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"The neighbors will be saying I am setting a bad example to my mother." "Bring your mother up to the Fur Company's quarters with you, and the neighbors will no longer have a chance to put mischief into her head." Jenieve took him seriously, though she had often suspected, from what she could see at the fort, that Americans had not the custom of marrying an entire family.
In that clear, high atmosphere, mainland shores and islands seemed to throw out the evening purples from themselves, and thus to slowly reach for one another and form darkness. Jenieve had lain on the grass, crying, "O Mama François Toussaint Gabriel!" But she sat up at last, with her dejected head on her breast, submitting to the pettiness and treachery of what she loved.
She poked one finger through the sward to the hardness underneath. The rock was below her, and Pontiac stood before her. He turned his head back from Round Island to St. Ignace. The wind blew against him, and the brier odor, sickening sweet, poured over Jenieve.
"Come and eat supper with my man and me to-night, and sleep in our house if you are afraid." Jenieve leaned her forehead against the hut, and made no reply to these neighborly overtures. "Did she say nothing at all about me, madame?" "Yes; she was afraid you would come at the last minute and take her by the arm and walk her home. You were too strict with her, and that is the truth.
"They are things to wear on your feet," explained Jenieve; and her red-skinned half-brothers heard her with incredulity.
Strange matches were made on the frontier, and Indian wives were commoner than any other kind; but through the whole mortifying existence of this Indian husband Jenieve avoided the sight of him, and called her mother steadily Mama Lalotte. The girl had remained with her grandmother, while François Iroquois carried off his wife to the Indian village on a western height of the island.
A daughter who has a marrying mother on her hands may become morbidly anxious; Jenieve felt she should have no peace of mind during the month the coureurs-de-bois remained on the island. Whether they arrived early or late, they had soon to be off to the winter hunting-grounds; yet here was an emergency. "Mama Lalotte!" called Jenieve. Her strong young fingers beckoned with authority.
"Monsieur, have I not told you many times? I cannot marry. I have a family already." The young agent struck his cap impatiently against the bark weather-boarding. "You are the most offish girl I ever saw. A man cannot get near enough to you to talk reason." "It would be better if you did not come down here at all, Monsieur Crooks," said Jenieve.
The addition of a schooner to the scattered fleet of sailboats, bateaux, and birch canoes made Jenieve laugh. It must have arrived from Sault Ste. Marie in the night. She had hopes of getting rid of Michel Pensonneau that very day. Since he was going to Cahokia, she felt stinging regret for the way she had treated him before the whole village; yet her mother could not be sacrificed to politeness.
She breathed the sweetbrier scent, her neck stretched forward and her dark eyes fixed on him; and as his head turned back from St. Ignace his whole body moved with it, and he looked at Jenieve. His eyes were like a cat's in the purple darkness, or like that heatless fire which shines on rotting bark. The hoar-frosted countenance was noble even in its most brutal lines.
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