He drew a long breath before he advanced, and then it was with a curse.
“’Tis the greaser I choked to death,” he said. “Here I’ve been crawling in the wrong direction all the time. What brought me back to this thing?” and, with a sigh of vexation, he threw himself beside the dead.
“It isn’t any harm to kill an Injun,” said the trader, with a smile, which looked ghastly on his bloody face; “but this fellow was sick, for he was as weak as the weasel’s kittens. I wonder if he hasn’t some pemmican about ’im. I’m hungry, an’ while I rest hyar, I might as well take a supper.”
So the Indian’s medicine-bag was drawn from beneath the body, and Doc Cromer’s hand disappeared among its contents.
“There’s not much hyar,” he said; “not an ounce of pemmican; but what’s this?”
Quickly he withdrew his hand, and bent forward to examine the object it clutched.
The prize glittered like gold in the rays of the moon, and all at once a strange cry pealed from the trader’s lips.
“Well, what’s goin’ to happen me next?” he exclaimed. “Hyar’s Silver Rifle’s ring—in the medicine bag of the greaser what I choked to death, when she war at my side! Say, Injun,” and he turned toward the corpse, “whar you run ’cross this? Blast yer ugly picture, ef you don’t tell I’ll knife you, I will, by hokey!”
He shook the body violently, and then laughed at his folly.
“Well, I’ve got the ring, anyhow,” he said, “and, by heavens! I’m goin’ to deliver it to the gal in person. I’m not goin’ to die hyar! no! Doc Cromer, suthin’ guided you to this spot—suthin’ we don’t know any thing about.”