"Come, Paul," said I, "we will be
off." Paul sat in the sun, under the wall of the fort.
He jumped
up, mounted, and we rode toward Fort Laramie. When we reached it, a
man came out of the gate with a pack at his back and a rifle on his
shoulder; others were gathering about him, shaking him by the hand, as
if taking leave. I thought it a strange thing that a man should set
out alone and on foot for the prairie. I soon got an explanation.
Perrault - this, if I recollect right was the Canadian's name - had
quarreled with the bourgeois, and the fort was too hot to hold him.
Bordeaux, inflated with his transient authority, had abused him, and
received a blow in return. The men then sprang at each other, and
grappled in the middle of the fort. Bordeaux was down in an instant,
at the mercy of the incensed Canadian; had not an old Indian, the
brother of his squaw, seized hold of his antagonist, he would have
fared ill. Perrault broke loose from the old Indian, and both the
white men ran to their rooms for their guns; but when Bordeaux,
looking from his door, saw the Canadian, gun in hand, standing in the
area and calling on him to come out and fight, his heart failed him;
he chose to remain where he was. In vain the old Indian, scandalized
by his brother-in-law's cowardice, called upon him to go upon the
prairie and fight it out in the white man's manner; and Bordeaux's
own squaw, equally incensed, screamed to her lord and master that he
was a dog and an old woman.
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