Mattie Mitchell Read Online Free Page B

snow-covered alpine
meadow, he paused. He had not stopped for a rest since he had
shrugged the dead beaver into place onto his broad shoulders
miles back. Weary and nearing the place where he would find
rest, Mattie scanned the deep, white valley below him. He
couldn’t see the river that ran the length of the winter valley,
but he knew it was there, even without hearing the sound of its
waters rising and falling on the evening breeze. What he could
see of the distant elevation through the misty rain showed a dark
blue. It was another sure sign of a mild spell. Maybe it was time
to leave for the coast, he thought.
    The man who stood looking down into the wet, misty valley
was tall. He was several inches taller than six feet. His small,
far-seeing eyes were dark, like the deep colour of a perfectly
cured pine marten hide. His face was long and angular, and his
full head of thick black hair fell matted below his ears. His jaws
and well-defined cheekbones were clean of facial hair, though heseldom shaved. His mouth was full, below a straight, full nose
that belied his ancestry. Mattie Mitchell was a handsome man.
He looked as if some hidden gene had been lodged in his veins,
producing in his features, for all to see, the link of his mysterious
lineage.
    Mattie was of Mi’kmaq/Montagnais Indian descent. He was a
revered chieftain among his people. He had “royal” blood in his
veins. His bloodline reached back into the realms of pre-recorded
history. The tales of his breed had been passed down through
long generations beside countless campfires in wonderfully told
accounts by those who knew and who believed.
    He was the descendant of an ancient nomadic people who
had roamed the steppes of a far eastern land. The land bridge
that had kept the earth’s greatest land mass as one allowed his
magnificent, wandering, fearless ancestors access to a land of
wonders. In his veins coursed the blood of ageless corsairs for
whom distant oceans were never a barrier. He was truly a man of
the earth. He was timeless.
    A brief rest slowed his pulsating blood as his wet clothing
cooled him. Knowing he would get a chill with a prolonged stop,
he moved away from the rim of the valley. A few long strides
took him across a narrow meadow and to the edge of the dripping
woods beyond.
    He was about to enter a faint trace, his right hand lifting a
snow-sodden alder branch out of his way, when a distant, muffled
boom thudded up through the valley behind him. Mattie froze
but didn’t turn his head toward the sound. For several minutes he
waited, listening for the sound to come again.
    When it came again he turned, and before the sound had
faded away he was standing once more on the valley edge. It had
come from the direction of the sea just a few miles away to the
west. Despite the high mountains with their deep valleys, therewas no following echo from the loud noise, just a dull roar that
hung for a while in the damp air before dissipating.
    It was a ship’s cannon fire. Mattie was as sure of that as if he
had been standing on the coastline watching the white men play
with their modern weapons. He had heard the sound many times
before and had once been witness to a strange event involving the
big black guns.

    IT HAD BEEN A QUIET , WARM SUNDAY morning that summer
past. Mattie had decided to attend Mass in his small village. The
Catholic Church had always played a big part in the lives of his
people. It was a friendship that had begun long before Mattie’s
time, across the water on the mainland of Canada.
    The native peoples of that vast land to the westward had no
say in the forced occupation of their country by warring nations
of white men. The two nations that were the most vicious in their
dominance of so much natural virgin wealth were the English
and the French. These two neighbouring countries had fought
against each other for centuries on the east side of the Atlantic
and now sought to extend their battlefield. They