He pulled forward the loose skin on the puma’s breast and showed them the scar of a knife-wound above the one his own knife had made.
“I’ve got the other murderer,” he said; “Gordineer’s knife went in here. Sacre, but it is good!”
Pourcette’s flesh needed little medicine; he did not feel his pain and stiffness. When they reached Clear Mountain, bringing with them the skin which was to hang above the fireplace, Pourcette prepared to go to Fort St. John, as he had said he would, to sell all the skins and give the proceeds to the girl.
“When that’s done,” said Lawless, “you will have no reason for staying here. If you will come with us after, we will go to the Fort with you. We three will then come back in the spring to the valley of gold for sport and riches.”
He spoke lightly, yet seriously too. The old man shook his head. “I have thought,” he said. “I cannot go to the south. I am a hunter now, nothing more. I have been long alone; I do not wish for change. I shall remain at Clear Mountain when these skins have gone to Fort St. John, and if you come to me in the spring or at any time, my door will open to you, and I will share all with you. Gordineer was a good man. You are good men. I’ll remember you, but I can’t go with you—no.
“Some day you would leave me to go to the women who wait for you, and then I should be alone again. I will not change—vraiment!”
On the morning they left, he took Jo Gordineer’s cup from the shelf, and from a hidden place brought out a flask half filled with liquor. He poured out a little in the cup gravely, and handed it to Lawless, but Lawless gave it back to him.
“You must drink from it,” he said, “not me.”
He held out the cup of his own flask. When each of the three had a share, the old man raised his long arm solemnly, and said in a tone so gentle that the others hardly recognised his voice: “To a lost comrade!” They drank in silence.
“A little gentleman!” said Lawless, under his breath. When they were ready to start, Lawless said to him at the last: “What will you do here, comrade, as the days go on?”