“It’d serve some of ’em right,” avowed Pizen Jane, with a grimness that was not pleasant. “Some on ’em that I know of, and am lookin’ fer, ought to be chopped into giblets. If the wolves should kill ’em, it’d save me the crime of murder when I meet ’em.”
When the shots did not come again, and nothing occurred to indicate who the man was, or what had happened to him, the scout abandoned his desire to go to his aid.
He feared the return of the wolves; and so he kept his horse in the stream, though the beast was soon shaking from the chill of the cold water.
“It’s a tarnal queer thing, Buffler, ther way that animiles do,” averred the woman, dropping into a mood of philosophy. “The wolves warn’t afeared of us, even when we laid ’em out on the shore like chopped corn, though they was skeered o’ that painter; and the painter that wasn’t afeared of the wolves, was afeared of us. Varmints aire that queer there’s no knowin’ what to expect of ’em.”
For nearly an hour the scout kept his shivering horse in the stream; but when it was seen that the wolves were not likely to return soon he rode out of the water.
On the shore he went into camp, and there he built a fire. The fire would help to keep the wolves at bay; and also it was needed to enable him and Pizen Jane to dry their wet clothing.
He screened the fire as well as he could; yet he knew it might be seen; and he was in a land where he could expect to meet enemies in human shape as terrible as the wolves and as little given to mercy. To guard against surprise, he for a time stood in the darkness beyond the rim of the firelight, watching there, while the woman by the fire dried and warmed herself.
Far away he heard wolves howling, and they may have been some of those who had pursued him; but the man who had fired the shots did not make himself known.
The stars and the moon swung their slow way westward, and the night grew late. At last the scout returned to the fire, fed it with wood, and sat down.
Pizen Jane had fallen asleep, but his return aroused her, and she raised herself on her elbow.