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Updated: June 27, 2025
But there was no mistaking the motive of fear that hurried him to the tent; and with Le Grand Diable among the hunters, Louis might well fear to be seen in my company. There was a hubbub of trappers returning to the lodges. I heard horses turned free and tent-poles clattering to the ground; but Laplante did not come back till it was late and the Indians had separated for the night.
We had overtaken Mr. Sutherland's canoe within half an hour of Louis' discovery, and Eric wheeled about with a querulous demand. "What's wrong? Are they ahead? I thought you said they were behind," and he turned suspiciously to Laplante. "You thought wrong," said Louis, ever facile with subterfuges. "You thought wrong, Mister High-and-Mighty! Camp here and watch; they come before morning!"
With overwhelming revulsion came memory of poor Louis Laplante lying at the camp-fire in the gorge tossing a crumpled piece of paper wide of the flames, where the Sioux squaw surreptitiously picked it up. If R-f-s G p e, E. H l-t-n, J k MacK, or any of that prig gang come prying round your camp for news, put them on the wrong track. I owe the whole set a score.
I had thought to save skirting the woods by a run across the camping-ground; but when my Indian dashed for the child and the Sioux saw me undefended with the white woman in my arms, she made a desperate lunge at Laplante and called at the top of her voice for the braves.
At once, to get my attention, Hamilton brought a stick down on my toes with a sharpness that made me leap. By all the codes of nudges and kicks and such signaling, it is a principle that a blow at one end of human anatomy drives through the density of the other extremity. It dawned on me that Eric was trying to persuade Laplante I had deserted Nor'-Westers for the Hudson's Bay.
"I not punish you here with two thousand against one! Louis Laplante is a gentleman even to his enemy!" "Bravo, comrade!" I shouted out, full of gratitude, and I thrust forward my hand. "No no thanks much," and Laplante drew himself up proudly, "not till I pay you well, richly, generous always to mine enemy!" "Very good! Pay when and where you will." "Pay how I like," snapped Louis.
Then, why had Diable rescued his betrayer? Where was Louis in hiding? Was the Sioux wife with her white slave really in the north country, or was she near, and did that explain my morose Iroquois' all-night vigils? We had cheated Laplante; but had he in turn cheated us? Would I be justified in taking Diable prisoner, and would my company consent to the demoralization of their crews by such a step?
"What!" came Hamilton's low cry of agony. Forgetting the fractured arm, he sprang erect. And Louis Laplante staggered back in the dark as if we had struck him. "Laplante! Laplante! Where's that Frenchman? Bring him up here!" called Governor McDonell's fussy, angry tones. Coming when it did, this demand was to Louis a bolt of judgment; and he joined the conference with a face as gray as ashes.
He quit wild Indian some-oder-time, and he never quit, not at all! And he go home and say his confess to the curé some-oder-time, and he never go, not at all! And he settle down with a wife and become a grand seigneur some-oder-time, and he never settle down at all!" "Good night, Laplante! I have business for the company.
"Sump too uss ain't it?" asked the sober man with bated breath and obvious distrust of his tongue. "Mag nee feque! M. Louis Laplante, look you there," cried the Frenchman, catching sight of his full figure in the mirror and instantly striking a pose of admiration. Then he twirled fiercely at both ends of his mustache till it stood out with the wire finish of a Parisian dandy.
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