so young as he had been. His tall figure stooped a little, but he had his fiddle, and those eyes of shining brown that were to be Deedee’s, and the happy heart which made him such a favorite at the garrison. And all these counted. But what counted most with Tess was a guarantee she found in the three young sons, of somewhat obscure maternity, who followed him wherever he went like a triplicate shadow. It was a guarantee of care, of loyalty, of gentleness.
What a man, thought Tess, thus to shepherd his casual progeny while his mates neither knew nor cared where their blood ran! And what children, these, to be living on the river! What little lads, to be cursing and carousing! So she stood up with Denis before Major Lawrence Taliaferro, the honest Indian Agent, and took the boys in hand with kindly vigor.
Tess was not only a woman of red cheeks, of charm and courage and unsentimental tenderness. She had been to school. She could read and write. She believed in well scrubbed hands and a well scrubbed kitchen floor. Of course she had no floors to scrub at the Entry, but she made the boys pound pebbles into the hard dirt, which served.
The DuGays had lived in a number of cabins. Denis had housed them first on the river bottom, and their home had been swept away in a spring torrent; then at M’dota, where they had been washed out again. Now they were lodged on the crest of the hill near the limestone walls of the fort, their window, when not blinded by sacking, looking down on the crooked St. Peters. Wherever they lived, their cabin was unique. Like the others, it was made of Cottonwood logs with a bark roof and mud chinkins, but it had a different air. The kettles were scoured with sand. The split-log furniture was tidy. If the cupboard was not entirely empty, the stew had flavor; Tess DuGay knew the value of an onion. She covered the wooden bunk, built into a corner for herself and Denis, with a three-point blanket. She put the wild flowers which the children brought in into a jug. Everyone liked the DuGay cabin, even the Indians, who never failed to pay a call when they came for a palaver with their white father at the Agency.
Tess was no longer young, but she had kept her red cheeks, and on Sundays she wore a white cap trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons which Narcisse had bought for her at the sutler’s store. She moved as quickly as a girl, although she grew heavier yearly. The family spoke an anomalous mixture of English, French and Sioux, but Tessie’s commonest means of communication was a chuckle. She chuckled when Denis strewed shavings of red cedar in his endless manufacture of fiddles. She chuckled when the boys overturned benches and tables in rough and tumble fights. She chuckled when Deedee ran in with dirty Indian babies held tenderly for her mother to admire. She chuckled—but she had the finger of authority. The DuGays were full of mischief—divil-ment, an Irish officer had called it, giving them their nickname—but not of honest wickedness. Unless, perhaps, it were Narcisse.
Narcisse said, “Tess, she brek de heart eef we too moch gret beeg devils.” He said it earnestly to his small half brothers and sister. But Narcisse drank too much whiskey; and more than once he had been in trouble with the military. And yet—there was something about Narcisse. Tess had, she could not deny it, a special feeling for him. And not Tess alone; everybody—the soldiers, the squatters, the Indians. For a mission which required tactful handling of the Indians, M’sieu Page always chose Narcisse. The Sioux would give Narcisse their very eagle feathers, M’sieu Page had said one time to Tess. Narcisse showed, it is true, a tint of the bois brûlé, but that was not the reason. Amable and Hypolite showed that, too.
How Deedee loved Narcisse! He and Amable and Hypolite seemed no less her brothers than the younger seven, and her supreme devotion was rendered to him and to Andy, the baby. Narcisse was like the baby, although he was tall and bronzed; he was so helpless. His curly black hair was always tousled by elated or despairing fingers. His black eyes either sparkled with fun or were clouded with misery. His smile flashed in his bearded face, only to go out like a candle.
There was no one quite like Narcisse, who on one return loaded her with wampum and beaded trinkets, and on the next would hardly fling her a word, but brooded over his pipe for days. The other DuGays were always happy. The little cabin shone with the sunshine of their dispositions. Narcisse was the only cloud. Yet when Narcisse was happy he was the happiest of all. How he could sing, about the three fairy ducks or the little bird which spoke both French and Latin! How he could laugh, with his head thrown back and his black beard pointed at the ceiling! How he could swing Tess off the floor, and did it, too, on those nights when some soldiers came in for a stew and Denis tuned up the fiddle!
Narcisse was too happy. Couldn’t he see it himself, wondered Deedee, watching him? It was going up so high which made him fall so far. When he was happy she watched him smilingly, but with a small pain at her heart, and when he was unhappy her eyes took on an anxious watchful look.
Amable had a round moon face and loved to eat, to sleep, to chatter. Hypolite had a long nose and twinkling eyes and a dangerous reputation as a fighter. All three had the long rakish body of their father, which Deedee also possessed. There was a story told of the brothers. It was said that once they had walked over fifty miles on snowshoes, and then, arriving to find a ball in progress at some half-breed shanty at the Entry, had danced all the rest of the night.
The younger boys were more like Tess, stocky and red-cheeked. Their mother had tried to insure their greatness by naming them for the great, and it was Deedee’s duty and privilege to box the ears, scrub the hands, sugar the bread and kiss the bumps of George Washington (Georgie), Lafayette (Lafe), Napoleon Bonaparte (Nappie), Jasper Page (Jappie), Daniel Boone (Dannie), Zachary Taylor (Zach)—Old Rough and Ready and his four delightful daughters had recently commanded at the fort. And down at the end of the string was Andy (for Andrew Jackson, who was president at the time), a one-year-old of soft alluring bulges and tender pendent cheeks.
Andy was the baby, and Deedee always took care of the baby. She took care of succeeding babies as they arrived at yearly intervals, and tended each one with undiminishing delight. Deedee loved babies. She loved all of her brothers, and herded the younger ones about with great good humor and beat them at running, at climbing, at swimming, just to keep them in hand. But especially she loved the one who at the moment was the youngest. Her long thin arms knew the very gentlest way to cradle a baby. Her bright eyes grew soft as patches of brown velvet when babies looked up at them with their unblinking stares. Her merry mouth turned tender as she hummed the little tuneless song which so infallibly put them to sleep.
“Delia has a way with babies,” said Tess DuGay. She was proud of her only daughter.
And in other ways besides taking care of babies, Dee-dee was a help. She was more help, her mother sometimes said, than the seven boys laid end to end. Deedee thought that boys laid end to end would be even less help than they were on their lively toes, but she never brought up the matter. Deedee, like her mother, was inclined to be silent in a houseful of chatterers. When she spoke it was slowly. She moved slowly, too. She had a negligent, smiling way of going into action.
But she went into action. Consider the morning upon which she went to the island and into M’sieu Page’s house.
Book 1-Chapter 3
III
SHE was unaware, of course, of what the day held, but she was up when reveille sounded faintly from the fort. She dragged off the buffalo robe under which her brothers slept, snuggled into straw at the other end of the loft, and inserted brown, inexorable toes beneath the ribs of George Washington DuGay. “Up with you, darlin’.”
She swung down the ladder and washed, and attended to Andy. She swept out the single room, pausing in the doorway to lean on her homemade hickory broom and survey the rising sun. It was only a red blur in a moist gray sky, and conveyed less hint of warmth than the thread of smoke which spiraled from the Agency chimney. Since her mother was already busy at the loom, she made the morning coffee, of burned crusts boiled in water. Then the boys piled down and the family assembled for breakfast, a babble of voices filling the cabin to its eaves. They were all there save Narcisse and Amable and Hypolite, who had left for their winter posts.
When