"Mister, I guess I'll go back to the Graham Glacier along with you. I'm Billy Spike, an' it kinder scares me to go back to them Hudson Mountains, but somehow, mister, when you choked me and kinder walked me off on my ear, why, mister, I kinder took to you like."
There was absolute silence for a minute; then he said:
"So if you go, I guess I'll go, too, mister."
"For a thousand dollars?"
"Fur nawthin'," he muttered—"or what you like."
"All right, Billy," I said, briskly; "just look over those rifles and ammunition and see that everything's sound."
He slowly lifted his tough young face and gave me a doglike glance. They were hard eyes, but there was gratitude in them.
"You'll get your throat slit," whispered Lesard.
"Not while Billy's with me," I replied, cheerfully.
Late that night, as I was preparing for pleasant dreams, a knock came on my door and a telegraph-messenger handed me a note, which I read, shivering in my bare feet, although the thermometer marked eighty Fahrenheit: