"Forty thousand acres make a big grant," cried Doby, much relieved by his country's bit of justice toward these men. "A large colony can live well on that much land."
"Ha!" shrugged Ol' Pap Soisson. "With that we take courage. By day we learn the so necessary agriculture. By night we fiddle, step to measure, sing the 'Marseillaise.' On Sunday, to preserve respect to ourselves and to honor the Virgin, we say a mass and make a toilette of fashionable attire."
Doby stared. "Do you mean to tell me that you dressed up in your city wigs and furbelows? In the wilderness?" he demanded.
"Of a certainty, yes! We love the good appearance. We want the laughter and the social life. Arrayed, I promenade the street for pleasure. A wild red heathen with a hatchet comes from behind and scalps me of my holiday wig, my best one!"
"No!" cried Doby. "No!"
"Yes! Yes!" bobbing his head a dozen times, the Frenchman insisted. "Yes! Yes!" He added: "The land is full of game. To pursue it is to live well. But see! for a quarter of a century I run from bear, from deer, from charging buffalo. Never do I pursue. Ever I am the pursued one. Of meat I taste little; of game nothing." He shook his head. "Now—have the young men of our kind learned the pioneering. We old mastered it not."
Doby was shocked. Such robbery and disappointment worried him. He looked to his father to say something cheery to the plucky little man.
Mr. Holman, big and brawny, equal to any demand of frontier life, gazed kindly at Ol' Pap Soisson, who had found its trials almost too much for him. "We will give you a taste of game to-day. Go, Doby, and shoot that gobbler we have been hearing."
"But, pa," protested Doby, "wild turkey isn't good in the spring. Nobody eats it."
"It will be good if your ma cooks it. I know some one who can eat it," and he smiled at the Frenchman.