethera, faintly,
" but de chimney not smoke."
" We not want de 'omesick some more, Clethera
— eh ? You t'ink de fools is all marry yet ?''
Clethera laughed and raised her head from his
arm, but not to look at him or box his ear. She
looked through the open door at an oblong of little
world, where the land was an amethyst strip be-
twixt lake and horizon. Across that beloved back-
ground she saw the future pass : hale, long years
with llonore ; the piled up wood of winter fires ;
her own home ; her children — the whole scheme of
sweet and humble living.
" You t'ink, after all de folly we have see' in de
family, Clethera, you can go de lenk — to get
marry ?"
" I go dat lenk for you, llonore — but not for any
hudder man."
186
"HE APPEAKEU AT THE UOOU, AND IT WAS IIONOUE
rv
THE BLUE MAN
THE lake was like a meadow full of running
streams. Far off indeed it seemed frozen,
with countless wind-paths traversing the ice,
so level and motionless was the surface under a
gray sky. But summer rioted in verdure over the
cliffs to the very beaches. From the high greenery
of the island could be heard the tink-tank of a bell
where some cow sighed amid the delicious gloom.
East of the Giant's Stairway in a cove are two
round rocks with young cedars springing from them.
It is eas}'^ to scramble to the flat top of the first one
and sit in open ambush undetected by passers.
The world's majority is unobservant. Chddren
with their nurses, lovers, bicyclists who have left
their wheels behind, excursionists — fortunately
headed towards this spot in their one available
hour — an endless procession, tramp by on the rough,
wave-lapped margin, never wearing it smooth.
Amused by the unconsciousness of the review-
ed, I found myself unexpectedly classed with the
world's majority. For on the east round rock, a
few yards from my seat on the west round rock,
behold a man had arranged himself, his back against
187
THE BLUE MAN
tlie cedars, without attracting notice. "Wliile the
gray weather lightened and wine-red streaks on the
lake began to alternate with translucent greens,
and I was watching mauve plumes spring from
a distant steamer before her whistles could be
heard, this nimble stranger must have found his
own amusement in the blindness of people with
eyes.
lie was not quite a stranger. I had seen him the
day before ; and he was a man to be remembered
on account of a peculiar blueness of the skin, in
which, perhaps, some drag or chemical had left an
unearthly haze over the natural flush of blood. It
might have appeared the effect of sky lights and
cliff shadows, if I had not seen the same blue face
distinctly in Madame Clementine's house. lie was
standing in the middle of a room at the foot of the
stairway as we passed his open door.
So unusual a personality was not out of place in
a transplanted Parisian tenement. Madame Clem-
entine was a Parisian ; and her house, set around
three sides of a quadrangle in which flowers over-
flowed their beds, was a bit of artisan Paris. The
ground-floor consisted of various levels joined by
steps and wide - jambed doors. The chambers, to
which a box staircase led, wanted nothing except
canopies over the beds.
" Alors I give de convenable beds," said Madame
Clementine, in mixed French and English, as she
poked her mattresses. " Des bons lits ! T'ree dol-
lar one chambre, four dollar one chambre — " she
188
TUE BLUE MAN
suddenly spread lierhan(isto include both — " seven
dollar de tout ensemble!"
It was delightful to go with any friend who
might be forced by crowded liotels to seek rooms
in Madame Clementine's alley. The active, tiny
Frenchwoman, who wore a black mob-cap every-
where except to mass, had reached present pros-
perity through past tribulation. Many years before
she had followed a runaway husband across the sea.
As she stepped upon the dock almost destitute the
first person her eyes rested on was her husband
standing well forward in the crowd, with a liam
under his arm which he was carrying home to his
family. He saw Clementine and dropped the h:im
to run The same hour he took his new wife and
disappeared from the island. The doubly deserted
French-speaking woman found employment and
friends; and by her thrift was now in the way of
piling up what she considered a fortune.
The man on the rock near me was no doubt one
of Madame Clementine's permanent lodgers. Tour-
ists ranting over the island in a single day had not
his repose. He met my discovering start with a
dim smile and a bend of his head, which was bare.
His features were large, and his mouth corners had
the sweet, strong expression of a noble patience.
What first impressed me seemed to be his blueness,
and the blurredness of his eyes struggling to sight
as Bartimeus' eyes might have struggled the instant
before the Lord touched them.
Only Asiatics realize the power of odors. The
189
TUE BLUE MAiN
sense of smell is lightly nppreciated in the "Western
world. A fragrance might be compounded which
would have absolute power over a human being.
We get wafts of scent to which somethin*]: in us ir-
resistibly answers. A satisfying sweetness, fleeting
as last year's wild flowers, filled the whole cove.
I thought of dead Indian pipes, standing erect in
pathetic dignity, the delicate scales on their stems
unfurled, refusmg to crumble and pass away ; the
ghosts of Indians.
The blue man parted his large lips and moved
them several instants ; then his voice followed, like
the tardy note of a distant steamer that addresses
the eye with its plume of steam before the whistle
is heard. I felt a creepy thrill down my shoulders
— that sound should break so slowly across the few
yards separating us! " Are you also waiting, m>i-
dame?"
I felt compelled to answer him as I would have
answered no other person. " Yes ; but for one who
never comes."
If he had spoken in the pure French of the
Touraine country, which is said to be the best in
France, free from Parisianisms, it would not
have surprised me. But he spoke English, with
the halting though clear enunciation of a Nova
Scotian.
" You — you must have patience. I have — have
iseen you only seven summers on the island."
