fle is of no use until it is cocked. While
he so stood, another man came into view and to the first one's side.
This one, too, he knew, despite the soft hat that had taken the place
of the silk one; for this was Tarbox. The Acadian was confirmed in
his conviction that the surveyor's invitation for him to come to Houma
was part of a plot to entrap him.

While he still looked the two men got into the canoe and St. Pierre
paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter let down the hammer of his gun,
shrank away again, turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his
canoe, and paddled off. The men's departure from the cabin was, in his
belief, a ruse. But he knew how by circuits and short cuts to follow
after them unseen, and this he did until he became convinced that they
were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in
the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his
cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it,
and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for a long
hiding-out.

He knew every spot of land and water for leagues around, as a bear or
a fox would know the region about his den. He had in mind now a bit of
dry ground scarce fifty feet long or wide, deeply hidden in the swamp
to the north of this lake. How it had ever happened that this dry
spot, lifted two or three feet above the low level around it, had been
made, whether by some dumb force of nature or by the hand of men yet
more untamable than he, had never crossed his thought. It was beyond
measure of more value to him to know, by what he had seen growing on
it season after season, that for many a long year no waters had
overflowed it. In the lake, close to his hut, lay moored his small
centerboard lugger, and into this he presently threw his few
appliances and supplies, spread sail, and skimmed away, with his
pirogue towing after.

His loaded rifle lay within instant reach. By choice he would not have
harmed any living creature that men call it wrong to injure; but to
save himself, not only from death, but from any risk of death,
rightful or wrongful, he would, not through courage, but in the
desperation of frantic cowardice, have killed a hundred men, one by
one.

By this time it was night; and when first the lugger and, after it was
hidden away, the pirogue, had carried him up a slender bayou as near
as they could to the point he wished to reach, he had still to drag
the loaded pirog