Name/Title
Faraon's (Robidoux) Love Story by Mary Alicia OwenEntry/Object ID
AM2013.3.68Scope and Content
Faraon's Love Story by Mary Alicia Owen. Short Story about Faraon Robidoux.
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Faraon's Love-Story
Faraon, usually the gayest and seemingly carefree of the Robidoux boys, was "sulky as a mule", as Fred Smith the young postmaster, said and went off to his cabin, early.
"Eee iss ver' tam mad", explained Blaise Sanganette, companion of his late embassy to certain Indians, to the other gossips collecting in the Robidoux General Store. "Ee 'ave hask un barrel eau-de-vie, am
ees fazer 'ave say, 'Non, non, nod dis taim', an' ee 'ave kip on sayseen de same sing."
"Of course", nodded Urley Herbron, the blacksmith. "The Sioux are on their way down the river with their furs, right now. Old Joe knows they wont trade for anything but whisky-the big devils!-an' what with the Hudson Bay competition an' that darn Jacob Astor's meddlin', the American Fus Company's havina hard time of it an' blamin' their agents somthin' scandalous. Faraon knows this, so I'm s'prised he'd pester his father,' 'specially sence he don't drink none 'cept a nip in his coffee."
"Ee wan' buy eem une femme-une vife:, sniggered Sanganette.
"Shoh!" "Shucks!" "Buncombe!" "Tell that to your daddy's old-maid aunt!" was the incredulous chorus.
"Eet iss un fax", persisted Sanganette.
"But", protested the postmaster, "Farr has no call to buy a wife. He has a way with girls. I'll bet a Spanish gold-piece he could get any white girl here, except my girl, Jane Tolin, for the asking, and a barrel of whisky would buy all the young squaws from here to Michel's camp on the Elkhorn."
"Zis iss w'ute gell prisonniere-ver' fine gell. She name 'er Marie. She-"
"Shucks!" interrupted a sharp-faced boy, 'Lish Gladden, "Farr's dog-tired and wolf-hungry, that's what he's sour about. Me and him and Blaise, here, we've had the awfulest voyage ever I went on. The Pottowattomies is holdin' back their beavers for reasons unbeknownst, and Old Joe sent us to find out the why and wherefor, and we got into one of these here creve-coeurs and like to a never got out. 'Twas where the Kaw sprawls out, nigh the mouth. On the way back, I stopped at Chimacarmack's wigwam and give his new squaw my last picayune to scrape the mud offen me. His siter Murukka was there and give me a hunk o' pemmican, else, I'd a died o; stravation. Blaise and Farr didn't stop, but I guess she seen 'em for she didn't ask who I was with."
"Me, I am fear zat squaw, because I am ze fren' to Faraon" acknowledge Sanganette.
"What is a creve-coeurs?" inquired a newly-arrived Englishman, John Angel. "Creve-coeurs means heart-break in my dictionary."
"So it is", shouted a dozen voices.
"The first French comers named it just right", continued a single voice in explanation. "It's a swamp, a slough, and you can't ride through it, nor walk through it, nor boat through it, and if it is deceitfully dried a little on top, it's you for the Happy Hunting Ground to pay for being fooled."
"I was on the opinion that it might commemorate an unhappy love-affair", simpered the Englishman, who had fallen a victim to the charms of Jeanne Robidoux, Faraon's cousin.
"Wuss'n that, heap wuss", commented Doc Brailey, who had wooed, won and buried three wives and considered himself an authority on sentiment. "It's on possibly any love-affair sh'd be as pesticatin' as this here black gumbo mud."
"Well! you'd orter know", agreed the blacksmith, genially, "but, excusin' ourselves for changin' the subject, we want to know about this conniption-fit of Faraon's hey Sanganette?"
"Eet iss lak zis- began Sanganette, but, hearing the scrape of a fiddle in the distance, broke off with, "pardon, eet is to dance", and was out the door and slouching up the middle of the unpaved street with the queer, un hurrying speed of a wolf or an Indian.
