Old Kaskaskia | Page 7

know how to deal with
young ladies. They like best to be fought over. It is not proper to tell
her we are willing to have her. The way to do is to drive off the other
suitors."
"But there are so many. Tante Isidore says all the young men in
Kaskaskia and the officers left at Fort Chartres are her suitors.
Monsieur Reece Zhone is the worst one, though. I might ask him to go
out to papa's office with me to-night, but we shall be sent to bed
directly after supper. Besides, here sits his sister who was carried out
fainting."
"While he is in our house we are obliged to be polite to him," said
Odile. "But if I were a boy, I would, some time, get on my pony and
ride into Kaskaskia"--The conspiring went on in whispers. The
children's heads bobbed nearer each other, so Peggy overheard no
more.
It was the very next evening, the evening of St. John's Day, that young
Pierre rode into Kaskaskia beside his father to see the yearly bonfire
lighted. Though many of the old French customs had perished in a
mixing of nationalities, St. John's Day was yet observed; the Latin race
drawing the Saxon out to participate in the festival, as so often happens
wherever they dwell.
The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It was
an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and
pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners.
The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some
half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent
as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful
noise, like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony,
but its character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at
night. The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists,
came out to see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or

less affecting them all.
Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame,
showing the eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the
church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly
fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and
wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest
faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close
around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating
unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of
the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the
tavern at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and
hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It
illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds
beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat
drove venturesome urchins back.
Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter,
conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church front.
Thirsty rustics and flatboat men crowded to his kegs and clinked his
glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky.
Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the
renegade, but returning him a shake of the head.
Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their
laughing faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a
moment, when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they
were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins
and fairies danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of
youth were at work.
People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice
Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny
face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black setting.
They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison waited
at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's habitual
indifference to her existence. He saw Angélique Saucier beside her
mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from Fort

Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to put
these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital to
Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The
moment Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their
political leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the
light of the St. John fire.
Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught