The Cursed Patois

The Cursed Patois, by Mary
Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The Cursed Patois From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23247]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CURSED PATOIS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE CURSED PATOIS
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

As his boat shot to the camp dock of beach stones, the camper thought
he heard a child's voice behind the screen of brush. He leaped out and
drew the boat to its landing upon a cross-piece held by two uprights in
the water, and ascended the steep path worn in leaf mould.
There was not only a child, there was a woman also in the camp. And
Frank Puttany, his German feet planted outward in a line, his smiling
dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creatures whom he had
evidently introduced, in foolish helplessness gave his partner the usual
greeting:
"Veil, Prowny."
"Hello, Puttany. Visitors?"
Brown pulled off his cap to the woman. She was pretty, with eyes like a
deer's, with white teeth showing between her parted scarlet lips, and
much curling hair pinned up and blowing over her ears. She had the
rich tint of a quarter-breed, lightened in her case by a constant suffusion
which gave her steady color. She was dressed in a mixture of patches,
but all were fitted to her perfect shape with a Parisian elegance sensed
even by-backwoodsmen. Pressed against her knee stood the dirtiest and
chubbiest four-year-old child on the borders of Brevoort Lake--perhaps
the dirtiest on the north shore of Michigan. The Indian mixed with his
French had been improved on by the sun until he was of a brick redness
and hardness of flesh; a rosy-raeated thing, like a good muskalonge.
Brown suddenly remembered the pair. They were Joe La France's wife
and child. Joe La France was dead. Puttany had recently told him that
Joe La France left a widow and a baby without shelter, and without
relations nearer than Canada.
After greeting Brown the guest resumed her seat on one of the
camp-chairs, a box worn smooth by much use, having a slit cut in the
top through which the hand could be thrust to lift it.
The camp, in a small clearing, consisted of two tents, both of the
wedge-shaped kind. The sleeping-tent was nearly filled by the bed it
contained; and this, lifted a few inches above the ground on pole

supports, was of browse or brush and straw, covered with blankets. A
square canopy of mosquito-netting protected it. The cooking-tent had a
foundation of logs and a canvas top. The floor was of pure white sand.
Boxes like lockers were stored under the eaves to hold food, and in one
corner a cylindrical camp-stove with an oven thrust its pipe through a
tinned hole in the roof. Plenty of iron skillets, kettles, and pans hung
above the lockers on pegs in the logs; and the camp dinner service of
white ware, black-handled knives and forks, and metal spoons, neatly
washed, stood on a table. Jess, the Scotch collie, who was always left to
guard the tents in their owners' absence, sat at her usual post within the
door; and she and Brown exchanged repressed growls at the strangers.
Jess, being freed from her chain, trotted at his heels when he went back
to the beach to clean fish for supper. She sat and watched his deft and
work-hardened hands as he dipped and washed and drew and scaled his
spoil. He was a clean-skinned, blue-eyed Canadian Irishman, well
made and sinewy, bright and open of countenance. His blond hair clung
in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm forehead. No ill-nature was visible
about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his partner,
who followed Jess and stood also watching him.
"Puttany, you fool! what have you brought these cursed patois into
camp for?"
"Joe La France vas my old pardner," softly pleaded the German.
"Damn you, man, we can't start an orphan-asylum and widows' home!
We'll get a bad name at the hotels. The real good people won't have us
for guides."
"She told me in Allanville she had no place to stay. She did not know
what to do. At the old voman's, where Joe put her, they have need of
her bed. The old voman is too poor to