“About forty.”
“How old was Kit then?”
“About twenty.”
“Ho, ho!” roared Rat again. “And yet you say he wasn’t afraid of anything on earth? How do you know he wasn’t? Because he told you so?”
Still Reuben refused to make any explanations to his companion. He was aware that Rat was deeply interested, although the cause of his interest was not yet apparent.
“Probably your wonderful Kit,” suggested Rat, “caught more beaver, shot and scalped more redskins, killed more deer and buffalo than any other man in the band.”
“I don’t know about that. He never told me. He wasn’t the one that told about these other things, either. He did say that scouts were always sent ahead of the men to find out whether any Indians were near. Every night they had guards for the camp.”
“They didn’t find any Indians, did they?”
“Not until they came to Salt River. There they found they were likely to be attacked by the same redskins that had killed the last party of trappers that had been there.”
“This time I suppose Kit single-handed killed every one o’ them?”