" You have seen me these seven years past? But
I never met you before !"
190
THE BLUE MAN
ITis mouth lal)orc(l voicelossly before he declareil,
" I have been here thirty-live years."
How could that be possible! — and never a hint
drifting through the hotels of any blue man! Yet
the intimate hfe of old inhabitants is not paraded
before the overrunning army of a season. I felt
vaguely flattered that this exclusive resident had
hitherto noticed me and condescended at last to re-
veal himself.
The blue man had been here thirty-five years!
lie knew the childish joy of bruising the flesh of
orange -colored toadstools and wading amid long
pine-cones which strew the ground like fairy corn-
cobs. The white birches were dear to him, and he
trembled with eagerness at the first pipe sign, or at
the discovery of blue gentians where the eastern
forest stoops to the strand. And he knew the echo,
shaking like gigantic organ music from one side of
the world to the other.
In solitary trysts with wilderness depths and
caves which transient sight-seers know nothing
about I had often pleased myself thinking the
Mishi-ne-macki-naw-go were somewhere around
me. If twigs crackled or a sudden awe fell cause-
lessly, I laughed — " That family of Indian ghosts is
near. I wish they would show themselves!" For
if they ever show themselves, they bring you the
gift of prophecy. The Chippewas left tobacco and
gunpowder about for them. My off e' tig was to
cover with moss the picnic papers, tins, and broken
bottles, with which man who is vile defiles every
191
THE BLUE MAN
prospect. l)iscov(M'in<^ such a i]u<u»r islander as the
blue nuiti was aluiost equal to seeing the Mishi-ne-
niacUi-naw-go.
Voices approached ; and T watclied his eyes come
into his face as he leaned forward ! From a blurr
of lids they turned to beauti'ul clear balls shot
throu^di with yearning. Around the jut of rock
appeared a bicycle girl, a golf girl, and a youth in
knickers haviny; his stoclviri«;s laici in correct folds
below the knee. They passed without noticing us.
To see his looks dim and his eagerness relax was
too painful. I watched the water ridging against
the horizon like goldstone and changing swiftly to
the blackest of greens. Distance folded into dis-
tance so that the remote drew near. lie was cer-
tainly waiting for somebody, but it could not be
that he had waited thirty-five years: thirty-five
winters, whitening the ice-bound island ; thirt3''-five
summers, bringing all paradise except what he
waited for.
Just as I glanced at the blue man again his lips
began to move, and the peculiar tingle ran down
rny back, though I felt ashamed of it in his sweet
presence.
" Madame, it will — it will comfort me if you per-
mit me to talk to you."
" I shall be very glad, sir, to hear whatever you
have to tell."
" I have — have waited here thirtv-five years, and
in all that time I have not spoken to any one!"
He said this quite candidly, closing his lips before
193'
THE BLUE MAN
his voice ceased to sound. The cedar sapling
against which his head rested was not more real
than the sincerity of that blue man's face. Some
hermit soul, who had j)roved me by watching me
seven years, was opening himself, and I felt the
tears come in my eyes.
"Have you never heard of me, madame?"
" You foiget, sir, that I do not even know your
name."
"My name is probably forgotten on the island
now. I stopped here between steamers during
your American Civil War. A passing boat put in
to leave a young girl who had cholera. I saw her
hair floating out of the litter."
"Oh!" I exclaimed; ''that is an island story."
The blue man was actually presenting credentials
when he spoke of the cholera story. " She was
taken care of on the island until she recovered; and
she was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy South-
ern family trying to get home from her convent in
France, but unable to run the blockade. The nun
who brought her died on shipboard before she
landed at Montreal, and she hoped to get through
the lines by venturing down the lakes. Yes, indeed !
Madame Clementine has told me that story."
He hstened, turning his head attentively and
keeping his eyes half closed, and again worked his
lips.
" Yes, yes. You know where she ras taken care
of?"
" It was at Madame Clementine's."
N .193
THE BLUE MAN
" T myself took her there."
"And hiive vou been there ever since?"
He passed over tlie trivial question, and when his
voice arrived it gushed without a stammer.
*' I had a month of lia])|)iness. I have ha<l thirty-
five years of waiting. When this island hinds you
to any one you remain bound. Sinco that month
with her I can do nothing but wait until she comes.
1 lost her, I don't know how. We were in this cove
togetiier. She sat on tliis rock and waited while I
went up the clitF to gather ferns for her. When I
returned she was gone. I search od the island for
her. It kept on smiling as if there never had been
such a person! Something happened which I do
not understand, for she did not want to leave me.
She disappeared as if the earth had swallowed her!"
I felt a rill of cold down ray back like the jetting
of the spring that spouted from its ferny tunnel
farther eastward. Had he been thirty-five years
on the island without ever hearing the Old Mission
story about bones found in the cliff above us?
Those who reached them by venturing down a pit
as deep as a well, uncovered by winter storms, de-
clared they were the reinains of a woman's skeleton.
I never saw the people who found theai. It was an
oft-repeated Mission story which had come down to
me. An Indian girl was missed from the Mission
school and never traced. It was believed she met
her fate in this rock crevasse. The bones were blue,
tinged by a clay in which they had '^.in. I tried to
remember what became of the Southern girl who was
194
THE BLUE MAN
put ashore, her hair flying from a litter. Distinct
us her tradition remained, it ended abruptly. Even
Ma(himo Clementine forgot when and how she left
the island after she ceased to be an object of solic-
itude, for many comers and goers trample the
memory as well as the island.
