In the surprise of the revelation she forgot her unease and looked at him, repeating slowly, "L'eau courante, running water. Why, of course. But it's like an Indian's name."
"It is an Indian's name. The Blackfeet gave it to me because they said I could run so fast. They were after me once and a man makes the best time he can then. It was a fine race and I won it, and after that they called me, 'The man that goes like Running Water.' The voyageurs and coureurs des bois put it into their lingo and it stuck."
"But your real name?" she asked, the pail forgotten.
"Just a common French one, Duchesney, Napoleon Duchesney, if you want to know both ends of it. It was my father's. He was called after the emperor whom my grandfather knew years ago in France. He and Napoleon were students together in the military school at Brienne. In the Revolution they confiscated his lands, and he came out to Louisiana and never wanted to go back." He splashed to the stone and took up the bucket.
She stood absorbed in the discovery, her child's mind busy over this new conception of him as a man whose birth and station had evidently been so different to the present conditions of his life. When she spoke her mental attitude was naïvely displayed.
"Why didn't you tell before?"
He shrugged.
"What was there to tell? The mountain men don't always use their own names."
The bucket, swayed by the movement, threw a jet of water on her foot. He moved back from her and said, "I like the Indian name best."
"It is pretty," and in a lower key, as though trying its sound, she repeated softly, "L'eau Courante, Running Water."