"Whose neck is broke?"
"Why that fellow's is pretty well jarred."
"Well, as long as he don't object I don't see what it is to you," was the good-natured response of Hawkins, who resumed chewing the juicy meat.
"Some of these days, somebody will give you a whack in return when you ain't expecting it, and it will be a whack too that will cure you of that sort of business. I believe, Deerfoot, that you are a Shawanoe, ain't you?"
"Deerfoot is a Shawanoe," was the answer, his jaws at work on the food just furnished him.
"I've heard tell of you; you're the chap that always uses a bow and arrow instead of a gun?"
The youth answered the query by a nod of the head. As he did so, Tom Crumpet, who sat further away, vigorously working his jaws, uttered a contemptuous grunt. Kit turned his head and looked inquiringly at him.
"Maybe you think he can't use the bow and arrow. I s'pose, Deerfoot, that's the bow you fired the arrow through the window of the block-house that was nigh a hundred yards off, with a letter tied around it, and fired it agin out on the flatboat with another piece of paper twisted around it—isn't that so?"
Despite his loose-jointed sentences, Deerfoot caught his meaning well enough to nod his head in the affirmative.
"Did you see it done?" asked Crumpet, with a grin at Hawkins.