“So am I,” roared the giant. “If you’re here, it may be somebody else will be here, too. Now, let me tell you that there isn’t anybody in creation what is going to set traps along the same streams where I set mine.”
“How will you stop it?” inquired Reuben.
“Do you see that?” inquired the giant as he held up for Reuben’s inspection an immense fist. “With that bunch of bones I have knocked down an ox. If anything happens to that fist, then I have got something else to fall back upon,” and with a loud laugh the giant held up his rifle. “And if worst comes to worst,” he continued, “I have got something in my belt here that will help take care of me.”
As he spoke he drew from his belt a long, slim, sharply pointed piece of steel, which he explained had once been a bayonet, but by repeated filings had been reduced to its present shape and size. That it was a dangerous weapon Reuben instantly understood.
“That time I was hugging that grizzly,” resumed Rat, “or, rather, that time when he was hugging me, do you know I just tickled his ribs with that instrument?”
“Did he like it?” inquired Reuben.
“He didn’t live long enough to say. There was a grin on his face though when he doubled over, so I guess he didn’t feel so bad as he made out, though he was pretty dead when I left him.”
“What do you mean by ‘pretty dead?’”
“Dead as a door-nail.”
“But when one is dead he can’t be any deader, can he?” persisted Reuben.