Rene picked up his cap and bolted out of the house.
CHAPTER III
THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN
The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so far as results seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame jeanne of fine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair had seized and run off with at the height of the carousal. He must have been soberer than his pursuers, or naturally fleeter; for not one of them could catch him, or even keep long in sight of him. Some pistols were emptied while the race was on, and two or three of the men swore roundly to having seen Long-Hair jump sidewise and stagger, as if one of the shots had taken effect. But, although the moon was shining, he someway disappeared, they could not understand just how, far down beside the river below the fort and the church.
It was not a very uncommon thing for an Indian to steal what he wanted, and in most cases light punishment followed conviction; but it was felt to be a capital offense for an Indian or anybody else to rape a demijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as a present, by a friend in New Orleans, to Lieutenant Governor Abbott, who had until recently been the commandant of the post. Every man at the river house recognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was, for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He had broken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond of sympathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in his daring enterprise. He had beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed all the conditions, and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that a little wicker covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of his life. So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping out and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a sudden end; but nothing further came of it that night, and no record of it would be found in these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hair afterwards became an important character in the stirring historical drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived at the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join in chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to the story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and could not refrain from saying that if he had been present there would have been a quite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said, drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aiming quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with the pantomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course,—the ball burying itself in the door-jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced and grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of backwoods English: