“And for the time I forgot my hate for Latour, until, in her feverish tossing about, she threw her bare arm over the side of the bed. Then I saw that which made me shiver with a desire to kill. There was a scratch on the arm, and the flesh about it was swollen and blue. It came to me that Latour had caused her to be inoculated that she might die before my return, and thus make my heart sore that he might see. “I grasped the dirk and ran wildly out of the house in search of Latour. I reached his door. Then I faltered. It was not fear that made me falter. It was that I knew my revenge could not be completed in this way. I wanted to see him suffer more than I had ever suffered. Also I wished to come away with clean hands. I did not know how it could be done then, but I trusted to some mysterious power that had seemed to be with me all through my terrible winter tramp. “I stole back to the bedside of Pelagie. She died at dawn. “Latour mourned with me. He wept and spoke touchingly of his own wife. I gritted my teeth and strained every nerve to keep from choking him. “The summer passed. Latour was so kind that I often found it an effort to keep alive my belief in his treachery. And at other times, I was obliged to leave him abruptly, feeling a madness in my blood for striking him down, trampling him, tearing him with my teeth and nails. “Oh, all the great actors have not appeared upon the stage! I must confess that Nature and Zephyr Recontre killed a great actor! “The fall came, and our friendship did not abate. I began to fear that my chance would never come, and I would be obliged to kill him as one brute kills another. Many nights I lay awake shaping impossible schemes of revenge that were rejected in the sanity of the morning. “In the first week of October I had occasion for a great joy. Latour called me to his office and stated that certain conditions of the trade which had been wholly unforeseen, made it necessary that he should be in St. Louis before the winter set in. Unfortunately, the last steamboat had left Fort Union for the South, making it necessary that the trip be made in a mackinaw boat. Would I, his dearest friend, consent to accompany him on the trip? “With a studied reluctance that hid my insane joy, I consented. Latour left a clerk in charge of affairs, and we started. We made very slow progress, as we depended almost entirely upon the current, having no oars, and there being little wind to fill the square sail we carried. “This was as I wished it to be. I kept longing for the ice to come down and shut us in. Time and again I managed to run the boat aground on bars in order to kill time. Latour seemed not to notice this. In fact, he was unusually pleasant in his bearing toward me.