"I can tell you", cried 'Lish. "It's a prisoner gal, just like he says. I saw her first, it'll be three years come next strawberry-time, when i was away up the river at Michel's camp. The Blackfeet had her when she was little and sold her to Nochuning, the big Sioux for one pony. His squaw had lost a girl and mourned so hard he bought her one. Now, the old woman's dead, Pashequan bought the girl off Nochuning for a buckskin shirt trimmed with elk's teeth and porkypine quills, and, since she'd turned out pretty in the last year, he wants to sell her for a whole bar'l of whiskey."
"Are you sure she's white?" inquired the postmaster. "Some Indians are light colored."
"Yes, sir! her hair is curly, her name's Mary- she said so, though the Indians call her 'Minichee', that is, 'Lightfoot' in United States. She doen't know her other names, nor how she happened to belong to the Blackfeet."
"I wonder", mused the postmaster, "if that can be the girl that the light-haired Methodist preacher who goes among the Indians to convert 'em is harping about every time he come to Robidoux'x Landing?"
"I reckon 'tis", said Pat Driscoll, who was Old Joe Robidoux'x drayman when the settlement was sober and policeman when it had looked on the cup that cheered and then set to fighting. "He whimpered like a baby when he told me that Nanabyeh, that ill-favored Kickapoo, had offered Pashequan all his horses for her and, now is tradin' the herd for furs, meanin' to trade them to Old Joe for the bar'l of whiskey."
"I'd ha' thought", commented Solly Mallis, Robidoux" clerk, "that they'd not have refused her to Mr. Shepherd, this here preacher that's come in andy stayin' at Simeon Kemper's right now. Indians stand in awe of peachers and lunatics, thinkin' 'em big medicine. They're as 'fraid of bein' cunjered as niggers are. That's why their reverences can ramble where a squaw man dast hardly to go."
"That's so in ordinary cases", agreed the blacksmith, "but hell's jist ditch water to 'em when whisky's likely to run. They'd fight the devil for one dram and throw the emptied cup in his face. The only hope is that Nanabyeh, when he sees the likker'll feel that he's got to drink it hisself."
"I sure hope so", sighed the policeman. "It's common knowledge that Nanabyeh killed one of his wives with a c club because she smaked his little son for jabbin' her in the back with a honey-locust thorn. Well! we'll see what we'll see tomorrer, for a redskin runner has brought Old Joe word that the whisky an' blankets'll be here in the mornin'. The West Wind, from St. Louis, is down below the Bend, takin' on wood right this minute."
"Yes, and all the redskins know it", said 'Lish, eagerly. "The river is plumb lousy with their boats already, dug-outs, rafts, even the little bull-boats that look like a market-basket standin' in an old umbrell', an' every one is crowded with thirsty devils and their furs. I wish I was old enough for Mary, I'd sneak her into the hold of the steamboat."
"Sorry I can't help you, bub", said the postmaster when the laughter had subsided, "but I'm a government officer and can't interfere until we get a better law, or more soldiers."
"Not to speak of making Jane jealous", said Solly.
"No, don't you speak of it", warned the postmaster with uplifted finger. "Well! see you in the moring, at the levee, boys, if none of you oversleep."
"No danger of that", laughed Solly. "Every jug's empty and the old women with fever-'n'-ager are complainin' that the juice has been stole offen their quinine-bark, not to speak of Dr. Silas McDonald compainin' that the coureurs that have come in have guzzled up all his essence of peppermint, leavin' none for the babies."
"They'll not better- or worse- themselves in the morning", said Squire Mosely, a stout, middle-aged man who had not before spoken. "Old Joe's in a terrible stew about the fallin' off in his trade and he's hell-bent to make it up. Why, he's had a letter from Bill Sublette, brung all the way from St. Louis by a nigger on hossback, complainin' that Manuel Lisa's way ahead on castors as well ad shaved deerskins and buffalo-robes. When he read that letter he cussed in French and United States and what I should judge was Latin out of his prayer-book. You can see for yourselves that every drop of that liquor must go for furs.- See you in the mornin', boys."
He did and many other besides. He saw whites, negroes, Indians, among the latter the maid Pashequan kept in his boat. He saw the anxious young minister standing with his friend Simeon Kemer, on a disused scow. He saw Faraon Robidoux, his delicate black brows drawn together in a heavy frown, leaning against the bole of the giant cottonwood to which the steamboat was made fast, and plucking angrily at the cable. He saw, where the shelving bank began to ascend steeply, Murrukka, the Indian girl once called Faraon's sweetheart, almost concealed by a tangle of vines and bushes and holding an iron-tipped dart in her hand, winged with red feather.
