Tossing the painter to the dog, Blue Pete leaped ashore and gathered her in his arms without a word. Then, tremulously happy but abashed by the fervour of their meeting, he released her and looked enquiringly about.
"I suppose it should have been Whiskers first," she pouted.
He laughed and whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly little pinto, all blotches of yellowish white and faded red, with a ragged tail that looked as if something had started to make a meal of it but became disgusted just before the end; and the left ear drooped humorously in its upper third. It nosed up against the halfbreed, nibbling playfully at his ears, his hands, the brim of his Stetson, the leather fringe of his chaps, the ends of the polka-dot handkerchief knotted about his neck.
"Yuh're some glad to see me, Whiskers, ole gal—if Mira ain't. But then yuh 'n' me knowed each other longer, an' sort o' got to see the good p'ints."
He laughed slyly at Mira from the corner of his eyes, and she laughed back, with a tinge of sadness in the tone, and turned away to take the painter from Juno. A second horse that had followed Whiskers from the trees stepped aboard the raft after the pinto.
"Bes' wait till it's darker," advised Blue Pete. "They got mighty peery since that las' raft showed us up. How d'yuh like the new one? 'Tain't's nifty 's the ole one, but it's easier handled, an' it'll last us through, I guess."
Mira was examining it soberly. "What's the matter with it? It don't seem even somehow."
He looked it over sheepishly. "I figured if I made it a bit shorter one side, yuh'd have less to pull. What bustin' I've did's run more to horses than boats, but ain't that about right? But the dang thing don't seem to work—like a loco'ed cayuse. Anyway it was a job. Them bohunks is getting' to roamin' about real annoyin', an' Koppy wust of all."
"Who was shooting just before you gave me the signal?"
"The bohunks, out after sparrow pie fer supper, I guess," he lied placidly, "ur larnin' which end a gun fires at. It's real dangerous in the bush these days. Fus' thing we know we'll have to show ourselves 'n' ask 'em to shoot at us to be safe. These loose bullets ain't a bit reasonable."