Riotously, exuberantly the frolic began. Blood pulsed hotly. Feet were free. Lips were ready. The Nor'westers' wives, the French-Canadian girls, the halfbreed women swung madly through the square and string dances with the Brondel men of their choice.
God of it all, Baptiste smiled perpetually over the tumult, quickening his music to a faster time, quivering the violin's fibres with sonorous volume. Mad hornpipes he shrilled out, sailors' tunes which Pete Connear stepped till the rafters shook with the clatter. Snappy reels he unwound in which Terence Burke led, throwing antics of Irish abandon that convulsed the throng. Also, Baptiste voiced the songs he loved, airs of his own race, dances he had whirled in old years with the belles of the Chaudiere and the Gatineau.
Out of sympathy for the prisoners, Glyndon and Follet, when all the amusement was going on above, Bruce Dunvegan had ordered them to be brought up. For the one evening they were allowed the freedom of the fort, but wherever they went two Indian guards stalked always at their elbows.
And Glyndon went most frequently where the rum flowed freest. After the abstinence imposed by confinement since the week-long debauch his thirst was a parching one. Half fuddled, he met Desirée threading her way through the crowd. He put out both hands awkwardly to bar her progress.
"What do you want?" she cried, drawing suddenly back as she would recoil from a snake.
"You," Glyndon answered thickly. "Can a man not speak with his wife?"
"Wife!" Desirée echoed. "Go find one of your halfbreed wenches. Speak with her!"
Disgust, contempt, revulsion were in Desirée's voice and manner. She darted aside and avoided him in the crowd.
Yet again he found her seated at a table between Dunvegan and Basil Dreaulond where she thought to be secure. He threw his arms about her neck, attempting a maudlin kiss, but instead of meeting her full, red lips his own insipid mouth met Dreaulond's great paw, swiftly thrust out to close upon his blotched cheekbones and whirl him into a seat on the courier's other side.
"Ba gosh, ma fren', you ain' be fit for kiss no woman," Basil observed sternly. "You got be mooch sobaire first. Eh, mon ami? Sit ver' still—dat's w'at I said."