Had his love followed him up the green tangled
height and sunk so swiftly to her death that it was
accomplished without noise or outcry? To this
hour only a few inhabitants locate the treacherous
spot. He could not hide, even at Madame Clemen-
tine's, from all the talk of a community. This un-
reasonable tryst of thirty-five years raised for the
first time doubts of his sanity. A woman might
have kept such a tryst ; but a man consoles himself.
Passers had been less frequent than usual, but
again there was a crunch of approaching feet.
Again he leaned forward, and the sparks in his
eyes enlarged, and faded, as two fat women wob-
bled over the unsteady stones, exclaiming and l)al-
ancing themselves, oblivious to the blue man and
me.
" It is four o'clock," said one, pausing to look at
her watch. " This air gives one such an appetite I
shall never be able to wait for dinner.'"
" When the girls come in from golf at five we
will have some tea," said the other.
Returning beach gadders passed us. Some of
them noticed '^ with a start, but the blue man,
wrapped in rigic privacy, with his head sunk on his
breast, still evaded curious eyes.
195
T 11 E 1) L U E M A N
I began to see that his clothes were by no means
new, though they suited the wearer with a kind of
masculine elegance. The blue man's head had so
entirely dominated my attention that the cut of his
coat and his pointed collar and neckerchief seemed
to ap|)ear for the first time.
He turned his face to me once more, but before
our brief talk could be resumed another woman
came around the jut of cliff, so light-footed that she
did not make as much noise on the stones as the
fat women could still be heard making while they
floundered eastward, their backs towards us. The
blue man had impressed me as being of middle age.
But I felt mistaken; he changed so completel}^
Springing from the rock like a boy, his eyes glori-
fied, his lips quivering, he met with open arms the
woman who had come around the jut of the Giant's
Stairway. At first glance I thought her a slim old
woman with the kind of hair which looks either
blond or gray. But the maturity glided into sinuous
girlishness, jdelding to her lover, and her hair shook
loose, floating over his shoulder.
I dropped my eyes. I heard a pebble stir under
their feet. The tinkle of water falling down its
ferny tunnel could be guessed at ; and the beauty
of the world stabbed one with such keenness that
the stab brought tears.
We have all had our dreams of flying; or float-
ing high or low, lying extended on the air at will.
By what process of association I do not know, the
perfect naturalness and satisfaction of flying re-
m
THE BLUE MAN
ciiri'od to me. I was cleansed from all doubt of ul-
timate Gfood. The meeting of the blue man and the
woman with floating hair seemed to be what the
island had awaited for thirty-five years.
The miracle of impossible happiness had been
worked for him. It confused me like a dazzle of
fireworks. I turned my back and bowed my head,
waiting for him to speak again or to leave me out,
as he saw lit.
Extreme joy may be very silent in those who
have waited long, for I did not hear a cry or a
spoken word. Presently I dared to look, and was
not surprised to find myself alone. The evergreen-
clothed amphitheatre behind had many paths which
would instantly hide climbers from view. The blue
man and the woman with floatinjj; hair knew these
heights well. I thought of the pitfall, and sat
watching with back-tilted head, anxious to warn
them if they stirred foliage near where that fatal
trap was said to lurk. But the steep forest gave
no sign or sound from its mossy depths.
1 sat still a long time in a trance of the senses,
like that which follows a drama whose spell you
would not break. Masts and cross-trees of ships
were banded by ribbons of smoke blowing back
from the steamers which towed them in lines up or
down the straits.
Towards sunset there was a faint blush above the
steel-blue waters, which at their edge reflected the
blush. Then mist closed in. The sky became
ribbed with horizontal bars, so that the earth was
197
THE BLUE MAN
pent like a heart within the hollow of some vast
skeleton.
I was about to climb down from my rock when
two young men passed by, the first strollers I had
noticed since the blue man's exit. They rapped
stones out of the way with their canes, and pushed
the caps back from their youthful faces, talking
rapidly in excitement.
" When did it happen ?"
" About four o'clock. You were off at the golf
links."
"Was she killed instantly?"
" I think so. I think she never knew what hurt
her after seeing the horses plunge and the carriage
go over. I was walking my wheel down -hill just
behind and I didn't hear her scream. The driver
said he lost the brake ; and he's a pretty spectacle
now, for he landed on his head. It was that beau-
tiful old lady with the fly-away hair that we saw
arrive from this morning's boat while we were sit-
ting out smoking, you remember,"
" Not that one !"
*' That was the woman. Had a black maid with
her. She's a Southerner. I looked on the regis-
ter."
The other young fellow whistled.
" I'm glad I was at the links and didn't see it.
She was a stunning woman."
Dusk stalked grimly down from eastern heights
and blurred the water earlier than on rose-colored
evenings, making the home-returning walker shiver
198
THE BLUE MAN
through evergreen glooms along shore. The lights
of the sleepy Old Mission had never seemed so pleas-
ant, though the house was full of talk about that
day's accident at the other side of the island.
I slipped ou^ before the early boat left next morn-
ing, driven b}- ^defined anxieties towards Madame
Clementine's alley. There is a childish credulity
which clings to imaginative people through life. I
had accepted the blue man and the woman with
fioating hair in the way which the}^ chose to present
themselves. But I began to feel like one who sees
a distinctly focused picture shimmering to a dissolv-
ing view. The intrusion of an accident to a
stranger at another hotel continued this morning,
for as I took the long way around the bay before
turning back to Clementine's alley I met the open
island hearse, looking like a relic of provincial
France, and in it was a coflBn, and behind it moved
a carriage in which a black maid sat weeping.
