“It’s a pleasant thing to be free, stranger,” Boone said, trying to look into the face of the strange being who had come so aptly to his rescue. But the gloom of the wigwam hid the face and form of the unknown with an ebon mask.
Besides, too, the unknown had taken a couple of blankets from a lot that lay in the corner of the wigwam, and wrapped one around his waist and the other over his head, when he had first entered the lodge.
The stranger stooped, took up another blanket, and gave it into Boone’s hands. The unknown seemed to possess the cat-like faculty of seeing in the dark.
As he gave the blanket into Boone’s grasp, again his hand touched that of the hunter.
“By jingo! his finger nails are awful,” muttered the hunter, to himself. “If his toe-nails are as long, I shouldn’t like to have him for a bedfellow. If he kicked any, he’d scratch a man half to death.”
The unknown took hold of a corner of Boone’s blanket and raised it a little in the air.
Boone understood what the unknown meant in an instant.
“You want me to put it round my head, eh, so as to kiver up my face?”
A vigorous tug at the blanket answered the hunter.
“I s’pose you mean yes by that, hey?”