“Ah!” cried Mario, “I do not like this place; it is inhabited.”  He pointed to a wretched hut half hidden by the forest.  Except two or three little cabins seen in the distance, this was the first habitation that had met our eyes since leaving the Mississippi.[14]

A woman showed herself at the door.  She was scarcely dressed at all.  Her feet were naked, and her tousled hair escaped from a wretched handkerchief that she had thrown upon her head.  Hidden in the bushes and behind the trees half a dozen half-nude children gazed at us, ready to fly at the slightest sound.  Suddenly two men with guns came out of the woods, but at the sight of the flatboat stood petrified.  Mario shook his head.

“If it were not so late I would take the boat farther on.”

[Yet he went hunting with ’Tino and Gordon along the shore, leaving the father of Francoise and Suzanne lying on the deck with sick headache, Joseph fishing in the flatboat’s little skiff, and the women and children on the bank, gazed at from a little distance by the sitting figures of the two strange men and the woman.  Then the hunters returned, supper was prepared, and both messes ate on shore.  Gordon and Mario joining freely in the conversation of the more cultivated group, and making altogether a strange Babel of English, French, Spanish, and Italian.]

After supper Joseph and Alix, followed by my sister and me, plunged into the denser part of the woods.

“Take care, comrade,” we heard Mario say; “don’t go far.”

The last rays of the sun were in the treetops.  There were flowers everywhere.  Alix ran here and there, all enthusiasm.  Presently Suzanne uttered a cry and recoiled with affright from a thicket of blackberries.  In an instant Joseph was at her side; but she laughed aloud, returned to the assault, and drew by force from the bushes a little girl of three or four years.  The child fought and cried; but Suzanne held on, drew her to the trunk of a tree, sat down, and held her on her lap by force.  The poor little thing was horribly dirty, but under its rags there were pretty features and a sweetness that inspired pity.  Alix sat down by my sister and stroked the child’s hair, and, like Suzanne, spite of the dirt, kissed her several times; but the little creature still fought, and yelled [in English]: 

“Let me alone!  I want to go home!  I want to go home!”

Joseph advised my sister to let the child go, and Suzanne was about to do so when she remembered having at supper filled her pocket with pecans.  She quickly filled the child’s hands with them and the Rubicon was passed....  She said that her name was Annie; that her father, mother, and brothers lived in the hut.  That was all she could say.  She did not know her parents’ name.  When Suzanne put her down she ran with all her legs towards the cabin to show Alix’s gift, her pretty ribbon.

Before the sun went down the wind rose.  Great clouds covered the horizon; large rain-drops began to fall.  Joseph covered the head of his young wife with her mantle, and we hastened back to the camp.