“It ish goot gun,” said Jan. “Don’t you make fun off me now, Penn Miffin.”
“Who’s makin’ fun of ye? I ain’t. I’m tellin’ the lady you’re goin’ to stand by her, and shoot that durned critter ef it comes back here.”
“Do you know what that thing could be called, sir?” said the girl; “it surely can not be a man.”
“Don’t say sir to me. I’m old Ben Miffin. Please to call me by my name.”
“If you like it?”
“You bet I like it. I ain’t ashamed of my handle, not a bit. It’s a good one, an’ I cum by it honest—the way I cum by all my traps. I fight fa’r for every thing, even with a durned low-lived swab of a Hudson Bay man, an’ anybody knows they ain’t human. Ye asked me what that critter was. I tell ye fa’r, I don’t know. I’ve seen it onc’t before. Some of the boys hez seen it too, an’ they don’t know. It’s a quar sort of critter. Ef I hed my say about it, I sh’u’d think it war half man an’ half wolf. It’s mean enough.”
“It does not talk; but you noticed that it was clothed in skins.”
“I seen that. It’s a quar critter, I must say. The boys call it the Mountain Devil. It’s a good name. It’s lucky for the thing that I fired in a hurry; and then the youngster was so much in the way I dassen’t fire at any thing but the arm. I hit that.”
“It saved my life,” said young Morris. “I had no strength to ward off another blow; I felt that my time had come.”
“So you mought well think. It ain’t one man but a dozen hez gone under, time and ag’in, here in the Black Hills. Whatever it is, it hates a man like death. Don’t you talk too much, young ’un; it mought hurt ye.”