The Road to Frontenac Part 42

Menard lay on his side, and watched the flames go roaring upward as the soldiers piled up the logs.

"I could tell you some things, Du Peron," he said slowly. "I suppose you didn't know,--for that matter you couldn't know,--but when the column was marching on the Senecas, and our rear-guard of four hundred men--"

"Four hundred and forty."

"The same thing. You can't expect the Cayugas to count so sharply as that. At that time the Cayugas and Onondagas held a council to discuss the question of sending a thousand warriors to cut off the rear-guard and the Governor's communications."

The Lieutenant slowly whistled.

"How did they know so much about it, Menard?"

"How could they help it? Our good Governor had posted his plans on every tree. You can see what would have happened."

"Why, with the Senecas on his front it would have been--" He paused, and whistled again.

"Well,--you see. But they didn't do it."

"Why not?"

"Because I spoke at that council."

"You spoke--but you were a prisoner, weren't you?"

"Yes."

The Lieutenant sat staring into the fire. Slowly it came to him what it was that the Captain had accomplished.

"Why, Menard," he said, "New France won't be able to hold you, when this gets out. How you must have gone at them. You'll be a major in a week. You're the luckiest man this side of Versailles."

"No, I'm not. And I won't be a major. I'm not on the Governor's pocket list. But I don't care about that. That isn't the reason I did it."

"Why did you do it then?"

"I--That's the question I've been asking myself for several days, Du Peron."

The Lieutenant was too thoroughly aroused to note the change in the Captain's tone.

"You don't see it right now, Menard. Wait till you've reached the city, and got into some clothes and a good bed, and can shake hands with d'Orvilliers and Provost and the general staff,--maybe with the Governor himself. Then you'll feel different. You're down now. I know how it feels. You're all tired out, and you've got the Onondaga dirt rubbed on so thick that you're lost in it. You wait a few weeks."

"Did the Governor have much trouble with the Senecas?"

"Oh, he had to fight for it. He was--My G.o.d, Menard, what about the girl? I was so shaken up at meeting you like this that it got away from me. The column had hardly got to the fort on their way up from Montreal before everyone was asking for you. La Grange had a letter from her father saying that she was with you, and he's been in a bad way. He says that he was to have married her, and that you've got away with her. It serves him right, the beast. One night, at La Famine, he was drunk, and he came around to all of us reading that letter at the top of his voice and swearing to kill you the moment he sees you. He's been talking a good deal about that."

"She is here, asleep."

"Thank G.o.d."

"Where is La Grange now?"

"He's over at Frontenac. He got into trouble before we left La Famine.

He's drinking hard now, you know. He had command of a company that was working on the stockades, and he made such a muss of it that his sergeant had to take hold and handle it to get the work done at all.

You can imagine what bad feeling that made in his company. Played the devil with his discipline. Well, he took it like a child. But that night, when he got a little loose on his legs, he hunted up the sergeant and made him fight. The fellow wouldn't until La Grange came at him with his sword, but then he cracked his head with a musket."

"Hurt him?"

"Yes. They took him up to Frontenac. He's in the hospital now, but it's pretty generally understood that d'Orvilliers won't let him go out until the Governor gets back from Niagara. He's well enough already, they say. It's hard on the sergeant, too; no one blames him."

Du Peron looked around and saw Teganouan lying near.

"Who's this Indian?" he asked in a low tone.

"He is with me. A mission Indian."

"Does he know French? Has he understood us?"

"I don't know. I suppose so. Here is Father Claude de Ca.s.son. You remember him, don't you?"

"Yes, indeed."

The Lieutenant rose to greet the priest, and then the three sat together.

"You asked me about the fight, didn't you, Menard? I don't seem able to hold to a subject very long to-night. We struck out from La Famine on the morning of the twelfth of July. You know the trail that leads south from La Famine? We followed that."

Menard smiled at the leaping fire.

"Don't laugh, Menard; that was no worse than what we've done from the start. The Governor never thought but what we'd surprise them as much on that road as on another. And after all, we won, though it did look bad for a while. There was a time, at the beginning of the fight,--well, I'm getting ahead of myself again. We were in fairly good order. Callieres had the advance with the Montreal troops. He threw out La Durantaye, with Tonty and Du Luth,--the _coureurs de bois_, you know,--to feel the way. La Durantaye had the mission Indians, from Sault St. Louis and the Montreal Mountain, on his left, and the Ottawas and Mackinac tribes on his right."

"How did the Ottawas behave?"

