David nodded.  He could not cover the sneering poison in his voice, his contempt for the man who stood before him.

“Yes, I looked through the window.  And I saw you, and the lowest woman on the Three Rivers—­the sister of a man I helped to hang, I—­”

“Stop!”

St. Pierre’s voice broke out of him like the sudden crash of thunder.  He came a step nearer, his face livid, his eyes shooting flame.  With a mighty effort he controlled himself again.  And then, as if he saw something which David could not see, he tried to smile, and in that same instant David caught a grin cutting a great slash across the face of Concombre Bateese.  The change that came over St. Pierre now was swift as sunlight coming out from shadowing cloud.  A rumble grew in his great chest.  It broke in a low note of laughter from his lips, and he faced the bateau across the river.

“M’sieu, you are sorry for her.  Is that it?  You would fight—­”

“For the cleanest, finest little girl who ever lived—­your wife!”

“It is funny,” said St. Pierre, as if speaking to himself, and still looking at the bateau.  “Yes, it is very funny, ma belle Marie-Anne!  He has told you he loves you, and he has kissed your hair and held you in his arms—­yet he wants to fight me because he thinks I am steeped in sin, and to make me fight in place of Bateese he has called my Carmin a low woman!  So what else can I do?  I must fight.  I must whip him until he can not walk.  And then I will send him back for you to nurse, cherie, and for that blessing I think he will willingly take my punishment!  Is it not so, m’sieu?”

He was smiling and no longer excited when he turned to David.

“M’sieu, I will fight you.  And the wagers shall stand.  And in this hour let us be honest, like men, and make confession.  You love ma belle Jeanne—­Marie-Anne?  Is it not so?  And I—­I love my Carmin, whose brother you hanged, as I love no other woman in the world.  Now, if you will have it so, let us fight!”

He began stripping off his shirt, and with a bellow in his throat Concombre Bateese slouched away like a beaten gorilla to explain to St. Pierre’s people the change in the plan of battle.  And as that news spread like fire in the fir-tops, there came but a single cry in response—­shrill and terrible—­and that was from the throat of Andre, the Broken Man.

XXI

As Carrigan stripped off his shirt, he knew that at least in one way he had met more than his match in St. Pierre Boulain.  In the splendid service of which he was a part he had known many men of iron and steel, men whose nerve and coolness not even death could very greatly disturb.  Yet St. Pierre, he conceded, was their master—­and his own.  For a flash he had transformed the chief of the Boulains into a volcano which had threatened to break in savage fury, yet neither the crash nor destruction had come.