The amazement of the trapper was not without its humorous feature. He remained leaning toward the youth, his hand outstretched with the uncorked flask in it and staring at him as if literally paralyzed. Then he drew a deep breath, swung back and exclaimed:
“Wal, I’ll be skulped! You’re the first Injin I ever seed that wouldn’t sell his moccasins for a swaller of red eye. It gits me!”
Deerfoot watched him with amused interest. Jack Halloway held up the flask at arm’s length and surveyed it thoughtfully. Once he started to place it to his lips, but shook his head, then jammed the cork back in place (the screwed tops were unknown in those days) and thrust the flask into his pocket again.
“Ef you won’t drink with me, Shawanoe, I won’t drink afore you.”
“Let my brother do as he feels like doing.”
“Which the same is what I’ve done. As I was sayin’, I allers take a keg of the extract of happiness with me and manage things so it will last till I get back to St. Louis; but bein’ as I stayed longer than usual, I’ve come so near running out that that flask has got to keep me alive for some weeks to come. I tell you it’s powerful tough, but there’s no help for it. Every trapper or hunter that I run across—if I run across any—will be as bad off as me.”
“When my brother gets to St. Louis what will he do with his peltries!”
“Why, sell ’em, of course. What did you think?”
“He has a good many,” remarked Deerfoot, glancing at the piles on the ground near at hand.
“You’re right. It has been a good season, and them skins is vallyble. There’s one black fox that’s the same as a hundred dollars to me, and the rest will bring three hundred dollars more.”