Ninon soon tired of her trapper.For one thing she found out that he was a coward.She saw him run once in a buffalo fight.That was when the Pawnee stood still with a blanket stretched wide in a gaudy square,and caught the head of the mad animal fairly in the tough fabric;his mus-tang's legs trembled under him,but he did not move,--for a mustang is the soul of an Indian,and obeys each thought;the Indian himself felt his heart pounding at his ribs;but once with that garment fast over the baffled eyes of the struggling brute,the rest was only a matter of judicious knife-thrusts.Ninon saw this.She rode past her lover,and snatched the twisted bullion cord from his hat that she had braided and put there,and that night she tied it on the hat of the Pawnee who had killed the buffalo.
The Pawnees were rather proud of the episode,and as for the Frenchmen,they did not mind.The French have always been very adaptable in America.Ninon was universally popular.
And so were her soups.
Every man has his price.Father de Smet's was the soups of Mademoiselle Ninon.
Fancy!If you have an educated palate and are obliged to eat the strong distillation of buffalo meat,cooked in a pot which has been wiped out with the greasy petticoat of a squaw!When Ninon came down from St.Louis she brought with her a great box containing neither clothes,furniture,nor trinkets,but something much more wonderful!It was a marvellous compound-ing of spices and seasonings.The aromatic liquids she set before the enchanted men of the settlement bore no more relation to ordinary buffalo soup than Chateaubrand's Indian maidens did to one of the Paw-nee girls,who slouched about the settle-ment with noxious tresses and sullen slavish coquetries.
Father de Smet would not at any time have called Ninon a scarlet woman.But when he ate the dish of soup or tasted the hot corn-cakes that she invariably invited him to partake of as he passed her little house,he refrained with all the charity of a true Christian and an accomplished epicure from even thinking her such.And he re-membered the words of the Saviour,"Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone."To Father de Smet's healthy nature nothing seemed more superfluous than sin.
And he was averse to thinking that any committed deeds of which he need be ashamed.So it was his habit,especially if the day was pleasant and his own thoughts happy,to say to himself when he saw one of the wild young trappers leaving the cabin of Mademoiselle Ninon:"He has been for some of the good woman's hot cakes,"till he grew quite to believe that the only attractions that the adroit Frenchwoman possessed were of a gastronomic nature.
To tell the truth,the attractions of Made-moiselle Ninon were varied.To begin with,she was the only thing in that wilder-ness to suggest home.Ninon had a genius for home-making.Her cabin,in which she cooked,slept,ate,lived,had become a boudoir.
The walls were hung with rare and beautiful skins;the very floor made rich with huge bear robes,their permeating odors subdued by heavy perfumes brought,like the spices,from St.Louis.The bed,in day-time,was a couch of beaver-skins;the fire-place had branching antlers above it,on which were hung some of the evidences of the fair Ninon's coquetry,such as silken scarves,of the sort the voyageurs from the far north wore;and necklaces made by the Indians of the Pacific coast and brought to Ninon by --but it is not polite to inquire into these matters.There were little moc-casins also,much decorated with porcupine-quills,one pair of which Father de Smet had brought from the Flathead nation,and presented to Ninon that time when she nursed him through a frightful run of fever.
She would take no money for her patient services.
"Father,"said she,gravely,when he offered it to her,"I am not myself virtuous.
But I have the distinction of having pre-served the only virtuous creature in the settlement for further usefulness.Some-times,perhaps,you will pray for Ninon."Father de Smet never forgot those prayers.
These were wild times,mind you.No use to keep your skirts coldly clean if you wished to be of help.These men were sub-duing a continent.Their primitive qualities came out.Courage,endurance,sacrifice,suffering without complaint,friendship to the death,indomitable hatred,unfaltering hope,deep-seated greed,splendid gayety --it takes these things to subdue a conti-nent.Vice is also an incidental,--that is to say,what one calls vice.This is because it is the custom to measure these men as if they were governed by the laws of civili-zation,where there is neither law nor civilization.
This much is certain:gentlemen cannot conquer a country.They tried gentlemen back in Virginia,and they died,partly from lack of intellect,but mostly from lack of energy.After the yeomen have fought the conquering fight,it is well enough to bring in gentlemen,who are sometimes clever lawmakers,and who look well on thrones or in presidential chairs.
But to return to the winter of the small-pox.It was then that the priest and Ninon grew to know each other well.They be-came acquainted first in the cabin where four of the trappers lay tossing in delirium.
The horrible smell of disease weighted the air.Outside wet snow fell continuously and the clouds seemed to rest only a few feet above the sullen bluffs.The room was bare of comforts,and very dirty.Ninon looked about with disgust.
"You pray,"said she to the priest,"and I will clean the room.""Not so,"returned the broad-shouldered father,smilingly,"we will both clean the room."Thus it came that they scrubbed the floor together,and made the chimney so that it would not smoke,and washed the blankets on the beds,and kept the wood-pile high.They also devised ventilators,and let in fresh air without exposing the patients.They had no medicine,but they continually rubbed the suffering men with bear's grease.
