The Black Wolfs Breed | Page 2

blue St. Lawrence and the mighty forests on its banks were a constant source of delight to my childish fancy, and those memories cling to me, ineffaceable even by all these years of war and tumult.
When she died I drifted to our newer stations in the south, down the great river, and it is of that last year in Louisiana, while I was yet Captain de Mouret of Bienville's Guards, that I would have my children know.
Along the shore of Back Bay, on the southern coast of our Province of Louisiana, the dense marsh grass grows far out into the water, trembling and throbbing with the ebb and flow of every tide.
Thicker than men at arms, it stands awhile erect where the shallow sea waves foam and fret; then climbing higher ground, it straggles away, thinner and thinner, in oaken-shaded solitudes long innocent of sun.
Beginning on the slopes, a vast mysterious forest, without village, path, or white inhabitant, stretches inland far and away beyond the utmost ken of man. There the towering pines range themselves in ever-receding colonnades upon a carpet smooth and soft as ever hushed the tread of Sultan's foot. Dripping from their topmost boughs the sunlight's splendor flickers on the floor, as if it stole through chancel window of some cool cathedral where Nature in proud humility worshiped at the foot of Nature's God.
It was in those wilds, somewhere, the fabled El Dorado lay; there bubbled the fountain of eternal youth: through that endless wilderness of forest, plain and hill flowed on in turbid majesty the waters of De Soto's mighty grave.
CHAPTER I
THE MASTER
It was late one clear moonlight night in the spring of 17--, when three silent figures emerged from the woodland darkness and struck across the wide extent of rank grass which yet separated us from the bay. Tuskahoma led the way, a tall grim Choctaw chieftain, my companion on many a hunt, his streaming plumes fluttering behind him as he strode. I followed, and after me, Le Corbeau Rouge, a runner of the Choctaws. We were returning to Biloxi from a reconnaissance in the Chickasaw country.
Each straight behind the other, dumb and soundless shadows, we passed along the way, hardly bruising a leaf or brushing the rustling reeds aside.
"See, there is the light," grunted Tuskahoma, pointing to a glimmer through the trees. "Yes, the White Prophet never sleeps," assented Le Corbeau Rouge.
The light which marked our almost ended journey came from a window in one of those low, square log houses, fortress-dwellings, so common in the provinces.
Here, however, the strong pine palisades were broken down in many places; the iron-studded gate hung unhinged and open, the accumulated sand at its base showed it had not been closed in many years.
But the decay and neglect everywhere manifest in its defenses extended no further, for inside the enclosure was a garden carefully tended; a trailing vine clung lovingly to a corner of the wide gallery, and even a few of the bright roses of France lent their sweetness to a place it seemed impossible to associate with a thought of barbaric warfare.
I loved this humble home, for in such a one my mother and I had spent those last years of sweet good-comradeship before her death--the roses, the rude house, all reminded me of her, of peace, of gentler things.
The character of its lone occupant protected this lowly abode far better than the armies of France, the chivalry of Spain, or the Choctaw's ceaseless vigilance could possibly have done. He came there it was said, some fifteen years before, a Huguenot exile, seemingly a man of education and birth. He built his castle of refuge on a knoll overlooking the sheltered bay, hoping there to find the toleration denied him in his native land. The edict of Nantes had been revoked by King Louis, and thousands of exiled Frenchmen of high and low degree sought new fortunes in newer lands.
Many had reached America, and strove with energetic swords and rapacious wallets to wrest blood and gold and fame from whatsoever source they might.
This man alone of all those first explorers had shown no disposition to search out the hidden treasures of the wilderness, to prey upon the natives. He became their friend and not their plunderer.
His quiet life, his kindness, his charity, his knowledge of the simple arts of healing, so endeared him to every warring faction that at his house the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, the Frenchman, Spaniard and the Englishman met alike in peace. So the needless fortifications fell into unrepaired decay.
Many an afternoon I had paddled across the bay and spent a quiet hour with him, as far from the jars and discord at Biloxi as if we were in some other world.
As, this night, we drew nearer the house we saw no