"Our own Indians I will tolerate when I must, but I want no strange
savages stealing my stores."
"_Monsieur_ has a family here?" I asked as we took our seats at a
rough table in the front room.
"Here! Never! Although I have one son who will soon be able to
carry on his father's work."
"One son? That is too bad. Now in Picardy----"
"_Mort de ma vie_! Would you talk to me of your Picards! Young man,
each Autumn that I return to Montreal--and it has been many Autumns,
let me tell you--Madame de Joncaire has a new little one to introduce
to me."
His face softened.
"Bless me if I know how that old lady does it!" he sighed. "We have
ten now--or maybe 'tis twelve. But I am not sure. I must count up
when I return this year."
He clapped his hands, and a soldier in the undress uniform of the
French marine troops, who formed the major part of the garrison of
Canada, entered.
"François," announced Joncaire, "this is Jean Courbevoir, who will be
my guest until he departs. He has been in Arles, François. Remember
that. It should be a part of each young man's training to visit
Arles.
"What he orders you will render to him. Now bring us the flagon of
wine which Monsieur Bigon sent out this Spring."
The soldier saluted me as if I were a marshal of France, and brought
in the flagon of the _intendant's_ wine with the exquisite reverence
which only a son of France could bestow upon the choicest product of
the soil of France.
"Pour it out, François," commanded Joncaire.
The soldier hesitated.
"And Monsieur de Lery?" he said.
"A thousand million curses!" exploded Joncaire. "Am I to wait for
him? Am I to sacrifice my choicest wine in his gullet!"
"Who is Monsieur de Lery?" I asked as François filled a thick mug
with the ruby juice.
"What? You do not know him? That is a good one, that! I should
like to have had him hear you say it. But do you mean you do not
know of him?"
"_Monsieur_ will remember I am of the wilderness," I protested.
"True, true. And this pompous whipper-snapper who sets out to teach
Louis Thomas de Joncaire, Sieur de Chabert, his duty, after
thirty-five years on the frontier--pah!"
He drained his mug, and pushed it toward François for more.
"But you have not told me who he is, monsieur," I said.
"He is----"
"Monsieur de Lery enters," interposed François with a glance at the
doorway.