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Updated: May 24, 2025
"M'sieu, on that raft out there are many of my men, and they have scarcely rested or slept since word was brought to them that a stranger was to fight Concombre Bateese. Tonnerre, they have gambled without ever seeing you until the clothes on their backs are in the hazard, and they have cracked their muscles in labor to overtake you!
He was in a gulf of blackness that writhed with the spirits of torment. He fought them and cried out against them, and his fighting and his cries brought the look of death itself into the eyes of the girl who was over him. He did not hear her voice nor feel the soothing of her hands, nor the powerful grip of Bateese as he held him when the critical moments came.
I asked him where you were, and I think he told me to shut up." "Bateese is very odd," said St. Pierre's wife. "He is exceedingly jealous of me, M'sieu David. Even when I was a baby and he carried me about in his arms, he was just that way. Bateese, you know, is older than he appears. He is fifty-one."
The half-breed had worked himself up to a ferocious pitch. His eyes rolled. His wide mouth snarled in the virulence of its speech. His thick neck grew corded, and his huge hands clenched menacingly upon the table. Yet David had no fear. He wanted to laugh, but he knew laughter would be the deadliest of insults to Bateese just now.
And tonight it was still. It was so quiet that the trickling of the paddles was like subdued music. From the forest there came no sound. Yet he knew there was life there, wide-eyed, questing life, life that moved on velvety wing and padded foot, just as he and Marie-Anne and the half-breed Bateese were moving in the canoe.
His eyes seemed ready to pop out of their sockets, and suddenly he let out a roar. "What! You dare talk lak that to Concombre Bateese, w'at is great'st fightin' man on all T'ree River? You talk lak that to me, Concombre Bateese, who will kill ze bear wit' hees ban's, who pull down ze tree, who who "
Pierre," he replied a little grimly. "Yes, M'sieu David. He is the most wonderful man in the world. And he will know what to do." David shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps, in some nice, quiet place, he will follow the advice Bateese gave you tie a stone round my neck and sink me to the bottom of the river." "Perhaps. But I don't think he will do that I should object to it." "Oh, you would!" "Yes.
For an instant Concombre's face darkened. Then, as he bent over the sweep with his great back to David, he chuckled audibly, and said: "Would you go, m'sieu? Ah it is le malade d'amour over there in the cabin. Surely you would not break in upon their love-making?" Bateese did not look over his shoulder, and so he did not see the hot flush that gathered in David's face.
I'll give you my word that I won't try to escape not until you and I have a good stand-up fight with the earth under our feet, and I've whipped you. Is it a go?" Bateese stared for a moment, and then his face broke into a wide grin. "You lak ze fight, m'sieu?" "Yes. I love a scrap with a good man like you." One of Bateese's huge hands crawled slowly over the table and engulfed David's.
For the first time the quiet of her eyes gave way to a warm fire. "It was hard work," she said, and the note in her voice gave him warning that he was approaching the dead-line again. "Bateese says I was a fool for doing it. And if you saw two of me, or three or four, it doesn't matter. Are you through questioning me, M'sieu David? If so, I have a number of things to do."
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