in
the agency house, five hundred were accommodated in barracks, but the
majority found shelter in tents and in the houses of the villagers.
Every night of the fur-trading month there was a ball in Mackinac, given
either by the householders or their guests; and it often happened that
a man spent in one month all he had earned by his year of tremendous and
far-reaching toil. But he had society, and what was to him the cream of
existence, while it lasted. He fitted himself out with new shirts and
buckskins, sashes, caps, neips, and moccasins, and when he was not on
duty showed himself like a hero, knife in sheath, a weather-browned and
sinewy figure. To dance, sing, drink, and play the violin, and have the
scant dozen white women, the half-breeds, and squaws of Mackinac admire
him, was a voyageur's heaven--its brief duration being its charm. For he
was a born woodsman and loved his life.

Charle' Charette did not care where he lodged. Neither had he any
heart to dance, until he looked through the door of the house where
festivities began that season and saw 'Tite Laboise footing it with
Etienne St. Martin. Parbleu! With Etienne St. Martin, the squab little
lard-eater whose brother, Alexis St. Martin, had been put into doctors'
books on account of having his stomach partly shot away, and a valve
forming over the rent so that his digestion could be watched. It was
disgusting. 'Tite would not speak to her own husband, but she would come
out before all Mackinac and dance with any other voyageurs who crowded
about her. Charle' sprang into the house himself, and without looking
at his wife, hilariously led other women to the best places, and danced
with every sinuous and graceful curve of his body. 'Tite did not look at
him. From the corner of his eye he noted how perfect she was, the fiend!
and how well she had dressed herself on his money. All the brigades
knew his trouble by that time, and an easy breath was drawn by his
entertainers when he left the house with knife still sheathed. In
the wilderness the will of a brigade commander was law; but when the
voyageur was out of the Fur Company's yard in Mackinac his own will was
law.

One of the cautious clerks suggested that Charle' and Etienne be
separated in their work, since it was likely the husband might quarrel
with 'Tite Laboise's dancing partner.

"Turn 'em in together, man," chuckled the Scotch agent, Robert Stuart,
who had charge of the outside work. "Let 'em fight