FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123  
124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>   >|  
uch rattling blades as himself and his Captain--who would have been disposed to lay the flat of his sword smartly across the shoulders of the orderly, could he have dreamed of mention in such irreverent fellowship--they had no chance with the women, and for his own part this made him very sad. And he contrived to look so for about a minute, as he led the Captain's horse up and down before the door of the council-house, while Choo-qualee-qualoo, at one end of his beat, stood among a clump of laurel and talked to him as he came and went, and Willinawaugh, in the shadowy recesses of a neighboring hut, watched through the open door how his scheme took effect. It made him very sad, the soldier said, mournfully, for the girls to like other fellows better than him--as they generally did! And Choo-qualee-qualoo broke off to say here that she did not discern why such preference should be, for this soldier's hair was the color of the Captain's gold lace on his red coat (the orderly was called "Carrots" by his comrades), and he had a face with--and at a loss she dabbled the tips of her fingers delicately about the bridge of her nose and her eyes to intimate the freckles on his fair skin, which beauty-spots she evidently admired. The Scotchman's French wife was a stunner, the orderly was good enough to declare again, and everybody else thought so too. But he had overheard Captain Demere say to Captain Stuart that her husband had no right to bring her to this western wilderness, and that that terrible journey of so many hundred miles, keeping up on foot with men, was enough to have killed her; and Captain Stuart had replied that she would make a fine pace-setter for infantry in heavy marching order. The orderly protested that for his part, if he were a condemned fine woman like that, he wouldn't live in a wilderness--he would run away from the Scotchman and go back to wherever she came from. Handsomest eyes he ever saw--_except two eyes_! Here Choo-qualee-qualoo gave Odalie a broadside glance which left no doubt as to whose eyes this exception was supposed to refer, and put two or three strands of the red beads into her mouth, showing her narrow sharp teeth as she laughed with pleasure and pride. Thus it was that Odalie was apprised of the fact that she was regarded by the Indians as a French prisoner in the hands of the English, and that the young soldier's use of the idea of capture by her husband, figuratively, as in th
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123  
124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Captain
 

orderly

 

soldier

 

qualoo

 

qualee

 
wilderness
 
Odalie
 

Stuart

 
Scotchman
 

husband


French

 

setter

 
declare
 

protested

 
marching
 

infantry

 
hundred
 
Demere
 

journey

 

terrible


overheard

 

killed

 

replied

 

western

 

thought

 

keeping

 

broadside

 

pleasure

 

laughed

 

showing


narrow

 
apprised
 

capture

 

figuratively

 

English

 
regarded
 

Indians

 
prisoner
 

strands

 
Handsomest

wouldn
 

supposed

 
exception
 
stunner
 

glance

 

condemned

 
council
 

recesses

 
neighboring
 

watched