The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage by Charles G. D. Roberts

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"It's a child I'm saving," he whispered. "Don't say anything about it."

"Good boy!" chuckled the singular marauders; and Pierre hastened on,
making for a wood near by.

Ere he could reach that shelter, however, Fate once more confronted him
in the shape of a tall Micmac, whom Pierre recognized as one of the
subchiefs of the tribe, a nephew of Cope. The chief, supposing Pierre was
carrying off something very rich in the way of booty, stopped him and
demanded a share. Pierre protested, declaring it was all his. When
he spoke the savage recognized him, and having a lofty contempt for one
who was both an Acadian and a mere boy, coolly attempted to snatch the
bundle from his arms.

Pierre's eyes blazed, as he grasped the Indian's wrist and wrenched the
cruel grip loose. He looked the savage straight in the eye.

"That's _mine!_" said he steadily. "Keep your hands off!"

The Indian snatched again at the bundle, this time ineffectually; and
then he drew his knife as if to attack Pierre. The latter jumped back,
laid his burden on the ground, and stood before it, hatchet in hand.
Seeing he was not to be intimidated, and willing to avoid a hand-to-hand
struggle with one who seemed so ready for it, the savage withdrew
grumbling, at the same time resolving that he would force Pierre later
on to divide his booty. As soon as he was gone Pierre snatched up his
charge and sped away exultant.

The boy's design was to follow the Kenneticook to its mouth, and thence
to ascend the Piziquid to the Acadian settlement, which he knew stood
somewhere on its banks. He did not dare to try and find his way back to
Beausejour. He knew that if he followed the trail of his party he would
be captured and the child killed; and we was equally certain that if he
deserted the trail he should be lost inevitably. Once at Piziquid,
however, he counted on getting a fisherman to take him to Beausejour
by water.

After toiling through the woods for perhaps an hour, keeping ever within
hearing of the stream, Pierre set his burden on the ground and threw
himself down beside her to snatch a moment's rest. The little one was
in her bare feet, so it was impossible for her to walk in that rough
and difficult region. Indeed, she had nothing on but a woolen nightdress,
and Pierre had to keep her well wrapped up in the blanket he had brought
from her bed. The little one had been contentedly sleeping in her
deliverer's arms, all unconscious of the awful fate that had befallen
those whom Pierre supposed to be her people. She remained asleep while
Pierre was resting, nor woke till it was clear dawn.

Long ere this Pierre had found easier traveling, having come out upon
a series of natural meadows skirting the stream. Beyond these meadows
were wide flats, covered at high tide, and Pierre, with an Acadian's
instinct, thought how fine it would be to dike them in. He had little
fear now of being followed. His party would take it for granted, not
finding him or his body, that he had fallen in the attack and been
burnt in the conflagration. He felt that they would not greatly trouble
themselves. As for those four who had seen him with his prize, two at
least would not tell on him and he had strong hopes that the two Micmacs
whom he had encountered would forget his prize in the confusion of the
hour. Beside a rivulet, in the gray of dawn, he stopped to wash himself;
that his appearance might not frighten the child on her awaking.

When the little one opened her eyes she looked about her in astonishment,
which became delight as she saw the glittering brook close beside her
and the many-colored sky overhead. She crept out of her blanket and stood
with her little white feet shining in the short spring grass. Then she
stepped into the brook, but finding it too cold for her she came out again
at once. Then she stood shivering till Pierre, after drying her feet on
his blanket, once more wrapped her up and seated her on a fallen tree
beside him. The child kept up a continual prattle, of which, of course,
Pierre understood not a word. He could only smile and stroke the little
fair head. When he spoke to her in his own language the child gazed at
him in wide-eyed wonder, and at last laughed gleefully and began to pat
his face, talking a lot of baby gibberish, such as she imagined Pierre
was addressing to her.

By and by Pierre remembered he was hungry. Taking some barley bread
and dried meat out of the bag he carried at his waist, he offered the
choicest bits to his tiny companion, and the two made a good breakfast.
Out of a strip of birchbark the lad twisted a cup and gave the child
to drink. Then, lifting her to his shoulder, he resumed his journey.

As the sun rose and the day grew warm Pierre let the child walk by his
side; but the tender little feet were not used to such work, and almost
immediately she cried to be taken up again. On this Pierre improvised
her a clumsy pair of moccasins, made of strips of his blanket.

