Fanchon Dodier, in obedience to the order of her mistress, started early in the day to bear the message entrusted to her for La Corriveau. She did not cross the river and take the king's highway, the rough though well-travelled road on the south shore which led to St. Valier. Angelique was crafty enough amid her impulsiveness to see that it were better for Fanchon to go down by water and return by land: it lessened observation, and might be important one day to baffle inquiry. La Corriveau would serve her for money, but for money also she might betray her. Angelique resolved to secure her silence by making her the perpetrator of whatever scheme of wickedness she might devise against the unsuspecting lady of Beaumanoir. As for Fanchon, she need know nothing more than Angelique told her as to the object of her mission to her terrible aunt.
In pursuance of this design, Angelique had already sent for a couple of Indian canoemen to embark Fanchon at the quay of the Friponne and convey her to St. Valier.
Half-civilized and wholly-demoralized red men were always to be found on the beach of Stadacona, as they still called the Batture of the St. Charles, lounging about in blankets, smoking, playing dice, or drinking pints or quarts,--as fortune favored them, or a passenger wanted conveyance in their bark canoes, which they managed with a dexterity unsurpassed by any boatman that ever put oar or paddle in water, salt or fresh.
These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession.
Fanchon knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe.
They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom, and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and dipped alternately in stream and sunshine;
"Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga!
Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!"
"They are singing about me, no doubt," said Fanchon to herself. "I do not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to give me a safe passage to St. Valier." In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in the Indian canoe.
Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St. Valier.
Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them.
"Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands," muttered Fanchon, "but they might have offered one assistance! Look there," continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet up to the ankle; "they ought to know the difference between their red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers as to an Indian anywhere."
The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to smoke.
"You may return to the city," said she, addressing them sharply; "I pray to the bon Dieu to strike you white;--it is vain to look for manners from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you."
"Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?" replied one of the boatmen, with a grim smile; "the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them manners like palefaces."
"Ugh! not for all the King's money. What! marry a red Indian, and carry his pack like Fifine Perotte? I would die first! You are bold indeed, Paul La Crosse, to mention such a thing to me. Go back to the city! I would not trust myself again in your canoe. It required courage to do so at all, but Mademoiselle selected you for my boatmen, not I. I wonder she did so, when the brothers Ballou, and the prettiest fellows in town, were idle on the Batture."
"Ania is niece to the old medicine-woman in the stone wigwam at St.
Valier; going to see her, eh?" asked the other boatman, with a slight display of curiosity.
"Yes, I am going to visit my aunt Dodier; why should I not? She has crocks of gold buried in the house, I can tell you that, Pierre Ceinture!"
"Going to get some from La Corriveau, eh? crocks of gold, eh?" said Paul La Crosse.
"La Corriveau has medicines, too! get some, eh?" asked Pierre Ceinture.
"I am going neither for gold nor medicines, but to see my aunt, if it concerns you to know, Pierre Ceinture! which it does not!"
"Mademoiselle des Meloises pay her to go, eh? not going back ever, eh?" asked the other Indian.
"Mind your own affairs, Paul La Crosse, and I will mind mine!
Mademoiselle des Meloises paid you to bring me to St. Valier, not to ask me impertinences. That is enough for you!" Here is your fare; now you can return to the Sault au Matelot, and drink yourselves blind with the money!"
