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Updated: August 21, 2024
Making a careful circuit through the thick undergrowth, swiftly but silently as two wildcats, the strange pair gained a covert close beside the trail by which Pichot and Mitchell would return to the rim of the pot. Safely ambuscaded, Henderson laid a hand firmly on the child's arm, resting it there for two or three seconds, as a sign of silence.
Then he understood, and woke up. Pichot was a dead shot. This was his intimation that Henderson must get out into the procession again. At the centre of the eddy he was not sufficiently entertaining to his executioners. The idea of being shot in the head had not greatly disturbed him he had felt as if it would be rather restful, on the whole.
"We're to leave the car after all my guarding care?" "No; here's Pichot volunteered to take your place." "Has he got food with him and rugs. My rug has gone...." "He has everything. Come along! Let's put everything of value into the other car." When they had finished the night air was clear of snowflakes; hill, road and valley were lit by the pallor of the fallen snow.
He gave no explicit explanation for this step; but in 1836, at the time of his lawsuit with the Revue de Paris, he stated as the reason for his desertion that he considered Pichot to be the author, under different pseudonyms, of the adverse criticism of his novels which appeared in its pages.
"I've held that idee," continued Pichot, after a civil pause, "though I hain't never yet found a man, nor a woman nuther, as was willin' to give it a fair trial. But I feel sure ye're the man to oblige me. I've left yer arms kinder free, leastways from the elbows down, an' yer legs also, more or less, so's ye'll be able to paddle easy-like.
He would settle with Red Pichot right there, on the spot where he had been taught the terrible lesson of fear. He felt that he could not really feel himself a man again unless he could settle the whole score before the sun of that day should set.
As Pichot ceased his measured harangue he jerked his pike-pole loose. Instantly the log began to forge forward, joining the reluctant procession. For a few moments Henderson felt like shutting his eyes and his teeth and letting himself go on with all speed to the inevitable doom. Then, with scorn of the weak impulse, he changed his mind.
For Pichot, though a beast for cruelty and treachery, and with the murder of a woman on his black record which placed him, according to Henderson's ideas, in a different category from a mere killer of men was at the same time a born leader and of a courage none could question.
In the midst of his trouble, a most unfortunate occurrence took place, which besides embittering his life at the time had a decided effect on his subsequent career; and indirectly obscured his reputation even after his death. In 1833, as we have already seen, Balzac, after long dissensions with Amedee Pichot, had definitely left the Revue de Paris.
Then Pichot went by at a swinging stride, with Mitchell skulking obediently at his heels. Henderson half raised his rifle, and his face turned grey and cold like steel. But it was no part of his plan to shoot even Red Pichot in the back. From the manner of the two ruffians it was plain that they had no suspicion of the turn which affairs had taken.
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