Ride the Red Earth

Only a few wanderers like Louis Juchereau de St. Denis had ever ridden the red earth from the San Pedro to the Red River. This Chevalier de St. Denis is portrayed in Wellman’s new novel not so much as a soldier of fortune but rather as fortune’s fool. Ten years in the service of the aging Louis XIV have won him little more than the buckskins he is wearing when he emerges from the bush outside Mobile at the start of this story. Within a week, as luck would have it, he is back in the bush, exiled to the farthest outpost of the Louisiana Territory. Chance and mischance lure him all the way to Mexico City where, in the Audience of Torments of the Spanish Inquisition, it looks as if the game is surely over. Women pursue Louis as relentlessly as he does fortune, and unavoidable duels with intolerant husbands result in his sad pilgrimage from Madrid to Mobile. In Mobile his attraction for a certain La Demoiselle results in a very early departure.