“Tired! Stranger, I don’t know the meanin’ of the word when I can git any thing tew eat; but, jist at present, I hain’t hed a toothful in three days. I’m holler clean tew my boot-heels. Got any thing eatable?”
“Yes; I have a piece of buffalo-hump. I shot one this morning,” replied Wayne, disengaging the meat from his saddle, and preparing to cook it.
A fire was soon kindled beside a log, and the meat stewing and sputtering on a stick beside it. The hungry trapper watched it eagerly, and when done, lost no time in disposing of a considerable piece of it.
“Thet was good,” he ejaculated, wiping his mouth; “an’ now, as it’s ’bout sundown, I guess we’d better be lookin’ ’round for night-quarters, ’specially as we’re in pretty open ground, an’ thar may be red-skins about. That grove, half a mile off, is a good place. What ye say?”
“I think we had better go there,” responded Wayne. “I wish I could find my friends.”
“Yer friends?” said the trapper, inquiringly. “I hain’t asked ye how ye come tew be pokin’ round here alone. How was it? Ye ain’t trappin’ alone?”
Kent then went on to relate his adventures, and when he was done, the trapper remarked:
“Wal, they are not fur from the South Pass, by this time. As I hain’t got nothin’ tew dew, an’ no hoss, I don’t mind goin’ with ye to ’em. We can stay here till airly to-morrow mornin’, an’ then we can push on an’ overtake ’em. Can’t really say that I can ’preciate this trampin’ ’round on foot. I’ll pay them Injuns for takin’ my horse an’ puttin’ me in thet trap. They’ll wish they’d died when they war young.”
Kent laughed at the trapper’s earnest manner and emphatic nods, and said:
“I don’t blame you for feeling rather hard toward them about it. It would have been a fearful death, to die of starvation and thirst.”