CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH ST. EUSTACE IS KIND TO DE SANCERRE
OVERLOOKING the waters of the great river, as they met and mingled with the waves of a lonely sea, stood a wooden column beside a wooden cross. Almost hidden by the shadow of the pompous pillar, the cross, unmarked by hand of man, made no open claim to power, but awaited patiently the outcome of the years. Upon the column had been inscribed the words:
Louis le Grand, Roy de France et de Navarre, règne; le Neuvième Avril, 1682.
Now and then the King’s Column would appear to hold converse with the Cross of Christ, for it was a weary vigil which they kept, and the lofty pillar, haughtily displaying the arms of France, was forced, from very loneliness, to recognize the humble emblem at its base.
Through long, sunny days and soft, moonlit nights the salt breeze from the sea heard the royal column boasting to the lowly cross. By virtue of the legend upon its breast, said the King’s Pillar, a great monarch had gained a vast domain. Savannas, forests, prairies, deserts, rivers, lakes, and mountains, forming a gigantic province, had become, through a word uttered by a great explorer, the property of him whose name the wooden column bore. Through all the oncoming ages, the King’s Pillar asserted, Louis le Grand, Roy de France et de Navarre, and his posterity, would own the fair lands through which a mighty river and its tributaries flowed. It was not to be wondered at that the stately column grew vain with the grandeur of its mission upon earth, and even garrulous at times, as it described to the insignificant cross the splendor of the dreams which a glowing future vouchsafed to it.
The Cross of Christ would listen in silence to the mouthing of the Royal Claimant, gazing further into the future, with a clearer vision than the proud pillar, whose words were those of men blinded by the intoxication of transient power. The unpretentious cross could well afford to indulge in the luxury of silence. Since it had first become a symbol of the power which is begotten by the teachings of humility and love, it had heard, a thousand times, the boastful words of monarchs swollen with the glory of ephemeral success. It had seen emperors and kings seizing lands and peoples to hold them in subjection until time should be no more. But the centuries had come and gone, and the banners of earthly kings, rising and falling, had pressed onward and been driven back. Only the cross, emblem of peace on earth and good will to men, had, through those same ages, steadily enlarged the dominion over which its gentle rule prevailed. Carried forward often by fanatics and made to serve the ends of cruel hearts, it was, in spite of all the errors of its followers, slowly but surely receiving the earth for its heritage and mankind as the reward of its benignity.
One afternoon, late in the month of May, a man, pale, dejected, moving with the heavy step of one who had undergone great bodily fatigue, led a maiden, upon whose white face lay the shadow of a weariness against which youth could not prevail, toward the King’s Column. Removing his bonnet from a head grown gray from recent hardships, the man, releasing the girl’s hand, bent a knee before the proud emblem of his sovereign. At the same moment the maiden knelt down before the cross, and, weeping softly, breathed a prayer to a Mother whose Son had died for men.
Presently the girl arose and, followed by him who had paid his tribute to the fleeting power of kings, skirted the royal column, and seated herself upon a mound of sand from which she could sweep, with her dark, mournful eyes, the expanse of a gulf new to the keel of ships. Stretching before her as if it knew no bounds lay a great water, an awful waste of sun-kissed, dancing waves, whose glittering splendor brought no solace to her heavy heart.
“It is a mystery which I cannot fathom,” said de Sancerre, mournfully, throwing himself down by Doña Julia’s side and gazing up at her sad, sweet face with eyes heavy from a disappointment which had crushed, for the time being, the fond hopes which had inspired him through long days of labor and nights of wakeful vigilance. “The good faith of the stern, upright de la Salle I cannot doubt. He would jeopardize his life, and all his mighty projects, to rescue a comrade to whom his word was pledged. We must have passed him somewhere in the twilight of the dawn or when I used the sunset’s glow too long.”
“What seemeth best to do, señor?” asked the girl, turning her gaze from the cruel sea to look into the face of a man upon whose courage and resourcefulness she had good reason to rely.
“Ma foi, I hardly know,” muttered the Frenchman, looking about him upon the scattered remnants of de la Salle’s encampment. “My captain may return—but ’twill be a weary while ere he comes back. A year, at least, must pass before he reaches here again. We stand in no great danger from starvation, but ’tis a lonely shore. I thought to lead you from captivity, and, lo! I’ve merely changed your cabin-prison to a sandy jail! I fear St. Maturin has turned his face from me!”
“Be not cast down, señor,” whispered Doña Julia, in her native tongue. “It cannot be that Mother Mary, who has been most kind to us, will leave us here to die.”
“’Twould be unreasonable,” exclaimed de Sancerre, almost petulantly. Then he went on, making an effort at cheerfulness. “But, for the present, we have no cause to lose all hope. This desert shore seems safe from savage men. My musket there will gain us meat enough, and in the forest there are fruits and berries fit for royal boards. In sooth, ‘le Roy de France et de Navarre’ has won a kingdom rich in all good things.”
