And she would have married him, too, and would have fought for
him with a club if it had come to that, when the thing happened that made
him run away. It was at the midsummer carnival, when all the trappers and
their wives and children were at Lac Bain. And Dupont followed the
Yellow-back about like a dog. He taunted him, he insulted him, he got
down on his knees and offered to fight him without getting on his feet;
and there, before the very eyes of Elise, he washed the Yellow-back's
face in the grease of one of the roasted caribou! And the Yellow-back was
a man! Yes, a grown man! And it was then that Jacques Dupont shouted out
his challenge to all that crowd. He would fight the Yellow-back. He would
fight him with his right arm tied behind his back! And before Elise and
the Yellow-back, and all that crowd, friends tied his arm so that it was
like a piece of wood behind him, and it was his right arm, his fighting
arm, the better half of him that was gone. And even then the Yellow-back
was as white as the paper he drew pictures on. Ventre saint gris, but
then was his chance to have killed Jacques Dupont! Half a man could have
done it. Did he, m'sieu? No, he did not. With his one arm and his one
hand Jacques Dupont whipped that Yellow-back, and he would have killed
him if Elise had not rushed in to sav e the Yellow-back's purple face
from going dead black. And that night the Yellow-back slunk away.
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