Luc or any other spokesman whom the Marquis Duquesne
might choose to send.

But his golden dreams were of Quebec, which was a continuous beacon and
lure to him. Despite a life spent chiefly in the woods, which he loved,
he always felt the distant spell of great capitals and a gorgeous
civilization. In the New World Quebec came nearer than any other city to
fulfilling this idea. There the nobles of France, then the most
glittering country in the world, came in silks and laces and with gold
hilted swords by their sides. The young French officers fought with a
jest on their lips, but always with skill and courage, as none knew
better than the British colonials themselves. There was a glow and
glamor about Quebec which the sober English capitals farther south did
not have. It might be the glow and glamor of decay, but people did not
know it then, although they did know that the Frenchman, with his love
of the forest and skill in handling the Indians, was a formidable foe.

"When do you think we'll reach the St. Lawrence, Dave?" he asked.

"In two or three days if we're not attacked again," replied the hunter,
"and then we'll get a bigger boat and row down the river to Quebec."

"Will they let us pass?"

"Why shouldn't they? There's no war, at least not yet."

"That battle back there in the gorge may not have been war, but it
looked precisely like it."

The hunter laughed deep in his throat, and it was a satisfied laugh.

"It did look like it," he said, "and it was war, red war, but nobody was
responsible for it. The Marquis Duquesne, the Governor General of
Canada, who is Onontio to our Iroquois, will raise his jeweled hand, and
protest that he knew nothing about those Indians, that they were wild
warriors from the west, that none of his good, pious Indians of Canada
could possibly have been among them. And the Intendant, Francois Bigot,
the most corrupt and ambitious man in North America, will say that they
obtained no rifles, no muskets, no powder, no lead from him or his
agents. Oh, no, these fine French gentlemen will disown the attack upon
us, as they would have disavowed it, just the same, if we had been
killed. I want to warn you, Robert, and you, Tayoga, that when you reach
Quebec you'll breathe an air that's not that of the woods, nor yet of
Albany or New York. It's a bit of old Europe, it's a reproduction on a
small scale of the gorgeous Versailles over there that's eating the
heart out of France. The Can