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Updated: June 26, 2025
One look at his bloodshot eyes sobered their mirth, and Pierre Garcon reached involuntarily for the knife in his sash. But Bois DesCaut, savage to silence, swung past them into the fort. McElroy watched him until he disappeared, fearing he knew not what. Then he faced the little scene again.
There was no little head in all the post like that save one, and it belonged to little Francette, the pretty maid who had run by the factor's side that day of the meeting of Bois DesCaut by the river. With the drop of that head from the sill there passed over Maren a strange feeling, a prescience of evil, a thrill of fear in a heart that had never known fear.
McElroy heard its dull impact, and the husky crumpled like a broken reed. With stern face the factor started forward, while the little maid covered her pretty eyes and whimpered. But quicker than his stride retribution leaped to meet DesCaut.
Merry laughter, turned as readily upon her, wafted back on the golden wind. Francette, her eyes flaming with all too great a fire, set a pan of cool water beneath the fevered muzzle of the husky and glanced, scowling, across her shoulder toward the factory. Five days had passed since the episode beside the stockade, and Bois DesCaut had said no word, of his property.
"Oh, M'sieu!" she cried, gasping from her run, "come at once beyond the great gate! Bois DesCaut, Oh, brute of the world! whips that great grey husky leader of his team, because it did but snap at his heel beneath an idle prod! Hasten, M'sieu! He drags it, glaring, along the shore to where lie those clubs brought for the kettles!"
Foremost was Bois DesCaut, his evil eyes glinting like a witch's omen. Yelling, jumping, flaming with the liquor of the Bois-Brules, they fell upon the two men and dragged them, half-falling, half-running, toward the circle, into it, and up to the fire. "Ho-ho! ho-ho-o! Ha-ha! ha-ha-a! ha-ha!"
Otherwise, five hundred warriors, M'sieu, can take their will with two hundred." "Aye?" said the tall man, jerking his head around. He had been scanning the mass of his own craft, packed behind him, fading into the shadows out of the light. There was a peculiar look in his eyes when he faced DesCaut again, a thrust to his square jaw.
Go, and boast of your strength. It is sufficient." DesCaut stood a moment swaying drunkenly with the force of passion within him, his lips snarling back from his teeth and his eyes measuring the factor unsteadily then he snatched off the little cap he wore and hurled it at him. Turning on his heel he swung down toward the gate and the two voyageurs now standing and still laughing merrily.
He had seen the flight of the maul, the sagging of the sturdy figure. Who had thrown it, if not that brute DesCaut? Who save DesCaut was so keen on the trail of the factor and the girl?
For a moment she stood as it had left her, leaning forward, and there was a shine of satisfaction in her eyes. Then as the man essayed to rise there was a mighty laughter from the two youths on the river bank and the spell was broken. McElroy went forward. "DesCaut," he said sharply, and his words cut like the lash of the long dog-whips, "you deserves death but you have been beaten by a woman.
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