"
"'Guess it do," said the old _voyageur_, with ready assent.
We nearly got foul of a raft coming down the lake, manned with a
rugged set of half-breeds, who had a cask of whiskey on board, and
were very drunk and boisterous.
"Ugly customers to deal with, those _brules_," remarked I, when we had
got clear away from them.
"Some on 'em is," replied the old _voyageur_. "Did you notice the one
with the queer eye,--him in the Scotch cap and _shupac_ moccasons?"
I _had_ noticed him, and an ill-looking thief he was. One of his eyes,
either from natural deformity or the effect of hostile operation, was
dragged down from its proper parallel, and planted in a remote socket
near the corner of his mouth, whence it glared and winked with
super-natural ferocity.
"That's Rupe Falardeau," continued my companion. "His father, old
Rupe, got his eye taken down in a deck-fight with a Mississippi
boatman; and this boy was born with the same mark,--only the eye's
lower down still. If that's to go on in the family, I guess there'll
be a Falardeau with his eye in his knee, some time."
In the deck-fight in which old Rupe got his ugly mark Pete Walker had
a hand; and the part he took in it, as related to me by old Quatreaux,
who was also present, affords a good example of the tact and coolness
which gave him such mastery over the wild spirits among whom he worked
out his destiny.
Walker was coming down a lumbering-river--I forget the name of it--on
board a small tug-steamboat, in which he had an interest.
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