"D'you see Murrukka? the blacksmith inquired, softly. "Has she got that dart ready for Faraon, or some one else? She can sling it, you know, so it'll tear right through a deer's juggilary vein. She never misses. Gosh! I'd hate to have a squaw love me harder'n a mule can kick an' fiercer'n a rattlesnake c'n sting. I shore would."
"So'd I', the squire whispered, without turning his head. "Makes me pity Farr in spite of his hangin' round the Landin' castin sheep's-eyes at the girls instead of doin' a man's regular work out in the wood, and I pity Murrukka that couldn't take his foolishness, like the French girls did, for what it was worth, which was just nothin'. My! my! what a mess this world is, here's Murrukka lovon' Farr so't she's ready to tear the bleedin
heart out of him, here's him stark mad for a girl that's so 'fraid of Nanabyeh she dont even reckonize he's alive, here's me wantin to kick Old Joe into the middle of next week. I reckon I haint named to you that after I left you boys last night, I went and searched out Old Joe and offered him his own price for a bar'l to exchange for the girl, but he wouldn't pay any heed to me. He said he was honor bound to make up his quota of furs and there was only one way to do it and, anyway, the girl had been rasied like an Indian and was best off to remain with 'em. We both got real snappish before I left."
"Too bad, too bad!" signed the blacksmith. "I've always maintained that it was plumb redickilis for a man to have red or yeller offsprings, but for a white girl-gosh!-Makes me think of a piece of poetry a young feller named Terrell read at the Methodist festible, t'other night. It was wrote by a man named Milton-no relation to Milt Tootle that I know of- and described a lady that perduced imps.- Oh, say, lookee! Old Joe is sellin' the stuff right thar on the levee, as fast as it's rolled ashore. They are gittin' it handed out in jugs an' bottles an' cups an'-yes, Nanabyeh's gitten' a whole unbusted bar'l. Pore girl!"
"Uh huh. There's a bar'l that's wrong somehow. It don't seem to work. Spigot or spill, they can't get it started. They have smashed the head in. Je-hosiphat! it's apples! When did I see an apple!"
Sure enough, a stream of rosy fruit was pouring from its shattered receptacle to the amazement and delight of the red men, who had never before tasted anything better than the bitter little wild crab-apples.
The two men ran to the levee. Other barrels were being opened. All contained apples.
"Me, I am zipose you sink zis ze miracle you pray for", said Old Joe, who was now in high good humor, having already more furs than he had expected and finding that the fruit, undoubtedly packed in old cogniac barrels to be shipped to New Orleans and, by mistake, sent up the river, was selling as well, or better than fire-water.
"Yes, it is a miracle", said William Shepherd. "A miracle no less because God put it into the heart of a St. Louis shipping-clerk to send what would put a stop to an ungodly traffic here. Now, my faith renewed, I look for that other miracle I have asked of the Lord with tears and many groaning. I-"
"Tonnaire! screamed Old Joe.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Faraon.
"Whoopee!" shouted the blacksmith.
"Glory to the Lord of Hosts! ejaculated the minister as he clasped his hands and raised his streaming eyes to Heaven.
Nanabyeh, rendered careless by potation from the jugs of his tribesmen, had dropped his barrel into the water, and the steamboat, turning to swing into mid-steam, had crushed it against the rocky reinforcements of the levee.
"Ah-ah-ah, wah-ahya, wah-ayah, wah-ayah". Nanabyeh sounded his war-cry in fury, but his tribesmen dared not rally to his call. Looking down from the deck of the West Wind were a score of hated blue-coats, soldiers from Benton Barracks, on their way to the fort in the Omaha Country, across the river from the Council Bluffs.
"The girl is mine", he said to Pashequan, when he could control his rage. I will pay when the fire-boat comes again."
Pasequan shook his head. "Its is late. The fire-boat comes no more till the Moon of Corn-Planting", he said.
Nanbyeh stormed, threatened, pleaded.
Pashequan continued to refuse.
Nanabyeh turned to his tribesmen, but their fire-water was already consumed. They explained drunkenly, noisily.
