"Ba'teese catch the nex' train to Tabernacle so soon as we have finish our business. Eet is for no good."
"I wonder—" it was a hope, but a faint one—"if she could be coming back to make amends, Ba'tiste? That—that other thing seemed so unlike the person who had been so good to me, so apart from the side of her nature that I knew—"
"She have a bad mouth," Ba'tiste repeated grimly. "She have a bad eye, she have a bad tongue. A woman with a bad tongue, she is a devil. You—you no see it, because she come to you with a smile, when every one else, he frown. You think she is the angel, yes, oui? But she come to Ba'teese different. She talk to you sof' and she try to turn you against your frien'. Yes. Oui? Ne c'est pas? Ba'teese see her with the selfish mouth. Peuff! He see her when she look to heem out from the corner of her eye—so. Ba'teese know. Ba'teese come back quick, to keep watch!"
"I guess you're right, Ba'tiste. It won't do any harm. If she's returned for a good purpose, very well. If not, we're at least prepared for her."
With that resolution they went on to Denver, there to seek out the few friends Ba'tiste possessed, to argue one of them into a loan of ten thousand dollars on the land and trustworthy qualities which formed the total of Ba'tiste's resources, to gain from the other the necessary bond to cover the contract,—a contract which Barry Houston knew only too well might never be fulfilled. But against this fear was the booming enthusiasm of Ba'tiste Renaud:
"Nev' min'. Somehow we do eet. Ah, oui! Somehow. If we make the failure, then it shall be Ba'teese who will fin' the way to pay the bond. Now, Ba'teese, he go back."
"Yes, and keep watch on that woman. She's out here for something'—I feel sure of it—something that has to do with Thayer. Before you go, however, make the rounds of the employment agencies and tell them to send you every man they can spare, up to a hundred. We'll give them work to the extent of five thousand dollars. They ought to be able to get enough timber down to keep us going for a while anyway—especially with the roads iced."
"Ah. Oui. It is the three o'clock. Bon voyage, mon Baree!"
It was the first time Ba'tiste Renaud ever had dropped the conventional "M'sieu" in addressing Houston, and Barry knew, without the telling, without the glowing light in the old man's eyes, that at least a part of the great loneliness in the trapper's heart had departed, that he had found a place there in a portion of the aching spot left void by a shrapnel-shattered son to whom a father had called that night in the ruined cathedral,—and called in vain. It caused a queer pang of exquisite pain in Houston's heart, a joy too great to be expressed by the reflexes of mere pleasure. Long after the train had left Denver, he still thought of it, he still heard the old man's words, he still sat quiet and peaceful in a new enthusiasm of hope. The world was not so blank, after all. One man, at least, believed in him fully.
Came Chicago and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing, Houston went onward toward Boston.