Three Iroquois, who had hidden themselves in the wheat at a distance of two musket shots from the fort, fell upon her unexpectedly. She defended herself like a lioness, fighting with her hands and feet. To quell her loud cries for help they gave her three or four stunning blows with their axes. Thinking her dead, as she sank to the ground, one of them threw himself over the prostrate body to take her scalp as his trophy, when suddenly our Amazon, coming to herself, raised herself, more furious than ever, seized him with such violence "par un endroit que la pudeur nous défend de nommer," that he could not free himself, although he did not cease striking her with the head of the axe. But she held on tightly, until at last she fell to the ground exhausted, thus affording her assailant what he most wanted at that moment, an opportunity to escape from the relief party now running from all parts of the fort to her rescue.
On reaching the spot where the poor woman lay bathed in her blood, one of the men assisting her to rise, moved by a natural sentiment of friendship and compassion, embraced her. But this seems to have made her confused, for she administered a sound slap in the face of this affectionate sympathizer, to the great surprise of the bystanders, who exclaimed: "What are you doing? This man was only showing his sympathy to you, without any thought of ill. Why do you strike him?"
"Par menda!" she exclaimed in her _patois_. "I thought he wanted to kiss me!"
Madame Primot did not die, but she was long afterwards known as "Parmenda," whose valour and modesty were lovingly held in tradition, as typical of the noble women of these early pioneering days, in which virtue and courage flourished side by side.
The severe treatment received at Montreal turned the Iroquois to Three Rivers, and in a skirmish on August 19th they killed the governor, M. Duplessis Kerbodot.
In October, however, Montreal was the scene of fresh fighting. Dollier de Casson has rescued the story of this from oblivion, from so many others not recorded.
On the 19th of this month, the barking of the dogs indicated the direction of an Iroquois ambuscade. The brave town major, Lambert Closse, ever ready to fly to the post of peril, started out at once with twenty-four armed men to reconnoitre the situation. But though brave, he was prudent; he therefore sent three of his soldiers ahead. La Lochetière,[69] Baston (or Bastoin) and another, ordering them to proceed within gunshot no further than a certain position marked out by him. La Lochetière, however, in his eagerness pushed a little ahead of his companions, and the more easily to discover the whereabouts of the enemy, he climbed a tree, intending to discover from this lookout if the enemy were hiding in a thicket.