Chance was disposed to be in a good humor. I had scarcely stepped into the crowd when I saw Pierre.
I went to him knowing that I should find opportunity for reproof, but should probably lack the will. For Pierre was my harlequin, and what man can easily censure his own amusements even when he sees their harm? Then there was more to make me lenient. The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had builded in our yews, and so, on one side at least, he inherited blind loyalty to my name. I say on one side, for his blood was mixed; his father had married a vagrant, a half-gypsy Irish girl who begged among the villages. It was the union of a stolid ox and a wildcat, and I had much amusement watching the two breeds fight for the mastery in the huge Pierre. The cat was quicker of wit, but the ox was of more use to me in the long run, so I tried to keep an excess of stimulants—whether of brandy or adventure—out of Pierre's way.
He was a figure for Bacchus when I found him, and I pricked at him with my sword, and drove him to the water, where I saw him well immersed.
"Now for quick work," I admonished. "I must see the commandant, but only for a moment. You gather the men, and have the canoes in waiting. There will be no tobacco for you to-night, if you are not ready when I come."
He shook the water from his red locks, and wagged his head in much more docile fashion than I had expected. "My master cannot go too fast for me," he said, with a twist of his great protruding lip. "I have no liking for white meat broth myself."
He drew back like one who has hit a bull's-eye and waited for me to ask questions, but I thought that I knew my man, and laughed at his childishness.
"No more of that!" I said with perfunctory sternness. "What pot-house rabble of Indians have you been with that you should prattle of making broth of white men, and dare bring such speech to me as a jest! That is not talk for civilized men, and if you repeat it I shall send you back to France. You are more familiar with the savages than I like a man of mine to be. Remember that, Pierre. Now go."
But he lingered. "It is no pot-house story," he defended sulkily.
"The Ottawas say they will go to war if the prisoner is not put in the
pot before to-morrow morning. And what can the commandant do? The
Ottawas are two thousand strong."
I knew, without comment, that he was telling me the truth, and I stood still. The din of the dancing and feasting was growing more and more uproarious, and the Indians were ripe for any insanity. I saw that the sun was already casting long shadows, and that the night would be on us before many hours. I looked at the garrison. Two hundred Frenchmen all told, and most of them half-hearted when it came to defending an Englishman and a foe! I turned to my man.
"You have been with an Ottawa girl, called Singing Arrow," I said.
"Are you bringing me some woman's tale you learned from her?"