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Godin snatched off his blanket and in a rain of bullets fled to the Sublette camp. "And so," said the voyageur with a note of exultation in his voice, "Godin got revenge on those men who had killed his father." For a moment his listeners were silent, suffering from a sense of bewilderment, not so much at the story, as at Zavier's evident approval of Godin's act.
"Trois cavalières bien montées L'une a cheval, l'autre a pied L'on, ton, laridon danée L'on ton laridon dai." Zavier furnished another diversion in the monotony of the days, injected into the weary routine, a coloring drop of romance, for, as he himself would have said, he was diablement épris with Lucy. This was regarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes.
Her words flowed with her tears, both together in a choked and bitter flood of wrath, sorrow, and self-pity. She bewailed Lucy, not only as a vanished relative but as a necessary member of the McMurdo escort. And doubts of Zavier's lawful intentions shook her from the abandon of her grief, to furious invective against the red man of all places and tribes whereso'er he be.
"It's terrible to think you'll never see him again," she said, looking for signs of compassion. "Don't you feel sorry?" Lucy looked down. She had been complaining to her friend of Zavier's follies of devotion. "There are lots of other men in the world," she said indifferently. Susan fired up. If not yet the authorized owner of a man, she felt her responsibilities as a coming proprietor.
For a space they could only stare at him as though he, too, were suddenly dropping veils that had hidden unsuspected, baleful depths. Then argument broke out and the clamor of voices was loud on the night. Courant bore the brunt of the attack, Zavier's ideas being scanty, his mode of procedure a persistent, reiteration of his original proposition.
Zavier's a man just the same as the others, and Lucy's a nice-looking girl when she gets rested up and the freckles go off. But he's an Indian if he does speak French, and make good money with his beaver trapping." "He's not all Indian," Susan said soothingly. "He's half white.
It was impossible to make Zavier see, and this new development in what had seemed a boyish and light-hearted being, full to the brim with the milk of human kindness, was a thing to sink before in puzzled speechlessness. Courant tried to explain: "You can't see it Zavier's way because it's a different way from yours.
Through the stillness a man's voice singing Zavier's Canadian song came to them. It stopped at the girl's outer ear, but, like a hail from a fading land, penetrated to the man's brain and he stirred. "Hist!" he said raising his brows, "there's that French song your mother used to sing." The distant voice rose to the plaintive burden and he lay motionless, his eyes filmed with memories.
"We'll be in the Crow's country, and Zavier's mother was a Crow." The words proved the completeness of her estrangement the acceptance of the alien race as no longer alien. "Oh, Lucy, don't, don't. Wait till we get to Fort Bridger and marry him there. Make him come to California with us. Don't do such an awful thing run away into the mountains with a half-breed." "I don't care what he is.
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