If he interested me, doubtless I was no less a study to him. I could see the astonishment in his eyes, after my first entrance, change to amusement as he gazed. Then he brought a white hand down, with a smart slap, upon the board beside him.
"By all the saints!" he exclaimed, "but I believe the black was right. 'Tis the face of a gentle, or I know naught of the breed, though the attire might fool the very elect. Yet, parbleu! if memory serves, 't is scarcely worse than what I wore in Spain."
He swung down upon his feet and faced me, extending one hand with all cordiality, while lips and eyes smiled pleasantly.
"Monsieur," he said, bowing low, and with a grace of movement quite new to me, "I bid you hearty welcome to whatsoever of good cheer this desert may have to offer, and present to you the companionship of Villiers de Croix. It may not seem much, yet I pledge you that kings have valued it ere now."
It was a form of introduction most unfamiliar to me, and seemed bristling with audacity and conceit; but I recognized the heartiness of his purpose, and hastened to make fit response.
"I meet you with much pleasure," I answered, accepting the proffered hand. "I am John Wayland."
The graceful recklessness of the fellow, so conspicuous in each word and action, strongly attracted me. I confess I liked him from his first utterance, although mentally, and perhaps morally as well, no two men of our age could possibly be more unlike.
"Wayland?" he mused, with a shrug, as if the sound of the word was unpleasant. "Wayland?—'t is a harsh name to my ears, yet I have heard it mentioned before in England as that of a great family. You are English, then?"
I shook my head emphatically; for the old wounds of controversy and battle were then being opened afresh, and the feeling of antagonism ran especially high along the border.
"I am of this country," I protested with earnestness, "and we call ourselves Americans."
He laughed easily, evidently no little amused at my retort, twisting his small mustache through his slender fingers as he eyed me.
"Ah! but that is all one to me; it is ever the blood and not the name that counts, my friend. Now I am French by many a generation, Gascon by birth, and bearing commission in the Guard of the Emperor; yet sooth, 't is the single accursed drop of Irish blood within my veins that brings me across the great seas and maroons me in this howling wilderness. But sit down, Monsieur. There will be both food and wine served presently, and I would speak with you more at ease."
As he spoke he flung himself upon a low settee, carelessly motioning me toward another.
"On my word," he said, eying me closely as I crossed over to the bench, "but you are a big fellow for your years, and 't is strength, not flabby flesh, or I know not how to judge. You would make a fine figure of a soldier, John Wayland. Napoleon perchance might offer you a marshal's baton, just to see you in the uniform. Parbleu! I have seen stranger things happen."
"You are now connected with the French army?" I questioned, wondering what could have brought him to this remote spot.
"Ay, a Captain of the Guard, yet an exile, banished from the court on account of my sins. Sacre! but there are others, Monsieur. I have but one fault, my friend—grave enough, I admit, yet but one, upon my honor, and even that is largely caused by that drop of Irish blood. I love the ladies over-well, I sometimes fear; and once I dared to look too high for favor."
"And have you stopped here long?"
"Here—at Hawkins's, mean you? Ten days, as I live; would you believe I could ever have survived so grievous a siege?" and he looked appealingly about upon the bare apartment. "Ten days of Hawkins and of Sam, Monsieur; ay! and of Ol' Burns; of sky, and woods, and river, with never so much as a real white man even to drink liquor with. By Saint Louis! but I shall be happy enough to face you across the board to-night. Yet surely it is not your purpose to halt here long?"
"Only until I succeed in joining some party travelling westward to the
Illinois country."
"No! is that your aim? 'T is my trip also, if Fate be ever kind enough to bring hither a guide. Sacre! there was one here but now, as odd a devil as ever bore rifle, and he hath taken the western trail alone, for he hated me from the start. That was Ol' Burns. Know you him?"
"'T was he who brought the message that sent me here; yet he said little of his own journey. But you mention not where you are bound?"
"I seek Fort Dearborn, on the Great Lake."
"That likewise is to be the end of my journey. You go to explore?"
"Explore? Faith, no," and he patted his hand upon the bench most merrily. "There are but two reasons to my mind important enough to lure a French gentleman into such a hole as this, and send him wandering through your backwoods—either war or love, Monsieur; and I know of no war that calleth me."
Love, as he thus spoke of it, was almost an unknown term to me then; and, in truth, I scarcely grasped the full significance of his meaning.
"You seek some lady, then, at Fort Dearborn?" I asked, for his tone seemed to invite the inquiry.
"Ay!" with quickened enthusiasm; "'tis there Toinette has hidden herself for this year or more—Toinette, on my word as a French soldier, the fairest maid of Montreal. I have just discovered her whereabouts, yet I shall win her ere I traverse these trails again, or I am not Villiers de Croix."
"I travel thither to bring back a little orphan child with me," I explained simply, in response to his look, "and will most gladly aid you where I can."
Before he could answer, Hawkins, a gaunt, silent frontiersman, together with Sam, entered the room, bearing between them our evening meal.
CHAPTER IV
CAPTAIN WELLS OF FORT WAYNE
We tarried at the table a considerable time—not because of any tempting variety in the repast, as the food furnished was of the coarsest, but for the sake of companionship, and because we discovered much of passing interest to converse about. De Croix had travelled widely, and had seen a great variety of life both in camp and court. He proved a vivacious fellow, full of amusing anecdote—a bottle of rich wine drawn from his own private stock so stimulating his imagination that I had little to do but sit and listen. Yet he contrived to learn from me—how, I hardly know—the simple story of my life, and, indeed, assumed a certain air of patronizing superiority, boasting unduly of his wider experience and achievements in a way that somewhat nettled me at last, as I began to comprehend that he was merely showing off his genteel graces the better to exhibit his contempt for my provincial narrowness. I did not permit this really to anger me, for our views upon such matters were totally different, and I could not help feel admiration for the brilliant and audacious fellow.
The black waited upon us while we ate and drank, moving noiselessly across the rough floor, so keenly observant of his master's slightest wish as to convince me the latter possessed a temper which upon occasion burst its bounds. Yet now he was surely in the best of humors; and with the coming of our second bottle, after the remains of the repast had been removed, he sang several love-songs in his native tongue, the meaning of which I could only guess at.
"Saint Guise!" he exclaimed at last, flinging one booted foot over the