CHAPTER IV.
On quitting the clearings, Isidore and his guide once more plunged intothe seemingly interminable forest, and had proceeded about half aleague when Boulanger, whose eye appeared to be unceasingly on thelook-out, cast a glance behind him and then came to a halt, saying,"Why, there is that girl again! What can she be up to?"
Isidore looked round, and there she was, sure enough. Amoahmeh, too,had stopped and remained standing about a hundred yards from them, butshe showed no signs of wishing to avoid notice, and looked as if sheonly waited for them to go on in order to follow them.
"This will not do," exclaimed the guide; "she must have some object intracking us like this. Hola! come here," he added, beckoning to her.Amoahmeh was at their side in a moment.
"What do you want? where are you going?" inquired Boulanger, sharply.
The girl looked timidly at him, then gazed for a minute in Isidore'sface.
"The young brave knows where they are," said she; "I am going with him."
"With him! Nonsense," ejaculated the Canadian, "you can't go with him.Get you back, there's a good girl. Pritchard and the rest of them willbe at the old place before nightfall, I daresay. You must go back tothem."
The girl did not answer, neither did she manifest any disposition to doas Boulanger desired her.
"_Peste!_" said the latter. "One doesn't know how to deal with theseidiots; it's of no use talking sensibly to them, and they are asobstinate as mules. Monsieur must try to make her go back. One cannotbeat her, you know," he added half apologetically, as the thought ofAmoahmeh's resolutely refusing to relieve them of her company probablysuggested some such extreme proceeding.
"Beat her!" exclaimed Isidore indignantly, "I should think not. Mygood girl, I cannot take you with me. You must go back to yourfriends."
She looked at him long and wistfully. At last she said, "You are myfriend, you know where they are. I will go with you until we findthem."
Boulanger struck the end of his rifle on the ground despair. Isidorewas puzzled, but suddenly a thought struck him.
"If Amoahmeh goes with me," said he quietly, "I shall be discovered bythe English, and if they find me they will shoot me."
She looked inquiringly at him as if she half understood the purport ofhis words.
"To be sure," interposed the guide. "Do you want him to be shot? Ifnot, you must go back." There was a short pause; then Amoahmeh bowedher head, and crossing her hands over her bosom turned away and beganto retrace her steps towards the settlement.
The young soldier made a gesture as though he would have recalled her,but Boulanger stopped him. "Let her alone, monsieur, for goodnesssake. But for that lucky shot of yours we should never have got rid ofher; and think, only think, monsieur, the further she had gone the moreimpossible it would have been for you to shake her off. Do you wanther to stick to you all your life?"
Isidore admitted that the guide was right, and on they went. Yet hisheart was full of pity for the poor child as he looked back and saw herstealing silently away through the wood, and he felt that he had beencompelled to extinguish the ray of sunlight that had shone in upon thedarkness of her soul.
The travellers halted before noon and rested for some hours. They thenpursued their march until near sunset, when they came to the elevatedridges which divide the small rivers flowing northward into the St.Lawrence, from those which run southward towards the West Hudson andthe Ohio. Boulanger's object was to reach a village situated amongstthe numerous small lakes in this district, and obtain a canoe, by meansof which he might greatly lighten the rest of their journey. TheIndians were of a friendly tribe and knew him of old, so he had nofears about the reception they might give him.
"In ten minutes," said he, "we shall reach the largest lake about here,and at this season we can skirt along its banks instead of having to goover yonder hill--no light task after the close of such a march as wehave had to-day." As he spoke, a form was seen bounding towards themwith the swiftness of a young roe; both stopped amazed, as Amoahmehsprang forward, and laying her hand on Boulanger's arm, pointed withthe other towards the leaf-covered ground, and uttered the single word"Iroquois."
Isidore of course saw nothing, but the practised eye of the Canadianwas not slow, now that his attention had been roused, to detect thetrail of footsteps that had crossed their track. "The girl is right,"said he, after a rapid but close inspection of them, "and take my wordfor it, it is the trail of our old friend of the button-tree. Yes, hehas been tracking us all the way. Now, look at that! The child cameupon it this morning, and has followed it; she has caught him up, andhas come to warn us of----"
Here Amoahmeh placed her finger on her lips, and made a gesture ofimpatience.
"Right, child," said Boulanger. "To think now that a bit of a girllike this should have to teach me to keep my tongue from wagging tooloud."
"But what are we to do?" asked Isidore, somewhat bewildered by all this.
"Do!" repeated the guide. "Well, we had better leave that to her.Questions would only puzzle her poor brain, whereas it is clear she hasstill got all the red skin's cunning, and won't let any harm befall youat any rate."
Probably Amoahmeh understood the expression of his face better than hiswords. At all events she took upon herself at once the office ofguide, and beckoning to them to follow her turned off from thedirection they had been taking and led them into the wood. In a fewminutes they found themselves on the borders of a creek, scarcely adozen yards from the point where it ran into a lake of great extent,and there, to their surprise, Amoahmeh pointed out two or three canoeswhich had evidently been purposely drawn up under some overhangingbushes, so as to escape the possibility of being observed either fromthe forest or the lake.
By this time a perfect understanding had been established betweenBoulanger and their new guide, and they seemed to need a few signs onlyto express their meaning. A good many whispers, however, werenecessary in order to make Isidore crouch down in the middle of thelargest canoe without upsetting the frail craft, but as soon as he haddone so his companions stepped lightly in, one at each end, and thenext moment they were silently paddling out into the lake.
