Couture did, indeed, bring news concerning La Salle. Within the palisaded walls that crowned the rock of Fort St. Louis, the Man with the Iron Hand now listened to a story that hardened his soul with anger and despair. The Abbé and Joutel had told him much, but they had not told him all. From what Couture said it became evident that when the Abbé and his party reached the post on the Arkansas, they had told some things which they did not afterwards relate at Fort St. Louis. Thus through Couture’s account, pieced out by other details learned later, Tonty came to know the real heart of the story which the Abbé and Joutel had only told in half.

The thread of the hidden tale ran back to the beginning of the voyage from France. On the way across the sea there was a growing discontent among the men, which ripened into intrigue when they landed. While Joutel with part of the colony was guarding the supplies on the shore and squaring timbers to be used in the fort upstream, a confession by one of the men enabled him to foil a conspiracy to kill Le Gros, who guarded the storehouse, and himself steal arms and supplies from the storehouse and desert to the wilds. Joutel turned the men over to La Salle, but the incident did not make sufficient impression upon his own unsuspicious nature. When some months later Duhaut came back alone from La Salle’s first expedition, Joutel contented himself with watching him narrowly for a few days. When La Salle set out on his second expedition, Duhaut remained behind with the men at the fort.

As the weeks of La Salle’s absence lengthened into months, discontent spread among the members of the colony at the fort. Probably La Salle was lost; at all events, it did not look as if he were coming back. Little knots of men drew off together to talk of their wrongs. Why not desert La Salle and take matters into their own hands? Duhaut passed among the discontented with words of encouragement: under his management things would be different. Having staked considerable wealth in the enterprise of La Salle’s colony, Duhaut had grumbled much at the ill fortune that had come upon them; but in spite of all the losses of the colony he had managed to keep a large supply of goods,—knives, hatchets, cloth for garments and for Indian trade,—and these and many other possessions he now promised to divide among those who would follow him.

Joutel, learning of the mutterings of the men and the intrigues of Duhaut, called the conspirator before him with sharp words. Later he felt that he would have done better service to La Salle if he had put Duhaut to death upon the spot. After talking with the men and quieting their discontent, he tried to prevent further trouble by keeping them busily at work about the fort. It was not long after this incident that La Salle came back from his search for the lost river.

The party which journeyed forth upon the final expedition in January of 1687 was not large, but it was one which held great possibilities for trouble. There were stanch friends of La Salle in the party—among them his hotheaded nephew Moranget. But Duhaut also was there with his devoted tool L’Archevêque and his friend Liotot the surgeon—a man who, like Duhaut, had money invested in the colonial venture and was sorely put out at the progress of affairs.

For more than two months the seventeen men traveled together across the prairies until, about the middle of March, they drew near to a place where La Salle on his former trip to the Cenis villages had hidden some supplies.

They halted and La Salle sent out a party of men to bring the food into camp. It was on the fifteenth of the month that this party of seven set out—Duhaut and L’Archevêque, Liotot and Hiens the buccaneer, Teissier, a servant of La Salle’s named Saget, and Nika, a faithful Shawnee who had crossed the ocean twice with La Salle and served him with undying devotion. They did not have far to go; but they found the food spoiled and unfit for use.

On the way back the keen-eyed Shawnee saw two buffaloes, and, slipping along after them, killed them both. The men halted where they were and sent Saget back to camp to............