“What’s the best thing to do following up a wounded buffalo?” was the question. The questions sprung briskly, as only a ‘yapper’ puts them; and the answers came like reluctant drops from a filter. “Git out!”
“Yes, but if there isn’t time?”
“Say yer prayers!”
“No—seriously—what is the best way of tackling one?”
“Ef yer wawnt to know, thar’s only one way: Keep cool and shoot straight!”
“Oh! of course—if you can?”
“An’ ef you can’t,” he added in fool-killer tones, “best stay right home!”
Rocky had no fancy notions: he hunted for meat and got it as soon as possible; he was seldom out long, and rarely indeed came back empty-handed. I had already learnt not to be too ready with questions. It was better, so Rocky put it, “to keep yer eyes open and yer mouth shut”; but the results at first hardly seemed to justify the process. At the end of a week of failures and disappointments all I knew was that I knew nothing—a very notable advance it is true, but one quite difficult to appreciate! Thus it came to me in the light of a distinction when one evening, after a rueful confession of blundering made to the party in general, Rocky passed a brief but not unfriendly glance over me and said, “On’y the born fools stays fools. You’ll git ter learn bymbye; you ain’t always yappin’!”
It was not an extravagant compliment; but failure and helplessness act on conceit like water on a starched collar: mine was limp by that time, and I was grateful for little things—most grateful when next morning, as we were discussing our several ways, he turned to me and asked gently, “Comin’ along, Boy?”
Surprise and gratitude must have produced a touch of effusiveness which jarred on him; for, to the eager exclamation and thanks, he made no answer—just moved on, leaving me to follow. In his scheme of life there was ‘no call to slop over.’