It was no easy task for the boy to beat the excited dogs into submission, but at length they slunk away before the stinging sweep of the lash, and Waseche Bill, his hands numb from his long gripping of the rope, slid squarely into the up-reaching arms of his little partner.
"Yo' sho' saved my bacon that time, kid. Why, that theah Slashah dawg—he'd of et me alive, an' the rest w'd done likewise, onct they got sta'ted!" Waseche Bill's tongue rattled off the words with which he sought to disguise the real emotion of his heart at finding the boy he had learned to love, safe and sound in the great white wilderness. But Connie Morgan was not deceived, and he smiled happily into the rough hair of his big partner's parka, as the man strained him to him in a bearlike embrace.
That night the two sat long over the camp fire at the foot of the moraine, and the heart of the man swelled with pride as the boy recounted his adventures on the trail.
"And now I've found you," concluded the boy, "I'm going to take you back. Pardners are pardners, you know—and tomorrow we'll hit for Ten Bow."
The man turned his face away and became busily engaged in arranging the robes into a bed close against the boy's sleeping bag.
"We sho' will, kid. Pa'dners is pa'dners, an'—me an' yo'—somehow—I cain't jes' say it—but—anyways—Why! Doggone it! Me an' yo's mo'n jes pa'dners—ain't we, kid?"
Later, as the man burrowed deep into his robes a voice sounded drowsily from the depths of the sleeping bag:
"Waseche!"
"Huh?" questioned the man.
"Black Jack Demaree said to tell you—let's see—what was it he said? Oh, yes—he said when I found you to tell you that 'you can't tell by the size of a frog how far he can jump.'"