Claudis Beauvois did not turn around in the street to look at any woman, rich or poor, when he left Cahokia, though how he left was not certainly known. Alexis Barbeau and his other associates knew better how their pockets were left.
Oh, yes, Alexis Barbeau was very willing for Celeste to marry Gabriel after that. He provided for them handsomely, and gave presents to each of the young men who had helped to take his daughter from the Puants; and he was so ashamed of the son-in-law he had wanted, that he never could endure to hear the man's name mentioned afterward. Alexis and the tavern-keeper used—when they were taking a social cup together—to hug each other without a word. The fine guest who had lived so long at the auberge and drank so much good wine, which was as fine as any in New Orleans, without expense, was as sore a memory to the poor landlord as to the rich landowner. But Celeste and Gabriel—my mother said when they were married the dancing and fiddling and feasting were kept up an entire week in Caho'.
[Footnote 1: To Cahokia.]
[Footnote 2: To Peoria.]
[Footnote 3: To Kaskaskia.]
[Footnote 4: Cahokian softening of cursed.]
PONTIAC'S LOOKOUT.
Jenieve Lalotte came out of the back door of her little house on Mackinac beach. The front door did not open upon either street of the village; and other domiciles were scattered with it along the strand, each little homestead having a front inclosure palisaded with oaken posts. Wooded heights sent a growth of bushes and young trees down to the pebble rim of the lake.
It had been raining, and the island was fresh as if new made. Boats and bateaux, drawn up in a great semicircle about the crescent bay, had also been washed; but they kept the marks of their long voyages to the Illinois Territory, or the Lake Superior region, or Canada. The very last of the winterers were in with their bales of furs, and some of these men were now roaring along the upper street in new clothes, exhilarated by spending on good cheer in one month the money it took them eleven months to earn. While in "hyvernements," or winter quarters, and on the long forest marches, the allowance of food per day, for a winterer, was one quart of corn and two ounces of tallow. On this fare the hardiest voyageurs ever known threaded a pathless continent and made a great traffic possible. But when they returned to the front of the world,—that distributing point in the straits,—they were fiercely importunate for what they considered the best the world afforded.
A segment of rainbow showed over one end of Round Island. The sky was dull rose, and a ship on the eastern horizon turned to a ship of fire, clean-cut and poised, a glistening object on a black bar of water. The lake was still, with blackness in its depths. The American flag on the fort rippled, a thing of living light, the stripes transparent. High pink clouds were riding down from the north, their flush dying as they piled aloft. There were shadings of peacock colors in the shoal water. Jenieve enjoyed this sunset beauty of the island, as she ran over the rolling pebbles, carrying some leather shoes by their leather strings. Her face was eager. She lifted the shoes to show them to three little boys playing on the edge of the lake.