Lazarre | Page 7

he began a kind of Anglo-French, worse than
the patois we used at St. Regis when we did not speak Iroquois. I made
out the talk between the two, understanding each without hesitation.
"Sir, who are you?"
"The chief, Thomas Williams," answered my father.
"Pardon me, sir; but you are unmistakably an Indian."
"Iroquois chief," said my father. "Mohawk."
"That being the case, what authority have you for calling yourself
Thomas Williams?" challenged the little man.
"Thomas Williams is my name."
"Impossible, sir! Skenedonk, the Oneida, does not assume so much. He
lays no claim to William Jones or John Smith, or some other honest
British name."
The chief maintained silent dignity.
"Come, sir, let me have your Indian name! I can hear it if I cannot

repeat it."
Silently contemptuous, my father turned toward me.
"Stop, sir!" the man in the horn spectacles cried. "What do you want?"
"I want my boy."
"Your boy? This lad is white."
"My grandmother was white," condescended the chief. "A white
prisoner from Deerfield. Eunice Williams."
"I see, sir. You get your Williams from the Yankees. And is this lad's
mother white, too?"
"No. Mohawk."
"Why, man, his body is like milk! He is no son of yours."
The chief marched toward me.
"Let him alone! If you try to drag him out of the manor I will appeal to
the authority of Le Ray de Chaumont."
My father spoke to me with sharp authority--
"Lazarre!"
"What do you call him?" the little man inquired, ambling beside the
chief.
"Eleazer Williams is his name. But in the lodges, at St. Regis,
everywhere, it is Lazarre."
"How old is he?"
"About eighteen years."

"Well, Thomas Williams," said my fretful guardian, his antagonism
melting to patronage, "I will tell you who I am, and then you can feel
no anxiety. I am Doctor Chantry, physician to the Count de Chaumont.
The lad cut his head open on a rock, diving in the lake, and has
remained unconscious ever since. This is partly due to an opiate I have
administered to insure complete quiet; and he will not awake for
several hours yet. He received the best surgery as soon as he was
brought here and placed in my hands by the educated Oneida,
Skenedonk."
"I was not near the lodge," said my father. "I was down the lake,
fishing."
"I have bled him once, and shall bleed him again; though the rock did
that pretty effectually. But these strapping young creatures need
frequent blood-letting."
The chief gave him no thanks, and I myself resolved to knock the little
doctor down, if he came near me with a knife.
"In the absence of Count de Chaumont, Thomas," he proceeded, "I may
direct you to go and knock on the cook's door, and ask for something to
eat before you go home."
"I stay here," responded my father.
"There is not the slightest need of anybody's watching beside the lad
to-night. I was about to retire when you were permitted to enter. He is
sleeping like an infant."
"He belongs to me," the chief said.
Doctor Chantry jumped at the chief in rage.
"For God's sake, shut up and go about your business!"
It was like one of the little dogs in our camp snapping at the patriarch
of them all, and recoiling from a growl. My father's hand was on his

hunting knife; but he grunted and said nothing. Doctor Chantry himself
withdrew from the room and left the Indian in possession. Weak as I
was I felt my insides quake with laughter. My very first observation of
the whimsical being tickled me with a kind of foreknowledge of all his
weak fretfulness.
My father sat down on the floor at the foot of my couch, where the wax
light threw his shadow, exaggerating its unmoving profile. I noticed
one of the chairs he disdained as useless; though when eating or
drinking with white men he sat at table with them. The chair I saw was
one that I faintly recognized, as furniture of some previous experience,
slim legged, gracefully curved, and brocaded. Brocaded was the word. I
studied it until I fell asleep.
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. Skenedonk had the mildest brown eyes I ever saw outside a
deer's head. He was a bald Indian with one small scalp lock. But the
just and perfect dome to which his close lying ears were attached
needed no hair to