The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1913-10-23
CHAPTER L-(continued).

CHAPTER L-(Continued).
And the next morning, after the child
had breakfasted on condensed milk and
mush and was playing with the hound
pups before the palmetto thatch, Mich
igan stole out of the flooded forest
with Bia woman In his pirogue. She
came to stand over the child listening
to the confused tales of the wooden
legged swampers who did their best to
explain. And the promises they made!
II b would only stay and help them
rear the guest to be q lady they would
roam no more. They would stay and
tend h lily boom for the lumber COM
pany, and catch fish n crabs for the
trade boats, and build q lean-to on h
house. and buy rice and red beans n
molasses and shoes-Oh, the wonder
full things they would do ii the Bia
would only stay and e a the
child to be q lady!
The Bia woma looked down Indian
faced and stotid, but when the guest
came without fear and took her hand
and smiled up, the shifty-footed basket
maker knelt and wiped the little ones
face. And at nightfall she came
again with all her goods. pad
ding through the woods by trails
pers beyond the ferty-arpent line"
could follow. Nothing she cared that
Old Man Captain had retreated to the
swamps in '65 and had never surren-
dered; nor that Michigan, who gained
his name through being captured by
the cavalr Of that state, had followed
Old Man Captain because, certainly IL
Old Man Captain wouldn't surrender,
and the government up north wouldn't
surrender, why one must stick to Old
Man Captain. She came because the
child smiled at her. and she was alone.
Shn had lnSt fCJrr~ hro%1nrc n - e;rkorr
IN the great storm at La Cheniere, and
the years since she had been with the
pfrogue makers at the Lake Salvador
Temple, or at an evil shrimp camp On
John-the-Fool; and once h had fol-
lowed a seine crew to the open gulf,
pulling an oar In the CLASSY Gains With
the best of them, but coming back bet
ter neither In money nor morals.
Long years after, In her bright world
the child had q memory OF the Indian
basket-maker, stolid. her black hair
hanging straight behind her ears, in
Which We're two brass rings, kneeling
to blow the GOALS in the clay furnace
and roasting live crabs, watching them
writhe with the calm of the savage.
And another memory vas of the Indian
woman taking her miles through the
swamps in her slender pirogue to meet
its from the lower coast plantations,
and thereafter the child came to know
that she had been named Aurelie be-
cause that word was found on her
rosary. Then came a tumble Of child
came to think they must be dreams:
of n long hot days and wonderful
sunsets owe the shoreless lakes, the
mornings all aglitter under the moss
plumed cypress, the cardinals and
knocking birds fitting above the float
ing hyacinths round their tiny gar
den. Many summers Aureiie watched
the eternal procession of the hyacinths
past their palm hut, sometimes so
choking the bayou that 1t was a sea
of purple. but n in which no boat
which came down o and then to
tow a raft UP to the great river to the
north.
She grew with many generations of
hound pups from the day of Ponto and
Flora. They built palm thatch after
palm thatch when he old ones sagged
I'm the July rains, or the floods from
~crevasses drove them into the tree plat
form built In a live oak for Just such
dangers. In summer the two old men
toted moss from the black swamp and
sold 1t to the trade boats; in winter
they trapped and hunted and a the
crab lines, and all these months and
years Old Man Captain lived in a great
expectancy, Of what, Q exactly knew.
Not even Michigan, who sometimes
would shake his head and confide to
Aurelie that odd Man, he done gone
clean crazy his time!"
Old Man would sit for hours regard
ing Aurelie as she played on the hard
packed earth before the thatch, his
vague blue eyes lit with his vision.
Then at times he would mutter. or at
night would get up to pace the path
between the hut and the bayou, call
ing out phrases Of the mighty drama
that had touched his brain. Sometimes
It vas Lee on his big white horse, or
Stonewall rarin' and c%hargin', or at
times it was Of Jean La Elites pirate
treasure buried somewhere from
Plaquemine to Grand Terre and which
Aurelie was to find and SO enrich the
confederacy that the old gray lines
would rise triumphantly. Yes. Aurelie
was to lead 'em to occupy the land.
But one summer Old Man Captain
was not SO well. He did not follow
Michigan to the deep swami. for moss
or turtles, but was content to sit and
canal. While Aurelie chartered, and
the Bia woman wove her crab baskets.
Old Man whitfield on Michigan's Christ
mas leg, which he kept hidden under
the coil Of the boom chair. Michigan
knew 1t was there but he pretended
the lay deceit. Christmas day each
partner gave the other his new leg:
and 81 long, for Aurelie's sake, had
they lived in this one camp that the
place was cluttered with peg-legs. They
were used for all sorts OF
from propping up the sagged thatch to
moss frame posts. Those wooden legs
led to all sorts of domestic complica-
tons Sometimes when Old Man Cap
tain got out of bed to walk the path
calling on the God o. battles, or tell
Ing Of the treasure Of the Old Pirate
Folkses, he would strap on Uncle
Michigan's peg-leg instead Of his own;
and then, when he crawled back to
bed. chilled with the dew, and Uncle
Michigan got out at dawn to make the
coffee, the latter would not disturb Old
Man to get his wv leg. He gently
strapped on his partners and went to
the swamps, but as Michigan was tall
and Old Mar Captain short, he was not
altogether comfortable. And this con-
fusion of wooden legs troubled Aurelie.
She tide a pink ribbon on Michigan's
peg, and a blue one on Old Man Cap
tain's; but in the dark this did no
good. Old Man Captains head was too
fun of the spfendors of the recoming
of the gray lines to tell pink from
blue. Then once the towboat niggers,
HOgiaw and Doc Forty1pa and CrIpop