第20章

Raoul was not afraid of anything but death; and whatever he wanted, he thought he had a right to have.But he did not know very well how to get it.He would start to chop a log just at the spot where there was a big knot.

He was the kind of a man that sets hare-snares on a caribou-trail, and then curses his luck because he catches nothing.

Besides, whatever he did, he was always thinking most about beating somebody else.But Prosper eared most for doing the thing as well as he could.If any one else could beat him--well, what difference did it make? He would do better the next time.

If he had a log to chop, he looked it all over for a clear place before he began.What he wanted was, not to make the chips fly, but to get the wood split.

You are not to suppose that the one man was a saint and a hero, and the other a fool and a ruffian.No; that sort of thing happens only in books.People in Abbeville were not made on that plan.They were both plain men.But there was a difference in their hearts;and out of that difference grew all the trouble.

It was hard on Vaillantcoeur, of course, to see Leclere going ahead, getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money with the notary Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish--it was hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even slipped back a little, got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land that his father left him.There must be some cheating about it.

But this was not the hardest morsel to swallow.The great thing that stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he could have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, when they were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable man--perhaps even higher.Why was it that when the Price Brothers, down at Chicoutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the Belle Riviere, they made Leclere the boss, instead of Vaillantcoeur?

Why did the cure Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of the new church?

It was rough, rough! The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it seemed.The fact that it was a man who had once been his protege, and still insisted on being his best friend, did not make it any smoother.Would you have liked it any better on that account? I am not telling you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it was.This isn't Vaillantcoeur's account-book; it's his story.You must strike your balances as you go along.

And all the time, you see, he felt sure that he was a stronger man and a braver man than Prosper.He was hungry to prove it in the only way that he could understand.The sense of rivalry grew into a passion of hatred, and the hatred shaped itself into a blind, headstrong desire to fight.Everything that Prosper did well, seemed like a challenge; every success that he had was as hard to bear as an insult.All the more, because Prosper seemed unconscious of it.He refused to take offence, went about his work quietly and cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went out of his way to show himself friendly and good-natured.In reality, of course, he knew well enough how matters stood.But he was resolved not to show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel.

He felt very strangely about it.There was a presentiment in his heart that he did not dare to shake off.It seemed as if this conflict were one that would threaten the happiness of his whole life.He still kept his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the memory of the many happy days they had spent together; and though the friendship, of course, could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left, at least on Prosper's side.To struggle with this man, strike at his face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground with him, like two dogs tearing each other,--the thought was hateful.His gorge rose at it.He would never do it, unless to save his life.Then? Well, then, God must be his judge.

So it was that these two men stood against each other in Abbeville.

Just as strongly as Raoul was set to get into a fight, just so strongly was Prosper set to keep out of one.It was a trial of strength between two passions,--the passion of friendship and the passion of fighting.

Two or three things happened to put an edge on Raoul's hunger for an out-and-out fight.

The first was the affair at the shanty on Lac des Caps.The wood-choppers, like sailors, have a way of putting a new man through a few tricks to initiate him into the camp.Leclere was bossing the job, with a gang of ten men from St.Raymond under him.

Vaillantcoeur had just driven a team in over the snow with a load of provisions, and was lounging around the camp as if it belonged to him.It was Sunday afternoon, the regular time for fun, but no one dared to take hold of him.He looked too big.He expressed his opinion of the camp.

"No fun in this shanty, HE? I suppose that little Leclere he makes you others work, and say your prayers, and then, for the rest, you can sleep.HE! Well, I am going to make a little fun for you, my boys.Come, Prosper, get your hat, if you are able to climb a tree."He snatched the hat from the table by the stove and ran out into the snow.In front of the shanty a good-sized birch, tall, smooth, very straight, was still standing.He went up the trunk like a bear.

But there was a dead balsam that had fallen against the birch and lodged on the lower branches.It was barely strong enough to bear the weight of a light man.Up this slanting ladder Prosper ran quickly in his moccasined feet, snatched the hat from Raoul's teeth as he swarmed up the trunk, and ran down again.As he neared the ground, the balsam, shaken from its lodgement, cracked and fell.

Raoul was left up the tree, perched among the branches, out of breath.Luck had set the scene for the lumberman's favourite trick.