“Snow or rain, light’in’ or pitch dark, who’s carin’?” retorted the other.
“It’s not a nice sort of trip you have before you, that’s all.”
“It’s me as has to take it, I guess, and I’m not goin’ to move an inch till you give me an extra pound of powder and enough lead for a hundred bullets. You hear me?”
“I have paid you all your furs are worth; you know I have.”
“Aye, and made me pay ten times too much for what I got here durin’ the summer. Come now, Smythe, wrap up the powder and give me the package of lead-leaf, and I’ll be makin’ tracks.”
Broadcrook arose and slouched forward. He was dressed in a heavy shirt of red wool and homespun trousers of gray. One ponderous hand held a long rifle and a coat of wolf-skin was slung across a muscular arm. Smythe eyed him speculatively.
“Broadcrook,” he said suavely, “you shall have it. I wouldn’t do it for anybody else.”
Broadcrook scratched his short-cropped head perplexedly. Acuteness was not one of his characteristics. He laid Smythe’s eagerness to oblige him to fear, and Broadcrook was not so many generations removed from the Cave Dwellers that he could not understand how this might well be. By nature he was a bully, one of a large family of bullies, whose forefathers had been bullies. Accordingly he stretched his person about four inches higher and expectorated on a pair of beaded moccasins hanging from the counter.
“Make it two pound o’ powder an’ two sheafs o’ lead,” he demanded.
Smythe, who had taken the powder-can from the shelf, put it back in its place. Then he leaned over the counter and gazed at the Bushwhacker through the twilight gloom.