These the little one regarded at first with lofty contempt, but when she
found they enabled her to run by her protector's side she was delighted.
It was necessary to stop often and rest long, so our travelers made slow
progress; but at noon, climbing a bluff which overlooked the river for
miles in either direction, Pierre was delighted to find himself within
two or three miles of the mouth. He marked, moreover, a short cut by
which, taking advantage of the curve in the main river, he could cut
off five or six miles and strike the banks of the Piziquid without
difficulty or risk.

"By this time to-morrow, if all goes well, we'll be safe in Piziquid,
cherie!" he cried joyously to the child, who responded with a mirthful
stream of babble. Pierre's conversation she regarded as a huge and
perpetual joke.

That night Pierre built a rough lean-to under the shelter of a great
white plaster-rock, and there in a heap of fragrant branches, the child
wrapped closely in the lad's arms, the lonely pair slept warm and secure.
The next day was mild and our travelers found their path easy. Ere noon
they arrived within sight of Piziquid.

They were on a hill with the Acadian village stretched out before them
far below, but a broad river rolling between them and their destination.
Pierre had forgotten about the St. Croix, but he recognized it now from
description. He saw, to his disappointment, that he would have to make
a long detour to pass this obstacle, so he sat down on the hill to rest
and refresh his little companion. The little one was now so tired that
she fell instantly to sleep, and Pierre thought it wise to let her sleep
a good half hour. Even he himself appreciated well the delay; and the view
that unrolled beneath him was magnificent.

Right ahead, in the corner of land between the Piziquid River and the
St. Croix, rose a rounded hill crowned with the English post of Fort
Edward. Beyond to right and left expanded plains of vivid emerald, with
a line of undulating uplands running back from Fort Edward and dividing
the marshes of the St. Croix from those of the Piziquid. The scene was
one of plenty and content. Pierre concluded that it would be necessary
for him to avoid being seen by the garrison of the fort, lest he should
be suspected of being one of the raiders. He decided to seek one of the
outermost houses of the settlement about nightfall and there to tell his
story, relying upon the good faith of one Acadian toward another. The
child, he made up his mind must stay in his care and go with him to
Beausejour. Having risked and suffered so much for her, he already began
to regard her with jealous devotion and to imagine she was indeed his own.

The child woke as joyous as a bird. Hand in hand the quaint-looking
pair--a seeming Indian with a little white-skinned child in a flannel
nightgown--trudged patiently up the stream, till in the middle of the
afternoon they came to a spot where Pierre thought it safe to wade across.
By this time the little one's feet were so sore that she had to be carried
all the time; and it was well after sunset when Pierre set his armful
down at the door of an outlying cottage of Piziquid, well away from
the surveillance of the fort.

In answer to Pierre's knock there came a woman to the door, who started
back in alarm. With a laughing salutation, however, Pierre followed her
into the blaze of firelight which poured from the heaped-up hearth.
In spite of his disguise he was at once recognized by the man of the
house as an Acadian, and the wanderers found an instant and hearty
welcome. Over a hot supper (in the midst of which the tired child
fell asleep with her head in her plate, and was carried to bed by
the motherly good wife) Pierre told all his story.

"We shall have to keep you hidden till we get you away!" said the
villager, one Jean Breboeuf by name. "You see, their eyes are open at
the fort. They got word at Halifax, somehow, that our precious abbe
(whom may the saints confound!) was planning some deviltry, and messages
were sent to the different posts to guard the outlying settlements.
It's a wonder you didn't find English soldiers at Kenneticook, for a
company started thither. However, if the English catch you in this dress
they won't take long deciding what to do with you."

Pierre was greatly alarmed.

"Can't you give me something to wear?" he cried.

"O, yes!" answered the host, "we'll fix you all right in the morning
so nobody will ever suspect you. Then I'll get Marin--he's got a good
boat--to start right off and sail you round to Beausejour. But what
about the little one?"

"O, she goes wherever I go!" said Pierre, decidedly.

"Yes, yes! But she's got to be kept out of sight," replied Breboeuf
"She looks English, every inch of her; and if the people at the fort
get eyes on her there'll be an investigation sure!"

"Can you speak English?" queried Pierre.

"Well enough!" replied his host.

"There'll be no trouble then," continued Pierre. "You can tell her to
keep quiet and keep covered up when we're taking her to the boat.
She'll mind, I'll answer you. And then, if Madame Breboeuf can give
her a little homespun frock and cap, we'll pass her off all right
should anyone see her. And when we get to Beausejour my father will
make it all right for the clothes."

