The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories of the French in the New World — John Shaqi
The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories of the French in the New WorldCatherwood, Mary Hartwell
General
The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories of the French in the New World
Catherwood, Mary Hartwell
French -- North America -- Fiction; French Americans -- Fiction; French Canadians -- Fiction
"Go away," said Jeannette, and her limbs began to settle. She thought
of smiling at the children, but her features were already cast. The
English child held her on one side, and the French child on the other,
as she collapsed in a sitting posture. Tender nuns, going from friend
to foe, would find this stoical face against the wall. It was no
strange sight then. Canada was taken.
Men with bloody faces were already running with barricades for the
gates. Wailing for Montcalm could be heard.
The boy put his arm abound the girl and turned her eyes away. They ran
together up towards the citadel: England and France with their hands
locked; young Canada weeping, but having a future.
THE WINDIGO.
The cry of those rapids in Ste. Marie's River called the Sault could
be heard at all hours through the settlement on the rising shore and
into the forest beyond. Three quarters of a mile of frothing billows,
like some colossal instrument, never ceased playing music down an
inclined channel until the trance of winter locked it up. At August
dusk, when all that shaggy world was sinking to darkness, the gushing
monotone became very distinct.
Louizon Cadotte and his father's young seignior, Jacques de
Repentigny, stepped from a birch canoe on the bank near the fort, two
Chippewa Indians following with their game. Hunting furnished no
small addition to the food supply of the settlement, for the English
conquest had brought about scarcity at this as well as other Western
posts. Peace was declared in Europe; but soldiers on the frontier,
waiting orders to march out at any time, were not abundantly supplied
with stores, and they let season after season go by, reluctant to put
in harvests which might be reaped by their successors.
Jacques was barely nineteen, and Louizon was considerably older. But
the Repentignys had gone back to France after the fall of Quebec; and
five years of European life had matured the young seignior as decades
of border experience would never mature his half-breed tenant. Yet
Louizon was a fine dark-skinned fellow, well made for one of short
stature. He trod close by his tall superior with visible fondness;
enjoying this spectacle of a man the like of whom he had not seen on
the frontier.
Jacques looked back, as he walked, at the long zigzag shadows on the
river. Forest fire in the distance showed a leaning column, black at
base, pearl-colored in the primrose air, like smoke from some gigantic
altar. He had seen islands in the lake under which the sky seemed to
slip, throwing them above the horizon in mirage, and trees standing
like detached bushes on a world rim of water. The Ste. Marie River was
a beautiful light green in color, and sunset and twilight played upon
it all the miracles of change.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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