“Money,” he exclaimed scornfully, “she is not money.  Piastre—­Spanish dollare—­then I give you carrot.”

“By God!” shouted Bill Cowan, “ye will take Virginny paper, and Congress paper, or else I reckon we’ll have a drink and tobacey, boys, take or no take.”

“Hooray, Bill, ye’re right,” cried several of our men.

“Lemme in here,” said Cowan.  But the frightened Creole blocked the doorway.

“Sacre’!” he screamed, and then, “Voleurs!”

The excitement drew a number of people from the neighborhood.  Nay, it seemed as if the whole town was ringed about us.

“Bravo, Jules!” they cried, “garde-tu la porte.  A bas les Bostonnais!  A bas les voleurs!”

“Damn such monkey talk,” said Cowan, facing them suddenly.  I knew him well, and when the giant lost his temper it was gone irrevocably until a fight was over.  “Call a man a squar’ name.”

“Hey, Frenchy,” another of our men put in, stalking up to the clerk, “I reckon this here store’s ourn, ef we’ve a mind to tek it.  I ’low you’ll give us the rum and the ’bacey.  Come on, boys!”

In between him and the clerk leaped a little, robin-like man with a red waistcoat, beside himself with rage.  Bill Cowan and his friends stared at this diminutive Frenchman, open-mouthed, as he poured forth a veritable torrent of unintelligible words, plentifully mixed with sacres, which he ripped out like snarls.  I would as soon have touched him as a ball of angry bees or a pair of fighting wildcats.  Not so Bill Cowan.  When that worthy recovered from his first surprise he seized hold of some of the man’s twisting arms and legs and lifted him bodily from the ground, as he would have taken a perverse and struggling child.  There was no question of a fight.  Cowan picked him up, I say, and before any one knew what happened, he flung him on to the hot roof of the store (the eaves were but two feet above his head), and there the man stuck, clinging to a loose shingle, purpling and coughing and spitting with rage.  There was a loud gust of guffaws from the woodsmen, and oaths like whip-cracks from the circle around us, menacing growls as it surged inward and our men turned to face it.  A few citizens pushed through the outskirts of it and ran away, and in the hush that followed we heard them calling wildly the names of Father Gibault and Clark and of Vigo himself.  Cowan thrust me past the clerk into the store, where I stood listening to the little man on the roof, scratching and clutching at the shingles, and coughing still.

But there was no fight.  Shouts of “Monsieur Vigo!  Voici Monsieur Vigo!” were heard, the crowd parted respectfully, and Monsieur Vigo in his snuff-colored suit stood glancing from Cowan to his pallid clerk.  He was not in the least excited.

“Come in, my frens,” he said; “it is too hot in the sun.”  And he set the example by stepping over the sill on to the hard-baked earth of the floor within.  Then he spied me.  “Ah,” he said, “the boy of Monsieur le Colonel!  And how are you called, my son?” he added, patting me kindly.