Of the girl, who kept close to the cabin she and her father shared, no word ever passed between the two. Nor did she meet Barreau or myself face to face for a matter of three weeks. Our sight of each was from a distance, and from that distance, with a blanket coat to her heels and a fur cap pulled over her ears, it was hard to distinguish her from one of the few half-breed women who had followed their men into the North. In what way Montell accounted for our presence, I did not know, nor how he explained Barreau’s assured position about the post. It may be that she did not notice this incongruity on the part of a supposed fugitive; it may be that Montell was a plausible liar. At any rate, upon the few occasions when we three came near enough to recognize each other, she appeared calmly indifferent. Barreau and I ate in the big cookhouse with the rest of the men. Montell and his daughter had their meals served in the cabin. So we—at least I will speak for myself, for Barreau maintained a stony front and absolute silence on the subject—were saved the embarrassment of meeting three times daily. Montell himself became very friendly toward me. Bit by bit he drew from me the story of my wanderings, and shook his head over it, assuring me that Missouri river sternwheel men were a hard lot. Once he became reminiscent and spoke of his dead wife and her people with a poorly concealed pride in the alliance. His palpable satisfaction amused me. It seemed odd that a man of his rugged type, a hard-headed business buccaneer, should have that fatuous overestimation of wealth and so-called “blood.” But he had it to the n’th degree. I dare say it was his one weak spot. She was a Charbonne, of the old New Orleans Charbonnes, originally a Hugenot family, but for the last generation or two of St. Louis, he told me; and in the telling he shed his natural carelessness of speech, and spoke in the stilted, exactly-phrased English in which he might have addressed the aristocratic parent of his bride. I knew more or less of the St. Louis Charbonnes myself, and I wondered that I had never heard of Montell or his daughter. Barreau smiled when I spoke of this later.