“We’re safe from savage men, you say, señor,” remarked Doña Julia, musingly, casting a meaning glance behind her at the silent woods. “I fear you do not understand the nation which we have defied.” She smiled sadly as she went on: “You have abducted Coyocop, a goddess sent from heaven to make their people great. Although your musket filled them with dismay, they’ll follow us.”
The lines of care upon de Sancerre’s drawn face grew deeper as he listened thoughtfully to the girl’s words.
“We’ve left no trail,” he mused, gazing longingly at the horizon where the sea-line met the sky. “They’re keen as woodsmen, but the river tells no tales. But, mayhap, you are right! You’ve known them long and heard the sun-priests talk. And if the worst should come, ma chère, I’d die for you with sword and gun in hand beneath the blazoned arms of France. ’Twould be a fitting ending for a count of Languedoc.”
“Speak not so sadly, señor,” exclaimed Doña Julia, placing a gentle hand upon his shoulder and looking into his face with courageous, hopeful eyes. “I sought not to dishearten you, but ’tis well for you to know the truth. To linger where we are is far from safe.”
“That may be so,” admitted de Sancerre, reflectively, as he examined the lock of his musket and then stood erect to cast a searching glance across sea and land. The restless billows of the gulf, the marshy coast, the islands at the river’s mouth, and the grim forest overlooking the waters, formed a picture which human gaze had seldom swept. At this moment the outlook held no menace to the eyes or ears of de Sancerre. “To linger where we are, señora, may not be safe,” he remarked, as he reseated himself and took her hand in his, “but where ’tis best to go I hardly know. Our raft will not float up-stream, and we cannot put to sea. We have not much to choose! Between this hillock and the next there can be no great difference in the perils which surround us. And, somehow, señora, I feel nearer to my captain with the arms of France above my head.”
Doña Julia pressed de Sancerre’s hand and her quick sympathy shone in her dark eyes.
“Your captain, señor—you loved him?”
“De la Salle? I know not that I loved him. But I would have followed him to hell! There is a grandeur in my captain’s soul which draws to him the little men and makes them great. Aye, señora, by all succeeding ages the name of him who raised this wooden column, against which we lean, in honor must be held! The deeds of de la Salle shall live, when the feats of countless noisy boasters are forgotten. But, that I loved this mighty leader I cannot say. I’ve served in Europe under lesser men than de la Salle, who led me by the heart; while he, methinks, appeals but to my head. He rules us not with velvet, but with steel, this dauntless captain, upon whose martial figure I would that I might gaze. And that is best, in such a land as this! Followed by redmen and wild border outlaws, he could not hold them should he smile and scrape. And, at the best, he cannot trust his men. They grumble at their captain, because he has no weakness in their eyes.”
De Sancerre’s long speech, to which Doña Julia had listened with forced attention, had changed the melancholy current of his thoughts and restored the lines of firmness to his mouth, the light of courage to his eyes. The memory of the bold adventurer under whom he had served for many months, and the inspiring legend which he had read and reread upon the column at his back, had revived the martial spirit in his impressionable soul, and his face and voice no longer bore evidence of the bitter disappointment which had driven him to the verge of despair when he had made the discovery that Sieur de la Salle had abandoned his camp at the Mississippi’s mouth. With gun in hand, the Frenchman stood erect.
“Listen, ma chère, for I crave your counsel and advice,” he said, gazing down at Doña Julia. “We may be here for months before we find a means of rescue, either by land or sea. We’re worn with sleeplessness and toil, but, more than this, our bodies crave strong food. We’ve eaten meal and berries until I dream of Vatel when I doze—great Condé’s cook, who killed himself because a dish was spoiled. My gun could add a fat wild turkey to our larder; but the point is this: the musket’s noise might lead our dusky enemies to seek us here. I feared not their persistence ’til you spoke of it. This column and the arms it bears would make no great impression upon our foes.”
“Our only hope must lie in yonder cross,” murmured Doña Julia, devoutly. Then she gazed upward at the thin, white face of a man who might well call himself at this moment “a splinter from a moonbeam,” so thin and white he looked. The horror of her situation, should her brave protector fall sick from lack of nourishing food, forced itself impressively upon her mind.
“’Twill do no harm, señor,” she went on, “for you to snap your gun. In any case, our enemies, if they are still upon our track, would find us here, and if they hear your musket’s loud report, ’twill check them for a time. They’ll think the woods are haunted with demons threatening them.”