Madame Clementine came out to her palings and
picked some of her nasturtiums for me. In her
mixed language she talked excitedly about the ac-
cident; nothing equals the islander's zest for sensa-
tion after his winter trance when the summer world
comes to him.
" When I heard it,'' I confessed, "I thought of the
friend of your blue gentleman. The description was
so like her. But I saw her myself on the beach by
the Giant's Stairway after four o'clock yesterday."
Madame Clementine contracted her short face in
puzzled wrinkles.
199
THE BLUE MAN
" There is one gentleman of red head," she re-
sponded, " but none of blue — pasdu tout."
" You mr.st know whom I mean — the lodger who
has been with you thirty-five years."
She looked at me as at one who has either been
tricked or is attempting trickery.
" I don't know his name — but you certainly
understand ! The man I saw in that room at
the foot of the stairs when you were showing
my friend and me the chambers day before yester-
day."
" There was nobody. De room at de foot of de
stair is empty all season. Tout de suite I put in
some young lady that arrive this night."
" Madame Clementine, I saw a man with a blue
skin on the beach yesterday — " I stopped. He
had not told me he lodged with her. That was my
own deduction. " I saw him the day before in this
house. Don't you know any such person ? He has
been on the island since that young lady was
brought to your house with the cholera so long
ago. He brought her to you."
A flicker of recollection appeared on Clementine's
face.
" That man is gone, madame ; it is many years.
And he was not blue at all. He was English Jersey
man, of Halifax."
" Did you never hear of any blue man on the isl-
and, Clementine ?"
"I hear of blue bones found beyond Point de
Mission."
200
THE BLUE MAN
" But that skeleton found in the hole near the
Giant's Stairway was a woman's skeleton."
" Me loes!" exclaimed Madame Clementine, mis-
calling her English as she always did in excitement.
"Me handle de big bones, moi-meme! Me loes
what de doctor who found him say !"
" I was told it was an Indian girl."
" You have hear lies, madame. Me loes there
was a blue man found beyond Point de Mission."
" Rut who was it that I saw in your house?"
" He is not in my house !" declared Madame
Clementine. " No blue man is ever in my house!"
She crossed herself.
There is a sensation like having a slide pulled
from one's head ; the shock passes in the fraction
of a second. Sunshine, and rioting nasturtiums, the
whole natural world, including Clementine's puzzled
brown face, were no more distinct to-day than the
blue man and the woman with floating hair had
been yesterday.
I had seen a man who shot down to instant death
in the pit under the Giant's Stairway thirty-five
years ago. I had seen a woman, who, perhaps,
once thought herself intentionally and strangely de-
serted, seek and meet him after she had been killed
at four o'clock !
This experience, set down in ray note-book and
repeated to no one, remains associated with the Old
World scent of ginger. For I remember hearing
Clementine say through a buzzing, "You come in,
madame — you must have de hot wine and jah jah !"
201
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
M
AUKICE BARRETT sat waiting in the
old lime-kiln built by the British in the war
of 1812 — a white ruin like much-scattered
marble, which stands bowered in trees on a high
part of the island. lie had, to the amusement of
the commissioner, hired this place for a summer
study, and paid a carpenter to put a temporary
roof over it, with skylight, and to make a door
which could be fastened. Here on the uneven floor
of stone were set his desk, his chair, and a bench
on which he could stretch himself to think when
undertaking to make up arrears in literary work.
But the days were becoming nothing but trysts
with her for whom he waited.
First came the heavenly morning walk and the
opening of his study, then the short half-hour of
labor, which ravelled off to delicious suspense. He
caught through trees the hint of a shirt-waist which
might be any girl's, then the long exquisite outline
which could be nobody's in the world but hers, her
face under its sailor hat, the blown blond hair,
the blue eyes. Then her little hands met his out-
202
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
stretched hands at the door, and her whole violet-
breathing self yielded to his arms.
They sat down on the bench, still in awe of each
other and of the swift miracle of their love and
engagement. Maurice had passed his fiftieth year,
so clean from dissipation, so full of vitality and the
beauty of a long race of strong men, that he did
not look fort}'-, and in all out-door activities rivalled
the boys in their early twenties. He was an ex-
pert mountain-climber and explorer of regions
from which he brought his own literary mate-
rial; inured to fatigue, patient in hardsliip, and re-
sourceful in danger. Money and reputation and
the power which attends them he had wrung
from fate as his right, and felt himself fit to
match with the best blood in the world — except
hers.
Yet she was only his social equtil, and had grown
up next door, while his unsatisfied nature searched
the universe for its mate — a wild sweetbrier-rose of
a child, pink and golden, breathing a daring, fra-
grant personality. He hearkened back to some
recognition of her charm from the day she ran out
bareheaded and slim-legged on her father's lawn
and turned on the hose for her play. Yet he barely
missed her when she went to an Eastern school,
and only thrilled vaguely when she came back like
one of Gibson's pictures, carrying herself with state-
liness. There was something in her blue eyes not
to be found in any other blue eyes. He was housed
with her family in the same hotel at the island be-
203
THE [NDIAN ON THE TRAIL
fore he completely understood the magnitude of
what had befallen him.
" I am awfully set up because you have chosen
me," she admitted at first. He liked to have her
proud as of a conquest, and he was conscious of that
general favor which stamped him a good match,
even for a girl half his age.
" How much have you done this morning?" she
inquired, looking at his desk.
" Enough to tide over the time until you came.
Determination and execution are not one with me
now." Her hands were cold, and he warmed them
against his face.
"It was during your married life that determi-
nation and execution were one ?"
