"Good for you, Rupe!" exclaimed Walker, lowering his pistol, with a
pleasant smile,--"good for you!--but, _sacre bapteme_! how dead I'd
have shot you, if you hadn't dropped that knife!"
The forbearance of Walker put an end to the row. Rupe, disarmed at
once by the loss of his knife and the coolness of Walker, was seized
by a couple of the deck-hands, and might have been secured without
injury to his beauty, had not a Mississippi boatman, who owed him an
old grudge, struck him on the face with a heavy iron hook, lacerating
and disfiguring him hideously for life.
"But why didn't Walker shoot Falardeau, old man?" asked I of the
_voyageur_, wishing to learn something of the etiquette of life and
death among these peculiar people, who appear to be so reckless of the
former and fearless of the latter.
"Ah!" replied he, "Rupe was too valuable to be shot down for missing a
man with a knife. Such a canoe-steersman as Rupe never was known
before or since: he knew every rock in every rapid from the Ottawa to
the Columbia."
Some time after this I again fell in with young Rupe, under
circumstances indicating that his life was not considered quite so
valuable as that of the old gentleman from whom he inherited his
frightful aspect.
In company with a friend, one day, I was beating about for wild-fowl
in a marshy river, down which small rafts or "cribs" of timber were
worked by half-breeds and Canadians.
About dark we came to a small, flat island in the marsh, where we
found an Iroquois camp, in which we proposed to pass the night, as we
had no camping-equipage in our skiff.
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