In all these councils, Ruby Roland acted as interpreter and chief at once of her dusky delegation, and the intercourse between her and the American leader was constant and quite familiar. The girl invariably insisted on the presence of father Gibault, who had become an ardent ally of the Americans, and the counsels of the two were of the utmost use to Clark, in the novel position in which he found himself placed.
And all this while the backwoods leader, who had been at the very first struck by Ruby’s beauty, found himself falling quickly and surely into the meshes of a love-net, from which it was impossible to extricate himself.
Ruby, whose manner toward him had been cold and distant at first, had retained her coldness, varied by bursts of great apparent friendliness, in public.
But on one or two occasions, when Clark had endeavored, at the close of business, to engage her in conversation, she had invariably repelled him with the utmost haughtiness. While father Gibault was present, she would talk freely, displaying all the graces of a cultivated woman; but to Clark alone she was as cold and cutting as a north-west wind.
Ruby Roland was indeed a strange compound of civilization and barbarism. Father Gibault himself, who had given her the greater part of her education, was often puzzled at her moods. The Indian warrior and the polished lady were about equally mixed in her manner. Of the humble, submissive squaw there was no trace, for dignity and pride were in every motion.
At last Clark grew desperate. It was at the end of the last council, on the day when Bowman returned from Cahokia, when a final treaty of peace and amity had been concluded between the tribes of the Wabash on the one hand, and the Americans on the other. When the chiefs rose to depart, after shaking hands with the colonel, Clark laid his hand on Ruby’s arm, as she was about to follow them, and said, in a clear voice:
“Mademoiselle Roland, with the chief’s daughter my business is over. With the French lady I desire a few minutes’ conversation.”
Ruby looked at him from head to foot as she withdrew her arm from his touch.
“You can not be much acquainted with French customs, monsieur,” she said, icily, “if you are not aware that unmarried girls do not hold conversation with bachelors, alone.”
“I invite father Gibault to be present,” said the Kentuckian, steadily determined not to be beaten. “There can be no impropriety in our talking before your religious instructor.”