The Cursed Patois | Page 5

themselves a tight house in which to hibernate. If you were obliged to have bear meat that season when the game was thin, you could cut a hole into a den, stand by it with an axe, and lop off the inquiring head stuck out to investigate disturbances. Bears had very small stomachs, but whatever they ate went to fat. They walked much on their hind feet, and browsed on nuts or mast when their hunting was not successful, being able to thrive on little. Usually a father, a mother, and a cub formed one household in one den.
Brown's mind ran on the subject of households; and he sometimes talked to Fran?oise about his mother.
"My mother Gaelics like the Scotch," he said. Fran?oise could not imagine what it was to Gaelic. People had not Gaelic-ed on the Chaudière, where she was brought up until the children were obliged to scatter from the narrow farm. But the priest had never warned her against it, and since M'sieu' Brownee's mother was addicted to the practice, it must be something excellent, perhaps even religious. She secretly invoked St. Francis, her patron saint, to obtain for her that mysterious power of Gaelic-ing of which M'sieu' Brownee spoke so tenderly.
So the summer passed, and frost was already ripening to glory the ranks on ranks of dense forest pressing to the lake borders. Brown and Puttany rowed home through an early September evening, lifted their boat to its cross-piece dock, and pulled the plug out of the bottom to let it drain. There was no sound, even of the dogs, as they flung their spoil ashore. It was the very instant of moon-rise. At first a copper rim was answered by the faintest line in the water. Then the full reddish disk stood upon a strong copper pillar, smooth and flawless in a rippleless lake, and that became denuded of its capital as the ball rose over it into the sky.
"Seems still," remarked Brown, and he ran up the path, shaking leaf loam like dry tobacco dust from the roots of ferns he had brought to Fran?oise. He knew at once that she and Gougou had left the camp. He sat down on the dog-kennel with his hands on his knees, staring at the dim earth. Puttany went from tent to cabin, calling his daily playmate, unable to convince himself that some unusual thing had happened, and he hoped that Brown would contradict him when he felt compelled to announce his slow discovery.
"Dey vas gone!"
"Damn you, Puttany!" exploded his partner, "what did you bring her here for? I didn't want to get into this! I wanted to steer clear of women! You knew I was soft! You knew her black eyes, and the child that made her seem like the Virgin, would get in their work on me!"
"No, I didn't," said Puttany, in phlegmatic consternation.
"What's the matter, Frank? Haven't we behaved white to this woman? Have you done anything, you stupid old Dutchman," cried Brown, collaring his partner with abrupt violence, "that would drive her out of the camp without a word?"
"I svear, Prowny," the other gasped, as soon as he had breath for swearing, "I haf been so polite to her as my own mudder."
The younger man sat down again, dropping lax hands across his knees. A growl inside the box reminded him that Jim the blood-hound should be brought to account for this disappearance.
"Come out here!" he commanded, and the lithe beast crept wagging and apologizing to his side. "What kind of a way is this for you to keep a camp--Jess sitting in the kitchen, and you in the box, and somebody carrying off Fran?oise and the boy, and every rag that would show they had ever been here--and not a sound out of your cowardly head till we come home and catch you skulking? I've a notion to take a board and beat you to death!"
Jim lay down with an abject and dismal whine.
"Where is she?"
Jim lifted his nose and sniffed hopefully, and his master rose up and dragged him by the collar to the empty cabin. It was the first time Brown had entered that little cell since its dedication to the woman for whom it was built. He rubbed Jim's muzzle against the bed, and pointed to nails in the logs where the clothes of the patois had hung.
"Now you lope out and find them--do you hear?"
Jim, crouching on his belly in acknowledgment that his apprehension had been at fault during some late encounter, slunk across the camp and took the path to the hotels.
Brown turned on Puttany following at his heels: "Frank, are you sure Joe La France is dead?"
"Oh yes, he is det."
"Did you see him die? Were you there when he was buried? Was he put underground