The cold set the miry roads like cement, in ruts and ridges. A flurry of
snow came and powdered the roofs even as the French loaves are powdered.

It was January. There was Colonel Clark on a runt of an Indian pony; Tom
McChesney on another, riding ahead, several French gentlemen seated on
stools in a two-wheeled cart, and myself. We were going to Cahokia, and
it was very cold, and when the tireless wheels bumped from ridge to
gully, the gentlemen grabbed each other as they slid about, and laughed.

All at once the merriment ceased, and looking forward we saw that Tom had
leaped from his saddle and was bending over something in the snow. These
chanced to be the footprints of some twenty men.

The immediate result of this alarming discovery was that Tom went on
express to warn Captain Bowman, and the rest of us returned to a painful
scene at Kaskaskia. We reached the village, the French gentlemen leaped
down from their stools in the cart, and in ten minutes the streets were
filled with frenzied, hooded figures. Hamilton, called the Hair Buyer,
was upon them with no less than six hundred, and he would hang them to
their own gateposts for listening to the Long Knives. These were but a
handful after all was said. There was Father Gibault, for example.
Father Gibault would doubtless be exposed to the crows in the belfry of
his own church because he had busied himself at Vincennes and with other
matters. Father Gibault was human, and therefore lovable. He bade his
parishioners a hasty and tearful farewell, and he made a cold and painful
journey to the territories of his Spanish Majesty across the Mississippi.

Father Gibault looked back, and against the gray of the winter's twilight
there were flames like red maple leaves. In the fort the men stood to