“Yes,” Sandy replied. “Let them have one of the musk-oxen. They’ll go away and leave us alone then.”
Toma’s sanction to the gift was given by a mere grunt.
“We’ve decided to let you have one of the musk-oxen since you’re hungry,” Dick told the spokesman of the three. “But it’s not because we fear you or think we owe it to you.”
The white man turned to the half-breed Indians and muttered a few words in a foreign tongue. The boys indicated the musk-oxen farthest away from them as the one the men should take, and, keeping their rifles ready for any trickery that might be enacted, they watched the outlaws hasten forward and attack the meat with their knives.
Soon the men had the animal quartered and had slung the fresh meat to their backs. The two half-breeds turned and climbed back into the ravine with their load, but the white outlaw tarried for a parting word.
“This country ain’t healthy f’r you fellers,” he leered at them. “I’m givin’ y’r a tip on the strength o’ this meat. I ain’t sayin’ I’m in love with Mistak, but I reckon I hate the Mounted more. My moniker is Moonshine Sam, if you fellers want ter know, an’ it’s the Mounted that’s chased me into this God-f’rsaken land. They ain’t goin’ to git me here. Git that? Not afore I git me two more policemen!”
Dick’s rifle came up quickly at the grim threat in the outlaw’s words, but Moonshine Sam turned abruptly and followed his companions down into the ravine.
When the three were out of sight the boys breathed sighs of relief. It had been a trying ordeal, and they felt themselves fortunate in coming through it without blood-shed.
“I wish we could have captured them,” Sandy expressed something that had been in Dick’s mind also.
“But it was too risky,” Dick replied. “You must remember they were grown men, and among the most desperate characters the Mounted has to deal with. If we’d tried to capture them they’d have finished us before we reached the home camp.”