" Decidedly. For that was my plodding age.
Sometimes when I am tingling with impatience
here I look back in wonder on the do^^ed drive of
those days. Work is an unhappy man's best friend.
I have no concealments from you, Lily. You know
I never loved my wife — not this way — though I
made her happy ; I did my duty. She told me
when she died that I had made her happy. People
cannot help their limitations."
" Do you love me ?" she asked, her lips close to
his ear.
" I am you ! Your blood flows through my
veins. I feel you rush through me. You don't
know what it is to love lik 3 that, do you ?"
She shook her head.
" When you are out of ray sight I do not live ; I
204
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
simply wait. AVhat is the weird power in you that
creates such gigantic passion i"
" The power is ail in your imagination. You
simply don't know me. You think I am a prize.
Why, I — flirt — and Tve — kissed men !"
He laughed. '' You would be a queer girl, at
your age, if you hadn't — kissed men — a little.
Whatever your terrible past has been, it has made
you the inlinite darling that you are !"
She moved her eves to watch the leaves twin-
kling in front of the lime-kiln.
" I must go," she said.
'' ' I must go ' !" he mocked. " You are no sooner
here than — ' I must go ' !"
" I can't be with you all the time. You don't
care for appearances, so I have to."
" Appearances are nothing. This is the only real
thing in the universe."
" But I really must go." She lifted her wilful
chin and sat still. They stared at each other in the
silence of lovers. Though the girl's face was with-
out a line, she was more skilled in the play of love
than he.
" Indeed I must go. Your eyes are half shut,
like a gentian."
" When you are living intensely you don't look
at the world through wide-open eyes," said Mau-
rice. "I never let myself go before. Repression
has been the law of my life. Think of it ! In a
long life-time I have loved but two persons — the
woman I told you of, and you. Twenty years ago
209
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
I found out what life meant. For the first time, I
knew ! But I was already married. I took that
beautiful love by the tliroat and choked it down.
Afterwards, when I was free, the woman I first
loved was married, llow long I have had to wait
for you to bloom, lotos flower ! This is living ! All
the other years were preparation."
" Do 3'ou never see her V inquired the girl.
"Who? That first one? I have avoided her."
" She loved you ?"
" With the blameless passion that we both at
first thought was the most perfect friendship."
" Wouldn't you marry her now if she were free ?"
" No. It is ended. We have grown apart in
renunciation for twenty years. I am not one that
changes easily, you see. You have taken what I
could not withhold from you, and it is yours. I
am in your power."
They heard a great steamer blowing upon the
strait. Its voice reverberated through the woods.
The girl's beautiful face was full of a tender wist-
fulness, half maternal. Neither jealousy nor pique
marred its exquisite sympathy. It was such an ex-
pression as an untamed wood-n^^mph might have
worn, contemplating the life of man.
" Don't be sad," she breathed.
Vague terror shot through Maurice's gaze.
"That is a strange thing for you to say to me,
Lily. Is it all you can say — when I love you so ?"
" I was thinking of the other woman. Did she
suffer ?"
206
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
" At any rate, she has the whole world now —
beauty, talent, wealth, social prestige. She is one
of the most successful women in this country."
" Do I know her name ?"
" Quite well. She has been a person of conse-
quence since you were a child."
"I couldn't capture the whole world," mused
Lily. Maurice kissed her small lingers.
" Some one else will put it in your lap, to keep
or throw away as you choose."
The hurried tink-tank of an approaching cow-bell
suggested passers. Then a whir of wheels could be
heard through tangled wilderness. The girl met
his lips with a lingering which trembled through
all his body, and withdrew herself.
" Now I am going. Are you coming down the
trail with me ?"
Maurice shut the lime-kiln door, and crossed with
her a grassy avenue to find among birches the rav-
elled ends of a path called the White Islander's
Trail. You may know it first by a triangle of roots
at the foot of an oak. Thence a thread, barely
visible to expert eyes, winds to some mossy dead
pines and crosses a rotten log. There it becomes
a trail cleaving the heights, and plunging boldly
up and dow^n evergreen glooms to a road parallel
with the cliff. Once, when the island was freshly
drenched in rain, Lily breathed deeply, gazing down
the tunnel floored with rock and pine-needles, a flask
of incense. " It is like the violins !"
In that seclusion of heaven Maurice could draw
207
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
hor slim shape to him, for the way is so narrow
that two are oblif^ed to walk close. They parted
near the wider entrance, where a stuini) reared 't-
self against the o[)en sky, bearing a stick like a bow,
and having the appearance of a crouching ligure.
"There is the Indian on the trail," said Lily.
" You must go back now."
"lie looks so formidable," said Maurice; "espe-
cially in twilight, and, except at noon, it is always
twilight here. But when you reach him he is noth-
ing but a stump."
" He is more than a stump," she insisted. " He
is a real Indian, and some day will get u{) and take
a scalp ! It gives me a shiver every time I come in
sight of him crouched on the trail !"
"Do you know," complained her lover, " that you
haven't told me once to-day iJ"
" Well— I do."
" How much ?"
" Oh— a little !"
"A little will not do!"
" Then — a great deal."
" I want all—all !"
Her eyes wandered towards the Indian on the
trail, and the bow of her mouth was bent in a tan-
talizing curve.
" I have told you I love you. Why doesn't that
satisfy you?"
" It isn't enough !"
" Perhaps I can't satisfy you. I love you all I
can."
208
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
" All you can?"
*'Ye8. Maybo I can't love you as much as you
want me to. I am shallow !"
