But I would not look away from the west.  “Some day I shall come back.  Not now.  Father, I married Ambition.  She lives in the wilderness.  I think I shall abide with her the next year.”

He frowned at me.  “Where has Madame de Montlivet gone?”

“She has started for her home in England, father.”

He tapped his teeth with his forefinger.  “You sent a curious guard with her.  Take the advice of an old man who has lived among Indians.  It is usually unwise to mix tribes.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have sent a guard of Ottawas with your wife and Starling.”

“They were all Ottawas.”

“No, they were more than half Hurons.  I counted.”

I jammed my teeth together and tried to think.  I had just said that the west was calling me, that I was untrammeled.  Untrammeled!  Why, I was enmeshed, choked by conflicting duties.  I put my head back, and breathed hard.

“Father, are you sure?  Cadillac himself saw to it that they were all Ottawas.”

The priest stepped forward and wiped his handkerchief across my face.  It was wet.  “My son, take this more calmly.  Cadillac does not know one Indian from another.  Does this mean harm?”

I shook the sweat from my fingers.  “I do not know what it means.  But I must go west.  I must.  Hundreds of men depend on me.  Father Carheil?”

“Yes, my son.”

“I bound you once on this very spot.  May I bind you again?”

“With promises?”

“Yes.  Will you see Cadillac at once, tell him what you know, and have a company of Ottawas sent in pursuit of Lord Starling?  Will you yourself see that it is rightly done?”

His foot drummed a tattoo.  “I ask no favors of the commandant.”

“Father!”

“Oh yes, I”——­

“Then go at once, I beg you.  Hasten.”

He shook his head at me, but he turned and ran.  I watched him a moment, then I stepped in the canoe.

“I will take a paddle,” I told Pierre.  “I can do something with my left hand.  Singing Arrow must take one, too.”

It had come to me before in my life to be compelled to force the apparently impossible out of opportunity.  But never had I asked myself to attempt such a task as this.  I had only one day the start of Cadillac, and in that time I must collect an army.  But if success were within human reach I was well armored to secure it, for I carried a desperate heart.

So if I say we went swiftly, it conveys no meaning of what we really accomplished.  We paddled as long as our arms would obey us, slept sparingly, and paddled again.  Singing Arrow was worth two men.  She paddled for us, cooked for us, and packed the bales when our hands blundered with weariness.  She was tireless.

And watching her I saw something lived before me day by day that I had tried to forget was in the world.  There was love between this Indian woman and my peasant Pierre.  They had found the real love, the love that is wine and meat.  It was very strange.  Pierre was quiet, and he was wont to be boisterous, but he looked into the girl’s eyes, and I saw that both of them forgot that the hours of work were long.  I have not seen this miracle many times, though I have seen many marriages.  What had Pierre done that he should find it?