"He won't do anything of the sort," answered both Breboeuf and his wife
in one breath. "We all know Antoine Lecorbeau, and we're proud to do
his son a service. If we poor Acadians did not help each other, I'd
like to know who'd help us, anyway!"

It was with a light heart that Pierre slept that night, and joyfully
in the morning he put away the last trace of his hated disguise.
His little charge showed plainly that she considered the change
an improvement. The child told Breboeuf (whom she understood with
difficulty) that her name was Edie Howe. At this Breboeuf was surprised,
for, as he said to Pierre, there were no Howes at Kenneticook. When
the Acadian tried to question Edie more closely, her answers became
irrelevant, which was probably due to the deficiencies of Monsieur
Breboeuf's English.

Pierre kept indoors most of the morning, as the little one would not
let him out of her sight, and he dared not be seen with her. Soon after
noon the tide was all ready for a departure, and not behindhand was
the fisherman, Marin, with his stanch Minas craft. Marin had brought
his boat up the St. Croix and into a little creek at some distance
from the fort, because at the regular landing place there were always
some English soldiers strolling about for lack of anything better to do.
It was with some trepidation that Pierre set out for the creek. The
little girl walked between her dear protector and their host, holding
a hand of each, and chattering about everything she saw, till with
great effort Breboeuf got her to understand that if she didn't keep
quite quiet, and not say a word to anybody till they got safely away,
in the boat, something dreadful might happen to her Pierre. She was
dressed like any of the little Acadian maidens of Piziquid, and her
blue cap of quilted linen was so tied on as to hide her sunny hair
and much of her face; but the danger was that she might betray herself
by her speech.

Before the party reached the boat they had a narrow escape from detection.
They were met by three or four soldiers who were strolling across the
marsh. In passing they gave Breboeuf a hearty good-day in English, and
one of them called Edie his "little sweetheart." The child looked up with
a laugh, and cried, coquettishly, "Not yours! I'm Pierre's." Then, as
Breboeuf squeezed her hand sharply, she remembered his caution and said
no more, though her small heart was filled with wonder to think she might
not talk to the nice soldiers.

"Why, where did the baby learn her English?" asked the soldier in a tone
of surprise. "_You_ never taught her, I'll be bound."

"Her mother taught her. Her mother speaks the English better than you
yourself," was Breboeuf's ready reply. Later in the day that soldier
suddenly remembered that the good wife Breboeuf did not speak a word
of English, and he was properly mystified. By that time, however, Pierre
and the little one were far from Piziquid. With a merry breeze behind them
they were racing under the beetling front of Blomidon.

On the day following they caught the flood tide up Chignecto Bay, and
sailed into the mouth of the Au Lac stream, almost under the willows
of Lecorbeau's cottage. The joy of Pierre's father and mother on seeing
the lad so soon returned was mingled with astonishment at seeing him
arrive by water, and with a little English child in his care. The little
one, with her exciting experiences behind her, did not dream of being shy,
but was made happy at once with a kind welcome; while Pierre, the center
of a wondering and exclaiming circle, narrated the wild adventures of
the past few days, which had, indeed developed him all at once from
boyhood to manhood. As he described the massacre, and the manner in
which he had rescued the yellow-haired lassie, his mother drew the
little one into her arms and cried over her from sympathy and excitement;
and the child wiped her eyes with her own quilted sunbonnet. At the
conclusion of the vivid narrative Lecorbeau was the first to speak.

"Nobly have you done, my dear son," he cried, with warm emotion.
"But now, where are your companions of that dreadful expedition?
Not one has yet arrived at Beausejour!"

CHAPTER VII.

PIERRE'S LITTLE ONE.

This question which Lecorbeau asked, all Beausejour was asking in an
hour or two. That night an Indian, sent from Le Loutre, who was lying
in exhaustion at Cobequid, arrived at the fort and told the fate of
the expedition.

As already stated, the English authorities in Halifax had been warned
of the movements of the Indians--though they could only guess the part
that Le Loutre had in them. Without delay they had sent small bands
of troops to each of the exposed settlements, but that dispatched
to Kenneticook arrived, as we have seen, too late. When the breathless
soldiers, lighted through the woods by the glare of the burning village,
reached the scene of ruin, of all who had that night lain down to
fearless sleep in Kenneticook there remained alive but one, the little
child whom Pierre had snatched from death.