" For God's sake, don't say you are shallow !
There is deep under deep in you ! I couldn't have
staked my life on you, I couldn't have loved you,
if there hadn't been ! Say I h:i ve only touched the
surface yet, but don't say you are shallow 1"
The girl shook her head.
" There isn't enough of me. Do you know," she
exclaimed, whimsically, " that's the Indian on the
trail ! You'll never feel quite sure of me, will you?"
Maurice's lips moved. " You are my own !"
She kept him at bay with her eyes, though they
filled slowly with tears.
"• I am a child of the devil !" exclaimed Lily, with
vehemence. " 1 give people trouble and make them
suffer!"
" She classes me with 'people' !" Maurice thought.
He said, " Have I ever blamed you for anything ?"
" No."
" Then don't blame yourself. I will simply take
what you can give me. That is all I could take.
Forgive me for loving you too much. I will try to
love you less."
" No," the girl demurred. "I don't want you to
do that."
"I am very unreasonable," he said, humbly.
" But the rest of the world is a shadow. You are
my one reahty. There is nothing in the universe
but you."
o 209
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
She brushed her eyes fiercely. " I mustn't cry.
I'll have to explain it if I do, and the lids will be
red all day."
The man felt internally seared, as by burning
lava, with the conviction that he had staked his all
late in life on what could never be really his. She
would diffuse herself through many. He was con-
centrated in her. His passion had its lips burned
shut.
" I am Providence's favorite bag-holder," was his
bitter thought. " The game is never for me."
" Good-bye," said Lily.
" Good-bye," said Maurice,.
" Are you coming into the casino to-night?"
" If 3''ou will be there."
" I have promised a lot of dances. Good-bye. Go
back and work."
" Yes, I must work," said Maurice.
She gave him a defiant, radiant smile, and ran
towards the Indian on the trail. He turned in the
opposite direction, and tramped the woods until
nightfall.
At first he mocked himself. " Oh yes, she loves
me! I'm glad, at any rate, that she loves me!
There wnll be enough to moisten my lips with; and
if I thirst for an ocean that is not her fault."
Why had a woman been made who could inspire
such passion without returning it? He reminded
himself that she was of a later, a gayer, lighter, less
strenuous generation than his own. Thousands of
men had waded blood for a principle and a lost
210
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
cause in his day. In hers the gigantic republic
stood up a menace to nations. The struggle for
existence was over before she was born. Yet wom-
en seemed more in earnest now than ever before.
He said to himself, " I have always picked out
natures as fatal to me as a death-warrant, and fast-
ened my life to them."
The thought stabbed him that perhaps his wife,
whom he had believed satisfied, had carried such
hopeless anguish as he now carried. Tardy remorse
for what he could not help gave him the feeling of
a murderer. And since he knew himself how little
may be given under the bond of marriage, he could
not look forward and say, " My love will yet be
mine!"
He would, indeed, have society on his side; and
children — he drew his breath hard at that. Her
ways with children were divine. He had often
watched her instinctive mothering of, and drawing
them around her. And it should be much to him
that he might look at and touch her. There was
life in her mere presence.
He felt the curse of the artistic temperament,
which creates in man the exquisite sensitiveness of
woman.
Taking the longest and hardest path home around
the eastern beach, Maurice turned once on impulse,
parted a screen of birches, and stepped into an
amphitheatre of the cliff, moss-clothed and cedar-
walled. It sloped downward in three terraces. A
balcony or high parapet of stone hung on one side,
211
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
f
a rock low and broad stood in the centre, and an
unmistakable chair of rock, cushioned with vividly
green-branched moss, waited an occupant. Maurice
sat down, wondering if any other human being,
perplexed and tortured, had ever domiciled there
for a brief time. Slim alder-trees and maples were
clasped in moss to their waists. The spacious open
Avas darkened by dense shade overhead. Bois Blanc
was plainly in view from the beach. But the eastern
islands stretched a line of foliage in growing dusk.
Maurice felt the cooling benediction of the place.
This world is such a good world to be happy in, if
you have the happiness.
When the light faded he went on, climbing low
headlands which jutted into the water, and sliding
down on the other side; so that he reached the hotel
physically exhausted, anc' had his dinner sent to his
room. But a vitality constantly renewing itself
swept away every trace of his hard day when he
entered the gayly lighted casino.
He no longer danced, not because dancing ceased
to delight him, but because the serious business of
life had left no room for it. He walked along the
waxed floor, avoiding the circling procession of
waltzers, and bowing to a bank of pretty faces, but
thinking his own thought, in growing bitterness:
" They who live blam^^less lives are the fools of fate.
If I had it to do over again, I would take what I
wanted in spite of everything, and let the conse-
quences fall where they would!" Looking up, he
met in the eyes the woman of his early love.
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
She was holding court, foi* a person of such conse-
quence became the centre of the caravansary from
the instant of her arrival; and she <^ave him her
hand with the conventional frankness and self-com-
mand that set her apart from the weak. Once more
he knew she was a woman to be worshipped, whose
presence rebuked the baseness he had just thought.
" Perhaps it was she who kept me from being
worse," Maurice recognized in a flash ; " not I my-
self!"
"Why, Mrs. Carstang, I didn't know you were
here!" he spoke, with warmth around the heart.
" We came at noon."
"And I was in the woods all day." Maurice
greeted the red-cheeked, eklerly Mr. Carstang,
whom, according to half the world, his wife doted
upon, and according to the other half, she simply
endured. At any rate, he looked i)leased with his
lot.
