"You'd really ought," said Storm, "to have primed that pan. Why, Hiram, you didn't stand no chance."
The trapper flung the weapon out through the door of the tipi. "I ain't no crawler. And if you thinks you've won my soul, you're away off. It's done lost."
Storm laughed gayly. "That's all right, partner," said he; "we'll catch it!"
"Well"—No-man smiled at last—"it's up to you. You won. And I shorely loves the way you acts."
"Found! The very first thing is loving your enemy, specially when you hates him like poison as you does me. Shake 'ands on it."
Shamefacedly No-man shook hands with Storm.
"Mush. I'm getting mushy," said the trapper to himself. "Softer than a woman, plumb unmanly believing of things which ain't so. Sick, of course. But this man isn't no hypocrite. He don't scare none. He don't preach. His medicine is powerful strong too, by the way he's healing this yer wound. Now, if I don't roll my tail down to the nearest white men and have a fortnight's drunk—why, dammit, they'll have me saved. I'm off!"
He went, his hosts proclaiming so frequently and with such insistence how greatly they were relieved at his departure, that one might even think they needed some persuasion of proof they did not miss the fellow at all. Of course he had to earn his living as a trapper, and naturally must sell the season's takings, but why not trade with Two Bits? News came by various clients at the lodge that No-man was here or there, in all sorts of scrapes, trying to get himself killed in the most lunatic adventures among hostile tribes, yet with a charmed life. He hunted Death, so of course Death had to run away; always does if you chase him. He was trying to find a white man's camp and get a proper drunk, or so he told the Indians. Why was it, they wanted to know, that when by accident he came on a white man's trading camp, he ran away? Was he afraid of his own tribe, or was he ashamed to meet them? And why was it that, when the women made eyes at Hunt-the-girls, he always fled from the camps?
Then, dreading the very sight of the priestess, horribly afraid lest Storm should unman him altogether by making a Christian of him, the trapper came back to the tipi because he was lonely, homesick, hungry of heart, and desolate.
Always after that, when he went away for a season's trapping, No-man was full of pomp and ostentation to himself, as well as towards his hosts, about the big drunk he would have in the spring at the nearest trade house, how he was hitting civilization, what presents he was taking to the folks down East. Young America always proposes to do things, whereas the other white men are grown-ups content to let the accomplished deed speak for them. Still, it pleased the exile to dream ahead, and he found in that a satisfaction which would never come from a drunk realized, a visit to the civilization which he dared not face, a return to the home love he never would know again, or any other fair-appearing dead-sea fruit, which in his mouth would change to ashes. Rain said she hated the very sight of No-man, Storm proclaimed him a nuisance; yet they saw through him, their hearts ached because of the tragic emptiness of the life he faced with such gay valor, and when they expected his return to this, his only home, they certainly looked forward to his gossip.