When the English emerged from the woods and saw the extent of the
disaster, they knew they were too late. Not a house, not a building
of any kind, but was already wrapped in a roaring torrent of flame,
and against the broad illumination could be seen the figures of the
savages, fantastically dancing. The English captain formed his line
with prudent deliberation, and then led the attack at a run.

Never dreaming of so rude an interruption, the raiders were taken
utterly by surprise and made no effective resistance. A number fell
at the first volley, which the English poured in upon them in charging.
Then followed a hand-to-hand fight, fierce but brief, which Le Loutre
didn't see, as he had wisely retired on the instant of the Englishmen's
arrival. He was followed by two of the Acadians, and two or three
of the more prudent of the Micmacs; but the rest of his party, fired
with blind fury by the liquor which they had found among the village
stores, remained to fight with a drunken recklessness and fell to a man
beneath the steel of the avengers.

Left masters of the field, the rescue party gazed with horror on the
ruin they had come too late to avert. With a grim, poetic justice they
cast the bodies of their slain foes into the fires which had already
consumed the victims of their ferocity. While this was going on the
leader of the party, a young lieutenant, stood apart in deepest dejection.

"What's the matter with the general?" inquired a soldier, pointing
with his thumb in the direction of his sorrowing chief.

"I'm afeard as how that little niece of his'n, as you've seed him
a-danderin' many a time in Halifax, was visitin' folks here. If so be
what I've hearn be true, them yellin' butchers has done for her, sure
pop. I tell ye, Bill, she was a little beauty, an' darter of the cap'n
they murdered last September down to Fort Lawrence."

"I ricklecs the child well" replied Bill, shaking his head slowly.
"It _was_ a purty one, an' _no_ mistake! An' Cap'n Howe's darter,
too. I swan!"

In a little while the careless-hearted soldiers were asleep amid the
ashes of Kenneticook village, while the young lieutenant lay awake,
his heart aching for his golden-haired pet, his widowed sister's child.
The next day he gave his men a long rest, for they had done some severe
forced marching. When at length he reached Piziquid he little dreamed
that the child whose death he mourned was at that very moment sailing
down the river bound for Beausejour and a long sojourn among her
people's enemies.

In the house of Antoine Lecorbeau things went on more pleasantly than
with most of his fellow-Acadians. With the good will of Vergor, the
commandant of Beausejour, who made enormous profits out of the Acadian's
tireless diligence, Lecorbeau became once more fairly prosperous; and
Le Loutre had grown again friendly. But most of the Acadians found
themselves in a truly pitiable plight. There were not lands enough to
supply them all, and they pined for the farms of Acadie which Le Loutre
had forced them to forsake. Threatened with excommunication and the
scalping knife if they should return to their allegiance, and with
starvation if they obeyed the commands of their heartless superiors
at Quebec, they were girt about on all sides with pain and peril.
Vacillating, unable to think boldly for themselves, they were doubtless
much to blame, but their miseries were infinitely more than they deserved.
The punishments that fell upon them fell upon the wrong shoulders.
The English, who treated them for a long time with the most patient
forbearance, were compelled at length, in self-defense, to adopt an
attitude of rigorous severity; and by the French, in whose cause they
suffered everything, they were regarded as mere tools, to be used
till destroyed. At the door of the corrupt officials of France may be
laid all their miseries.

After the affair at Kenneticook Le Loutre found that Cobequid was no
longer the place for him. He needed the shelter of Beausejour. There,
by force of his fanatic zeal, his ability, and his power over the
Acadians, he divided the authority of the fort with its corrupt
commandant. He never dreamed of the part Pierre had played that dreadful
night on the Kenneticook. He knew Lecorbeau had somewhere picked up
an English child. But a child was in his eyes quite too trivial
a matter to call for any comment.

As time went on Pierre's little one, as she was generally called--"la
p'tite de Pierre"--picked up the French of her new Acadian home, and
went far to forgetting her English. In the eyes of Lecorbeau and his
wife she came to seem like one of their own and she was a favorite with
the whole family; but to Pierre she clung as if he were her father and
mother in one. As soon as she had learned a little French she was
questioned minutely as to her parents and her home. Her name, Edie Howe,
had at once been associated with that of the lamented captain.

"Edie," good wife Lecorbeau would say to her, "where is your mother?"

At this the child would shake her head sorrowfully for a moment, and
pointing over the hills, would answer:

"Away off there!"--and sometimes she would add, "Poor mamma's sick!"

