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We fared well, indeed, and the wine was good, and my master said he must sustain himself on it though it proved his death. He could not march as Skenedonk and I regularly marched. We hired a cart to lift him and our knapsacks from village to village, with a driver who knew the road to Paris. When the distances were long we sometimes mounted beside him.
The sun, shining through the protected windows, instead of glaring into our lodge door, showed my father sitting in the same position when I woke, and Skenedonk at my side. I liked the educated Iroquois. He was about ten years my senior. He had been taken to France when a stripling, and was much bound to the whites, though living with his own tribe.
Therefore I was at the mercy of Skenedonk, also. The Indian appeared in the doorway and watched me. I knew he thought there was to be trouble with the gentleman from Washington, and I went to him to ease his mind. Skenedonk had nothing to say, however, and made me a sign to follow him. As we passed through the tap-room, General Jackson gave me another pleasant look.
In the silence I turned to Skenedonk. "Isn't my name Lazarre Williams, Skenedonk?" "You are called Lazarre Williams." "A woman told me last night that it was not my name. Everyone denies me. No one owns me and tells whose child I am. Wasn't I born at St. Regis?" "If you were, there is no record of your birth on the register. The chief's other children have their births recorded."
Something bounced from it on the floor with a clack like wood. I stretched downward from one of Madame Ursule's thick feather beds, and picked up what brought me to my feet. Without letting go of it I lighted my candle. It was the padlocked book which Skenedonk said he had burned.
One glimpse of Skenedonk I caught while we marched along Rue St. Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd. He thought I was going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his loaf of bread.
They both stood severely reserved, passively loosening the filial bond. All the business of life was suspended, as when there is death in the lodge. Skenedonk and I sat down together on a bunk. "Lazarre," my father spoke, "do you want to be educated?" The things we pine for in this world are often thrust upon us in a way to choke us.
What we suffer for is enriched by our suffering until it becomes priceless. So far on the frontier was this cabin that no community block-house stood near enough to give its inmates shelter. They were obliged to go with us to Fort Stephenson. Skenedonk pioneered the all-night struggle on an obscure trail; and he went astray sometimes, through blackness of woods that roofed out the stars.
Skenedonk said to me in Iroquois that Doctor Chantry was a sick old woman who ought to be hidden some place to die, and it was his opinion that the blessing of the church would absolve us. We could then make use of the pouch of coin to carry on my plans. My plans were more ridiculous than Skenedonk's. His at least took sober shape, while mine were still the wild emotions of a young man's mind.
The gentleman staring at me, strangely polite and full of suspicion, conducted me into a well-lighted room where Skenedonk waited by the farther door, holding the jewel-case as tenaciously as he would a scalp. I entered the farther door. It closed behind me. A girl stood in the center of this inner room, looking at me.
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