“Comical little duck,” was John’s opinion of Andy.
“Strike me pink! He’s the funniest old geezer that I ever saw in me life,” Andy confided to Donald.
Together they washed the dishes and tidied up the room. When they had finished Andy dragged in his duffle-bag, rummaged through the contents, and produced a flask of rum. The trapper’s face brightened.
“I brought this for medicinal purposes,” stated Andy. “How are you feelin’, John?”
The mirth wrinkles around the trapper’s eyes deepened. “My misery is purty bad to-night, ol’ timer.”
Andy poured liberally into a tin cup. The pungent odour of rum filled the room. Old John sniffed the contents. “Whuff!” he yowled, “good licker!”
The old trapper, standing in the centre of the room, presented a figure wild and strange. His coat of buckskin was open at the throat to expose a hairy chest. His mane-like mass of wiry hair stood straight out and shook with every movement of his body. A veritable wild man of the woods he looked as he grasped the cup and held it up to his admiring gaze.
The storm had reached the height of its fury. The wind roared and moaned like a famished wild thing denied its kill. Occasionally a venturesome gust would find its way down the chimney to send thin puffs of smoke to linger in the air and fill the cabin with the sweet perfume of the burning alder.
“Give us a toast, John,” begged Andy.
The trapper raised his cup on high: