Birds fluttered in the
tangle, and fish bubbled to the surface under our paddles. I did not
wonder that I found the tribe as well fed as summer beavers. But I
learned nothing from them. They were a good-natured people, as running
over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first
white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the
Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having
seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been
with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment. They said that a
small company of Sacs was encamped to the north, and that Father Nouvel
was with them. So after a few days I went on.
A waft of fetid air on a hot day will bring the smell of that Sac camp
to me even now. The Sacs were a migratory, brutish people, who
snatched at life red-handed and growling, and as I squatted in their
dirty hovels, I lost, like a dropped garment, all sense of the wonder
and freedom of my wilderness life. Suddenly all the forest seemed
squalid, and a longing for the soft ease and cleanliness of
civilization came on me like a wave. But I hid the feeling, and
lingered, though my welcome was but slight.
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