"Do you see now what I mean to do?" I asked gravely. "We shall be alone in the wilderness for months to come. I will be the one woman; perchance the only white woman into whose face he will look until we return to Quebec. I am not vain, yet I am not altogether ill to look upon, nor shall I permit the hardships of this journey to affect my attractiveness. I shall fight him with his own weapons, and win. He will beg, and threaten me, and I shall laugh. He will love me, and I shall mock. There will be jealousy between him and De Artigny, and to win my favor he will confess all that he knows. Tonight he sulks somewhere yonder, already beginning to doubt his power to control me." "You have quarreled?" "No--only that I asserted independence. He would have entered this tent as my husband, and I forbade his doing so. He stormed and threatened, but dare not venture further. He knows me now as other than a weak girl, but my next lesson must be a more severe one. 'Tis partly to prepare that I sent for you; I ask the loan of a pistol--the smaller one, to be concealed in my dress." "You would kill the man?" "Pooh! small danger of that. You may draw the charge if you will. For him to know that I possess the weapon will protect me. You do not grasp my plan?" He shook his head gloomily, as though it was all a deep puzzle to his mind, yet his great hand held forth the pistol, the short barrel of which gleamed wickedly in the fire glow, as I thrust it out of sight. "'Tis not the way I front enemies," he growled stubbornly, "and I make little of it. _Mon Dieu!_ I make them talk with these hands." "But my weapons are those of a woman," I explained, "and I will learn more than you would with your brute strength. All I ask of you now, Uncle Chevet, is that you keep on friendly terms with Monsieur Cassion, yet repeat nothing to him of what I have said, and gain me opportunity for speech alone with Sieur de Artigny." "Ah! perhaps I perceive--you love the young man?" I grasped his sleeve in my fingers, determined to make this point at least clear to his understanding. His blunt words had set my pulses throbbing, yet it was resentment, indignation, I felt in strongest measure. "Mother of God, no! I have spoken with him but three times since we were children. He is merely a friend to be trusted, and he must be made to know my purpose. It will be joy to him to thus affront Cassion, for there is no love lost between them. You understand now?" He growled something indistinctly in his beard, which I interpreted as assent, but I watched his great form disappear in the direction of the fire, my own mind far from satisfied; the man was so lacking in brains as to be a poor ally, and so obstinate of nature as to make it doubtful if he would long conform to my leadership. Still it was surely better to confide in him to the extent I had than permit him to rage about blindly, and in open hostility to Cassion.