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Updated: May 2, 2025
The crowds that surged through the street hurrying for home and fireside after the day's work were impatient. "Don't block the way, Johnny Crapaud!" called a girl with a shawl over her head; and with the combined shove and push of those behind, the sabot-shod young man was shouldered into the street. There he stood dazed and bereft, with the sailor's bag on his back.
Then from the parted leaves come forth first a dirty wrinkled leg, then a dirty wrinkled head with gleaming eyes, and Monsieur Crapaud crawls with self-satisfied dignity on to Monsieur the Viscount's outstretched hand. So they stay laughing and chatting, and then Monsieur the Viscount bids his friend good-night, and holds him towards Madame, that she may do the same.
The last Frenchman attempted to defend himself; but when he saw Paul and the two lads with arms in their hands approaching him, while his companions were unable to assist him, he knew that resistance was useless and cried out for quarter. "You don't deserve it, Monsieur Crapaud," answered Paul; "but I'm not the fellow to take a man's life in cold blood.
An ensign of some sort was stopped half-way up the mizen rigging, as a signal of distress; and after a while I made it out to be the tricolour. "Johnny Crapaud a Frenchman!" I exclaimed to the skipper, who was standing near me, working away at her with the ship's telescope. "A Frenchman, eh!" responded the skipper. "Can you make out the colours of that ensign from here?
On the discharge of the gun, I heard a voice calling out, "Mon Dieu!" and another, in a plaintive tone, exclaiming, "Ah mon garçon!" This was all I heard distinctly, when every voice joined in one cry, "Tueons le crapaud;" and presently the wretched Indian was kicked and cuffed by as many as could press round him.
With one wrinkled leg after another he clambered on to the stone, and Monsieur the Viscount started when he saw him. "Friend Crapaud! I had actually forgotten thee. I fancied I had said adieu for the last time;" and he gave a choked sigh, which Monsieur Crapaud could not be expected to understand. In about five minutes he sprang up suddenly.
"General Harney" and "Dan," the two best horses of the trader's stable, despite the presence of the sentry at the front, had been abstracted sometime during the earlier hours of the night, and later traced to the ford at Stabber's old camp, and with Pete and Crapaud, doubtless, were gone. That day the major wired to Omaha that he should be reinforced at once.
The wood-lice were an especial amusement: when Monsieur the Viscount touched them, they shut up into tight little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention.
"But this I do know, they are after something and expect to get it. If I might make so bold, sir, I think the major ought to keep an eye on them blasted halfbreeds at Hay's." It set Flint to serious thinking. Pete and Crapaud, paid henchmen of the trader, had been taking advantage of their employer's absence and celebrating after the manner of their kind.
Monsieur Crapaud explained to us that Madame Dupin was not only a beauty and a précieuse, but an excellent business woman, so clever, indeed, that she managed to prove, by hook or by crook, that Chenonceaux had never been absolutely crown property and so did not fall under the coup de décret.
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