ALL the way down the river and on the Great Sweet Water beyond they watched and waited for a time of escape, whispering together, thinking of little else but how could they run away with Tgui, the waves, all around them? On shore Père Le Clercq kept his sharp eyes on them like Meechgalane, the hawk, letting no more than one into the bush at a time. The portage was long and the two girls pressed against each other as they passed the fearful sight and sounds of Niagara.

“How can we ever go back now?” Simone mourned. “Even a fish could not swim up the thundering waters.”

“No, but a fox can run through the forest,” Stone Girl reminded her.

And now they laid eyes on another stretch of Great Sweet Water that Père Le Clercq called Lac Ontario. Here the bateaumen took them to sea again. Later they went up a small river that the priest after consulting his map called Oswego. From a Lesser Sweet Water, they ascended a still smaller stream, then portage to a river that grew gradually larger, passing farms and villages. Père Le Clercq said the waterway joined another river that emptied into the Great Salt Water but they would not go so far, not even to the falls ahead. They turned off into a creek by a fort and then onto a smaller stream with a dam and two houses. Père Le Clercq had been consulting with people along the way in his curious English pronunciation, and now he informed Simone that both houses belonged to her parents and that one was a mill. Simone, who had of late become spirited and defiant again, grew desperate.

“Ekih! How can I meet these strangers? Let us jump out and run!” she begged Stone Girl.

“Sister. You will live afterward,” Stone Girl told her. “It is not as bad as Angelik, death.”

“If they put their foreign faces close to mine to kiss like the Plantscheman, I will let out Allamuin, the scalp yell.” Simone promised.

“Sister. Otter Boy and I will help you with Allamuin, the scalp yell. Then maybe they will not come too close.”

Both girls huddled in the bateau looking at the scene before them. On the lower side of the mill, water from a turning wheel flashed in the sun. From inside came a continuous roaring like a small Niagara. White dust fine as snow drifted out of the door.

“Sister. What do I do now?” Simone asked.

“It is Gasca, the gauntlet,” Stone Girl said. “You will have to run through.”

A man had come out of the mill door to gaze at the boat, a little man very active for his age, his clothing covered with white dust which could not hide his apple-red cheeks. He stood peering at the approaching bateau, then ran like a youth to the house. In a moment he came out, a woman with him, a plump older woman with a white apron like Madame Corbusier sometimes wore when guests came.