"Wretchedly. They ran at the first fire. I'll come to that. The others weren't so bad, but there was no holding them. They spread through the forest, away out of reach. Perrot had the command, but he could only follow after and knock one down now and then."

"The Governor took command of the main force?"

"Yes. And he carried his bale like the worst of us; I'll say that for him. It was hot, and we all drooped a bit before night. And he made a good fight, too, if you can forgive him that bungling march. When we bivouacked, some of Du Luth's boys scouted ahead. They got in by sunrise. They'd been to the main village of the Senecas on the hill beyond the marsh,--you know it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And they saw nothing but a few women and a pack of dogs. The Governor was up early,--he's not used to sleeping out doors in the mosquito country,--sitting on a log at the side of the trail, talking with Granville and Berthier. I wasn't five yards behind them, trying to sc.r.a.pe the mud off my boots--you know how that mud sticks, Menard.

Well, when the scouts came in with their story, the Governor stood up.

'Take my order to La Durantaye,' he said, 'that he is to move on with all caution, that the surprise may be complete. He will push forward, following the trail. You,' he said, to a few aides who stood by, 'will see that the command is aroused as silently as possible.' Well, I didn't know whether to laugh at the Governor or pity myself and the boys. Any man but the crowd of seigniors that he had about him would have foreseen what was coming. I knew that the devils were waiting for us, probably at one of the ravines where the trail runs through that group of hills just this side of the marsh. You know the place,--every one of us knows it. But what could we say? I'd have given a month's pay to have been within ear-shot of La Durantaye when he got the order. La Valterie told me about it afterward. 'What's this?' he says, 'follow the trail? I'll go to the devil first. There's a better place for my bones than this pest-ridden country.' He calls to Du Luth: 'Hear this, Du Luth. We're to "push forward, following the trail."' I can fairly hear him say it, with his eyes looking right through the young aide. 'Not I,' says Du Luth, 'I'm going around the hills and come into the village over the long oak ridge!' 'You can't do it. I have the Governor's order.' And then Du Luth drew himself up, La Valterie says, and looked the aide (who wasn't used to this kind of a soldier, and wished himself back under the Governor's petticoats) up and down till the fellow got red as a Lower Town girl. 'Tell your commanding officer,' says Du Luth, in his big voice, 'that the advance will "push forward, following the trail,"--and may G.o.d have mercy on our poor souls!'

"Well, Menard, they did it, nine hundred of them. And we came on, a quarter of a league after, with sixteen hundred more. We got into the first defile, and through it, with never a sound. Then I was sure of trouble in the second, but long after the advance had had time to get through, everything was still. There was still the third defile, just before you reach the marsh, and my head was spinning, waiting for the first shot and wondering where we were to catch it and how many of us were to get out alive. And then, all at once it came. You see the Senecas, three hundred of them at least, were in the brush up on the right slope of the third defile; and as many more were in the elder thickets and swamp gra.s.s ahead and to the left. They let the whole advance get through,--fooled every man of Du Luth's scouts,--and then came at them from all sides. We heard the noise--I never heard a worse--and started up on the run; and then there was the strangest mess I ever got into. They had surprised the advance, right enough,--we could see Du Luth and Tonty running about knocking men down and bellowing out orders to hold their force together,--but you see the Senecas never dreamed that a larger force was coming on behind, and we struck them like a whirlwind. Well, for nearly an hour we didn't know what was going on. Our Indians and the Senecas were so mixed together that we dared not shoot to kill. Our own boys, even the regulars, lost their heads and fell into the tangle. It was all yelling and whooping and banging and running around, with the smoke so thick that you couldn't find the trail or the hills or the swamp. I was crowded up to my arms in water and mud for the last part of the time. Once the smoke lifted a little, and I saw what I thought to be a mission Indian, not five yards away, in the same fix. I called to him to help me, and he turned out to be a Seneca chief. Our muskets were wet,--at least mine was, and I saw that he dropped his when he started for me,--so we had it out with knives."

"Did he get at you?"

"Once. A rib stopped it--no harm done. Well, I was tired, but I got out and dodged around through the smoke to find out where our boys were, but they were mixed up worse than ever. I was just in time to save a _coureur_ from killing one of our Indians with his own hatchet.

Most of the regulars scattered as soon as they lost sight of their officers. And Berthier,--I found him lying under a log all gone to pieces with fright.

"I didn't know how it was to come out until at last the firing eased a little, and the smoke thinned out. Then we found that the devils had slipped away, all but a few who had wandered so far into our lines--if you could call them lines--that they couldn't get out. They carried most of their killed, though we picked up a few on the edge of the marsh. It took all the rest of the day to pull things together and find out how we stood."