"Oh, my, this is the time now, before the sun is up, I'm glad I am not married. It's a pleasure to be a single man at this hour."
Heh! Heh! As a usual thing we are not gratified at all for this favor of heaven. A single man, Shoepack Sam was saying, would not have to be looking at the wreck of his wife in the morning; and this is when women were caught unawares in the gill-nets time is lowering for them.
"They are pale about the gills then," he said. "They are just drowned fish. They have stayed in the nets too long."
"No, it's not certain," said Rainbow Pete. "She might be pleasant-looking on the pillow with her hair adrift."
Then Shoepack told him that the salt water had leaked into his brains, what with his voyages.
"Still, this is a beautiful cheek," said Pete, speaking low, because she was moving about beyond the boards.
"These things are purchased," said Shoepack, scraping his feet together in yellow moosehides. "Listen to me, I have seen them in a long line, on her shelf, with many odors."
So they were talking together, and Rainbow Pete was putting his fingers to the flute and staring down the valley, where Throat River was twisting like a rag.
"I could have had a wife for speaking at Kicking Horse," he said.
"There is one for speaking now," said Shoepack.