"Shall we follow on?"
Destournier nodded.
They heard a step crunching over the snow and waited breathlessly.
It was Jacques Roleau they saw as he came in sight, one of the workmen at the fort. He gestured to them that all was right.
"They have fled, what was left of them," he explained. "I despatched two wounded Iroquois that they had left behind. There are two of our men that they must have made prisoners, the M"sieu at the fort who has the pretty wife, and young Chauvin"--and he paused, as if there was more to say.
"Wounded?"
He shook his head sadly.
"Dead?" Destournier"s breath came with a gasp.
"Both dead, M"sieu, but strange, neither has been scalped."
"Let us push on," exclaimed Destournier sadly.
They followed the trail. After a short distance a body had been dragged evidently. Roleau led the way through a tortuous path until they came in sight of a small vacant spot where sometime Indians had camped, as they could tell by the scorched and blackened trees. A nearly nude body had been fastened to one and a few dead branches gathered, evidently for a fire.
Destournier stood speechless. The head hung down, the face was unmarred, save for a few scratches, and he gave thanks for that. But his heart was heavy within him. The poor body had been stabbed and cut, yet it had not bled much, it seemed.
He would have felt relieved if he had known the whole story. Two stalwart bucks had seized Giffard just beyond the settlement and hurried him along at such a pace that he could hardly breathe. They fastened his arms behind, each man grasping an elbow, and fairly galloped, until one of them caught his foot in a fallen tree and went down. In the fall Giffard"s temple struck against a stone that knocked him senseless. He might have revived, but he was hurried along by a stout leathern thong slipped under the armpits, and was then dragged a dead weight. They had stopped for a holocaust and bound him to a tree, while they despatched the younger man. But there was difficulty in finding anything dry enough to burn, so they had amused themselves by gashing the dead body. Then suddenly alarmed they had plunged farther into the forest, leaving one of their own wounded that Roleau had finished.
Giffard had been captured in a moment of incautiousness, but the sights and the wantonness had fired his blood and roused a spirit of retaliation.
They had nearly stripped both bodies, and carried off the garments.
"If you can manage, M"sieu," exclaimed their guide, "I will take the young fellow." He stooped, picked him up, and threw him over his shoulder.
"You will find him a heavy burthen," as the man staggered a little.
"I can carry. Do not fear," nodding a.s.surance.
Destournier took off his fur coat and wrapped it about the poor body.
Each took hold of the improvised litter and they commenced their melancholy journey. How could Madame Giffard stand it, for she really did love him. The man"s heart ached with the sincerest pity.
They laid down their burthens inside the settlement in one of the partly destroyed cabins. Du Parc came thither to meet them.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "that fine young fellow who was going to be a great success. The company wanted him back in France. And his poor wife! The blow will kill her."
"I wished him to remain within for her sake. He was no coward, either. I would give the whole settlement if it would restore him to life. The Governor thought it an excellent, but venturesome plan. But we must have colonists if ever we are to make a town that will be an honor to New France."
"It is not such a complete ruin. We have lost two men, one woman, and three children. Five Iroquois bodies have been found and two are badly wounded."
"And two more out in the woods. They had better be buried, so as to stir up no more strife. It could not have been a large party, or we would have suffered more severely."
"The English have had many of these surprises. I think we have been fortunate, even if we have fewer in numbers. And it would have been worse if there had been growing crops."
"I shall have the fortifications strengthened. And perhaps it would be well to keep guard."
They left Roleau in charge of the bodies and turned to the fort. The wounded had been made comfortable.
Rose sprang down the steps to meet Destournier.
"Oh, have you found him? Miladi is almost dead with grief and anxiety.
She is sure they have killed M. Giffard."
"Poor wife! How will we tell her?"
"Oh, then he is dead?" The child"s face was blanched with terror.
"Yes, he has been killed by the cruel savages. But we have brought home his body. Who is with her?"
"Wanamee and Madawando, who is saying charms over her. She is the medicine woman who brought back the Gaudrion baby when he was dead. Oh, can you not make her bring back M. Giffard? Miladi will surely die of grief. Couldn"t they put some one in his place? Wouldn"t the great G.o.d listen to the priest"s prayers?" and she raised her humid, beseeching eyes.
"My child, you loved him dearly."
"Sometimes. Then he made me feel--well, as if I could run away. He was never cross. Oh, I think it was because he loved Miladi so very much, there was no room for any one else. And that is why I love you so--because you have no one belonging to you."
"We are alike in that," he made answer.
He saw Wanamee presently.
"She goes from one dying fit to another. Madawando brings her back. But if he is dead, M"sieu, why should they not let her join him?"
Would she be happier in that great unknown land with him. What was there here for her?
And some way he felt in part responsible. He had risked his life to save Destournier"s property.
There were sad days in the fort. The weather came off comparatively pleasant, and the half-ruined huts were repaired, the wounded healed, the losses made good, as far as possible. The dead Iroquois were put in a trench, but better sepulture was provided for the colonists, and the services over the body of M. Giffard were in a degree military. The two Recollet priests were kindness and devotion personified, and they said prayers every hour in their rude little chapel, where a candle was kept burning before the altar.
They frowned severely on what they termed the mummeries of Madawando.
Even the Indian converts, and they were few enough, lapsed into charms and incantations in times of trouble. They willingly had their children baptized, as if this was one of the charms to ward off danger. But the priests labored with unabated courage.
Miladi seemed to hover a long while between the two worlds, it was thought, but the real spring was coming on, and all nature was reviving.
She had never quite wanted to die, so at the lowest ebb she seemed to will herself back to life by some occult power.
Rose meanwhile had run quite wild, but she had been Destournier"s companion in his walks, in his canoe journeys; sometimes with Marie Gaudrion, she was in and out of the settlement, and as she understood a little of the several Indian languages, she was quite a favorite; but Destournier felt troubled about her at times. She was very fearless, very upright, and detected the subterfuges of the children of the wilderness, condemning them most severely. But they never seemed angry with her.
Sometimes he thought he would send her to France and begin her education in a convent. But could the wild little thing who skipped and danced and sung, climbed rocks and trees, managed a canoe, tamed birds that came and sang on her shoulder, endure the dull routine of convent life? She could read French quite fluently. She had taken an immense fancy to Latin, and caught the lines so easily when Destournier read them from musical Horace, or the stirring scenes of the Odyssey, the only two Latin books he owned. And her head was stuffed full of wild Indian tales.
"I wonder," she said one day, as she sat on the rocks, leaning against Destournier"s knee, the soft wind playing through the silken tendrils of her hair--"I wonder if you should die whether I could be like miladi, and want the room dark and have every one go in the softest moccasins, and have headaches and the sound of any one"s voice pierce through you like a knife. It would be terrible."
"Why do you think of that?"
"Because I love you best of everybody. The Governor is very nice, but he is in France so much and you are here. Then we can climb rocks together and sit in the forests and hear the trees talk. I go to M. Giffard"s grave and say over the spells Madawando taught me, to bring him back, but he does not come. If he could, miladi would be bright and gay again, and we would dance and sing, and have merry times. If you died I should want to die, too."