He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand, said: “Me live out of the mountains! Don’t you know better than that? I couldn’t breathe, and I wouldn’t want to breathe. I’ve got my shack here, I got my fur business, and they’re still fond of whiskey up North!” He chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the mountain behind them. “I make enough to live on, and I’ve put a few dollars by, though I won’t have so many after to-morrow, after I’ve given you a little pile, Jinny.”
“P’r’aps there won’t be any to-morrow, as you expect,” she said, slowly.
The old man started. “What! you and Jake ain’t quarrelled again? You ain’t broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain’t had a letter from Jake?” He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook his head in bewilderment.
“I’ve had no letter,” she answered. “I’ve had no letter from Selby for a month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think’d be postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the last letter.”
“Then what’s the matter? I don’t understand,” the old man urged, querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn’t marry Jake Lawson.
“There’s only one way that I can be married to-morrow,” she said, at last, “and that’s by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon to-night.”
He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded. “What in—”
He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further. Jenny had not always been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now.
She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room.
“There’s a plate of vittles ready for you in there,” she said. “I’ll tell you as you eat.”