The Cobbler In The Devils Kitchen | Page 5

that same in sorrow, consatin' to fetch her out to Ameriky whin yer fortune was made?"
"I did, Owen, I did."
"Whin ye got word of her death last year, was ye a broken-hearted widdy or was ye not?"
"I was, Owen, I was." 46
"John McGillis, do ye call yerself a widdy now, or do ye not call yerself a widdy?"
"I do, Owen, I do."
"Thin ye're the loire," and Owen slapped his face.
For a minute there was danger of manslaughter as they dealt each other blows with sledge fists. Instead of clinching, they stood apart and cudgelled fiercely with the knuckled hand. The first round ended in blood, which John wiped from his face with a new bandanna, and Owen flung contemptuously from his nose with finger and thumb. The lax-muscled cobbler was no match for the fresh and vigorous voyageur, and he knew it, but went stubbornly to work again, saying, grimly:
"I've shpiled yer face for the gu'urls the night, bedad."
They pounded each other without mercy, and again rested, Owen this time leaning against the fence to breathe.
"John McGillis, are ye a widdy or are ye not a widdy?" he challenged, as soon as he could speak.
"I am, Owen Cunnin', I am," maintained John.
"Thin I repate ye're the loire!" And once more they came to the proof, until Owen lay upon the ground kicking to keep his opponent off.
"Will I bring ye the dhrop of whiskey, Owen?" suggested John, tenderly.
His cousin by marriage crawled to the fence and sat up, without replying.
"I've the flask in me pouch, Owen."
"Kape it there."
"But sure if ye foight wid me ye'll dhrink wid me?"
"I'll not dhrink a dhrop wid ye."
The cobbler panted heavily. "The loikes of you that do be goin' to marry on a Frinch quarther-brade, desavin' her, and the father and the mother and the praste, that you do be a widdy."
"I am a widdy, Owen."
The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back, repeating, at the top of his breath, "Ye're the loire!"
"What do ye mane?" sternly demanded John. "Ye know I've had me throuble. Ye know I've lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year gone. Was the praste that wrote the letther a loire?"
"I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye think ye are."
John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasping him by the collar. Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory and imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present of large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose up it took entire possession of him.
"Why didn't ye tell me this before?"
"I've not knowed it the long time meself."
"What towken have ye got?"
"Towken enough for you and me."
"Show it to me."
"I will not."
"Ye're desavin' me. Ye have no towken."
"Thin marry on yer quarther-brade if ye dare!"
To be unsettled and uninterested in his surroundings was John McGillis's portion during the remaining weeks of his stay on the island. Half savage and half tender he sat in his barracks and smoked large pipes of tobacco.
He tramped out nearly every evening to the Devil's Kitchen, and had wordy battles, which a Frenchman would have called fights, with the cobbler, though the conferences always ended by his producing his ration and supping and smoking there. He coaxed his cousin to show him the token, vacillating between hope of impossible news from a wife he had every reason to believe dead, and indignation at being made the sport of Owen's stubbornness. Learning in the Fur Company's office that Owen had received news from the old country in the latest mail sent out of New York, he was beside himself, and Amable Morin's girl was forgotten. He began to believe he had never thought of her.
"Sure, the old man Morin and me had some words and a dhrink over it, was all. I did but dance wid her and pinch her cheek. A man niver knows what he does on Mackinac till he comes to himself in the winter camps wid a large family on his moind."
"The blarney of your lip doesn't desave me, John McGillis," responded his cousin the cobbler, with grimness.
"But whin will ye give me the word you've got, Owen?"
"I'll not give it to ye till the boats go out."
"Will ye tell me, is the colleen alive, thin?"
"I've tould ye ye're not a widdy."
"If the colleen is alive, the towken would be sint to me."
"Thin ye've got it," said Owen.
Poor John smoked, biting hard on his pipe-stem. Ignorance, and the helplessness of a limited man who is more a good animal than a discerning soul; time, the slow transmission of news, his