CHAPTER II
IN WHICH DE SANCERRE IS CONFRONTED BY A
MYSTERY
LIKE a statue done in bronze stood Chatémuc before a hastily-constructed hut at the rear of the log fort in which the rank and file of the explorers lay sleeping. La Salle had chosen the sentry as his special body-guard, for at many a critical juncture in his long years of exploration—menaced at all times, as he had been, by a thousand lurking perils—the daring Frenchman had tested the loyalty and courage of this stalwart Mohican, who, for love of a white man, had wandered many weary miles from his tribal hunting-grounds.
Within the rude but spacious hut over which the phlegmatic Indian stood guard lay sleeping, as La Salle and de Sancerre entered the enclosure, two men who had found rest upon heaps of leaves and grass, and whose strangely-contrasted outlines, emphasized by the errant moonbeams that penetrated the chinks between the logs, called attention to the curious mixture of unrelated nationalities of which La Salle’s expedition was made up. In one corner of the hut reclined the slender form of the Franciscan friar, Zenobe Membré. Upon his placid, smiling face—a countenance suggestive of religious enthusiasm even while he slept—rested a ray of silvery light, as if the prayer that he had uttered ere he fell asleep had transformed itself into a halo to glorify his pillow through the night. His thin hands were crossed upon his breast, and showed white and transparent against the gray background of his garb.
Within the shadows at an opposite corner of the apartment lay the lithe, muscular figure of a man whose costume made it difficult for the observer to determine whether the wearer was a foot-soldier from the Low Countries or a Canadian coureur de bois. The truth was that Henri de Tonti’s experiences as an Italian officer in the Sicilian wars had left their impress upon his attire as an explorer under de la Salle. As he lay, fully dressed, in the moonlight that night he might well have been a sculptor’s dream, representing in his outlines the martial genius of the Old World, bringing “not peace but a sword” to the New. A bare hand rested lovingly upon the cross-piece of his rapier, which he had unfastened from his waist and tossed upon the dry grass of his couch. His other hand was covered by a glove.
tempting beds of leaves, La Salle and de Sancerre stood side by side in the centre of the hut for a moment, gazing thoughtfully at the weird tableau that their slumbering comrades made.
“The sword and crucifix!” whispered de Sancerre, pointing from the soldier to the priest. “Strange allies these, monsieur.”
“But one without the other were in vain! They serve together by the will of God. Good-night, Monsieur le Comte.”
How long de Sancerre had slept before he was awakened by a light touch upon his shoulder he never knew. It must have been a considerable time, for, as he opened his reluctant eyes, he saw that the moonlight no longer gleamed in all quarters of the hut, but dimly illumined only one corner thereof. Inured though he was to perils of all kinds, the Count felt a thrill of dismay as his eyes rested upon a hideous, grinning face leering at him from the shadows close at hand. He sat up hurriedly, uttering no sound, but fumbling in the leaves and grass for his rapier. A glance assured him that his comrades had been undisturbed by the intruder at his side.
“Be not afraid, señor,” whispered a voice in broken Spanish. “The children of the moon have naught to fear from us.”
De Sancerre, to whom Spanish was like a native tongue, raised himself upon his elbow and gazed searchingly at the misshapen hag who had disturbed his sleep.
“I crave your pardon,” he murmured, with the air of a courtier addressing a coquette in the Salon de Venus, while the mocking smile that his face so often wore gleamed in the half-light. “Then I am of the children of the moon?”
“At night ye come from out the shadows of the distant lands, ye white-faced offspring of your Queen, the Moon. The Sun, our God, has told us you would come. Be not afraid. We have rare gifts for you—and loving hearts.”
The harsh, guttural voice in which the aged crone spoke these gentle words added to the uncanny effect of her wrinkled, time-marked face, peering at the smiling Frenchman through the gloom.
“I bring you this,” she went on, still speaking in a mongrel Spanish patois, which de Sancerre found it difficult to interpret. “Remember what I say. The children of the sun send greeting to their brothers of the moon.”
She laid upon the dried grass of his bed a piece of white mulberry bark, upon which de Sancerre’s eyes rested indifferently for an instant. When he raised them again the hag had left his side, and he saw her pushing her way through an opening in the tree-limbs at the further end of the hut. For an instant her diminutive body stopped the gap in the wooden wall. Then, from where he lay, the Frenchman could catch a glimpse of moonbeams on the river through the opening that she had made.