While Maurice stood talking with Mrs. Carstang,
the new grief and tlie old strangely neutralized each
other. It was as if they met and grap])led, and he
had numb peace. The woman of his first love made
him proud of that early bond. She was more than
she had been then. But Lily moved past him with
a smile. Her dancing was visible music. It had
a penetrating grace — hers, and no other person's in
the world. The floating of a slim nymph down a
forest avenue, now separating from her partner, and
now joining him at caprice, it rushed through Mau-
rice like some recollection of the Golden Age, when
213
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
he had stood imprisoned in a tree. There was little
opportunity to do anything but watch her, for she
was more in demand than any other girl in the
casino. Hop nights were her unconscious ovations,
lie took a kind of aching delight in her dancing.
For while it gratified an artist to the core, it sepa-
rated her from her lover and gave her to other
men.
Next morning he waited for her in the study
with a restlessness which would not let him sit still.
More than once he went as far as the oak-tree to
watch for a glimmer. But when Lily finally ap-
peared at the door he pretended to be very busy
with papers on his desk, and looked up, saying,
"Oh!"
The morning was chill, and she seemed a fair
Eussian in fur-edged cloth as she put her cold fin-
gers teasingly against his neck,
" Are you working hard ?"
"Trying to. I am behind."
" But if there is a good wind this afternoon you
are not to forget the Carstangs' sail. They will be
here only a day or two, and you mustn't neglect
them. Mrs. Carstang told me if I saw you first to
invite you."
Maurice met the girFs smiling eyes, and the ice
of her hand went through him.
" Isn't Mrs. Carstang lovely ! As soon as I saw
you come in last night, I knew she was — the other
woman."
" You didn't look at me."
214
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
" I can see with my eyelashes. Do you know, I
have often thought 1 should love her if I were a
man!"
There was not a trace of jealousy in Lily's gentle
and perfect manner.
" You resemble her," said Maurice. " You have
the blond head, and the same features — only a little
more delicate."
" I have been in her parlor all morning," said
Lily. " We talked about you. I am certain, Mau-
rice, Mrs. Carstang is in her heart still faithful to
you."
That she should thrust the old love on him as a
kind of solace seemed the crudest of all. There
was no cognizance of anything except this one
maddening girl. She absorbed him. She wrung
the strength of his manhood from him as tribute,
such tribute as everybody paid her, even Mrs. Car-
stang. lie sat like a rock, tranced by the strong
control which he kept over himself.
" I must go," said Lily. She had not sat down
at all. Maurice shuffled his papers.
" Good-bye," she spoke.
" Good-bye," he answered.
She did not ask, " Are you coming down the trail
with me?" but ebbed softly away, the swish of her
silken petticoat subsiding on the grassy avenue.
Her lover stretched his arms across the desk and
sobbed upon them with heart-broken gasps.
"It is kiUing me! It is killing me! And there
is no escape. If I took ray life ray disembodied
215 *
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
ghost would follow her, less able to malve itself felt
than now! I cannot live without her, and she is
not for me — not for me!"
He cursed the necessity which drove him out with
the sailing party, and tiie prodigal waste of life on
neutral, trivial doings which cannot be called living.
lie could see Lily with every pore of his body, and.
grew faint keeping down a wild beast in him which
desired to toss overboard the men who crowded
around her. She was more deliciously droll than
an}'- comedienne, full of music and wit, the kind of
spirit that rises flood-tide with occasion. He was
himself hilarious also during this experience of sail-
ing with two queens surrounded by courtiers and
playing the deep game of fascination, as if men
were created for the amusement of their lighter
moments. Lily's defiant, inscrutable eyes mocked
him. But Mrs. Carstang gave him sweet friend-
ship, and he sat by her with the unchanging loyalty
of a devotee to an altar from which the sacrament
has been removed.
Next morning Lily did not come to the lime-kiln.
Maurice worked furiously all da^^ and corrected
proof in his room at night, though tableaux were
shown in the casino, both ..Mrs. Carstang and Lily
being head and front of the undertaking.
The second day Lily did not come to the hme-
kiln. But he saw her pass along the grassy avenue
in front of his study with Mrs. Carstang, a man on
each side of them. They waved their hands to
him.
216
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
Maurice sat with his head on his desk all the
afternoon, beaten and broken hearted. lie told
himself he was a poltroon; that ho was losing his
manhood ; that the one he loved despised him, and
did well to despise him ; that a man of his age who
gave way to such weakness must be entering se-
nility. The habit of rectitude would cover him like
armor, and proclaim him still of a chivalry to which
he felt recreant. But it came upon him like reve-
lation that many a man had died of what doctors
had called disease, when the report to the health-
officer should have read : " This man loved a wom-
an with a great passion, and she slew him."
The sigh of the woods around, and the sunlight
searching for him through his door, were lonelier
than illimitable space. It was what the natives
call a " real Mackinac day," with infinite splendor
of sky and water.
Maurice heard the rustle of woman's clothes, and
stood up as Lily came through the white waste of
stones. She stopped and gazed at him with large
hunted eyes, and submitted to his taking and kiss-
ing her hands. It was so blessed to have her at all
that half his trouble fied before her. They sat
down together on the bench.
Much of his life Maurice had been in the atti-
tude of judging whether other people pleased him
or not. Lily reversed this habit of mind, and made
him humbly solicitous to know whether he pleased
her or not. He silently thanked God for the mere
privilege of having her near him. Passionate self-
217
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
ishness was chastened out of him. One can say
much behind tlie lips and make no sound at all.