At last one day she seemed suddenly to remember, and cried as if she
were announcing a great discovery, "Why, mamma's in Halifax."

Mother Lecorbeau was not a little triumphant at having elicited this
definite information.

On the subject of her father the little one had not much to say. When
questioned about him she merely said that she was his little girl, and
that he had gone away somewhere, and some bad people wouldn't let him
come back again. She said her mamma had cried a great deal while telling
her that papa would never come back--and from this it was clear at once
that the father was dead. To get any definite idea from the child as to
the time of his death proved a vain endeavor; she was not very clear
in her ideas of time. But she said he was a tall man and a soldier.
She further declared that he hadn't a lot of hair on his face, like
father Lecorbeau, but was nice and smooth, like her Pierre, only with
a mustache. All this tallied with a description of Captain Howe, so
Lecorbeau concluded that she was Howe's child. As for the people with
whom she had been visiting in the hapless village of Kenneticook, they
were evidently old servants of her father's family.

"I was staying at nurse's," she used to say. "Uncle Willie sent me
there because my mamma was sick." Of this Uncle Willie she talked
so much and so often that Pierre said he was jealous.

While several years rolled by, bringing no great event to the cabin
in the willows at the foot of Beausejour, a cloud was slowly gathering
over the fortressed hill. The relations between France and England
in Acadie were growing more and more strained. It was plain that a
rupture must soon come. In the cabin, by the light of fire or candle,
after the day's work was done, Pierre and his father, with sometimes
the old sergeant from the fort, used to talk over the condition of
affairs. To Pierre and the sergeant it was obvious that France must win
back Acadie, and that soon; and they paid little heed to Lecorbeau's
sagacious comparisons between the French and English methods of
conducting the government. Lecorbeau, naturally did not feel like
arguing his points with much determination; but across the well-scrubbed
deal table he uttered several predictions which Pierre recalled when
he saw them brought to pass.

"Here's about how it stands," remarked the sergeant one night, shaking
the ashes of his pipe into the hollow of his hand, "there's hundreds
upon hundreds now of your Acadians shifting round loose, waiting for a
chance to get back to their old farms. They don't dare go back while the
English hold possession, for fear of His Reverence yonder"--signifying,
of course, Le Loutre--"so they're all ready to fight just as soon as
France gives the word. They don't care much for France, maybe--not
much more than for the English--but they do just hanker after their
old farms. When the government thinks it the right time, and sends us
some troops from Quebec and Louisburg, all the Acadians out of Acadie
will walk in to take possession, and the Acadians in Acadie will bid
good day to King George and help us kick the English out of Halifax.
It's bound to come, sure as fate; and pretty soon, I'm thinking."

"I believe you're right!" assented Pierre, enthusiastically.

"What would you think, now," said Lecorbeau, suggestively, "if the
English should take it into their slow heads not to wait for all this
to happen? What would you do up there in the fort if some ships were
to sail up to-morrow and land a little English army under Beausejour?
You've got a priest and a greedy old woman (begging Monsieur Vergor's
pardon) to lead you. How long would Beausejour hold out? And suppose
Beausejour was taken, where would the settlements be--Ouestkawk and
Memramcook, and even the fort on the St. John? Wouldn't it rather
knock on the head this rising of the Acadians, this 'walking in and
taking possession' of which you feel so confident?"

"But we won't give the English a chance!" cried the warlike pair,
in almost the same breath. "We'll strike first. You'll see!"

Meanwhile the English were making ready to do just what Lecorbeau said
they might do. At the same time the French at Quebec, at Louisburg,
at Beausejour, though talking briskly about the great stroke by which
Acadie was to be recaptured, were too busy plundering the treasury
to take any immediate steps. Following the distinguished example of the
notorious intendant, Bigot, almost every official in New France had
his fingers in the public purse. They were in no haste for the fray.

The English, however, seeing what the French _might_ do, naturally
supposed they would try and do it. To prevent this, they were planning
the capture of Beausejour. Governor Lawrence, in Halifax, and Governor
Shirley, in Boston, were preparing to join forces for the undertaking.
In New England Shirley raised a regiment of two thousand volunteers
who mustered, in April of the year 1755, amid the quaint streets of
Boston. This regiment was divided into two battalions, one of which
was commanded by Colonel John Winslow, and the other by John Scott.
After a month's delay, waiting for muskets, the little army set sail
for Beausejour. The chief command was in the hands of Colonel Moncton,
who had been sent to Boston by Lawrence to arrange the expedition.

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