Part 25 (1/2)
”A friend!” said Robert. ”I know of no friend to expect.”
”I used the word 'friend' in exactly the opposite sense. It's an enemy.
I'm quite sure n.o.body in the world hates us more.”
”Tandakora!”
”None other. It's the sanguinary Ojibway, his very self. I saw him stalking along the streets of Quebec in the most hideous paint that man ever mixed, a walking monument of savage pride, and I've no doubt in my mind either why he came here.”
”To get some sort of revenge upon us.”
”That's it. He'll go before the Governor General, and charge that we attacked him in the gorge and slew good, innocent men of his.”
”Tandakora is cunning,” said Tayoga. ”The Great Bear is right. He will lie many times against us, and it is likely that the Frenchmen, de Courcelles and Jumonville, will come also and tell that they met us in the woods, although they said smooth words to us when we left them.”
”And we don't know what kind of a net they'll try to weave around us,”
said Willet. ”I say again I wish we'd delivered our letters and were out of Quebec.”
But Robert could not agree with the hunter and Tayoga. He was still glad of the lucky chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger and more penetrating. Now it rested upon Robert.
”I had a fair opinion of you,” he said. ”Coming with you in the _Frontenac_ down the river I judged you, despite your weapons and the fact that you belong to another race than mine, a gentle youth and full of the virtues. Now I find that you have been fighting and fighting with intent to kill.”
”Hold hard, Father,” said Willet in a good-humored tone. ”Only half of that is true. Your information is not full. He has been fighting, but not with intent to kill. He held the life of Count Jean de Mezy on the point of his sword, but gave it back to him, such as it was.”
The deep eyes of the priest smoldered. Perhaps there was a distant and fiery youth of his own that the morning's deed recalled, but his menacing gaze relaxed.
”If you gave him back his life when you could have taken it, you have done well,” he said. ”As the hunter intimates, it is a life of little value, perhaps none at all, but you did not on that account have any right to take it. And I say more, that if the misadventure had to happen to any Frenchman here in Quebec I am glad it happened to one of the wicked tribe of Bigot.”
”Your man Bigot, powerful though he may be, seems to have plenty of enemies,” said the hunter.
”He has many, but not enough, I fear,” said the priest gloomily. ”He and his horde are a terrible weight upon the shoulders of New France. But I should not talk of these things to you who are our enemies, and who may soon be fighting us.”
He quit the subject abruptly, and talked in a desultory manner on irrelevant matters. But Robert saw that Quebec itself and the struggle between the powerful Bigot ring and the _honnetes gens_ was a much greater weight on his mind than the approaching war with the English colonies.
After a stay of a half hour he departed, saying that he was going to visit a parish farther down the river, and might not see them again, but he wished them well. He also bade them once more to beware of Tandakora.
”A good man and a strong one,” said Willet, when, he left. ”I seem to feel a kindred spirit in him, but I don't think his prevision about not seeing us again is right, though his advice to look out for Tandakora is certainly worth following.”
They saw the Ojibway warrior twice that afternoon. Either he concealed the effects of the wound in his shoulder or it had healed rapidly, since he was apparently as vigorous as ever and gave them murderous glances.
Tayoga shrugged his shoulders.
”Tandakora has followed us far,” he said, ”but this is not the ground that suits him. The forest is better than a city for the laying of an ambush.”
”Still, we'll watch him,” said Willet.
The evening witnessed the arrival at the Inn of the Eagle of two new guests to whom Monsieur Berryer paid much deference, Colonel de Courcelles and Captain de Jumonville, who had been on an expedition in behalf of His Majesty, King Louis, into the forests of the south and west, and who, to the great surprise of the innkeeper, seemed to be well acquainted with the three.
Robert, Tayoga and Willet were having their dinner, or supper as it would have been called in the Province of New York, when the two Frenchmen dressed in their neat, close-fitting uniforms and with all the marks of travel removed, came into the large room. They rose at once and exchanged greetings. Robert, although he did not trust them, felt that they had no cause of quarrel with the two, and it was no part of his character to be brusque or seek trouble.
De Courcelles gave them a swift, comprehensive glance, and then said, as if they were chance visitors to Quebec:
”You've arrived ahead of us, I see, and as I learn, you find the Marquis Duquesne away. Perhaps, if your letters are urgent, you would care to present them to the Intendant, Monsieur Bigot, a man of great perception and judgment.”