“Wolves not eat people, mamselle, unless they hunt in a pack; and they
run from fire. You know what M'sieu' Cable tell about wolves that chase
him on the ice when he skate to Cheboygan? He come to great wide crack
in ice, he so scare he jump it and skate right on! Then he look back,
and see the wolves go in, head down, every wolf caught and drown in the
crack. It is two days before he come home, and the east wind have blow
to freeze that crack over--and there are all the wolf tails, stick up,
froze stiff in a row! He bring them home with him--but los them on the
way, though he show the knife that cut them off!”
“I have hear that,” says Rosalin. “I think he lie.”
“He say he take his out on a book,” I tell her, but we both laugh,
and she is curl down so close to the fire her cheeks turn rosy. For a
camp-fire will heat the air all around until the world is like a big
dark room; and we are shelter from the wind. I am glad she is begin to
enjoy herself. And all the time I have a hand on my knife, and the cold
chills down my back where that hungry vild-cat will set his claws if he
jump on me; and I cannot turn around to face him because Rosalin thinks
it is nothing but a cowardly wolf that sneak away. Old Sauvage is uneasy
and come to me, his fangs all expose, but I drive him back and listen to
the bushes behind me.
“Sing, M'sieu' Pelott,” says Rosalin.
Oh God, yes I it is easy to sing with a vild-cat watch you on one side
and a woman on the other!
“But I not know anything except boat songs.”
“Sing boat songs.”
So I sing like a bateau full of voyageurs, and the dark echo, and that
vild-cat must be astonish. When you not care what become of you, and
your head is light and your heart like a stone on the beach, you not
mind vild-cats, but sing and laugh.
I cast my eye behin sometimes, and feel my knife. It make me smile to
think what kind of creature come to my house in the wilderness, and I
say to myself: “Hear my cat purr! This is the only time I will ever
have a home of my own, and the only time the woman I want sit beside my
fire.”
Then I ask Rosalin to sing to me, and she sing “Malbrouck,” like her
father learn it in Kebec. She watch me, and I know her eyes have more
danger for me than the vild-cat's. It ought to tear me to pieces if I
forget maman and the children. It ought to be scare out the bushes to
jump on a poor fool like me. But I not stop entertain it--Oh God, no!
I say things that I never intend to say, like they are pull out of my
mouth. When your heart has ache, sometimes it break up quick like the
ice.
“There is Paul Pepin,” I tell her. “He is a happy man; he not trouble
himself with anybody at all. His father die; he let his mother take care
of herself. He marry a wife, and get tired of her and turn her off with
two children. The priest not able to scare him; he smoke and take his
dram and enjoy life. If I was Paul Pepin I would not be torment.”
“But you are not torment,” says Rosalin. “Everybody speak well of you.”
“Oh God, yes,” I tell her; “but a man not live on the breath of his
neighbors. I am thirty years old, and I have take care of my mother and
brothers and sisters since I am fifteen. I not made so I can leave them,
like Paul Pepin. He marry when he please. I not able to marry at all. It
is not far I can go from the island. I cannot get rich. My work must be
always the same.”
“But why you want to marry?” says Rosalin, as if that surprise her.
And I tell her it is because I have seen Rosalin of Green Bay; and she
laugh. Then I think it is time for the vild-cat to jump. I am thirty
years old, and have nothing but what I can make with the boats or my
traino; the children are not grown; my mother depend on me; and I have
propose to a woman, and she laugh at me!
But I not see, while we sing and talk, that the fire is burn lower, and
old Sauvage has crept around the camp into the bushes.
That end all my courtship. I not use to it, and not have any business
to court, anyhow. I drop my head on my breast, and it is like when I am
little and the measle go in. Paul Pepin he take a woman by the chin and
smack her on the lips. The women not laugh at him, he is so rough. I am
as strong as he is, but I am afraid to hurt; I am oblige to take care of
what need me. And I am tie to things I love--even the island--so that I
cannot get away.
“I not want to marry,” says Rosalin, and I see her shake her head at me.
“I not think about it at all.”
“Mamselle,” I say to her, “you have not any inducement like I have, that
torment you three years.”
“How you know that?” she ask me. And then her face change from laughter,
and she spring up from the blanket couch, and I think the camp go around
and around me--all fur and eyes and claws and teeth--and I not know what
I am doing, for the dogs are all over me--yell--yell--yell; and then
I am stop stabbing, because the vild-cat has let go of Sauvage, and
Sauvage has let go of the vild-cat, and I am looking at them and know
they are both dead, and I cannot help him any more.
[Illustration: The camp go round and round 086]
You are confuse by such things where there is noise, and howling
creatures sit up and put their noses in the air, like they call their
mate back out of the dark. I am sick for my old dog. Then I am proud he
has kill it, and wipe my knife on its fur, but feel ashame that I have
not check him driving it into camp. And then Rosalin throw her arms
around my neck and kiss me.
It is many years I have tell Rosalin she did that. But a woman will deny
what she know to be the trut. I have tell her the courtship had end, and
she begin it again herself, and keep it up till the boats take us off
Round Island. The ice not run out so quick any more now like it did
then. My wife say it is a long time we waited, but when I look back it
seem the shortest time I ever live--only two days.
Oh God, yes, it is three years before I marry the woman that not want to
marry at all; then my brothers and sisters can take care of themselves,
and she help me take care of maman.
It is when my boy Gabriel come home from the war to die that I see the
skeleton on Round Island again. I am again sure it is wash out, and I go
ashore to bury it, and it disappear. Nobody but me see it. Then before
Rosalin die I am out on the ice-boat, and it give me warning. I know
what it mean; but you cannot always escape misfortune. I cross myself
when I see it; but I find good luck that first time I land; and maybe I
find good luck every time, after I have land.