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Updated: June 23, 2025
Cadillac came toward me once as if to speak, but looked at me and turned away. At last I had made up my mind, and I went to the hut where I had left Pemaou. It had taken time to fight down my longing for even combat with him, but I knew that I must not risk that, for I needed to keep my life for a time. So I would try for speech with him first, and then he should die.
A bird that calls 'beware' from the branches, and then flits away. Why watch the old wolf, and let the cub play free? Would you make yourself a laughing-stock among your people, by letting the Englishman escape into the Baron's hands? Pemaou, son of the Baron, stands with his followers outside the Englishman's window. What does he seek? I am no Ottawa.
Where did you see Pemaou first?" "At Michillimackinac. When I reached there and learned that the prisoner had gone with you I sent interpreters through the camps with offers of reward for news of your whereabouts. Pemaou came. He said he could locate you and I took him as guide." "He selected his own escort?" "Yes." "And you traveled slowly?" "Very slowly."
That cut my last hope of news. I saw that Pemaou was still well bound, and I had him carried into a hut to await my orders. I went to Pierre's body. Singing Arrow still wailed beside it, and cried out that it should not be moved. I told her the soldiers would obey her orders, and carry it where she wished. But there was a fourth matter. I spoke to Dubisson, and my tongue was furry and cold.
Yet, cautious as I was, little furtive rustlings preceded me. The wood folks had seen me and were spreading the warning. Unless Pemaou were asleep I had little chance of surprising him. Yet I crept on till I saw through the leaves the outlines of a brown figure on the ground. I stopped.
He had grown curiously at ease when he had found himself in an Iroquois camp. I had no choice but to believe that Pemaou had tricked and deceived him, as he had said, but that did not mean that he had not been in league with Pemaou in the beginning. Pemaou was capable of tricking a confederate.
I knew this dimly, as the lost in the inferno know the barred joys above them. Unless we found Pemaou within the next few hours I should never be one with the loveliness of nature again. I held my way due west to the Malhominis. I could secure their cooperation, if nothing more. Pierre followed at a canoe length, and we traveled unbrokenly.
They were a good-natured people, as running over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment.
"Five large canoes left this morning," he warbled. "They carried madame, the Englishman, Pemaou, and his Hurons, and a detachment of the Senecas, some seventy-five in all. They went to Michillimackinac." The news hit me like a bullet, and I must have whitened, but I kept on singing. I nodded at Labarthe, and sang, I think, of spring and running brooks.
I frowned at that and thought it over. "What do you make of it?" Cadillac questioned. But I could only say I did not know. "Pemaou is skillful about using us as his jailers," I went on. "That may be his object now. He evidently finds some opposition in the Huron camp, or you would have had massacre before this." "You think the Senecas are here for conquest?"
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