This spoiling of Assyrian camps, so to speak, often detained Mr. Tarbox within limited precincts for days at a time; but “Isn’t that what time is for?” he would say to those he had been dealing with, as he finally snapped the band around his pocket-book; and they would respond, “Yes, that’s so.”
And then he would wish them a hearty farewell, while they were thinking that at least he might know it was his treat.
Thus it was the middle of February when at Houma, the parish seat of Terrebonne, he passed the last rootlet of railway, and, standing finally under the blossoming orange-trees of Terrebonne Bayou far down toward the Gulf, heard from the chief of the engineering party that Claude was not with him.
“He didn’t leave us; we left him; and up to the time when we left he hadn’t decided where he would go or what he would do. His father and he are together, you know, and of course that makes it harder for them to know just how to move.”
The speaker was puzzled. What could this silk-hatted, cut-away-coated, empearled, free lance of a fellow want with Claude? He would like to find out. So he added, “I may get a letter from him to-morrow; suppose you stay with me until then.” And, to his astonishment, Mr. Tarbox quickly jumped at the proposition.
No letter came. But when the twenty-four hours had passed, the surveyor had taken that same generous—not to say credulous—liking for Mr. Tarbox that we have seen him show for St. Pierre and for Claude. He was about to start on a tour of observation eastward through a series of short canals that span the shaking prairies from bayou to bayou, from Terrebonne to Lafourche, Lafourche to Des Allemands, so through Lake Ouacha into and up Barataria, again across prairie, and at length, leaving Lake Cataouaché on the left, through cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. He would have pressed Mr. Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged skiff, with a stalwart negro rowing or towing whenever the sail was not the best.
“It’s all of sixty miles,” said the engineer; “but if the wind doesn’t change or drop we can sleep to-night in Achille’s hut, send this man and skiff back, and make Achille, with his skiff, put us on board the Louisiana-avenue ferry-launch to-morrow afternoon.”
“Who is Achille?”
“Achille? Oh! he’s merely a ’Cajun pot-hunter living on a shell bank at the edge of Lake Cataouaché, with an Indian wife. Used to live somewhere on Bayou des Allemands, but last year something or other scared him away from there. He’s odd—seems to be a sort of self-made outcast. I don’t suppose he’s ever done anybody any harm; but he just seems to be one of that kind that can’t bear to even try to keep up with the rest of humanity; the sort of man swamps and shaking prairies were specially made for, you know. He’s living right on top of a bank of fossil shells now,—thousands of barrels of them,—that he knows would bring him a little fortune if only he could command the intelligence and the courage to market them in New Orleans. There’s a chance for some bright man who isn’t already too busy. Why didn’t I think to mention it to Claude? But then neither he nor his father have got the commercial knowledge they would need. Now”—The speaker suddenly paused, and, as the two men sat close beside each other under an umbrella in the stern of the skiff, looked into Mr. Tarbox’s pale-blue eyes, and smiled, and smiled.
“I’m here,” said Mr. Tarbox.