The native jerked his head up the river.
"Many people there?"
He nodded.
"White men, too?"
He shook his head.
"How far to the nearest white men?"
Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest thing to eat.
"I thought you said he could speak English."
"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we, Nicholas?"
Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.