Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

Cadieux’s only answer was a laugh. “En avant! my children. I have my task and you have yours. We shall soon drink together at Mercier’s Mill,” and he waved his hand and turned into the woods.

  * * * *

  The canoes passed at the bend of the river, and Donald’s eyes looked eagerly westward. His heart nearly stopped beating when he caught sight of the pursuit. An hour behind! They were scarcely thirty minutes. For a moment he had a long view into the back country, up the Ottawa and west to Lake Nipissing and the French river and Georgian Bay. He saw the still smoking ruins of the Huron mission. He saw the trail of the Iroquois, the bark houses which they built each night, for they did not use teepees. He saw dead men in the woods, scalpless and horrible. And then he saw the fleet of war canoes slipping down the stream like a young brood of mallards.

  He discovered Cadieux. The coureur de bois had found shelter in a clump of reeds close to the shore, at a bend in the river where it was broken by an island and the main stream made a right-angled turn. There was something magical about Donald’s eyesight or he would never have detected Cadieux, so cunningly was he hidden. He noticed that his musket was laid so as to command the passage.

  The flotilla swung down-stream with a great shouting, for the Iroquois thought that any need for secrecy was past, and that their quarry was already in their hands. Donald’s blood chilled as he looked at them, for he had never imagined a more terrible sight. All were young, and, since they were on the warpath, they were mostly mother-naked. There were a few in shirts of deerskin fringed with porcupine quills, and one or two wore old-fashioned corslets of twigs interlaced with hempen cords. All were painted and oiled, their muscles suppled by rubbing with the fat of the wild cat. Their breasts were tattooed in strange patterns, and their faces scored with red paint in concentric rings. Out of the paint their small eyes gleamed like a ferret’s. Their heads were shaven, except for a top-knot in which eagle feathers were stuck. They kept time to their paddles with a wild rhythmic tune which broke sometimes into a tornado of savage howls.

  Cadieux watched the procession pass until it turned the bend of the river, all except the last canoe, in which, as he had expected, were two men — one an ordinary naked brave, the other a weird figure with a circular head-dress of feathers. His oiled bosom and shoulders were sprinkled with the under-down of an eagle’s wing. This was the medicine man, the sorcerer, who always accompanied a war-party. He sat in the stern and did the steering.

  Cadieux’s musket cracked, and a bullet went through the sorcerer’s head. As he sank in death his paddle dropped and the canoe swung round athwart the current. The other Indian stopped paddling and half rose from his knees. The delay gave Cadieux time to reload, and a second bullet took the man in the throat. He tumbled overboard, and the current brought the canoe close to the near edge. In a second Cadieux was in the water, holding his musket high, and had scrambled aboard. He pitched the sorcerer into the stream, and the two bodies floated into a shallow, where the oil on their skins made a scum on the surface. Cadieux stuck the sorcerer’s crown of feathers on his own head, seized a paddle and followed the others.

  After that things became for Donald desperately exciting. Soon he saw the three canoes of the coureurs de bois approaching Calumet island, whose tall pines seemed to make a barrier across the river. The Iroquois, when they espied them, set up a demoniac shouting. Presently Donald saw the line of white water which marked the beginning of the rapids, and to which the Frenchmen boldly steered. The Indians drew into the left bank, where the portage began. They were far too engrossed with their purpose of slaughter to look back at their last canoe. In a few seconds they had beached their craft and set out on the portage trail. The game was in their hands, for from the trail they could command the canoes struggling in the rapids and at their leisure slaughter the crews.

  Cadieux landed a little behind the rest and dived into the woods. He knew the place like his own hand, and was making for a point which commanded the portage. He made a wide circuit to avoid the Indians, while Donald held his breath.... And then it seemed to the boy that the scene staged itself. There were the three canoes in the difficult rapids, following Poncet’s lead, zigzagging to avoid sunken rocks, going slowly and cautiously except when it was necessary to risk a plunge of the current. There were the Indians, each man with his musket ready, now almost abreast of the canoes. And there was Cadieux, ahead of the Indians, ensconced above the path on a rock thatched with turf and gay with trilliums and the first wood lilies, scarcely breathing in spite of his hard race, his eyes merry and watchful, his finger on the trigger of his gun.

