Pathfinders of the West | Page 7

only when armed with a musket.[2] Yet the three young hunters rashly
left the shelter of the fort walls and took the very dangerous path that
led between the forests and the water. One of the young men was
barely in his seventeenth year.[3] This was Pierre Esprit Radisson, from
St. Malo, the town of the famous Cartier. Young Radisson had only
come to New France the year before, and therefore could not realize the
dangers of Indian warfare. Like boys the world over, the three went
along, boasting how they would fight if the Indians came. One skirted
the forest, on the watch for Iroquois, the others kept to the water, on the
lookout for game. About a mile from Three Rivers they encountered a
herdsman who warned them to keep out from the foot of the hills.
Things that looked like a multitude of heads had risen out of the earth
back there, he said, pointing to the forests. That set the young hunters
loading their pistols and priming muskets. It must also have chilled
their zest; for, shooting some ducks, one of the young men presently

declared that he had had enough--he was going back. With that daring
which was to prove both the lodestar and the curse of his life, young
Radisson laughed to scorn the sudden change of mind. Thereupon the
first hunter was joined by the second, and the two went off in high
dudgeon. With a laugh, Pierre Radisson marched along alone,
foreshadowing his after life,--a type of every pathfinder facing the
dangers of the unknown with dauntless scorn, an immortal type of the
world-hero.
Shooting at every pace and hilarious over his luck, Radisson had
wandered some nine miles from the fort, when he came to a stream too
deep to ford and realized that he already had more game than he could
possibly carry. Hiding in hollow trees what he could not bring back, he
began trudging toward Three Rivers with a string of geese, ducks, and
odd teal over his shoulders, Wading swollen brooks and scrambling
over windfalls, he retraced his way without pause till he caught sight of
the town chapel glimmering in the sunlight against the darkening
horizon above the river. He was almost back where his comrades had
left him; so he sat down to rest. The cowherd had driven his cattle back
to Three Rivers.[4] The river came lapping through the rushes. There
was a clacking of wild-fowl flocking down to their marsh nests;
perhaps a crane flopped through the reeds; but Radisson, who had
laughed the nervous fears of the others to scorn, suddenly gave a start
at the lonely sounds of twilight. Then he noticed that his pistols were
water-soaked. Emptying the charges, he at once reloaded, and with
characteristic daring crept softly back to reconnoitre the woods.
Dodging from tree to tree, he peered up and down the river. Great
flocks of ducks were swimming on the water. That reassured him, for
the bird is more alert to alarm than man. The fort was almost within
call. Radisson determined to have a shot at such easy quarry; but as he
crept through the grass toward the game, he almost stumbled over what
rooted him to the spot with horror. Just as they had fallen, naked and
scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his
comrades of the morning, dead among the rushes. Radisson was too far
out to get back to the woods. Stooping, he tried to grope to the hiding
of the rushes. As he bent, half a hundred heads rose from the grasses,
peering which way he might go. They were behind, before, on all

sides--his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he
might hide by diving and wading, till darkness gave a chance for a rush
to the fort. Slipping bullet and shot in his musket as he ran, and
ramming down the paper, hoping against hope that he had not been
seen, he dashed through the brushwood. A score of guns crashed from
the forest.[5] Before he realized the penalty that the Iroquois might
exact for such an act, he had fired back; but they were upon him. He
was thrown down and disarmed. When he came giddily to his senses,
he found himself being dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois
flaunted the fresh scalps of his dead friends. Half drawn, half driven, he
was taken to the shore. Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where
he had been hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before. Fires were
kindled, and the crotched sticks driven in the ground to boil the kettle
for the evening meal. The young Frenchman was searched, stripped,
and tied round the waist with a rope, the