Doc was mystified. “Can you what?” Then, when Verrieul had explained, Doc said “Oh!” a little feebly, and added, “Yes, you’re right! They’re the worst Can-I’s there is! With them Americans it’s all the time Can-I this and Can-I that; and the truth is, they can’t. They can’t lick nobody without they hide behind a tree and do it long-distance! They ain’t sporting!”

“Purely barbarous in action and speech,” Verrieul assured him. “It’s agony to be near such uncultivated fellows, talking through their noses about trade, trade, trade!”

“Hypocrites!” Doc exclaimed.

“You said ‘hypocrites’ once before,” Verrieul said. “Don’t repeat yourself.”

“Why not?” Doc asked helplessly. “If I don’t repeat myself, I got to use profanity.”

He yawned and stumbled to his feet to look behind the canoe. When he returned he had a satisfied air, and I hoped that Gautier, too, had been satisfied.

… The settlement of Green Bay, on the shores of the beautiful Fox River, is a handsome piece of country only marred by the perpetual thunderstorms that hover above it, day and night, during warm weather.

On one side of the river were cabins, built of whitewashed logs, and in front of them narrow fields of brilliant green. Growing in the water were acres of wild rice; and the flocks of geese and brant and ducks that circled above the rice surpassed belief. The bottom of the river was covered with sturgeon the size of sharks, while trout and whitefish flirted over and among them. The place was a Paradise of game.

Opposite the settlement were camped the Indians who had agreed to go east with Langlade. Like the Sacs and Foxes, they had brought friends and relatives in such numbers as to make a populous Indian town, each nation distinguishable from the others by the manner in which their lodges were built. The Sioux stretched tanned skins over stakes; the Ottawas erected wigwams out of sheets of bark laid on poles; we Sacs and Foxes used closely woven mats of rushes in the same manner. Chippewas, Menominees and Winnebagoes for the most part slept beneath their overturned canoes.

All these people visited among themselves, smoking each other’s pipes, sampling each other’s food, swapping bracelets and brooches. All enmities, even the bitter hatred of the Sacs for the Sioux, were forgotten in making common cause against the Americans.

It was early in June that the last of the Ottawas came in from the northward. That night the nations danced their war dances, all of them different, but all equally terrible.

The songs to which they danced were dissonant and ominous; and their movements and appearance, too, were menacing. Some were naked, except for such covering as was to be had from the skin of a woodpecker or golden robin, or some equally trifling bird. From head to foot they were painted to suggest the raw flesh of open, festering wounds.