When they issued from the tent Jack Chanty and Humpy were to be seen supping cheek by jowl beside the fire, and Linda said with a flash of intuition:
"I'll be bound, they're having a better supper than we had!"
She was only guessing, but as a matter of fact, in the case of a party as large as this, there are bound to be tidbits, such as a prairie-chicken, a fish or a rabbit, not sufficient to furnish the general table, and these naturally fall to the share of the cook and his chum.
Afterward, while the Indians washed the dishes, Jack smoked and Humpy talked. Humpy was the kind of innocent braggart that tells tall tales about nothing at all. He was grateful to Jack for even the appearance of listening, and Jack in turn was glad of the prattle that enabled him to keep his face while he thought his own thoughts.
"Last winter when the steamboat was laid up," said Humpy Jull, "I was teaming for the company down to Fort Ochre. Say, it's wild country around there. The fellers advised me not to leave my gun behind when I druv into the bush for poles. One day I was eatin' my lunch on a log in the bush when I hear a grizzily bear growl, right behind me. Yes, sir, a ding-gasted grizzily. I didn't see him. I didn't wait. I knew it was a grizzily bear because the fellers say them's the on'y kind that growls-like. Say, my skin crawled on me like insec's walkin' on my bare bones. I never stop runnin' till I get back to the fort. The hosses come in by themselves. Oh, I let 'em laugh. I tell you I wa'n't takin' no chances with a grizzily!"
Meanwhile Jack, for the first time in his life, was obliged to face a moral crisis. Other threatening crises hitherto he had managed to evade with youth's characteristic ingenuity in side-stepping the disagreeable. The first time that a young brain is held up in its happy-go-lucky career, and forced to think, is bound to be a painful experience.
Up to now Jack had taken his good name for granted. He had run away when he felt like it, meaning to go back when he was ready. Now, when he found it smirched he realized what an important thing a good name was. He raged in his mind, and justly at the man who had destroyed it; nevertheless a small voice whispered to him that it was partly his own fault. For the first time, too, he realized that his name was not his exclusive property; his father and mother had a share in it, though they were no longer of the world. He thought too of the streets of the city that was so dear to him, now filled with people who believed that Malcolm Piers was a thief.
The simplest thing was not to think about it at all, but go direct to Frank Garrod, and "have it out" with him. But Jack was obliged to recognize that this was no solution. Every time he had drawn near to Frank since the afternoon, Frank had cringed and shown his fangs like a sick animal, disgusting Jack, and making it impossible for him to speak to Frank in any connection. A look in Frank's desperate eyes was enough to show the futility of an appeal to his better feelings. "Besides, I couldn't beg him to set me right," Jack thought, his hands clenching, and the vein on his forehead swelling.
Force then suggested itself as the only recourse, and the natural one to Jack's direct nature. This was no good either. "He's a sick man," Jack thought. "He couldn't stand up to me. If I struck him——" A cold fear touched his heart at the thought that he had no way in the world of proving himself honest, except by means of a free and voluntary statement from a man who was obviously breaking, and even now scarcely sane.
The problem was too difficult for Jack to solve. He found himself wishing for an older head to put it to. More than once his thoughts turned to the wiser and older lady in Sir Bryson's party, to whom he had not yet spoken. "I wish I could make friends with her," he thought.