In a flash she had passed the two other horses and her dainty hoofs were flinging the soft dirt of the road in their faces. It was more a country lane than a village street, with scattered houses tree-embowered, and just back of Auguste Chouteau's place, which I recognized from the rear, was a church, and behind it the crosses of many graves, and beside it a priest's house with two black-robed priests taking a noonday siesta in comfortable chairs on the shady, vine-covered gallery. They awoke with a start as Fatima thundered by, and the two other horses, now well in the rear, pounded after, and I doubt not they thought it was the beginning of another 1780 affair, so frightened did they look.
It did not take Fatima long to cover that mile and a half, and when I saw that we were approaching the stockade at the end of the road, with only one house between (which, like the Chouteaus', was set in a great yard inclosed with high stone walls), I drew rein under a wide-spreading oak and waited for the others. And as I waited I began once more to wonder what kind of creature Dr. Saugrain's ward could be: the acknowledged belle of St. Louis and now in some extreme danger from a white villain and a rascally Indian, for so I had easily understood Black Hawk's figurative language—the White Wolf and the Red Dog.
I could hear the soft thrumming of a guitar, and a low voice crooning songs, of which I could now and then catch a word of the creole French. I did not doubt it was the doctor's ward who thus beguiled the hours with melody, and I grew vastly impatient to meet the loveliest lady in St. Louis and the sweetest of singers, if I could judge from the snatches of song that floated to my ears.
In a minute more the doctor himself rode up, shouting lustily before he reached the gate, "Narcisse, Narcisse!" which put a sudden end to the music. As a black boy ran out in answer to his call, the doctor sprang as nimbly from his horse as I myself could have done, and flung the boy his reins with a sharp command to take care of the horses. He started swiftly for the house, but stopped suddenly and turned to Narcisse.
"Where are your mistress and mademoiselle?" he asked, in a tone so sharp and excited the boy was frightened and stammered as he answered:
"In the house, sir."
"You are sure?"
"Yes, sir; 'fore God, sir, they're in the living-room this minute."
"Thank God!" ejaculated the doctor, and then I saw, to my astonishment, that he was all white and trembling. He recovered himself in a moment and turned to us with the suavity of a genial host:
"Gentlemen, I fear that rascal Black Hawk has played us a scurvy trick; very likely for reasons of his own he wanted to get rid of me. He has given me a bad quarter of an hour, but otherwise he has only given me the pleasure of welcoming you a little earlier to Émigré's Retreat. Let us go find the ladies."