" If 1 drench her with my love and she does not
know it," thouf»iit IVIaurice, " it cannot annoy her.
Let me take what she is willing to give, and ask no
more."
" The Carstangs are gone," said Lily.
" Yes ; I bade them good-bye this morning before
I came to the lime-kiln."
" You don't say you regret their going."
" I never seek Mrs. Carstang."
He sat holding the girl's hands and never swerv-
ing a glance from her face, which was weirdly pallid
— the face of her spirit. lie felt himself enveloped
and possessed by her, his will subject to her will,
lie said within himself, voicelessly : " I love you.
I love the firm chin, the wilful lower lip, and the
Cupid's bow of the upper lip. I love the oval of
your cheeks, the curve of your ears, the etched eye-
brows, and all the little curls on your temples. I
love the proud nose and most beautiful forehead.
Every blond hair on that dear head is mine ! Its
upward tilt on the long throat is adorable! Have
you any gesture or personal trait which does not
thrill me ? But best of all, because through them
you yourself look at me, revealing more than you
think, I adore your blue eyes."
"What are you thinking?" demanded Lily.
" Of a man who lay face downward far out in
the desert, and had not a drop of water to moisten
his lips."
218
THE IxNDIAN ON TIIK TKAIL
" Is he in your story ?"
" Yes, he is in iny story."
" I thought ptirhaps you didn't want me to come
here any more/' sho. said.
" You didn't think so !" flaslied Maurice.
" J3ut you turned your cheek to nie the last time
I was here. You were too busy to do more than
speak."
Voicelessly he said : " I lay under your feet, my
life, my love! You walked on me and never knew
it." Aloud he answered : " Was I so detestable ?
Forgive me. I am tr3nng to learn self-control."
" You are all self-control ! If you have feeling,
you manage very well to conceal it."
"God grant it!" he said, in silence, behind his
lips. " For the touch of your hand is rapture. My
God ! how hard it is to love so much and be still !"
Aloud he said, " Don't you know the great mass of
human beings are obliged to conceal their feelings
because they have not the gift of expression?"
"Yes, I know," answered Lily, defiantly.
" But that can never be said of you," Maurice
went on. " For you are so richly endowed with
expression that your problem is how to mask it."
"Are you coming down the trail with me? It
is sunset, and time to shut the study for the day."
He prepared at once to leave his den, and they
went out together on the trail, lingering step by
step. Though it was tiie heart of the island sum-
mer, the maples still had tender pink leaves at
the extremities of branches ; and the trail looked
219
THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL
wild juul fresh as if tliat liour tunnelled through
the wilderness. Sunset tried to peneti'ate western
stretches with level shafts, but none reached the
darkening path where twilight ah'eady pur[)led
the hollows.
The night coolness was like respite after burning
pain. Maurice wondered how close he might draw
this changeful girl to him without again losing her.
He had compared her to a wild sweetbrier - rose.
She was a hundred-leaved rose, hiding innuuierable
natures in her depths. '
The}"^ passed the dead pines, crossed tlie rotten
log, and came silently within sight of the Indian on
the trail, but neither of them noted it. The Indian
stood stencilled against a background of primrose
light, his bow magnified.
It was here that Maurice felt the slight elastic
body sag upon his arm.
" I am tired," said Lily. " I have been working
so hard to amuse your friends !"
" Would that I w^ere my friends !" responded
Maurice. He said, silently : "I love you! I won-
der if I shall ever learn to love you less ?■ '
The unspoken appeal of her swaying figure put
him off his guard, and he found himself holding
her, the very depths of his passion rushing out with
the force of lava.
" It is you I want ! — the you that is not any
other person on earth or in the universe! What-
ever it is — the identity — the spirit — that is you —
the you that was mated with me in other lives —
2$20
THE INDIAN ON Tllh) TKAIL
that I have sought — will seek—must have, what-
ever the [)t'ice in time and anguish! — understand!
— there is nobody but you !"
Tears oozed from under her closed lids. She lay
in his arms passive, as in a half-swoon.
*' You do the talking," she breathed. "I do the
loving!"
Without opening her eyes she met him with her
perfect mouth, and gave herself to him in a kiss.
He understood a spirit so passionately reticent that
it denied to itself its own inward motions. The
wilfulness of a solitary exalted nature melted in
that kiss. All the soft curves of her face con-
cealed and belied the woman who opened her wild
blue eyes and looked at him, passionately adoring,
fierce for her own, yet doubtful of fate.
" If I let you know that I loved you all I do, you
would tire of me !"
" How can you say I could ever tire of you ?"
"I know it ! When you are not quite sure of me,
you love me best !"
Maurice laughed agamst her lips. "You said
that was the Indian on the trail — my never being
quite sure of you ! Will you take an oath with me ?"
" Yes."
" This is the oath : 1 swear before God that I
love you more than any one else on earth ; more
than any one else in the universe."
She repeated : " I swear before God that I love
you more than any one else on earth ; more than
any one else in the universe !"
221
TIIK TNI»l AN ON Til E TRAIL
Maurice hold Ihm* blond lnjad n^^ninst his breast,
quiverin*^ through flesh and spirit. That was the
moment of life. Wiuit was ('on(|Uoring the dense
resistance of material things, or coming ofT victor
in bouts with men? The moment of life is when
the infinite sea opens before the lover.
The heart of the island held them like the heart
of Allah. The pines sang around them.
" We must go on," spoice Lily. '' It is so dark
wo can't see the Indian on the trail."
"There isn't any Indian on the trail now,"
laughed Maurice. " You can never frighten me
with him again."
THE £NI>