“No, not one word.”
“All is well, then. As you have kept and continue to keep my secrets, so shall yours be kept. It is a dozen or fifteen years since I have been in this section at all. It is filling up with new men. There are but two persons now in the settlement that can ever have seen or known me. And they will not disturb me.”
“Then there are two that have known you? Who can they be?”
“One is Wenongonet, an old Indian chief, as he calls himself, still living on one of the upper lakes, they say, but too old to ramble or attend to anybody’s business but his own. The other is Phillips, the hunter.”
“Phillips! Phillips, did you say? Why, as much as he has been at our house, he has never dropt a word from which one could infer that you were not a perfect stranger to him.”
“I did not suppose he had. Phillips is a peaceable, close-mouthed fellow; pretends not to know any thing about anybody, when he thinks the parties concerned would rather have him ignorant; keeps a secret by never letting anybody know he has one; and never means to cross another man’s path. I can get along with him, too. And the only question now is whether you and I can live together in the same settlement.”
“It will probably be your fault if we can’t. I shall make war on no one.”
“My fault! Why I wish to be on good terms with you; and yet, Elwood, you feel out of sorts with me, and, in spite of all I can do, seem disposed to keep yourself aloof.”
“If I do seem so, it may be because the past teaches me that the best way to avoid quarrels is to avoid intimacies. You know how we last parted in that gambling-room. I had no business to be there, I admit; but that was no excuse for your treatment.”
“Treatment! Why, Elwood, is it possible you have been under a misapprehension about that, all this time?” responded Gaut, with that peculiar wheedling manner which he so well knew how to assume when he wished to carry his point with another. “My object then was to save the money for you and me, so that we could divide it satisfactorily between ourselves. I was angry enough at those other fellows, whom I saw getting all your money in that way, I confess; and, in what I said, I was whipping them over your shoulders. I thought you understood it.”