"An' how—"
"Cards and mixed drinks," he said, laconically. "Angels in the wine-rooms, and a slick individual at the table who had a better poker hand than I had. How's that as a trade for six months' work? How does it pan out in the balance with half-breeds?"
Evidently it staggered MacDougall. "It is no much like ye to dissipate, Genesee," he said, doubtfully. "O' course a man likes to try his chance on the chips once in a way, and to the kelpies o' the drinkin' places one must leave a few dollars, but the mixin' o' drinks or the muddlin' o' the brains is no natural to ye; it may be a divarsion after the hill life, but there's many a kind that's healthier."
"You're a confounded old humbug," said Genesee coolly; "you preach temperance to me, and get drunk as a fiddler all alone here by yourself—not much Scotch in that way of drinking, I can tell you. Hello! who's that?"
MacDougall leaned forward and peered down the path where the sound of a horse's feet were heard coming around the bend.
"It's that man o' Hardy's comin' again about a guide, I have na doubt. I'll send him across Seven-mile Creek to Tyee-Kamooks. They can get a Siwash guide from him, or they can lose themsel's for all me," he said, grumpily, incited thereto, no doubt, by Genesee's criticism of his habits. He often grumbled that his friend from the Maple range was mighty "tetchy" about his own faults, and mighty cool in his opinions of others.
A dark, well-built horse came at an easy, swinging pace out of the gloom of the spruce boughs and over the green sward toward the cabin; his rider, a fair, fine-looking fellow, in a ranchman's buckskin suit, touched his hat ever so lightly in salute, a courtesy the others returned, Genesee adding the Chinook word that is either salutation or farewell, "Klahowya, stranger," and the old man giving the more English speech of "Good evening; won't ye light, stranger?"
"No; obliged to you, but haven't time. I suppose I'm speaking to Mr. MacDougall," and he took his eyes from the tall, dark form of Genesee to address his speech to the old trapper.
"Yes, I'm Davy MacDougall, an' I give a guess you're from the new sheep ranch that's located down Kootenai Park; you're one of Hardy's men."
"No; I'm Hardy."