The Hunters of the HillsAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Hunters of the Hills
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- French and Indian War, 1754-1763 -- Fiction
After they had slipped some silver pieces to the boatmen and had said
farewell to Captain de Galisonniere, they took their way up a steep
street, a swarthy French-Canadian porter carrying their baggage. Here,
as at Montreal, the most attention was attracted by Tayoga, and, if
possible, the young Onondaga grew more haughty in appearance and manner.
His moccasined feet spurned the ground, and he gazed about with a fierce
and defiant eye.
Robert knew well what was stirring the spirit of the Onondaga. This was
not the Quebec of the French, it was the Stadacona of the Mohawks, the
great brother nation of the Onondagas, and the French here were but
interlopers and robbers.
But Robert soon lost thought of Tayoga as he looked at the crowded city,
and its mingling of the splendid and the squalid, its French and
French-Canadians, its soldiers and priests and civilians and Indians,
its great stone houses, and its wooden huts, its young officers in fine
white uniforms and its swarthy _habitants_ in brown homespun. Albany had
its Dutch, and New York had its Dutch, too, and people from many parts
of Europe, but Quebec was different, something altogether new, without a
trace of English or Dutch about it, and, for that reason, it made a
great appeal to his curiosity.
A light open carriage drawn by two stout ponies passed them at an
amazing pace considering the steepness of the street, and they saw in it
a florid young man in a splendid costume, his powdered hair tied in a
queue.
"De Mezy," said the priest, who was just behind them.
Then they knew that it was the young man, the companion of Bigot in his
revels, against whose chateau Father Drouillard had raised his
threatening hands. Now the priest spoke the name with the most intense
scorn and contempt, and Robert, feeling that he might encounter de Mezy
again in this pent-up Quebec, gazed at his vanishing figure with
curiosity. They had their gay blades in New York and Albany and even a
few in Boston of the Puritans, but he had not seen anybody like de Mezy.
"It is such as he who are pulling down New France," murmured Father
Drouillard.
A moment or two later the priest said farewell and departed in the
direction of the cathedral.
"There goes a man," said Willet, as he looked after the tall figure in
the black robe. "I don't share in the feeling of church against church.
I don't see any reason why Protestant should hate Catholic and Catholic
should hate Protestant. I've lived long enough and seen enough to know
that each church holds good men, and unless I make a big mistake, and I
don't think I make any mistake at all, Father Drouillard is not only a
good man, but he has a head full of sense and he's as brave as a lion,
too."
"Lots of priests are," said Robert. "Nobody ever endured the Indian
tortures better than they. And what's the figure over the doorway,
Dave?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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