“No; to cut our enemies with!” Massawippa replied, with preoccupied eye which noted little the shudder of the European.
“O Massawippa! they may be engaged with the Iroquois even now. Dollard has been gone two days.”
“Have no fear of that, madame. There will be no fighting until Annahotaha reaches the expedition,” assumed the chief’s daughter with a high air most laughable to her superior. And after keen meditation she added: “We might start to-morrow daybreak if we but had our supplies ready.”
“Massawippa,” exclaimed Claire, “how do you barter with merchants? Can we not send for them and buy our provisions at once?”
“Madame, send for the merchants? You make me laugh! Very cautiously will I have to slip from this place to that; and perhaps I cannot then buy all we need, especially with gold louis. They may, however, think coureurs de bois have come to town. And now at dusk is a better time than in broad daylight.”
Claire went in haste to her casket, which stood in the nuns’ parlor, and selected from it things which she might not have the chance of removing later. These she put in her cell, and came back to Massawippa with her hand freighted.
“How much, madame?” the half-breed inquired as pieces were turned with a clink upon her own palm.
“All. Three louis.”
“Take one back, then. Two will be too many, though one might not be enough. Madame, that Frenchman who feeds the nuns’ pigs and tends this fire, he will let me out; and what I buy I will hide outside the Hôtel-Dieu.”