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But Du Lhut was on his feet again in a moment, and running up and down like a sleuth-hound, noting a hundred things which even Amos would have overlooked. He circled round the bodies again and again. Then he ran a little way towards the edge of the woods, and then came back to the charred ruins of the blockhouse, from some of which a thin reek of smoke was still rising.
It was strange to look upon the fairy loveliness of their many-tinted foliage, and to know that the spirit of murder and cruelty was roaming unchained behind that lovely screen. The scouting party under Du Lhut and Achille de la Noue had already left, and at the order of the seigneur the two gates were now secured with huge bars of oak fitted into iron staples on either side.
Their camp is five miles down the river, and there cannot be less than six hundred." "You were fortunate in escaping them." "But they were not so fortunate in escaping us. We killed Brown Moose and his son, and we fired the woods so as to drive them out of their camp." "Excellent! Excellent!" said the seigneur, clapping gently with his dainty hands. "You have done very well indeed, Du Lhut!
You have eyes, monsieur, and it may please you some day to remember that Greysolon du Lhut told you so." Amos felt a flush of pride at these words from a man whose name was honoured wherever trader or trapper smoked round a camp fire.
Above all, Du Lhut made himself the guardian of French interests at Michilimackinac, the chief French post of the Far West the rendezvous of more tribes than came together at any other point. The finest tale of his courage and good judgment belongs to the period of La Barre's government when, in 1684, at the head of forty-two French, he executed sentence of death on an Indian convicted of murder.
In the Bibliotheque Imperiale is the rude map of the Jesuit Raffeix, made at about the same time. It is chiefly interesting as marking out the course of Du Lhut on his journeys from the head of Lake Superior to the Mississippi, and as confirming a part of the narrative of Hennepin, who, Raffeix says in a note, was rescued by Du Lhut. It also marks out the journeys of La Salle in 1679, '80.
That night his daughter, Wanena, who had seen Du Lhut at the trading post and had felt the stir of a generous sentiment toward him, appeared before the prisoners when sleep was heaviest in the camp, cut their bonds, led them by an obscure path to the river, where she enjoined them to enter a canoe, and guided the boat to the Holy Isle.
"Their camp lies over there." "Can we do nothing to aid them?" cried Amos. "Ay, ay, lad," said the captain in English. "We can't pass distress signals without going out of our course. Let us put about and run down yonder." "In that camp," said Du Lhut slowly, "there are now nearly six hundred warriors. We are four. What you say has no sense.
"Then you leave her behind?" "On the contrary, she is always there to welcome me. By Saint Anne, I should be heavy-hearted if I came to any village between this and the Bluffs of the Illinois, and did not find my wife waiting to greet me." "Then she must travel before you." Du Lhut laughed heartily, without, however, emitting a sound. "A fresh village, a fresh wife," said he.
That night his daughter, Wanena, who had seen Du Lhut at the trading post and had felt the stir of a generous sentiment toward him, appeared before the prisoners when sleep was heaviest in the camp, cut their bonds, led them by an obscure path to the river, where she enjoined them to enter a canoe, and guided the boat to the Holy Isle.
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