"Pierre Caribou," I said, "wouldn't you like to have the old days back when M. Duchaine was master and there was no Simon Leroux?"
He did not answer me, but I saw his face-muscles twitch. Then he pulled a pipe from his pocket and stuffed it with a handful of coarse tobacco. He handed it to me and struck a match and held it to the bowl.
When the tobacco was alight he took another pipe and began smoking also.
I had not smoked for days, and I inhaled the rank tobacco-fumes through the old pipe gratefully. I was smoking, with an Indian, and that meant what it has always meant. A black cloud seemed to have been lifted from my mind. And I was not trembling any more.
But how warily I was reaching out toward my companion.
"Pierre, I came here to save Mlle. Jacqueline," I said.
"No can save him," he answered. "No can fight against Simon."
"What, in the devil's name, is his power, then?" I cried.
"Le diable," he replied. He may have misunderstood me, but the answer was apt. "No use fight him," he said. "All finish now. Old times, him finish, and my gal, too. Soon Pierre Caribou, him finish. No can fight Simon. Perhaps old Pierre kill him, nobody else." He looked steadily at me. "I poison him dogs," he added.
"What?" I exclaimed.