All Mac's old suspicions of the Jesuits seemed to return with the advent of that letter.
"I'll read it presently." He laid it on the mantel-shelf, between the sewing-kit and the tobacco-can, and he looked at it, angrily, every now and then, while he helped to skin Mr. Benham. That gentleman had thrown back his hood, pulled off his great moose-skin gauntlets and his beaver-lined cap, and now, with a little help, dragged the drill parki over his head, and after that the fine lynx-bordered deer-skin, standing revealed at last as a well-built fellow, of thirty-eight or so, in a suit of mackinaws, standing six feet two in his heelless salmon-skin snow-boots. "Bring in my traps, will you?" he said to the Indian, and then relapsed into silence. The Indian reappeared with his arms full.
"Fine lot o' pelts you have there," said the Colonel.
Benham didn't answer. He seemed to be a close-mouthed kind of a chap. As the Indian sorted and piled the stuff in the corner, Potts said:
"Got any furs you want to sell?"
"No."
"Where you takin' 'em?"
"Down to the Oklahoma."
"All this stuff for Cap'n Rainey?"
Benham nodded.