I
“Old Leather Face seems to be peeved about it, doesn’t he?”
It was Sandy Macdougal who spoke. He had returned from the cook-house unnoticed by Hammond and had evidently been an amused spectator while the dialogue was going on between Hammond and Ogima Bush.
“Did you get what he croaked at you, Hammond?” he asked.
“I caught something about him ‘taking what he wanted’ or words to that effect.”
“He said: ‘Ogima takes what he wants,’ and then he asked, ‘Kaw-gaygo esca-boba?’ That’s Indian for ‘Have you got nothing?’ Sounds foolish, but when an Indian asks it the way he did—that way, look out! He’s either looking for whiskey or trouble.”
“Well, he’s rapping at the door of the goat’s house for wool this time,” laughed Hammond. “I haven’t seen anything that looked like good whiskey in a blue moon, and, as for trouble, I can usually locate plenty of it without seeking it from a red-skin.”
“Speakin’ of whiskey,” Sandy’s eyes crinkled, “how’d you like a little nip right now?”
“A drink?”
“Sure. You’re lookin’ sort of all bowled over about something, and a little snort will brace you up. Come on in the shack.”
Inside the cabin Macdougal closed the door and hooked it on the inside. He lifted some loose flooring in the corner and brought up a black bottle. “You needn’t be afraid of it,” he assured Hammond as he poured him a draught in a metal cup. “This is sealed rye goods I got on a doctor’s prescription. But I got to keep it dark because there’s two things the Big Boss is death on any of us totin’ around camp; the one is six-guns and the other is whiskey. . . . Here’s how!”
Macdougal guzzled a generous cupful straight. Hammond perforce had to take his neat too.
The cook made to fill the two cups again.
“No, thanks,” declined Hammond. “I don’t indulge as a general thing, but I’ll admit that’s fairly smooth stuff.”
Sandy tossed off another stiff one. Then he sat down smacking his lips as though it agreed with him immensely. “You never met that copper-faced old rat before you came out here?” he asked presently.
“Who—Ogima Bush? No, I never before set eyes on him until that morning he wandered in while I was at breakfast.”
“H’m—h’m—well!” Macdougal studied his cup reflectively one minute. “You know, I thought at first maybe you and him might be cahoots on something. One don’t know who’s who out in this queer dump. But I’ve sized you up as a decent head, no matter what your business might be, and you takin’ a nip with me now and then has raised you a bit more in my notions of you.”
“Good heavens,” smiled Hammond, “you surely didn’t think I was in league with that near-agent of Satan?”
“I ain’t sayin’ I was sure of anything,” cut back Macdougal slightly irritated. “Only, I had one of my flash hunches that first morning he dropped into the diner that there was something between him and you. It was the way he looked at you, I guess. Since then, I’ve been figurin’ out it’s all on his side and maybe you don’t know anything about it.
“However,” he followed up deliberately, “what I been debatin’ in my own mind the past day or so was about tellin’ you something for your own good.”
Macdougal appeared to be in the throes of that mental debate as he sat with eyes glued on his empty cup. He seemed to arrive at two decisions suddenly. The first was to have another tidy drink.
“Great hootch that.” He grimaced gratefully. “Now, look here, Hammond, it’s this: That old, red-skinned side-wheeler don’t mean you no good, and, if you’ll take it from me, I think he’s figurin’ on how much of a boost it’d take to shoot you over one of them steep cliffs back in the bush if you happened to be near the edge.
“Now wait—I ain’t given to guessin’ nor romancin’ either. I got a sharp eye that sees more’n most people gives it credit for. Every time you ain’t lookin’ that Indian is a-watchin’ you out of the corners of his wicked old lids in a queer, creepy way, just like a weasel watches a chipmunk he’s figurin’ on for breakfast. Besides, sometimes you go out in the bush and he slips out a little later in the same direction. At first I tells myself: ‘The two of them has a date on to meet out there on some scheme they’re hatchin’ up—maybe bootleggin’.’ But I hunched it later there was nothin’ to that. He’s layin’ for you for some reason I don’t know anything about; that’s what I wanted to tell you.”