“Catchum rattlesnake bite?” queried Good Indian inanely, as is the habit of the onlooker when the scene shouts forth eloquently its explanation, and questions are almost insultingly superfluous.
“Huh!” grunted Peppajee, disdaining further speech upon the subject, and regarded sourly the red drip.
“Want me to suck it?” ventured Good Indian unenthusiastically, eying the wound.
“Huh!” Peppajee removed the pipe, his eyes still upon his ankle. “Plenty blood come, mebbyso.” To make sure, however, he kneaded the swollen flesh about the wound, thus accelerating slightly the red drip.
Then deliberately he took another turn with the rock, sending the buckskin thongs deeper into the flesh, and held the burning pipe against the skin above the wound until Good Indian sickened and turned away his head. When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking hard at the pipe, and gazing impersonally at the place. He bent again, and hid the glow of his pipe against his ankle. His thin lips tightened while he held it there, but the lean, brown fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behind him. When the fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his breath, and when it winked redly at him he laid it grimly against his flesh.
So, while Good Indian stood and looked on with lips as tightly drawn as the other's, he seared a circle around the wound—a circle which bit deep and drew apart the gashes like lips opened for protest. He regarded critically his handiwork, muttered a “Bueno” under his breath, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and returned it to some mysterious hiding-place beneath his blanket. Then he picked up his moccasin.
“Them damn' snake, him no speakum,” he observed disgustedly. “Heap fool me; him biteum”—he made a stabbing gesture with thumb and finger in the air by way of illustration—“then him go quick.” He began gingerly trying to force the moccasin upon his foot, his mouth drawn down with the look of one who considers that he has been hardly used.
“How you get home?” Good Indian's thoughts swung round to practical things. “You got horse?”
Peppajee shook his head, reached for his knife, and slit the moccasin till it was no more than a wrapping. “Mebbyso heap walk,” he stated simply.
“Mebbyso you won't do anything of the kind,” Good Indian retorted. “You come down and take a horse. What for you all time watchum Baumberger?” he added, remembering then what had brought them both upon the bluff. “Baumberger all time fish—no more.” He waved his hand toward the Malad. “Baumberger bueno—catchum fish—no more.”