"Oh, dear me! Paradise of course, my dear Storm, and all the fountains playing, but who invites these old Haidah wives of mine and the Kutenais harem as well? They must not meet, or there'll be such a row. And for heaven's sake don't let them see my Little Fur Seal, or any of them meet Pavlova. Good gracious, here's my old Samoyed wife as well! What a reunion! How badly arranged! They'll never get on together. Don't let my past wives catch me in Heaven—it's really too disgusting. I am busy. Tell them I haven't the honor of their acquaintance. Olga! Be reasonable. None of them have any manners. Yes, I admit they fail to do me justice, biting, clawing, screeching. Canaille! Hags! Oh, not at all a good selection to meet me in Paradise. The arrangements here are really deplorable! Help! Help! Woman, that's my face——
"Ah! Brother! Is that you?"
The dying man shoved Storm aside, reached out his arms, his face most strangely boyish. "Alexei!" he said. "Let's play at wives and husbands!"
Storm saw the spirit departing from the worn-out, ruined body of his friend.
II
Daily the widows mourned. Ah hai-i-i ahee-ee! for the White Chief, Many Wives hai-ai-ya-hai! Whose medicine was so strong that the hair grew out at the wrong end of his head? Ya-a-a-hai! Whose body needed the tribe, the dogs, and carrioles lashed abreast, to carry awai-i-i-ya-hai-i-i. Yow-ow-ow-o! And he wanted to be buried up a tree-ee-ee-hee! Aye, yow-ow-ow! Ahooo-oo-boohoo-oo-oo-oo-ahai-i!
At meals, or otherwise when ordered by the white men to shut up, and hold their row-ow-ow-aeou! they became placid, even moderately cheerful, and squabbled a little in the kitchen about the division of Fatbald's property.
It was at such an interval that Storm took Hiram into the trade room where one's breath made clouds. They sat on bales of furs considering a pack of sulphur from the Cascade volcanoes, a sack of willow charcoal, and ten alforgas of wood ash washed, strained, and dried into gray niter with a nice gun-powder perfume. These the American approved, but he demanded black lead to waterproof the gunpowder, when made, "Unless," he said, "you want it for liquid face paint."
As for Storm's cake of explosive, made already and with great pride set out for inspection: "Shucks," said the trapper, "ef that ain't the complete benighted, effete, old-country Britisher! Want it as mush for breakfast, or to drown kittens in?
"And yet, I dunno. It's shorely a safety gunpowder this, all right. No danger of going off bang—just mammie's pap warranted safe for children."