“Ah, what would you have me do? I must live. Is that not so? And is it not better to live on the creatures of the woods than on one’s fellow-men? I kill only what I need for sustenance; for the rest I hurt not one.”
There was a hidden fierceness back of the soft voice and David felt immediately apologetic:
“Excuse me! Of course it’s all right. I only thought when you spoke of them as your people, and then pointed to their pelts hung around, it sounded sort of barbaric. Sort of like the Indians showing off their scalps, or the headhunters showing their skulls.”
The trapper smiled, and the smile was friendly.
“Youth is ever quick to accuse and as quick to forgive. I know. It is hard for you to understand how I can make them my friends through the long summer; and then, when winter comes and there is a price on their fur, trap them and kill them. But Nicholas Bassaraba kills only enough to bring him in the bare needs of life, and then only for one half the year. For the rest, I am a guide; I carry the packs for the gentlemen campers; I build their fires; I draw their water.”
The smile changed to a contemptuous curl of the lips. “Such it is to be a man locked out of his own country.”
David watched him uncomfortably for an instant. Then he laughed—he could not help it.
“You’re not the only one. There are two more of us; and I don’t know but what you’d call the flagman another, and Uncle Joab, and maybe the South-Americans, too. You see, I’m just sort of locked out, but the others are truly locked out.” And David launched into an account of himself and of what he knew of the others, all but the fairy.
“And is that all? I thought you said there was another person,” reminded the trapper.
David blushed consciously. Not that there was the slightest reason for blushing. He certainly felt no shame in his acquaintanceship with the locked-out fairy. It was rather the feeling of shyness in having to put it all into words, and there was always the uncertainty of how a stranger would take it. You never could tell how people were going to take fairies, anyhow. Besides, maybe there were no fairies in what had been this man’s country.