"The lasso is of Comanche make," went on the mountain man, severely frowning again. "And I'll swear your cheek has never been burnt south of the Platte."
"That's so. It was a 'foot Indian' who tried to kill me. I boast no knowledge of these gentry. That's one of his shoes. The other I wore to death on these cursed flinty hills."
"Crow!" cried the Half-breed, with a glance at the moccasin. "Mountain Crow! And a war shoe!"
"The Crows 'out,'" repeated Ridge, biting his lips. "You see, we are getting information, though you are so stingy. Come, as your news leads off so good, continue it. Who are you, I say? And what is your business where few of us who are regular trappers venture?"
"A trapper?"
"An honest trapper! What did you take us for?—robbers and murderers?" said the hunter, indignantly.
"Well, I kind o' don't know," rejoined the stranger, with a significant glance at Cherokee Bill, whose savage eyes were not reassuring like the other's. "My name is no value out here, four thousand miles from my folks, I guess; but if you are a regular trapper—"
"I am called the Old Man of the Mountain," said Ridge, sadly rather than proudly. "I am about the last of the old guard—I fear one of the oldest men. I am Jim Ridge. That's the young man's best companion out here, that's called the Yager—same name put on me, too, by the hearing of it; the Yager of the Yellowstone. When I handled that first in '42, I bent a trifle under the weight. Them was the grand, good old times! The sort of men we get now don't grade up with the brand that passed up to 1850. They don't hunt now—they butcher. They don't trap—they surround and slaughter. They'll be clearing out a beaver lake with a diving bell, next! I wonder! Yes, I am the Old Man, the Yager of the Yellowstones," he repeated, a little piqued at his fame falling on a dead ear—"Injin or white, they all know this child."
The stranger seemed easier; but, unfortunately, the ghost of a smile on his wan features was assumed to be impudence.
"Answer, then," went on Ridge, testily, "for I don't want none of your blood on my knife, though it is itching to be in at your ribs."