“She says she will not see you, Charle',” said Mademoiselle Laboise, color like sunset vermilion showing in the delicate aboriginal face.
“What have I done?” gasped the voyageur.
Mademoiselle lifted French shoulders with her father's gesture. She did not know.
“Did I expect to be treated this way?” shouted the injured husband.
“Who can ever tell what 'Tite will do next?”
That was the truth. No one could tell. Yet her flightiest moods were her most alluring moods. If she had not been so pretty and so adroit at dodging whippings when a child, 'Tite Laboise might not have set Mackinac by the ears as often as she did. But her husband could not comfort himself with this thought as he turned to the shop of madame her aunt, who was also a trader.
It had surprised the Indian widow, who betrothed her own daughter to the commandant of the fort, that her husband's niece would have nobody but that big voyageur Charle' Charette. Though in those days of the young century a man might become anything; for the West was before him, an empire, and woodcraft was better than learning. Madame Laboise accepted her niece's husband with kindness. Her house was among the most hospitable in Mackinac, and she was chagrined at the reception the young man had met.
He sat down on her counter, whirling his cap and caressing the black feather in it. The gentle Chippewa woman could see that his childish pride in this trophy was almost as great as his trouble. What had 'Tite lacked? he wanted to know. Had he not good credit at the stores? Tonnerre!—if madame would pardon him—was not his entire year's wage at the girl's service? Had he spent money on himself, except for tobacco and necessary buckskins? Madame knew a voyageur was allowed to carry scarce twenty pounds of baggage in the boats.
Did 'Tite want a better man? Let madame look at the black feather in his cap. The crow did not fly that could furnish a quill he could not take from any man in his brigade. Charle' threw out the arch of his beautiful torso. And he loved her. Madame knew what tears he had shed, what serenades he had played on his fiddle under 'Tite's window, and how he had outdanced her other partners. He dropped his head on his breast and picked at the crow's feather.
The widow Laboise pitied him. But who could account for 'Tite's whims? “When she heard the boats were in sight she was frantic with joy. I myself,” asserted madame, “saw her clapping her hands when we could catch the song of the returning voyageurs. It was then 'Oh, my Charle'! my Charle'!' But scarce have the men leaped on the dock when off she goes and locks the door of her bedroom. It is 'Tite. I can say no more.”