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The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured near his former patron. It might be the engineer could give him work whereby to earn a day's ready money. He was not disappointed. The engineer told him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the pot-hunter knew so well, across the swamps and prairies to Bayou Terrebonne and the little court-house town of Houma.
All the boats had been tied up securely, and a mongrel lot of new men had joined the Spanish force, shiftless and half-civilized Houma and Natchez Indians, coal black negroes, some from the West Indies and some from Africa, Acadians, and fierce-looking adventurers from Europe. Most of them seemed to be laborers, however, and they worked with the arms and baggage taken from the boats.
The Acadian was confirmed in his conviction that the surveyor's invitation for him to come to Houma was part of a plot to entrap him. While he still looked the two men got into the canoe and St. Pierre paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter let down the hammer of his gun, shrank away again, turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his canoe, and paddled off.
She replied in the same Acadian French in which she was questioned, that there dwelt, or had dwelt, and about two weeks ago had died, "Monsieur Robichaux." The pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, his canoe shot on, and two hours later he walked with dust-covered feet into Houma.
Thus it was the middle of February when at Houma, the parish seat of Terrebonne, he passed the last rootlet of railway, and, standing finally under the blossoming orange-trees of Terrebonne Bayou far down toward the Gulf, heard from the chief of the engineering party that Claude was not with him.
Then was heard the crashing plunging sound of the paddle-wheels as they beat the brown water, and then the ringing of the bell, and the shouts of command passing from captain to mate, and from mate to "deck hands," and in five minutes after, the "Houma" Red River-boat, lay side by side with the old "Sultana."
The time had now arrived for unbosoming myself, and half-an-hour after Eugene D'Hauteville knew the story of my love. I confided to him all that had occurred from the time of my leaving New Orleans, up to the period of our meeting upon the Houma. My interview with the banker Brown, and my fruitless search that day for Aurore, were also detailed.
"I am going down to the city, and have come here to wait for a boat. Is it likely one will pass to-night?" "Sure, massa sure be a boat dis night. Bossy 'spect a boat from de Red ribber dis berry night either de Houma or de Choctuma."
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