“I know a story that’s a fact,” said he. “It’s about a friend of mine—one of the best friends I ever had, I reckon. At least he never went back on me. Shall I tell it?”
“Go ahead,” said I.
And this is the story he told me:
“My friend’s name is Narcisse. I knew him when he was just a little shaver. I knew his mother and his father. In fact I was, at one time, just like one of the family.
“Narcisse was a wild sort of a boy always, though I do think his heart was in the right place, as they say. Never betrayed a friend, never stole, and never knuckled to an enemy. But he was a wild boy and didn’t stay at home much after he was in his first ’teens. Knocked about the world considerable, Narcisse did, and wound up out here in this God-forsaken end of creation. Worked on a cordelle gang, handled mackinaws, hammered pack mules, fought Indians, starved and feasted, froze and toasted, like all the others who come out here. Entered the fur trade as engagé of the Company, and was sent to a post up river.
“Now if there was a weak spot in Narcisse, it was his leaning toward womenfolks. None of your fooling, though! Narcisse loved just like he’d fight—pretty serious, you know. When he said a thing, Narcisse he meant that; and when he wanted to do something real bad, he did that—O, spite of hell he did that! You know the breed? Well, that was Narcisse.
“There was an old French trader living at a post further up—old man Desjardins. He had a daughter—Paulette—by an Indian woman who died when the girl was just a baby, and the old man raised her somehow—God knows how—till she grew to be about the prettiest girl you’d see anywhere in a year’s tramp, being a good walker. Old man doted on the girl, and until she was full-grown there wasn’t anybody could come nigh enough to her to make a sweet grin effective. But once Narcisse and his friend, Jacques Baptiste, got snowed in there on one of their trips.
“Now them two, Jacques and Narcisse, was about the best friends you ever saw, I reckon. They never had any secrets from one another; and many’s the time they had split the last bit of grub on long winter trails, and made a feast of that little; because there isn’t any feast better than a little grub split between friends, is there?
“Now Paulette was a slender little creature with black eyes and lots of black hair. Lots of hair! That makes a woman fetching, don’t you think so? Well, Narcisse and Jacques sang old French songs during the blizzard, and kind of got into the old man’s heart like. Nothing like old-time songs to fetch a man when he’s got to that place where there isn’t any way to look but back. So the old man made ’em welcome and said for ’em to come back when they could.
“On the trip from old man Desjardins’ place to Pierre, them two friends talked pretty frank, like they always did. Both of ’em was in love, and neither of ’em was ashamed of it. Told each other so.