"Anything he likes to ask almost. Men who are worth anything at all as workers are scarce around these parts."
"Then we sha'n't starve, that is some consolation. By the way, I have a note here for you. This confounded business nearly made me forget it;" and so saying Corbett produced from an inner pocket the little note given him by Roberts at the Balm-of-Gilead camp.
For a few moments Rampike twisted and turned the note about, trying to decipher the faint pencil-marks in the dim light. At last he got the note right side up and began to read. Evidently he hardly understood what he read at first, for those who were watching him saw that he read the note through a second time, as if looking for some hidden meaning in every word. When he had done this a vindictive bitter oath burst from between his set teeth.
"If Cruickshank ain't dead by now, my old pal Roberts is. You may bet on that. Look ye here!" and the speaker handed Ned a flattened, blood-stained bullet which he had taken from Roberts' letter.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked.
"It looks like a revolver bullet," answered Ned.
"And so it is. That's the identical bullet as Dan Cruickshank fired at a grouse and hit a cayuse with. Pretty shooting, wasn't it?" and Rampike ground his teeth with anger.
"What the deuce do you mean?" cried Steve in blank astonishment.
"Mean—mean! Why, that if you warn't such a durned tenderfoot you'd have tumbled to the whole thing long ago! Men like Cruickshank don't leave horses unhobbled by mistake, don't hit and scare pack-horses on a stone-slide by mistake, don't get to Williams Creek a day late by mistake. Oh, curse his mistakes! If he makes one more there'll be the best pal and the sweetest singer in Cariboo lying dead up among them pines."