"Y-yes," answered the Colonel. "I've been thinkin' a good deal about the punch."
"So's myself," said O'Flynn frankly; but Potts looked at the Colonel suspiciously through narrowed eyes.
"There's very little whiskey left, and I propose to brew a mild bowl—"
"To hell with your mild bowls!"
"A good enough punch, sah, but one that—that—a—well, that the whole kit and boodle of us can drink. Indians and everybody, you know ... Nicholas and Andrew may turn up. I want you two fellas to suppoht me about this. There are reasons foh it, sah"—he had laid a hand on Potts' shoulder and fixed O'Flynn with his eye—"and"—speaking very solemnly—"yoh neither o' yoh gentlemen that need mo' said on the subject."
Whereupon, having cut the ground from under their feet, he turned decisively, and stirred the mush-pot with a magnificent air and a newly-whittled birch stick.
To give the Big Cabin an aspect of solid luxury, they had spread the Boy's old buffalo "robe" on the floor, and as the morning wore on Potts and O'Flynn made one or two expeditions to the Little Cabin, bringing back selections out of Mac's hoard "to decorate the banquet-hall," as they said. On the last trip Potts refused to accompany his pardner—no, it was no good. Mac evidently wouldn't be back to see, and the laugh would be on them "takin' so much trouble for nothin'." And O'Flynn wasn't to be long either, for dinner had been absurdly postponed already.
When the door opened the next time, it was to admit Mac, Nicholas with Kaviak in his arms, O'Flynn gesticulating like a windmill, and, last of all, the Boy.
Kaviak was formally introduced, but instead of responding to his hosts' attentions, the only thing he seemed to care about, or even see, was something that in the hurly-burly everybody else overlooked—the decorations. Mac's stuffed birds and things made a remarkably good show, but the colossal success was reserved for the minute shrunken skin of the baby white hare set down in front of the great fire for a hearthrug. If the others failed to appreciate that joke, not so Kaviak. He gave a gurgling cry, struggled down out of Nicholas's arms, and folded the white hare to his breast.
"Where are the other Indians?" said Mac.