"Say, Keeko," he cried, gazing up into the troubled eyes watching him, and addressing the girl by name for the first time, "let's sit. We've got to make a big talk. Anyway, I have. I feel like one of those fool neches sitting in a war council, and handing out wisdom that wouldn't fool a half-hatched skitter. Still, I reckon I've got one hell of a notion, and notions worry me to death if I can't hand 'em on to some feller who can't defend himself. I'm not often worried that way. Will you listen awhile?"
Marcel's effort was not without effect. The girl's eyes cleared of their shadows, swept away by a smiling amusement. She found him quite irresistible in the gloom of her twilight surroundings, and forthwith permitted herself to subside upon the ground opposite him, with legs crossed, and her rifle lying across her knees.
"It's easy listening," she said with a laugh.
"Good!"
Marcel laughed, too.
"Now, it's this," he began, with a profound solemnity that delighted the girl. "If I hand you anything you don't fancy listening to, why, say so right away, and I'll quit. You see, I don't get much practice handing it out to a girl, and I'm liable to make breaks—bad breaks. You see, we're mostly a thousand miles outside the world, and you're a lone girl in a hell of a lone land. I'd be thankful for you to get hold of it that I was raised to reckon a girl needs all the help a decent man can hand her. That's his duty. Plumb. And he hasn't a right on earth to figger on any return. Well, I haven't got over that notion yet. It goes with me every time, and I pray the good God of this darnation wilderness it always will. I allow this is just preliminary, to make you feel good before I start in to talk. It isn't the sermon you may guess it is, so that'll make it easier remembering what lies back of my head when you start—guessing."
Marcel produced a pipe and stuffed it with the tobacco he flaked off a sad-looking plug. The pipe was crudely carved in Eskimo fashion out of the ivory of a walrus tusk. Keeko watched him silently with an interest she made no attempt to disguise, while deep in her heart was stirring that feeling she was wholly unconscious of. His "preliminary" was unnecessary. In her woman's way she read him to her own satisfaction.
He lit his pipe carefully, and as carefully extinguished his match. They were in a forest where the decaying vegetation was as dry as tinder.
"You need pelts," he said, after a considering pause. "You need three thousand dollars trade in 'em. You want silver fox and black fox. Well—you can have enough to set Lorson Harris squealing."
Keeko was startled.