So
he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping out
and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a
sudden end; but nothing further came of it that night, and no
record of it would be found in these pages, but for the fact that
Long-Hair afterwards became an important character in the stirring
historical drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived
at the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join
in chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to
the story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and
could not refrain from saying that if he had been present there
would have been a quite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said,
drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions
of one aiming quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest
was he with the pantomime, that he actually did fire,
unintentionally of course,--the ball burying itself in the door-
jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than
they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced
and grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in
queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of
backwoods English:
"Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that
he actually amounted to a big pile.
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