“Joseph!” she cried. “You’ve come back at last!” She stood before the tent flap, as if to bar his path. Joseph, however, walked straight at her; and she, confronted by this menacing, paint-smeared figure, gave way before him and let him pass. Joseph walked into the tent, and Nathaniel after him; and before Nathaniel could drop the tent flap, I pushed Doc in as well and went in myself.

LIII

THE tent was small and hot, and smelled of women and dry grass. On a rolled bearskin in one corner sat Ellen Phipps, and at sight of her I was afraid the thumping of my heart might drown all other sounds in that cramped shelter. I fixed my eyes stolidly on an Indian squaw who squatted on her heels at the back of the tent. A rope was coiled around her waist, and I somehow knew she used the rope for tying Ellen.

Ellen wore an Indian woman’s jerkin, too large for her, and beltless, so that she seemed to be huddled in a shapeless buckskin bag. Her feet were bare.

I saw her make the word “Joseph” with her lips; then felt her eyes on me. I gave her a fleeting glance. Her eyes were wide and her lips a little parted. She looked away with such startled suddenness that I knew she recognized me, in spite of my panoply of soot and grease and the painted white rings around my eyes: in spite of my shaved head and my crest of hair, stiffened with clay.

Marie de Sabrevois had come into the tent after us, and made an affectation of being glad to see Joseph. “You mysterious boy! Away from us these months, and nobody knowing where! Now it seems that all the time you’ve been with friends!” She smiled and added, “Don’t you think, Joseph, you might ask these two comrades of yours to go outside? They make the tent a little crowded.”

She drew a handkerchief from the breast of her caped and belted smock—an absurd imitation, both in cut and material, of the rough tow-cloth hunting shirts worn by woodsmen. I caught again the familiar penetrating odor of violets. She pressed the handkerchief to her pretty nose, and the look she threw us wasn’t kind.

Joseph eyed her. “Why Ellen dressed like this way?”

Marie de Sabrevois turned an amused glance on Nathaniel, as if calling him to witness how absurd an Indian could be.

To Joseph she said, “I’m afraid, my dear boy, you’ve been coarsened by your travels. Perhaps, if you speak in French, it will help you to achieve politeness.”

“I speak English,” Joseph said. “Why you keep my sister in tent like this way? Why you call her sick? She no more sick than me.”