“Ma foi, they would be, had I the magic which I claim!” exclaimed de Sancerre, examining carefully the priming of his gun. “I think, señora, that what you say is true. If those brown devils are now upon our trail, our silence cannot save us. St. Eustace be my guide! We’ll break our fast at sunset, sweetheart, upon a bit of meat. I’ll not go out of sight. I’ve wasted too much time, for we must choose a lodging for the night before the dark has come.”
Reinvigorated in mind and body, de Sancerre descended the hillock from which the King’s Column and the Cross of Christ looked down upon an empire over which the reign of the proud pillar was not destined to endure. With eyes raised to heaven, Doña Julia knelt before the humble emblem of her faith, and besought the saints to guard her champion from the perils which might at this moment beset his steps. Then she arose, and, leaning against the wooden monument, watched, with ever-growing interest, the versatile Frenchman’s efforts to satisfy his craving for a more nourishing diet than his labors as a raftsman had permitted him to gain.
“Peste!” muttered de Sancerre, as he made his way through the long grass toward the forest trees, “this musket is heavier by many pounds than when the good St. Maturin turned my footsteps toward it. Unless your bullet, ma petite, should find its way to yonder sleek, but most unsuspicious, banquet, I fear you’ll grow too weighty for my hands. Laude et jubilate! The bird is mine!”
De Sancerre turned and waved his ragged bonnet toward Doña Julia, who had witnessed the success of his shot, and then, leisurely reloading his musket, made his way toward the precious trophy of his marksmanship. Suddenly he stood stock-still, his head thrown back, and his eyes staring at the forest in amazement. As if in answer to his gun’s report, there came from the distant trees the echo of a musket-shot, which thrilled the soul of the startled Frenchman with mingled hope and fear.
“St. Maturin help me!” he exclaimed, in a voice suggesting a parched throat. “Is it friend or foe? I thought, ma petite, that you had no kinsman within the radius of many miles.”
Striving by gestures to urge Doña Julia to conceal herself behind the King’s Column, de Sancerre, with his musket at his shoulder, stretched himself at full length upon the grass, and, while his heart beat with suffocating rapidity, watched with straining eyes a grove of leafy trees from which the ominous reply to his gun had been made. Suddenly in front of him, almost within a stone’s-throw, stood a tall, slender man, clad in the unseasonable costume of a Canadian courier de bois. He carried a smoking musket in his hand. At his belt dangled a hatchet, a bullet-pouch, and a bag of tobacco. In a leather case at his neck hung his only permanent friend, his pipe.
“St. Maturin be praised!” cried de Sancerre, springing to his feet and raising his musket to arm’s-length above his head. “’Tis that rebellious rascal, Jacques Barbier! Bienvenue, Jacques! In the name of all the saints at once, how came you here?”
“Gar!” exclaimed the lawless runner-of-the-woods, throwing himself at full length upon the grass, and gazing up at de Sancerre with a smile, hard to analyze, upon his sun-burned, handsome, self-willed face. “It is Monsieur le Comte! My eyes are quick, monsieur. I do not wonder that you stayed behind.”
Displaying his white teeth mischievously, the coureur de bois, a deserter from de la Salle’s band of Indians and outcasts, waved a brown hand toward the King’s Column.
Hot with anger at the insolence of the outlaw though he was, de Sancerre controlled his temper and said calmly, but in a tone of voice which had a restraining effect upon the bushranger:
“’Tis a long story, Jacques! I found a Spanish princess in a city built by devils. You’ve come to me in time to take a hand in a merry little war between the sun and moon. No, Jacques! You’re wrong. I can read your mind at once. You think the wilderness has robbed me of my wits. But come! There is much to do, and I must question you about my captain and why I find you here alone. Bring that nut-fattened turkey up the hill, and we will work and talk and make what plans we may.”
The outlaw, whose life had been one long protest against the authority of other men, arose from the ground, with lazy nonchalance, and gazed down at the wild-fowl which de Sancerre had shot. The Frenchman had turned away and was breaking his path through the long, dry grass toward the crest of the hill, from which Doña Julia had been watching a rencontre the outcome of which she had no way of predicting.
Jacques Barbier gazed alternately upward at the retreating figure of de Sancerre and downward at the wild turkey at his feet. Then, with a protesting smile upon his symmetrical, but half-savage, face, he bent down and raised the fat fowl to his shoulder and followed Monsieur le Comte toward the King’s Column. De Sancerre had gained for a time—short or long, as the case might be—an ally whose woodcraft was as brilliant as his lawlessness was incorrigible.
“Jubilate, señora,” cried the count, as he approached Doña Julia. “The saints have been more than kind! They have filled our larder, doubled our fighting force, and made me younger by ten years. But, señora, ’tis not a pious friend whom I have found! This same Jacques Barbier’s a devil, in his way. Wear this, my dagger, at your waist, ma chère! I know that you dare use it, should the need arise.”