“Drop that knife!” repeated Walker.—­“One, two, three!—­I’ll give you a last chance, and when I say three again, I shoot, by thunder!”

The last word had not rolled away, when the gleaming knife flashed from the hand of Rupe, glanced close by Walker’s ear, and sped quivering into the paddle-box, just behind his head.

“Good for you, Rupe!” exclaimed Walker, lowering his pistol, with a pleasant smile,—­“good for you!—­but, sacre bapteme! how dead I’d have shot you, if you hadn’t dropped that knife!”

The forbearance of Walker put an end to the row.  Rupe, disarmed at once by the loss of his knife and the coolness of Walker, was seized by a couple of the deck-hands, and might have been secured without injury to his beauty, had not a Mississippi boatman, who owed him an old grudge, struck him on the face with a heavy iron hook, lacerating and disfiguring him hideously for life.

“But why didn’t Walker shoot Falardeau, old man?” asked I of the voyageur, wishing to learn something of the etiquette of life and death among these peculiar people, who appear to be so reckless of the former and fearless of the latter.

“Ah!” replied he, “Rupe was too valuable to be shot down for missing a man with a knife.  Such a canoe-steersman as Rupe never was known before or since:  he knew every rock in every rapid from the Ottawa to the Columbia.”

Some time after this I again fell in with young Rupe, under circumstances indicating that his life was not considered quite so valuable as that of the old gentleman from whom he inherited his frightful aspect.

In company with a friend, one day, I was beating about for wild-fowl in a marshy river, down which small rafts or “cribs” of timber were worked by half-breeds and Canadians.

About dark we came to a small, flat island in the marsh, where we found an Iroquois camp, in which we proposed to pass the night, as we had no camping-equipage in our skiff.  The men were absent, hunting, and there was nobody in charge of the wigwam but an ugly, undersized squaw, with her two ugly, undersized children.

We were much fatigued, and agreed to sleep by watches, knowing the sort of people we had to deal with.  It was my watch, when voices were heard as of men landing and pulling up a canoe or boat.  Presently three men came into the wigwam, railing-men, dressed in gray Canada homespun and heavy Scotch bonnets.  The light of the fire outside flashed on their faces, as they stooped to enter the elm-bark tent, and in the foremost I recognized the hideous Rupe Falardeau, Junior.  This man carried in his hand a small tin pail full of whiskey.  He was very drunk and dangerous, and greatly disgusted at the absence of the Iroquois men, with whom he had evidently laid himself out for a roaring debauch.

I woke up my companion, and a judicious display of our double-barrelled guns kept the three scoundrels in check.  They insisted on our tasting some of their barbarous liquor, however, and horrible stuff it was,—­distiller’s “high-wines,” strongly dashed with vitriol or something worse.  No wonder that men become fiends incarnate on such “fire-water” as that!