Above their gutterals rose the voice of Squire Mosely,"
"Say, Pashequan, you've got your jug, with enough in it to make you see snakes till next week, so why not sell the girl you have there for apples? Accordin' to the thick corn-shucks, it' goin to be a hard winter, so why feed her till spring for Nanabyeh, huh?"
Pashequan liked Squire Mosely and he felt irritated at Nanabyeh, who had wasted such a treasure of fire-water. He pondered a little than nodded acquiescence. "Same weight squaw, same weight appa",
But, Jules Robidoux had been too eager to help his father, he had sold to white and red until only about a bushel of apples remained.
"You-you!" stuttered Faraon, standing over his brother, with clenched fists.
"Don't hit him, Farry, we'll make it up. Here's my hatful", cried the usually sedated John Angell, excitedly.
"And mine", called the postmaster, "all except one for my Jane."
"My girl, Jane Mayes, would throw it at me, if I kept back one from the rescue of a girl". cried Felix, Old Joe's fifth son, as he emptied his prize from his buckskin wamus. "Hi there, Pat,
With much scurrying and laughter that made light of their serious purpose, the remainder of the ransom was collected.
"I know we've more than enough" announced the squire. "A bushel of apples weighs sixty pounds, and we've here full two bushels. The little girl looks like a peck maybe, but it's possible a hundred pounds is her figure. Lish, oh Lish! Run to the store, son, and bring the steelyards.
When Lish, with the speed of a darting hawk, had executed his mission, and Pashequan had shown himself satisfied, with a certain amount of ceremony the postmaster and the squire took the girl's hands and helped her from the boat.
"Mine! Mine!" exulted Faraon, pushing his way to her side. "You are mine, Marie.- Mine, I say!"- as William Shepherd interposed an arm between him and the shrinking girl. "Begone, man, she is mine. Is it not so, my father?"
"EEt iss not", said Old Joe, shouldering his offspring back. "Ze Fille iss ze-ze ward of ze communitee. S'e vill not herself marry honless s'e is disposed."
"She is homeless. I have a cabin ready for her", said Faraon.
"Who's been thar before her?" inquired a voice that Faraon ignored.
"Send her to Mother Patchen till she makes up her mind what she wants to do", suggested a voice. "The widder'll like her for company."
"Why send her away", entreated the preacher. "W love each other, We prayed that our love might be blessed to us and it has been, Moraculously. Brother Jesse Bird will be here to preach the Word at early candlelights. For a few hours she can rest with Brother and Sister Kemper. Then, we can be married and take up the Lord's work together."
Almost in spasms of rage, Faraon made a lunge at the preacher, but strong hangs caught him and drew him back.
"Begone, false priest of a false religion", as he struggles with his captors. "Begone, I say!"
"Ef he goes, you'd better hope he'll be moved by the sperit to take Murrukka along", whispered Driscoll, the big frayman, who had Faraon by the shoulder. "Looky here, Farr, I'm afraid you've been makin' a big fool o' yourself. Murrukka's up thar in the bresh an' Posey Smith has jist crope up behind her an' taken away a dart she had aimed for somebody."
Faraon whirled in the direction Driscoll indicated, but Murrukka had disappeared.
"See here, folks", shouted Squire Mosely above the din that had arisen, " I Can't tie a fancy knot, but I can tie a tight one, and I think it's the part o' wisdom to stop all this rippet. Let Brother Bird add the fancy kinks when he gets ready. William, do you take this woman for your wedded wife, to have and to hold against all comers?"
"Why, certainly", resonded William Shepherd.
"Mary, which you ruther have? Do you want Faraon?'
Mary shook her head in alarm and shrank closer to William.
"uh huh, I see how the land lays. Will you have William for your wedded husband till death does you part? Speak up."
"Yes", faltered Mary.
"Then, in the name of the commonwealth of Missouri, of which I am a magistrate, I pronounce you two man and wife, and may the Lord have mercy on your souls.
With a cry, Faraon struggles to free himself from Driscoll and the blacksmith, while his father scolded and his brothers possessed themselves of his knife and pistol.
"Take him up the road to his cabin, boys", advised the squire, "and keep him thar till he cools off. I'm sorry you feel sort of prestered, Farr," he added, pacifically, "but you've had such a lot of expeunce with girls you know this unwont hurt you long."
But it did. Faraon never married.
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