The Story of Tonty Part 5

"Come then, tiger-cat, return to thy cage."

"My uncle La Salle, let me look a moment longer. See that fat man and his lean brother the people are pointing at! Even the Indians jump and jeer. I would strike them for such insolence! There, my uncle La Salle, there is Monsieur Iron-hand talking to the ugly servant of Jeanne le Ber's father."

La Salle easily found Tonty. He was instructing and giving orders to several men collected for the explorer's service. Jolycoeur,[6] his cap set on sidewise, was yet abashed in his impudence by the mastery of Tonty. He wore a new suit of buckskin, with the coureur de bois' red sash knotted around his waist.

"My uncle La Salle," inquired Barbe, turning over a disturbance in her mind, "must I live in the convent until I wed a man?"

"The convent is held a necessary discipline for young maids."

"I will then choose Monsieur Iron-hand directly. He would make a good husband."

"I think you are right," agreed La Salle.

"Because he would have but one hand to catch me with when I wished to run away," explained Barbe. "If he had also lost his feet it would be more convenient."

"The marriage between Monsieur de Tonty and Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier may then be arranged?"

She looked at her uncle, answering his smile of amus.e.m.e.nt. But curving her neck from side to side, she still examined the Italian soldier.

"I can outrun most people," suggested Barbe; "but Monsieur de Tonty looks very tall and strong."

"Your intention is to take to the woods as soon as marriage sets you free?"

"My uncle La Salle, I do have such a desire to be free in the woods!"

"Have you, my child? If the wilderness thus draws you, you will sometime embrace it. Cavelier blood is wild juice."

"And could I take my fortune with me? If it c.u.mbered I would leave it behind with Monsieur de Tonty or my brother."

"You will need all your fortune for ventures in the wilderness."

"And the fortunes of all your relatives and of as many as will give you credit besides," said a priest wearing the Sulpitian dress. He stopped before them and looked sternly at Barbe.

The Abbe Jean Cavelier had not such robust manhood as his brother. In him the Cavelier round lower lip and chin protruded, and the eyebrows hung forward.

La Salle had often felt that he stooped in conciliating Jean, when Jean held the family purse and doled out loans to an explorer always kept needy by great plans.

Jean had strongly the instinct of acc.u.mulation. He gauged the discovery and settlement of a continent by its promise of wealth to himself. His adherence to La Salle was therefore delicately adjusted by La Salle's varying fortunes; though at all times he gratified himself by handling with tyranny this younger and distinguished brother. Generous admiration of another's genius flowering from his stock with the perfect expression denied him, was scarcely possible in Jean Cavelier.

"The Sisters said I might come hither with my uncle La Salle," replied Barbe, to his unspoken rebuke.

"Into whose charge were your brother and yourself put when your parents died?"

"Into the charge of my uncle the Abbe Cavelier."

"Who brought your brother and you to this colony that he might watch over your nurture?"

"My uncle the Abbe Cavelier."

"It is therefore your uncle the Abbe Cavelier who will decide when to turn you out among Indians and traders."

"You carry too bitter a tongue, my brother Jean," observed La Salle.

"The child has caught no harm. My own youth was cramped within religious walls."

"You carry too arrogant a mind now, my brother La Salle. I heard it noted of you to-day that you last night sat apart and deigned no word to them that have been of use to you in Montreal."

La Salle's face owned the sting. Shy natures have always been made to pay a tax on pride. But next to the slanderer we detest the bearer of his slander to our ears.

"It is too much for any man to expect in this world,--a brother who will defend him against his enemies."

As soon as this regret had burst from the explorer, he rested his look again on Tonty.

"I do defend you," a.s.serted Abbe Cavelier; "and more than that I impoverish myself for you. But now that you come riding back from France on a high tide of the king's favor, I may not lay a correcting word on your haughty spirit. Neither yesterday nor to-day could I bring you to any reasonable state of humility. And all New France in full cry against you!"

Extreme impatience darkened La Salle's face; but without further reply he drew Barbe's hand and turned back with her toward the Hotel Dieu. She had watched her uncle the Abbe wrathfully during his attack upon La Salle, but as he dropped his eyes no more to her level she was obliged to carry away her undischarged anger. This she did with a haughty bearing so like La Salle's that the Abbe grinned at it through his fretfulness.

He grew conscious of alien hair bristling against his neck as a voice mocked in undertone directly below his ear,--

"Yonder struts a great Bashaw that will sometime be laid low!"

The Abbe turned severely upon a person who presumed to tickle a priest's neck with his coa.r.s.e mustache and astound a priest's ear with threats.

He recognized the man known as Jolycoeur, who had been pushed against him in the throng. Jolycoeur, by having his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure of La Salle, had missed the ear of the person he intended to reach. He recoiled from encountering the Abbe, whose wrath with sudden ebb ran back from a brother upon a brother's foes.

"You are the fellow I saw whining yesterday at Sieur de la Salle's heels. What hath the Sieur de la Salle done to any of you worthless woods-rangers, except give you labor and wages, when the bread you eat is a waste of his substance?"

Jolycoeur, not daring to reply to a priest, slunk away in the crowd.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Several historians identify Jolycoeur with the noted coureur de bois and writer, Nicolas Perrot. But considering the deed he attempted, the romancer has seen fit to portray him as a very different person.

Book II.

FORT FRONTENAC.

1683 A. D.

I.

RIVAL MASTERS.