Again Boulanger made a sign; stealthily they paddled back, and theCanadian reached over into the other canoes in succession, and with afew strokes of his Indian knife ripped them up after a fashion that didaway with all chance of pursuit from that quarter; this done, they oncemore regained the lake.
After pausing for a few seconds to listen, Boulanger and the girl, asif with one consent, drove the canoe close under the bushes thatfringed the bank and here and there hung down and dipped their longbranches in the water. Isidore's impatience and curiosity now becameso great, and his sense of his own rather undignified position sogalling, that he was just about to assert some kind of right to knowwhat and whereabouts the danger might be, when he was stopped by thesound of voices upon the bank at no great distance from them. A fewmore strokes of the stealthy paddles and the voices were distinctlywithin hearing.
"And I say," exclaimed some one in English, "that I am not going tostay out here all night on such a wild-goose chase."
"Nor I," said another. "You, Master Kirby, may stop here with themthat will; some of us have sorrow and trouble enough at our own doorsthat call us home instead of loitering here. Besides, who knows thatthe whole thing isn't a lie of this red scoundrel's after all?"
"You placed yourself under my orders, and I bid you stop here," replieda firm voice. "The Indian's story was clear enough as he told it atfirst, before you were such fools as to let him get dead drunk afterhis hard run. What more likely than that Oswego has been taken by thatrascally Montcalm, or that he should send important despatches acrosscountry this way? I know this Indian fellow well: he is trustworthyenough when sober, and he says he not only saw the French officer andhis guide start from Oswego after the disaster there, but left them nottwo hours ago on a path that must bring them either along here or takethem over the hil
l, in which latter case they will fall into Tyler'shands."
As these various views and opinions were uttered the canoe was glidingalong within a couple of feet of the bank, stealthily indeed and withdiminished speed, lest the mere splash of the paddle should give thealarm. The bank was for the most part steep enough to afford completeconcealment from any one at a short distance from the edge. It hadjust passed the spot, and was drawing away from the voices, when itsuddenly stopped and swung round. But for a dexterous stroke ofBoulanger's paddle it must have turned over, for it had come rightacross a long bramble that had become submerged.
"What was that?" exclaimed one of the New England men; "it sounded likea paddle."
"Sounded like a fiddlestick!" replied another; "you with your sharpears are always hearing something that nobody else can, Master Dick."
"Well, I am not going to stop here any longer," said the first speaker."We know that the Commandant of Fort Chambly has pushed forwarddetachments in this direction, and 'tis my belief that if we don'tclear out, instead of shooting these Frenchmen and sending theirdespatches to the General at New York, we may get shot ourselves, or betaken and sent off to Montreal."
By this time Boulanger, feeling cautiously over the side, had comeacross the bramble that had stopped their course; his knife was throughit in a moment and the canoe swung clear.
"Hush! I'll swear I heard a paddle this time, say what you like,"cried the former speaker. "Run one of you to the creek and see thatthe canoes are all safe."
What else he may have said died away in the distance as the frailbarque that carried Isidore and his companions stole swiftly away, andsoon afterwards rounded a small headland and took to the open waters.
"All safe!" cried Boulanger. "Half an hour will bring us across to apoint they could not reach on foot in three hours at least. We are outof rifle shot already, even if they should see us; so take it easy alittle, my brave girl, whilst I look about and get my bearings allright."
Just for a moment the evening breeze wafted towards them a faint soundas of men shouting; then a shot was fired, but after that all becamestill. In half an hour they had crossed the lake, and on landing theguide ordered a halt and produced their supper.
"Our friends from Chambly are pretty certain to have reached St. Michelby this time if they are really moving in this direction," saidBoulanger, as he shared the provisions among them. "We will rest a bithere and then push on; in any case there is, or used to be, an Indiansettlement there, where we can take up our quarters for the night."
"Thank Heaven for that, on this poor child's account," replied Isidore."From what you have told me I hope that her misfortunes will ensure hersafety with any tribe of friendly Indians."
"Undoubtedly; but we will not talk of that now, nor think about it justyet, monsieur," whispered the guide, "or she will read it in our facesthat we want to get rid of her, which may make the thing not quite soeasy."
On starting again, to Isidore's great surprise, the guide quietlyshouldered the canoe and marched off with it, though he subsequentlyallowed both Isidore and Amoahmeh to assist him in carrying it. Ashort hour's march brought them to another creek sufficiently large tofloat their skiff, and soon afterwards they came upon a second lake,which they traversed from end to end. Then, as they neared the shore,Isidore's ears were greeted by a well-known and most welcome sound--thechallenge of a French sentinel. They had come upon the detachment sentout from Fort Chambly.
Great was the surprise of the French officer, who was in command of thelittle force, on seeing his friend Isidore at such a time and place andin such company. All this was of course quickly explained, and theyoung soldier and his guide were soon comfortably housed, but not untilthey had committed poor Amoahmeh, with many an expression of theirgratitude for her kindly help, to the care of an Indian family, intowhose wigwam she was received with all the awe that her infirmity wassure to command. It may well be believed that after such a day it wasnot long before all three were asleep and dreaming of old friends andold homes, either amid the grand and gloomy forests of the New World orthe sunny slopes and smiling vineyards of the Old.
Tailpiece to Chapter IV]
Headpiece to Chapter V]