  The track was narrow and could hold only one man at a time. An Iroquois came into view, a shot rang out, and he fell twenty feet into the rapids. Reloading took time, and the second Indian was ten paces nearer Cadieux before he met the same doom. A third followed; he did not fall into the stream but lay writhing in the path and tripped up the man who followed. This one too got his bullet, but the wound was not mortal, for he managed to glide like a snake into the thicket.

  And then to Donald’s amazement Cadieux began to sing, and his voice was so strong and rich that it seemed to be the singing not of one man but of a troop. His songs were strange things in that savage setting, for they told of faraway princesses and cavaliers of France, of shepherdesses of Touraine, of orange groves in Provence, of rose gardens in Navarre. One Donald knew well, for it was Malbrouck s’en va fen guerre, which he had learned in the nursery. It was eerie to hear those innocent old lays in that place of death.

  The Iroquois checked. It looked as if they had stumbled into a hornets’ nest and a troop of Frenchmen, deadly sharpshooters all, had come out to convoy the coureurs de bois. Cadieux fired again at a painted face, which drew back just in time, and followed his shot by shouting in different keys, as if many voices were joining in. The Iroquois had no love for fighting at a disadvantage and had deadly fear of a trap, since that was their own method of warfare. Moreover, they had lost their leader, whose body was now whirling down the rapids. There was a quick retreat, and soon the band were back in their canoes paddling furiously up-stream.

  All but one. Donald had seen a wounded Indian crawl into the covert. Suddenly the man revealed himself. As Cadieux rested on his musket, his ears strained to catch every sound, his spirits soared as he realised that the enemy was in flight. A rustle at his back made him turn, and he found his legs gripped by strong arms which pulled him to the ground. He grappled with his enemy, but his hands slipped on the oiled body, and an Iroquois knife was plunged deep in his side. The pain quickened his giant strength, his fingers found the Indian’s throat, and a second later another carcase was in the river.

  But Cadieux knew that he had won victory at the price of his life. The knife had gone deep, and the gush of blood told him that he had little time left on earth. He was moved to a strange exaltation. On the crest where he stood there was a little hollow caused by a fault in the rock. This should be his grave.

  His strength was fast ebbing and he expended what remained like a miser. First with his axe he cut two branches, and with a piece of hemp from his pocket made a cross of them and set it up at the head of the grave. Then he cut green boughs and piled them at the edge. Then he stripped the bark from a white birch, and thereby made tablets on which, with the point of his knife, he could write his last testament.

  He thought of his wife far away on the St. Lawrence shore. He thought of his friends and his youth. He thought of his companions whose safety he had purchased with his blood. He thought of the bright world which he was leaving, and in which he had been happy. The poet awoke in him for the last time, and he made the death song of Cadieux which was to live in the hearts of his people.

  He laid himself in the grave, and, while he sang the verses to a sad old tune, he wrote them on the birch-bark. A raven fluttered down beside him, but flew away at the sound. A wolf looked over the edge and also fled.

  “Petit rocher de la haute montagne.”

  he sang
,

  “Je viens ici finir cette campagne.”

  “Little rock of the mountain side,

  Here I rest from all my pride.

  Sweet echo, hear my cry;

  I lay me down to die.”

  He sang his last greetings to the birds and the woods, to his companions, to his wife and his children.

  “Say to my dear ones, nightingale,

  My love for them can never fail.

  My faith has known no stain,

  But they see me not again.”

  And then, as his breath grew short, he pulled the coverlet of branches over him and wrote his last verse with a faltering hand.

  “Now the world has dimmed its face,

  Saviour of men I seek Thy grace.

  Sweet Virgin ever blest,

  Gather me to thy breast.”

