She sprang to her feet. "Ah, now I understand,' she said. "That was why
you quarrelled with me; why you deserted me. You were not man enough to
say what made you so much the--so wicked and hard, so--"
"Be thankful, Lucy, that I did not kill you then," he interjected.
"But it is a lie," she cried; "a lie!"
She went to the door and called the Indian woman. "Ikni," she said.
"He dares to say evil of Andre and me. Think--of Andre!"
Ikni came to him, put her wrinkled face close to his, and said: "She was
yours, only yours; but the spirits gave you a devil. Andre, oh, oh,
Andre! The father of Andre was her father--ah, that makes your sulky
eyes to open. Ikni knows how to speak. Ikni nursed them both. If you
had waited you should have known. But you ran away like a wolf from a
coal of fire; you shammed death like a fox; you come back like the snake
to crawl into the house and strike with poison tooth, when you should be
with the worms in the ground. But Ikni knows--you shall be struck with
poison too, the Spirit of the Red Knife waits for you. Andre was her
brother."
He pushed her aside savagely: "Be still!" he said. "Get out-quick.
'Sacre'--quick!"
When they were alone again he continued with no anger in his tone: "So,
Andre the avocat and you--that, eh? Well, you see how much trouble has
come; and now this other--a secret too. When were you married to Shon
McGann?"
"Last night," she bitterly replied; "a priest came over from the Indian
village."
"Last night," he musingly repeated. "Last night I lost two thousand
dollars at the Little Goshen field. I did not play well last night;
I was nervous. In ten years I had not lost so much at one game as I did
last night. It was a punishment for playing too honest, or something;
eh, what do you think, Lucy--or something, 'hein?'"
She said nothing, but rocked her body to and fro.
"Why did you not make known the marriage with Shon?"
"He was to have told it to-night," she said.
There was silence for a moment, then a thought flashed into his eyes, and
he rejoined with a jarring laugh, "Well, I will play a game to-night,
Lucy Rives; such a game that Pretty Pierre will never be forgotten in the
Pipi Valley--a beautiful game, just for two. And the other who will
play--the wife of Francois Rives shall see if she will wait; but she must
be patient, more patient than her husband was ten years ago."
"What will you do--tell me, what will you do?"
"I will play a game of cards--just one magnificent game; and the cards
shall settle it. All shall be quite fair, as when you and I played in
the little house by the Chaudiere--at first, Lucy,--before I was a
devil."
Was this peculiar softness to his last tones assumed or real? She looked
at him inquiringly; but he moved away to the window, and stood gazing
down the hillside towards the town below. His eyes smarted.
"I will die," she said to herself in whispers--"I will die." A minute
passed, and then Pierre turned and said to her: "Lucy, he is coming up
the hill. Listen. If you tell him that I have seen you, I will shoot
him on sight, dead. You would save him, for a little, for an hour or
two--or more? Well, do as I say; for these things must be according to
the rules of the game, and I myself will tell him all at the Saints'
Repose. He gave me the lie there, and I will tell him the truth before
them all there. Will you do as I say?"