The half-breed looked down upon him with a twitching face. "What hinders me from killing you now?" he demanded, with a backward look at the road. "None may pass for many minutes."
Haward lay back upon the moss, with his hands locked beneath his head. "What indeed?" he answered calmly. "Come, here is a velvet log, fit seat for an emperor—or a sachem; sit and tell me of your life in the woods. For peace pipe let me offer my snuffbox." In his mad humor he sat up again, drew from his pocket, and presented with the most approved flourish, his box of chased gold. "Monsieur, c'est le tabac pour le nez d'un inonarque," he said lazily.
Hugon sat down upon the log, helped himself to the mixture with a grand air, and shook the yellow dust from his ruffles. The action, meant to be airy, only achieved fierceness. From some hidden sheath he drew a knife, and began to strip from the log a piece of bark. "Tell me, you," he said. "Have you been to France? What manner of land is it?"
"A gay country," answered Haward; "a land where the men are all white, and where at present, periwigs are worn much shorter than the one monsieur affects."
"He is a great brave, a French gentleman? Always he kills the man he hates?"
"Not always," said the other. "Sometimes the man he hates kills him."
By now one end of the piece of bark in the trader's hands was shredded to tinder. He drew from his pocket his flint and steel, and struck a spark into the frayed mass. It flared up, and he held first the tips of his fingers, then the palm of his hand, then his bared forearm, in the flame that licked and scorched the flesh. His face was perfectly unmoved, his eyes unchanged in their expression of hatred. "Can he do this?" he asked.
"Perhaps not," said Haward lightly. "It is a very foolish thing to do."
The flame died out, and the trader tossed aside the charred bit of bark. "There was old Pierre at Monacan-Town who taught me to pray to le bon Dieu. He told me how grand and fine is a French gentleman, and that I was the son of many such. He called the English great pigs, with brains as dull and muddy as the river after many rains. My mother was the daughter of a chief. She had strings of pearl for her neck, and copper for her arms, and a robe of white doeskin, very soft and fine. When she was dead and my father was dead, I came from Monacan-Town to your English school over yonder. I can read and write. I am a white man and a Frenchman, not an Indian. When I go to the villages in the woods, I am given a lodge apart, and the men and women gather to hear a white man speak.... You have done me wrong with that girl, that Ma'm'selle Audrey that I wish for wife. We are enemies: that is as it should be. You shall not have her,—never, never! But you despise me; how is that? That day upon the creek, that night in your cursed house, you laughed"—
The Haward of the mountain pass, regarding the twitching face opposite him and the hand clenched upon the handle of a knife, laughed again. At the sound the trader's face ceased to twitch. Haward felt rather than saw the stealthy tightening of the frame, the gathering of forces, the closer grasp upon the knife, and flung out his arm. A hare scurried past, making for the deeper woods. From the road came the tramp of a horse and a man's voice, singing,—