And for the first time M'sieu, my comrade, spoke.
"Let us bring up the dunnage from the canoe, mon pere."
He led the way out of the cabin, and I followed. We were fifty steps away
when he stopped suddenly.
"Ah," he said, "I have forgotten something. I will overtake you."
He turned back to the cabin, and I went on to the canoe.
He did not join me. When I returned with my burden, M'sieu appeared at
the door. He amazed me, startled me, I will say, gentlemen. I could not
imagine such a change as I saw in him--that man of horrible silence, of
grim, dark mystery. He was smiling; his white teeth shone; his voice was
the voice of another man. He seemed to me ten years younger as he stood
there, and as I dropped my load and went in he was laughing, and his hand
was laid pleasantly on my shoulder.
Across the cot, with his head stretched down to the floor, his eyes
bulging and his jaws agape, lay Joseph Brecht. I sprang to him. He was
dead. And then I SAW Gentlemen, he had been choked to death!
"He made one leetle meestake, mon pere. Andre Beauvais did not die. I am
Andre Beauvais."
That is all, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted. May the Law have mercy!
THE OTHER MAN'S WIFE
Thornton wasn't the sort of man in whom you'd expect to find the devil
lurking. He was big, blond, and broad-shouldered. When I first saw him I
thought he was an Englishman. That was at the post at Lac la Biche, six
hundred miles north of civilization.
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