United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Indian mixed with his French had been improved on by the sun until he was of a brick redness and hardness of flesh; a rosy-raeated thing, like a good muskalonge. Brown suddenly remembered the pair. They were Joe La France's wife and child. Joe La France was dead. Puttany had recently told him that Joe La France left a widow and a baby without shelter, and without relations nearer than Canada.
"Now you lope out and find them do you hear?" Jim, crouching on his belly in acknowledgment that his apprehension had been at fault during some late encounter, slunk across the camp and took the path to the hotels. Brown turned on Puttany following at his heels: "Frank, are you sure Joe La France is dead?" "Oh yes, he is det." "Did you see him die? Were you there when he was buried?
And Frank Puttany, his German feet planted outward in a line, his smiling dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creatures whom he had evidently introduced, in foolish helplessness gave his partner the usual greeting: "Veil, Prowny." "Hello, Puttany. Visitors?" Brown pulled off his cap to the woman.
Brown and Puttany rowed home through an early September evening, lifted their boat to its cross-piece dock, and pulled the plug out of the bottom to let it drain. There was no sound, even of the dogs, as they flung their spoil ashore. It was the very instant of moon-rise. At first a copper rim was answered by the faintest line in the water.
One of us will have to marry Joe La France's widow that's what it will come to!" Brown slapped the water in violent disgust, but Puttany blushed a dark and modest red. Men of their class rarely have vision or any kind of foresight. They live in the present and plan no farther than their horizon, being, like children, overpowered by visible things.
But the Irish Canadian had lived many lives as lake sailor and lumberman, and he had a shrewd eye and quick humor. It was he who had devised the conveniences of the camp, and who delicately and skilfully prepared the meals so that the two fared like epicures; while Puttany did the scullery-work, and was superior only at deerstalking.
No ill-nature was visible about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his partner, who followed Jess and stood also watching him. "Puttany, you fool! what have you brought these cursed patois into camp for?" "Joe La France vas my old pardner," softly pleaded the German. "Damn you, man, we can't start an orphan-asylum and widows' home! We'll get a bad name at the hotels.
"Damn you, Puttany!" exploded his partner, "what did you bring her here for? I didn't want to get into this! I wanted to steer clear of women! You knew I was soft! You knew her black eyes, and the child that made her seem like the Virgin, would get in their work on me!" "No, I didn't," said Puttany, in phlegmatic consternation. "What's the matter, Frank? Haven't we behaved white to this woman?
Ignace and brought back denim and white and black calico, which he presented to Françoise. "She ought to have a kind of second mourning," he explained to Puttany, who received his word on any matter as law. "Joe La France wasn't worth wearing first mourning for, but second mourning is decent for her, and it won't show in the camp like bright colors would."
The world of city-maddened people who swarmed to this lake for their annual immersion in nature did not often intrude on the camp. Yet the fact of a woman's presence there could not be concealed, and Puttany was disciplined to say to strangers, "Dot vas my sister and her little poy." A tiny cabin was built for Françoise, with the luxuries of a puncheon floor and one glazed window.
Word Of The Day