“Mokgroggir,” replied the Indian.
“Ha, Macgregor, ye mean, no doubt.”
Hawkswing nodded.
“Here you are, friends,” said McLeod, re-entering the room with a large roll of tobacco. “Help yourselves and don’t spare it. There’s plenty more where that came from. But I see the steaks are ready, so let us fall to; we can smoke afterwards.”
During the repast, to which the trappers applied themselves with the gusto of hungry men, March Marston questioned McLeod about the Wild Man.
“The Wild Man o’ the West,” said he in some surprise; “is it possible there are trappers in the Rocky Mountains who have not heard of him?”
“Oh yes,” said March hastily, “we’ve heard of him, but we want to hear more particularly about him, for the accounts don’t all agree.”
“Ha! that’s it,” said Bounce, speaking with difficulty through a large mouthful of fish, “that’s it. They don’t agree. One says his rifle is thirty feet long, another forty feet, an’ so on. There’s no gittin’ at truth in this here—”
A bone having stuck in Bounce’s throat at that moment he was unable to conclude the sentence.
“As to the length of his rifle,” said McLeod, when the noise made by Bounce in partially choking had subsided, “you seem to have got rather wild notions about that, and about the Wild Man too, I see.”