“I wish more white men were thataway,” said Sleepy, looking seriously at Hashknife. “A lot of fellers’ brains and tongues are kiwa teahwit.”
Hashknife squinted closely at Sleepy, and his face broke into a wide grin. Big Medicine was not looking at either of them.
“Lucy got a lot of pleasure out of exchanging a few words in the trade language with you,” he said. “She said it was like seeing some of her own people again. None of the rest of us ever understood the language.”
“That’s what I understand,” said Sleepy, and Hashknife smothered a laugh in the sleeve of his shirt.
The joke had gone over better than he had anticipated, much better.
CHAPTER VII
THE MAN WITH THE WAXED MUSTACHE
It was about a week later, well past midnight, when the stage rattled down the grades which led into Hawk Hole. Olsen, the regular driver, was alone on the seat, with one passenger inside the stage.
They swept into the Hole and out onto the flat country, the four horses running at top speed. Far ahead of them a lantern blinked beside the road. Olsen drew the team down to a trot and stopped near the lantern, where a man held the heads of a team hitched to a buckboard.
The man climbed down from inside the stage and walked over to the lantern. He was a big man, almost as big as Big Medicine Hawkworth, and of about the same age. But this man’s face was pale and heavily lined, with a hawklike nose and piercing black eyes. His white mustache was waxed to needlelike points, and his white hair curled down around his shoulders from beneath a wide-brimmed, black hat.
“Well, yuh got here, Doc,” observed Baldy Kero, who held the team. “I just got here myself.”