for she was not permitted to hang him on her back, stood and talked with her red-skinned intimates of the lodges.  The Frenchwomen collected at the seigniory house.  As for the men of the garrison, they were obliged to stay and receive the English then on the way from Detour.  But they came out to see the boats off with the concern of brothers, and Archange’s uncle, the post commandant, embraced Monsieur Cadotte.

The priest and Jacques Repentigny did not speak to each other about that wretched creature whose hoverings around the Sault were connected with Louizon Cadotte’s disappearance.  But the priest went with Louizon’s father down the river, and Jacques led the party which took the opposite direction.  Though so many years had passed since Father Dablon and Father Marquette built the first bark chapel, their successor found his work very little easier than theirs had been.

A canoe was missing from the little fleet usually tied alongshore, but it was not the one belonging to Louizon.  The young seignior took that one, having Jean Boucher and Jean’s son to paddle for him.  No other man of Sault Ste. Marie could pole up the rapids or paddle down them as this expert Chippewa could.  He had been baptized with a French name, and his son after him, but no Chippewa of pure blood and name looked habitually as he did into those whirlpools called the chutes, where the slip of a paddle meant death.  Yet nobody feared the rapids.  It was common for boys and girls to flit around near shore in birch canoes, balancing themselves and expertly dipping up whitefish.

Jean Boucher thrust out his boat from behind an island, and, turning it as a fish glides, moved over thin sheets of water spraying upon rocks.  The fall of the Ste. Marie is gradual, but even at its upper end there is a little hill to climb.  Jean set his pole into the stone floor of the river, and lifted the vessel length by length from crest to crest of foam.  His paddles lay behind him, and his arms were bare to the elbows, showing their strong red sinews.  He had let his hair grow like a Frenchman’s, and it hung forward shading his hatless brows.  A skin apron was girded in front of him to meet waves which frothed up over the canoe’s high prow.  Blacksmith of the waters, he beat a path between juts of rock; struggling to hold a point with the pole, calling a quick word to his helper, and laughing as he forged his way.  Other voyagers who did not care to tax themselves with this labor made a portage with their canoes alongshore, and started above the glassy curve where the river bends down to its leap.

Gros Cap rose in the sky, revealing its peak in bolder lines as the searchers pushed up the Ste. Marie, exploring mile after mile of pine and white birch and fantastic rock.  The shaggy bank stooped to them, the illimitable glory of the wilderness witnessing a little procession of boats like chips floating by.

It was almost sunset when they came back, the tired paddlers keeping near that shore on which they intended to land.  No trace of Louizon Cadotte could be found; and those who had not seen the windigo were ready to declare that there was no such thing about the Sault, when, just above the rapids, she appeared from the dense up-slope of forest.