“Who—Ogima Bush? No, I never before set eyes on him until that morning he wandered in while I was at breakfast.”
“H’m—h’m—well!” Macdougal studied his cup reflectively one minute. “You know, I thought at first maybe you and him might be cahoots on something. One don’t know who’s who out in this queer dump. But I’ve sized you up as a decent head, no matter what your business might be, and you takin’ a nip with me now and then has raised you a bit more in my notions of you.”
“Good heavens,” smiled Hammond, “you surely didn’t think I was in league with that near-agent of Satan?”
“I ain’t sayin’ I was sure of anything,” cut back Macdougal slightly irritated. “Only, I had one of my flash hunches that first morning he dropped into the diner that there was something between him and you. It was the way he looked at you, I guess. Since then, I’ve been figurin’ out it’s all on his side and maybe you don’t know anything about it.
“However,” he followed up deliberately, “what I been debatin’ in my own mind the past day or so was about tellin’ you something for your own good.”
Macdougal appeared to be in the throes of that mental debate as he sat with eyes glued on his empty cup. He seemed to arrive at two decisions suddenly. The first was to have another tidy drink.
“Great hootch that.” He grimaced gratefully. “Now, look here, Hammond, it’s this: That old, red-skinned side-wheeler don’t mean you no good, and, if you’ll take it from me, I think he’s figurin’ on how much of a boost it’d take to shoot you over one of them steep cliffs back in the bush if you happened to be near the edge.
“Now wait—I ain’t given to guessin’ nor romancin’ either. I got a sharp eye that sees more’n most people gives it credit for. Every time you ain’t lookin’ that Indian is a-watchin’ you out of the corners of his wicked old lids in a queer, creepy way, just like a weasel watches a chipmunk he’s figurin’ on for breakfast. Besides, sometimes you go out in the bush and he slips out a little later in the same direction. At first I tells myself: ‘The two of them has a date on to meet out there on some scheme they’re hatchin’ up—maybe bootleggin’.’ But I hunched it later there was nothin’ to that. He’s layin’ for you for some reason I don’t know anything about; that’s what I wanted to tell you.”
II
Hammond lit a cigarette to cover up any concern he might have felt. “That’s certainly interesting to me, Sandy,” he acknowledged, “and it’s deucedly good of you—”