"Are you afraid of him?" Canby demanded, incredulously.
"I wouldn't say I'm actually afraid of him, but I got an old mother in southern Idyho that's dependin' on me and I can't afford to take chances."
"I'll go myself," said Canby, curtly.
"Don't let him git the drop on you," Boise Bill warned him. "I never see anybody so quick as he is. He had out his weepon and was over the fire at me before I knew what was happenin'," with conviction. "He gets 'ringy'—that feller."
Canby's cold gray eyes glittered, though he said nothing of his intentions.
Pinkey put up Wallie's silk tent and staked it, showed him how to hobble and picket his horse and to make baking-powder biscuit, and left him.
"It'll be lonesome at first, and the work'll come hard on you, but you'll be jest as happy as if you was in your right mind, onct you git used to it," he assured Wallie.
"The work doesn't bother me, but I imagine it will be lonesome."
"You ought to git some kind of an animal and tame it," Pinkey suggested. "I mind one winter when I 'bached' I tamed and halter-broke two chipmunks so I could lead 'em anywhur. You wouldn't believe what company they was for me."