“Don’t know,” grunted the pale squaw; “must be going to shoot mark.”
“Shoot at mark in the dark?” said St. Pierre. “If it were light, I’d think you right, old woman; but now something’s up. Mebbe she’s goin’ to shoot the major? You know gals—at least they do in our country—take moighty strange notions sometimes.”
The half-breed wife broke into a loud laugh, which she continued until Mitre’s cheek assumed a scarlet hue, the sure precursor of a whirlwind of passion.
“Gal not shoot scarlet soldier,” she said. “Gal love him; not shoot man she loves; Indian gal don’t.”
Old St. Pierre dropped the conversation, rose to his feet and deliberately took his rifle from the wall.
“Where goin’?” asked his wife.
“Fire-huntin’,” was the response, and the speaker picked up a bundle of resinous sticks, prepared for the purpose, from one corner of the apartment.
“Who carry fire?” asked the half-breed, who seemed to divine the motives that prompted her husband’s sudden activity.
“I’ll carry it myself,” gruffly responded St. Pierre.
Effie usually accompanied him on his fire hunts, and bore the torch. But now and then he would take it, while she dropped the noble prey.