"Yes, it's blown over, and our old friends in Texas are catching it about this time. I hope it will wash the slate of some of my unpaid scores in barrooms I could tell you of! But care killed a cat; I'll have none of that in my tumbler. There's only one thing kept me awake last night, and that was not the thought of the storm."
"What, my friend Corky Joe?" inquired the captain, who seemed to feel peculiar affection for this lieutenant.
This singular, or even comic title, that of the wolverine, otherwise carcajieu of the Canadian trappers, the wickedest wild beast of Northwest American fauna, seemed no misnomer for a daredevil, spirited, malicious, alert, quick to whip out a knife or draw a pistol to back his impudent and defiant speech. The finest shot with either hand was he, the best horseman and the most tireless and reliable sentinel of the band.
"I only would like to know who cut off our friends in the narrow ways."
"Oh, as for that, the girl whom we brought in alone knows; but I am sure they knew we were 'no good settlers,' to have laid our representatives low. I am reserving the questioning of that girl till our more important 'talk' is over. Light your pipes, gentlemen, if you are done polishing your eyeteeth, and let us hold the council."
"There's one thing sure," observed the Frenchman, "the more I look on this forsaken country, through smoke or with a clear eye, whither the Cap. has brought us, the more firmly I wish I had it well behind me. It's enough to make a man wish he was a grizzly; nothing else can thrive here."
"Come, come, Frenchy," remonstrated the leader, "we are no more delighted than you. It is not here I mean to lay out Kiddville! But there is no other way to the port whereto I steer."
"Port! More like alkali water; there's not an ounce of anything worth a man's stooping to pick up over all the tracks we've crossed. The fact is, the hangers round Varina have 'stuffed' you with yarns of the wonderland which gets farther away the nearer you come to it! Gammon about the valley covered with surface gold! I know what gold bearing earth is, having been in Californy in the good old years!" with a smack of the lips. "This volcanic tract is burnt out. Any metal has long since melted and run away miles below. Either you have swallowed the old trapper's drunken mouthings for gospel, or you have let Corky Joe here get you in a coil! The bigger lies he tells, the more you like him, I believe! I wouldn't copper his layout one sou! You hear me!"
"You keep my name out of it!" cried the individual alluded to, with an unfriendly tone.
"I'll kick you out of it if you lead us astray! I am not to be bluffed off by you, ugly face! This is a free country, ain't it? And my opinion is that you fawn on the chief to have the longest pull at his bottle of select brandy!"