“Why don’t you, now while he cannot help himself—why don’t you go to him and hit him square in the face, like”—her arm flew up, and she smote him with her sunbonnet full between the eyes—“like that!” She ran away, laughing joyously, while Bonaventure sat down and wept with rage and shame.
Day by day he went about his trivial tasks and efforts at pastime with the one great longing that Zoséphine would more kindly let him be her slave, and something—any thing—take ’Thanase beyond reach.
Instead of this ’Thanase got well, and began to have a perceptible down on his cheek and upper lip, to the great amusement of Zoséphine.
“He had better take care,” she said one day to Bonaventure, her eyes leaving their mirth and expanding with sudden seriousness, “or the conscript officer will be after him, though he is but sixteen.”
Unlucky word! Bonaventure’s bruised spirit seized upon the thought. They were on their way even then à la chapelle; and when they got there he knelt before Mary’s shrine and offered the longest and most earnest prayer, thus far, of his life, and rose to his feet under a burden of guilt he had never known before.
It was November. The next day the wind came hurtling over the plains out of the north-west, bitter cold. The sky was all one dark gray. At evening it was raining. Sosthène said, as he sat down to supper, that it was going to pour and blow all night. Chaouache said much the same thing to his wife as they lay down to rest. Farther away from Carancro than many of Carancro’s people had ever wandered, in the fire-lighted public room of a village tavern, twelve or fifteen men were tramping busily about, in muddy boots and big clanking spurs, looking to pistols and carbines of miscellaneous patterns, and securing them against weather under their as yet only damp and slightly bespattered great-coats, no two of which were alike. They spoke to each other sometimes in French, sometimes in English that betrayed a Creole rather than an Acadian accent. A young man with a neat kepi tipped on one side of his handsome head stood with his back to the fire, a sabre dangling to the floor from beneath a captured Federal overcoat. A larger man was telling him a good story. He listened smilingly, dropped the remnant of an exhausted cigarette to the floor, put his small, neatly booted foot upon it, drew from his bosom one of those silken tobacco-bags that our sisters in war-time used to make for all the soldier boys, made a new cigarette, lighted it with the flint and tinder for which the Creole smokers have such a predilection, and put away his appliances, still hearkening to the story. He nodded his head in hearty approval as the tale was finished. It was the story of Sosthène, Chaouache, ’Thanase, and the jayhawkers. He gathered up his sabre and walked out, followed by the rest. A rattle of saddles, a splashing of hoofs, and then no sound was heard but the wind and the pouring rain. The short column went out of the village at full gallop.
Day was fully come when Chaouache rose and stepped out upon his galérie. He had thought he could venture to sleep in bed such a night; and, sure enough, here morning came, and there had been no intrusion. ’Thanase, too, was up. It was raining and blowing still. Across the prairie, as far as the eye could reach, not a movement of human life could be seen. They went in again, made a fire of a few fagots and an armful of cotton-seed, hung the kettle, and emptied the old coffee from the coffee-pot.
The mother and children rose and dressed. The whole family huddled around the good, hot, cotton-seed fire. No one looked out of window or door; in such wind and rain, where was the need? In the little log stable hard by, the two favorite saddle-horses remained unsaddled and unbridled. The father’s and son’s pistol-belts, with revolvers buttoned in their holsters, hung on the bedposts by the headboards of their beds. A long sporting rifle leaned in a corner near the chimney.
Chaouache and ’Thanase got very busy plaiting a horse-hair halter, and let time go by faster than they knew. Madame Chaouache, so to call her, prepared breakfast. The children played with the dog and cat. Thus it happened that still nobody looked out into the swirling rain. Why should they? Only to see the wide deluged plain, the round drenched groves, the maraises and sinuous coolées shining with their floods, and long lines of benumbed, wet cattle seeking in patient, silent Indian file for warmer pastures. They knew it all by heart.
Yonder farthest île is Sosthène’s. The falling flood makes it almost undiscernible. Even if one looked, he would not see that a number of horsemen have come softly plashing up to Sosthène’s front fence, for Sosthène’s house and grove are themselves in the way. They spy Bonaventure. He is just going in upon the galérie with an armful of China-tree fagots. Through their guide and spokesman they utter, not the usual halloo, but a quieter hail, with a friendly beckon.