Part 8

The tenth day of September a mellow autumn sun shone on maize fields where squaws labored, on lazy old braves sprawled around buffalo robes, gambling with cherry stones, and on peaceful lodges above which the blue smoke faintly wavered. It was so warm the fires were nearly out. Young warriors of the tribes were away on an expedition; but the populous Indian town swarmed with its thousands.

Father Ribourde and Father Membré had that morning withdrawn a league up the river to make what they called a retreat for prayer and meditation. The other Frenchmen were divided between lodge and garden.

Near this living town was the town of the dead, a hamlet of scaffolds, where, wrapped in skins, above the reach of wolves, Illinois Indians of a past generation slept their winters and summers away. Crows flapped across them and settled on the corn, causing much ado among the papooses who were set to shout and rattle sticks for the protection of the crop.

Suddenly a man ran into camp, having just leaped from the canoe which brought him across the river. When he had talked an instant old braves bounded to their feet with furious cries, the tribes flocked out of lodges, and women and children caught the panic and came screeching.

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Tonty, unable to understand their rapid jargon. The Frenchmen drew together with the instinct of uniting in peril, and, led by old men, the Indian mob turned on them.

"What is it?" cried Tonty.

"The Iroquois are coming! The Iroquois are coming to eat us up! These Frenchmen have brought the Iroquois upon us!"

"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices, his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young braves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from Fort Crèvecoeur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river.

"The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois are at peace with the French! But they are marching here to eat us up!"

"We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are coming we will go out with you to fight them!"

Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with a foe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threatening Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the women and children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to an island, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back and prepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces, made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one another to courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, were reflected in the dark river.

About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came running with news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on the opposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of the Illinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklers of rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle himself led them.

The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand.

"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them! Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle were coming against you!"

"But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!"

"I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go with you now to fight them!"

At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without military order.

"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat," said Tonty to Boisrondet and Étienne Renault while they paddled as fast as they could across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must be making a retreat, too."

"I have not myself seen him since last night," Boisrondet remembered.

"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and children," said Étienne Renault. "I saw him go."

And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring back Father Membré and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying.

Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling. These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they called themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they wavered in their first charge.

He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois to stop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent a young Indian with him. Boisrondet and Étienne Renault also walked at his side into the open space between two barbaric armies. The Iroquois did not stop firing when he held up and waved the belt in his left hand. Bullets spattered on the hummocky sod of the prairie around him.

"Go back," Tonty said to Boisrondet and Renault and the young Indian. "What need is there of so many? Take the lad back, Boisrondet."

They hesitated to leave him.

"Go back!" he repeated sharply, so they turned, and he ran on alone. The Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood ran down his buckskins and filled his throat.

"Stop!" shouted an Iroquois chief. "This is a Frenchman; his ears are not pierced."

Tonty's swarthy skin was blanching with the anguish of his wound, which turned him faint. His black hair clung in rings to a forehead wet with cold perspiration. But he held the wampum belt aloft and spat the blood out of his mouth.