Jim McAllister took Mr. Richard Sherwood upriver in December, twenty-six years ago, to introduce him to some of the mysteries of trapping fur. Sherwood was restless and traveled fast. After a time they struck French River at a point about ten miles from its mouth and within a few hundred yards of the log house of Louis Balenger. Balenger had Iroquois blood in his veins and was from the big northern province of Quebec. He had come to French River with his family five or six years before, traveling light and fast. When Jim McAllister saw where he was he urged Sherwood to keep right on, for Balenger had the reputation of being a dangerous man.
But Louis sighted them and hailed them, ran to meet them and had them within the log walls of his house as quick as winking. And there was rum on the table and the fire on the hearth burned cheerily and Mrs. Balenger said that dinner would be ready in half an hour. The dinner was plentiful and well cooked, the eyes of the Balenger girls were big and black and bright and the conversation of Louis was pure entertainment though somewhat mixed in language.
That was the beginning of Richard Sherwood’s fall from grace in the eyes of the O’Dells and McAllisters and most other people of unmixed white blood on the big river. Jim McAllister returned to O’Dell’s Point alone; and even he had turned his back reluctantly on the exciting hospitality of the big log house. Even as it was, he had remained under that fateful roof long enough to lose the price of a good young horse to his merry host at poker. He made all haste down the white path of French River for ten miles and then down the wider white way of the big river for twenty miles and reported to his friend John O’Dell before showing himself to his own family.
Captain O’Dell gave Jim two hours in which to rest, eat and rub the snowshoe cramps out of his legs with hot bear’s grease; and then the two of them headed for French River, backtracking on Jim’s trail which had scarcely had time to cool. They reached Balenger’s house next day, before noon. Mrs. Balenger opened the door to them and welcomed them in. Jim McAllister followed John O’Dell reluctantly into the big living room. There sat Sherwood and Balenger at a table beside the wide hearth with cards in their hands, just as Jim had last seen them two days before.