  Twilight had fallen on the forest, and with the day went Cadieux.

  * * * *

  Night passed, and next morning came three of the coureurs led by Du Gay, with a reserve of a dozen stout fellows from the settlement. They found everything quiet on the portage. The scouts they sent out reported that the night before the Iroquois had made their fires twenty miles to the west.

  The rude cross showed them the grave of Cadieux. Donald saw them lift the body and carry it reverently to the settlement. Among the coureurs de bois many had died gallantly in faraway places, and no word had come of their end, but the story of Cadieux was there for all men to read. There was an old air which he had loved and which fitted the words inscribed on the birch-bark, and the canoemen sang it like a funeral song when they brought the dead man to Montreal.

  Donald wondered why his eyes were watering as if the sun had been too strong for them. He was puzzled, too, why he had seen no more fish in Baptiste’s Pool, and why he felt so apathetic about next day’s venture. Negog had stopped humming his queer tune and was looking for a match to relight his pipe.

  Now Donald had no recollection of how he saw the pictures in the Eau Dorée, for that is the way of strong magic. But he remembered very clearly what he had seen and heard. So if you look at the book of Chansons Populaires du Canada which Father Laflamme has recently published, you will find two verses of Cadieux’s song never before printed. The editor explains in a note that they were taken down from the recitation of a friend, and I do not mind telling you that that friend was Donald.

  CHANSONS

  “What are the songs that Cadieux sings

  Out in the woods when the axe-blade rings?

  Whence the words and whence the tune

  Which under the stars the boatmen croon?

  Some are the games that children play

  When they dance in rings on a noon in May,

  And the maiden choir sings high and low

  Under the blossomy orchard snow.

  Some are the plaints of girls forlorn,

  For lovers lost and pledges torn,

  Told at eve to the evening star,

  When the lit tourelle is a lamp afar.

  Some are sung ‘neath the dreaming trees

  In modish garden pleasances,

  Where a silken Colin indites his ode

  To a shepherdess hooped and furbelowed,

  And fat carp swim in the fountain’s deep,

  And the cares of the world have gone to sleep.

  And some are the lays of the good green earth,

  Of sunburnt toil and hobnailed mirth,

  Where Time is loth to turn the page,

  And lingers as in the Golden Age.

  That is the tongue that Cadieux speaks

  In his bottes sauvages and his leathern breeks —

  Old sweet songs of the far-off lands,

  Norman orchards and Breton sands,

  Chicken-skin fans and high-heeled shoon, —

  Squires and ladies under the moon, —

  Which the night wind carries swift and keen

  To the ears of wolf and wolverine,

  And every beast in the forest’s law, —

  And maybe a prowling Iroquois.

  CHAPTER V. The Man who dreamed of Islands

  NEXT day Donald got his salmon. It was in Baptiste’s Pool, as he expected, and, though it was not very big — only eight pounds — it was his first, and he caught it on a nine-foot trout-rod.

  It happened after tea, just in the way such things ought to happen. At the foot of the pool the Manitou gathered itself into a deep swirl, smooth as oil, which swept in a curve like a snake’s back into a boulder-strewn shallow. On each side of the current there was a yard or two of slack water. Negog tied a rope to Donald’s waist and the boy waded to the very edge of the swirl and just managed to get his fly into the slack beyond. There the salmon took him. It was mercifully inspired to go upstream, for it would have inevitably broken him among the boulders in the pool. He had a mighty tussle, and his line ran out to the last yard of backing. But after a breathless ten minutes the obliging fish, though still untired, came close to the near shore and was beautifully gaffed by Negog.

  A first salmon is one of the high lights of life, and Donald missed nothing of its savour. He held it lovingly in his arms; he laid it on the turf and regarded it from different angles; hoarsely he demanded to know what it weighed. He was still too excited to have many words. Then Negog made a fire.

  “We eat him,” he said. “We have supper. I have brought salt and bread.”

