inhabitant of Three Rivers. Farmers
had flocked into the little fort and could venture back to their fields
only when armed with a musket.[2] Yet the three young hunters rashly
left the shelter of the fort walls and took the very dangerous path
that led between the forests and the water. One of the young men was
barely in his seventeenth year.[3] This was Pierre Esprit Radisson,
from St. Malo, the town of the famous Cartier. Young Radisson had only
come to New France the year before, and therefore could not realize the
dangers of Indian warfare. Like boys the world over, the three went
along, boasting how they would fight if the Indians came. One skirted
the forest, on the watch for Iroquois, the others kept to the water, on
the lookout for game. About a mile from Three Rivers they encountered
a herdsman who warned them to keep out from the foot of the hills.
Things that looked like a multitude of heads had risen out of the earth
back there, he said, pointing to the forests. That set the young
hunters loading their pistols and priming muskets. It must also have
chilled their zest; for, shooting some ducks, one of the young men
presently declared that he had had enough--he was going back. With
that daring which was to prove both the lodestar and the curse of his
life, young Radisson laughed to scorn the sudden change of mind.
Thereupon the first hunter was joined by the second, and the two went
off in high dudgeon. With a laugh, Pierre Radisson marched along
alone, foreshadowing his after life,--a type of every pathfinder facing
the dangers of the unknown with dauntless scorn, an immortal type of
the world-hero.

Shooting at every pace and hilarious over his luck, Radisson had
wandered some nine miles from the fort, when he came to a stream too
deep to ford and realized that he already had more game than he could
possibly carry. Hiding in hollow trees what he could not bring back,
he began trudging toward Three Rivers with a string of geese, ducks,
and odd teal over his shoulders, Wading swollen brooks and scrambling
over windfalls, he retraced his way without pause till he caught sight
of the town chapel glimmering in the sunlight against the darkening
horizon above the river. He was almost back where his comrades had
left him; so he sat down to rest. The cowherd had driven his cattle
back to Three Rivers.[4] The river came lapping through the rushes.
There was a clacking of wild-fowl flocking down to t