“Let wife carry fire,” said the woman, burning with a desire to follow her lord.
“That ’ud be a pretty caper,” responded old Mitre, “fur all of us to go away and let the red thieves steal every thing we’ve got. Not another word out of ye, woman; I’m goin’ alone, an’ if I see your eyes in the woods, I’ll put a bloody spot atween them.”
Cowed by this threat the dusky wife relapsed into silence, and the trader walked from the Post.
“I’m goin’ to see the endin’ o’ this love-talk,” he muttered, as he hurried toward the river. “I’ve never listened to them yit; but I can’t resist the temptation to listen now, for I tell ye somethin’s in the wind, when a young gal goes out with a pistol to meet her lover.”
The twilight had faded now, the goddess of night had crept up from the horizon, bathing the trysting-spot and adjacent stream in crystalline light.
Mitre St. Pierre crept down the river-bank, toward the giant cottonwood. The shadows that the great trees threw shielded him from observation. The cottonwood stood some distance from its neighbors.
“So you are here at last, mon ami. I feared that you would not obey my request.”
There was an unwonted tone to the British major’s voice, and his face wore a deathly pallor in the moonlight.
Effie St. Pierre noted all this before she spoke.