  He cleaned the fish, cut two steaks from it, buttered the little pan which he carried in his bag, and set them to grill. The prospect of such a supper opened Donald’s lips. He babbled.

  “How many salmon has my father caught, Negog? Thousands — hundreds of thousands.”

  “I do not know. I think as many as the snow-geese in spring.”

  “You know that he caught the record fish in the Beauly.”

  “The Beauly! What is that?”

  “A river in Scotland. Oh, a fine river, though not as big as the Manitou. I’ve seen it. I’ve been in Scotland. Once. I’ve seen the Scots hills. They’re not covered with trees like ours, but bare and rocky, and some of them have sharp points. And I saw the Alps, too, and they’re all snow and ice. The Rockies are like them. I want to go to the Rockies. Have you been there, Negog?”

  The Indian shook his head. His attention was claimed by the salmon steaks which were beginning to frizzle nicely.

  “Some day I’ll go there,” Donald went on in a high recitative, for he was a little above himself. “I’m going to climb the big bare mountains. My father says he gets tired of hills that cannot clear their feet of woods. And some day I’m going to catch a Scots salmon. They’re very difficult, for they’re not as plentiful as here, and there are no canoes, so you’ve got to cast a mighty long line. We’re Scottish, you know. Our family were Jacobites, and had to clear out when Prince Charlie got beaten. We went to North Carolina, and had to clear out of there, too, when the Americans rebelled. We were something called Empire-loyals. Do you know what that means?”

  Negog did not. He belonged to a Canada which knew nothing of the old frontier troubles.

  “I had a great-great-great-great-uncle — I don’t know how many ‘greats.’ He was a grand chap. His name was Alan Macdonnell. He came up from the United States and joined the fur traders. My father has found out a lot about him. He was always pushing farther West. He wanted to get to the high mountains and the sea.”

  The Indian raised his eyes from his cooking.

  “Did he get there?” he asked.

  “We can’t tell. He never came back. My father says that he wishes he had the time to follow up his trail. When I’m a man I’m going to have a try at it. Maybe he was the first to get to the Pacific and nobody knows about it.”

  “That is well,” said Negog. “It is right to follow the path of one’s ancestors.” But he spoke in Cree and Donald did not know what he was saying.

  The boy surveyed the remains of his fish, now minus the steaks, with a regret that a thing so shapely should perish.
Then he took up a flat stone and skimmed it over the river. It made five hops, which pleased him. The evening sun had turned Baptiste’s Pool into a golden dazzle. The great central swirl was a mist of light, but the shallows at the edge were bright and clear. He saw something move in them which at first he thought was a fish. As he peered he saw that it was a picture.

  Donald was looking at a place which he had never seen before, and yet which he seemed to know as intimately as Bellefleurs. He knew that he was in Scotland. The time was late afternoon. He was in a pass, between steep little hills red with heather. A stream had its source in a tiny well, and ran in a green strath between bogs to a beach of white sand. Beyond that was the sea, quiet as a mill-pond, a pale amber at the edge but a pool of gold where it caught the westering sun. In the middle distance lay a string of islands, low reefs except in the centre, where one rose to a ragged cockscomb of rock. The islands were deep blue like a sapphire, but the cockscomb was curiously gilded. To Donald it was more than a spectacle. He seemed to sniff a delectable odour of thyme and salt and peat, an odour he had never met before, and to have in his ears a continual calling of wild birds, plaintive and yet oddly comforting too. Somehow the place made him happy.

  He had a sudden feeling that someone was beside him looking at the same prospect; so he swung round, but there was nothing but the bees and the birds and the tinkling stream. But he knew that someone had been there, and though he had not seen him, he knew what he looked like.

  Then the picture faded, and he saw a big, dusty, raftered room, half office, half warehouse, in which two men were bending over a table of charts.

  The pair wore breeches and full-skirted coats and small unpowdered wigs. They were both tall fellows, broad-shouldered, on the sunny side of middle age, with strong, harsh features; but one had a ruddy face, and the skin of the other was dark and sallow.