The Indians of the Peoria village were interested spectators of the events which were being acted out by the band of Frenchmen. Father Membré lived in their town and they gave him respectful attention. Among themselves they talked much of his white friends within the stockaded walls of the fort. There were scarcely a dozen men with Tonty now, and upon them the Indians looked with a mixture of curiosity, contempt, and awe. Among them there were ship carpenters and soldiers, on some of whose faces rascality and cowardice were written. Had the Peorias not seen them nervous with fear while Nicanopé told them of the imaginary terrors of the river, and at a public council, too,—what could more clearly stamp the coward?

The old friar Ribourde shuffled about in his gray gown and bare sandaled feet, saying mass among the Frenchmen as Membré did among the Peorias. The strong-armed man, Le Meilleur, whom his comrade called La Forge, swung the hammer on the red-hot iron and mended the tools of the French at the precious forge. Down by the river, Moyse Hillaret and La Roze and the other shipbuilders and carpenters laid out and joined together the ribs of the huge wooden skeleton. Among these brawny men was a muscular young lad from Paris named Renault, L’Espérance, a brave-hearted young servant of La Salle, and Boisrondet, a man of higher birth than the rest and a special friend of Tonty. But it was not of these men that the Peorias talked most to the bands of hunters and warriors returning now to the village—it was of La Salle, the white chief, who had left the fort, and of Tonty, the man of mystery, who remained in charge of the garrison.

The Indians could not understand the curious commander of the fort. Why was his skin darker than that of his comrades and his hair so black—like the hair of their own Indian women, though not so straight? But most of all they wondered at the queer way in which he used his right hand. They told the newly arrived Indians of the day the white men came to the village. At the feast of welcome Tonty had used his left hand always as he ate of their sagamite and meat, and now they watched him as he passed here and there among his men. If he pulled a canoe up on shore or grasped a piece of timber down at the shipyard it was never with his right hand. Yet they had seen him deal blows with that mysterious right hand which had the effect of an Indian war club. With what strange “medicine” his powerful arm was gifted they coul............