Soon After, Old
Pierre Came In With His Lantern; And, Muttering To Himself, Began To
Pull Over The Bales Of Meat, And Select The Best Pieces, As Usual.
But suddenly a hollow and sepulchral voice proceeded from the inner
apartment:
"Pierre! Pierre! Let that fat meat alone! Take nothing
but lean!" Pierre dropped his lantern, and bolted out into the fort,
screaming, in an agony of terror, that the devil was in the
storeroom; but tripping on the threshold, he pitched over upon the
gravel, and lay senseless, stunned by the fall. The Canadians ran
out to the rescue. Some lifted the unlucky Pierre; and others,
making an extempore crucifix out of two sticks, were proceeding to
attack the devil in his stronghold, when the bourgeois, with a crest-
fallen countenance, appeared at the door. To add to the bourgeois'
mortification, he was obliged to explain the whole stratagem to
Pierre, in order to bring the latter to his senses.
We were sitting, on the following morning, in the passage-way between
the gates, conversing with the traders Vaskiss and May. These two
men, together with our sleek friend, the clerk Montalon, were, I
believe, the only persons then in the fort who could read and write.
May was telling a curious story about the traveler Catlin, when an
ugly, diminutive Indian, wretchedly mounted, came up at a gallop, and
rode past us into the fort. On being questioned, he said that
Smoke's village was close at hand. Accordingly only a few minutes
elapsed before the hills beyond the river were covered with a
disorderly swarm of savages, on horseback and on foot.
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