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Updated: July 4, 2025
From all sides sounded the scuffling of straining men who breathed heavily as they fought in the blackness. A thin red flame cut the air and a shot rang sharp. Someone screamed and a string of Spanish curses blended into the hubbub of turmoil. "De hosses, queek, m's'u!" The cool air of the street fanned the Texan's face as he leaped across the sidewalk, and vaulted into the saddle.
"It is," the guide began, as if carefully weighing his words, "that you are the good friends of M's'u' Bill. Also I have seen that you know the men of the logs. "Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, my mother, who is old and very wise, knows the men of the logs, and, knowing them, hated M's'u' Bill, and would have returned him to the river, but Jeanne prevented.
"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky" the dream of her life had been realized, but in the realization she had been beaten all her hopes and prayers, the long, bitter hours of her soul-anguish, which burned and gnawed beneath the stoicism and apathy her environment demanded, had gone for naught, and she, who had borne the brunt of the long battle, was brushed aside and forgotten.
"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky," he said. "Even in the time of his great sickness would he drink no whisky; and if you give him whisky he will be very angry."
Their knock was answered by a tousled-headed man who stood, lamp in hand, and blinked owlishly at them from the shelter of the doorway. "You are Vic Chenault?" asked the girl, and, without waiting for his grunted assent, continued: "I am Jeanne Lacombie, and this is M's'u' Bill, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die." At the mention of the names the door swung wide and the man smiled a welcome.
She listened, and with few words and all the dramatic eloquence of the pure Indian the half-breed girl told of the rescue from the river; of her own love for M's'u' Bill, "The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die"; of his firm rejection of that love; of her pursuit of him when he started for the land of the white man; of the scene at the camp-fire when old Wa-ha-ta-na-ta called him "The One Good White Man"; of the broken knife; of The Promise; of her peril at the hand of Moncrossen, and of the cold-blooded shooting of her brother.
The girl was at her side now, and with a low cry threw herself upon her knees before the man, and stretched her arms toward him gropingly. "M's'u' Bill!" she cried, and the voice was sweet and soft; the words uttered with imploring intensity. And then in Ethel's ears was the voice of her husband. "Jeanne, Jeanne," he said; "why have you come? Speak, girl; why have you come to me?"
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