Pierre had said about
Marie-Anne. He had pitied St. Pierre then; he had pitied this
great cool-eyed giant of a man who was fighting gloriously, he had
thought, in the face of a situation that would have excited most
men. Frankly St. Pierre had told him Marie-Anne cared more for him
than she should. With equal frankness he had revealed his wife's
confessions to him, that she knew of his love for her, of his kiss
upon her hair.
In the blackness Carrigan's face burned hot. If he had in him the
desire to kill St. Pierre now, might not St. Pierre have had an
equally just desire to kill him? For he had known, even as he
kissed her hair, and as his arms held her close to his breast in
crossing the creek, that she was the wife of St. Pierre. And
Marie-Anne--
His muscles relaxed. Slowly he lowered himself into the cool wash
of the river, and struck out toward the bateau. He did not breast
the current with the same fierce determination with which he had
crossed through the storm to the raft, but drifted with it and
reached the opposite shore a quarter of a mile below the bateau.
Here he waited for a time, while the thickness of the clouds
broke, and a gray light came through them, revealing dimly the
narrow path of pebbly wash along the shore.
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