For a moment this strange visitation affected de Sancerre unpleasantly. Surrounded, as their little party was, by unknown tribes with whom the wily Spaniards had had intercourse, the words of the old crone, cordial though they had been in their way, filled the Count with alarm. Furthermore, the ease with which she had made an undiscovered entrance to their hut emphasized the disquiet that he had begun to feel. Thorough soldier as he was, this seemingly harmless invasion of his leader’s quarters became to his mind a more menacing episode the more he weighed it in all its bearings.
Rising noiselessly from his resting-place, de Sancerre made his way between his sleeping comrades to the entrance to the hut. Stepping forth into the white night, he confronted Chatémuc, who still stood motionless in the same spot that he had occupied when La Salle and his companion had returned from the river. The Mohican, from long service with the explorer, had acquired a practical knowledge of the French tongue, but, as a general rule, he made use of it only in monosyllables.
“Chatémuc,” said de Sancerre, sternly, “your eyes are heavy with the moonlight or with sleep. You keep indifferent guard. Did you not see an aged witch who even now stood within the hut and roused me from my sleep?”
The tall Mohican gazed down upon the Frenchman with keen, searching eyes, which glowed at that moment with a fire that proved him innocent either of treason or stupidity. His stern, immobile face gave no indication of the astonishment which the Frenchman’s accusation must have caused him.
“There’s nothing stirring but the river and the leaves,” said Chatémuc, with grim emphasis, turning his shapely head slowly to sweep the landscape in all directions with eyes for which the forest had no mysteries.
“Ma foi, my Chatémuc! You’re as proud and stubborn as de Groot, the Hollander. But follow me. I’ll show you a hole that proves I dreamed no dream.”
De Sancerre, behind whom stalked the stately Mohican, made his way hurriedly to the further side of the hut. Pointing to an opening between the logs, through which a small boy might have crawled, the Count said:
“Behold, monsieur, the yawning chasm in your reputation as a sentry! ’Twould not admit an army, but it might serve for a snake.”
Chatémuc had fallen upon his knees, and was examining the aperture and the trampled grass which led to it. Presently he arose and turned towards the Count.
“A woman,” he muttered. “Small. Light. Old.”
“Fine woodcraft, Chatémuc! You read the blazonry that crossed the drawbridge with great skill—after the castle has been captured. But let it pass. No harm’s been done, save that your pride has had a fall. And so I leave you to your watch again. If you loved me, Chatémuc, you’d keep old women from my midnight couch. I fear my sleep is lost.”
Stealing noiselessly past the motionless forms of La Salle, the friar, and the Italian captain, after his successful demonstration of Chatémuc’s negligence as a sentinel, de Sancerre approached his tumbled bed of leaves with weary step. A feeling of depression, a sudden realization of the horrid possibilities that his environment suggested, a sensation of impotent rebellion at the fate that had hurled him from the very centre of seventeenth-century civilization into the rude embrace of a horror-haunted wilderness, came suddenly upon the vivacious Frenchman, mocking at his stoical views of life and making of the satirical tendency of his mind a knife with which to cut himself.
“Nom de Dieu!” he muttered, as he gazed down upon the dry grass and leaves of his uninviting couch, “these be fine lodgings for a Count of Languedoc! At the worst, with Turenne, there was always Versailles at our rear.”
At that instant his heavy eyes lighted upon the slip of white bark which his recent caller had left with him as a token of good-will. De Sancerre bent down and, grasping the seemingly meaningless gift, gazed at it inquiringly. To his amazement, he made out in the darkness what seemed to him to be a bit of writing, scratched with a pointed instrument upon this fragment from a mulberry bush. Hastily, stealthily, making his way to the opening through which the donor of the gift had forced her exit, the Count leaned forward, and in the moonlight read, with wondering eyes, the name:
Julia de Aquilar
It was the name of the woman for love of whom he had killed a Spaniard and lost his native land. Instantly his mind harked back to the confession that, but an hour or so before, he had poured into the ears of Sieur de la Salle. Had an eavesdropper overheard his words, and, in a spirit of mischief, sought to tease him by a trick? He rejected the supposition at once, for the conviction came upon him, increasing a thousandfold the consternation which he felt, that he had deliberately refrained from mentioning the name of his inamorata to La Salle.
De Sancerre drew himself erect and stood motionless for a moment, the most amazed and startled being in all the strange new world.