"What are you here for?" roared Leroux, but in a quavering voice that did not sound like his own. "Get out of the way or I'll smash your face!"
The Indian still blocked the passage. "Your time come now, Simon. All finish now," he answered.
Simon drew back a pace and watched him, and I heard him breathing like one who has run a race.
"You come here one, two year ago," Pierre continued. "You eat up home of M. Duchaine, my master. Old M. Duchaine my master, too. I belong here. You eat up all, come back, eat up some more. Then you sell Mlle. Jacqueline to Louis d'Epernay. You made her run 'way to New York. I ask your diable when your time come. Your diable he say wait. I wait. Mlle. Jacqueline come back. I ask your diable again. He say wait some more. Now your diable tell me he send you here to-night because your time come, and all finish now."
The face that Simon turned on me was not in the least like his own. It was that of a hopeless man who knows that everything he had prized is lost. He had never cowered before anyone in his life, I think, but he cowered now before Pierre Caribou.
"Hewlett!" he cried in a high-pitched, quavering voice, "help me throw this old fool out of the way."
I spoke to Pierre. "Our quarrel is at an end," I said. "I am going away. You must go, too."
Pierre Caribou did not relax an inch of ground.
Then a roar burst from Leroux's lips, and he flung himself upon the Indian in the same desperate way as I had experienced, and in an instant the two men were struggling at the edge of the platform.
It was impossible for me to intervene, and I could only stand by and stare in horror. And, as I stared, I saw the face of Lacroix among the rocks again, peering out, with an evil smile upon his lips.