"Not him," laughed Claw. "Him an' I ain't always pulled, what you might say, together—but he's square—kill you in a minute, if he took a notion—but he'd go to hell before he'd snitch. Have another drink, Ace-In-The-Hole, 'twon't hurt you none—only rum—an' water-weak."
Before he knew it the glass was in his hand, and again Brent drank.
After that he took them as they came. The bottle was emptied and tossed into the corner where the drunken klooch recovered it and holding it to her lips, greedily sucked the few drops that remained in the bottom. Another bottle was produced, and Brent, his brain fired by the raw liquor, measured glasses, drink for drink, never noticing that the same liquor served, in the glasses of the other three, for round after round of libations.
"Wher's yer camp?" asked Claw, as he refilled the glasses.
"Bloody Falls," answered Brent, waxing loquacious. "Bloody Falls of the Coppermine, where old Samuel Hearne's Indians butchered the Eskimos."
"Butchered the Eskimos!" exclaimed Claw, "What d'you mean—butchered? I ain't heard 'bout no Huskies bein' killed, an' who in hell's Sam Hearne? I be'n round here, off an' on, fer long while, an' I ain't never run acrost no Sam Hearne. What be you handin' us? You ort to start a noospaper."
Brent laughed uproariously: "No, Claw, I reckon you never ran across him. This happened over a hundred years ago—1771—July 13th, to be exact."
Asa Scroggs grinned knowingly: "Man kin lap up a hell of a lot of idees out of a bottle of hooch," he opined, "Mostly it runs to ph'los'fy, er fightin', er po'try, er singin', er religion, er women, er sad mem'ries—but this here stale news idee is a new one.
But, g'wan, Ace-In-The-Hole, did the Mounted git Sam fer his murdersome massacres?"
"That was a hundred years before the Mounted was thought of," answered Brent, eying Scroggs truculently, as his inflamed brain sought hidden insult in the words.