Occasionally some wag would push forward the pockmarked brave and demand of Dud that he baptize him again, and always the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased to be a scream.
Dud grinned at Dillon. “These wooden heads are so fond of chestnuts I’m figurin’ on springin’ on them the old one about why a hen crosses the road. Bet it would go big. If they got the point. But I don’t reckon they would unless I had a hen here to show ’em.”
The feast ended only when the supplies gave out. Two and a half sacks of flour disappeared. About fifteen pounds of potatoes went into the pot and from it into the openings of copper-colored faces. Nothing was left of the elk but the bones.
“The party’s mighty nigh over,” Dud murmured. “Wonder what our guests aim to do now.”
“Can’t we feed ’em anything more?” asked Bob anxiously.
“Not unless we finish cookin’ the pockmarked gent for ’em. I’m kinda hopin’ old Colorow will have sabe enough not to wear his welcome out. It’d make a ten-strike with me if he’d say ‘Much obliged’ an’ hit the trail.”
Bob had not the heart to jest about the subject, and his attempt to back up his companion’s drunken playacting was a sad travesty. He did not know much about Indians anyhow, and he was sick through and through with apprehension. Would they finish by scalping their hosts, as Dud had suggested early in the evening?
It was close to midnight when the clown of Colorow’s party invented a new and rib-tickling joke. Bob was stooping over the stove dishing up the last remnants of the potatoes when this buck slipped up behind with the carving-knife and gathered into his fist the boy’s flaming topknot. He let out a horrifying yell and brandished the knife.
In a panic of terror Bob collapsed to the floor. There was a moment when the slapstick comedy grazed red tragedy. The pitiable condition of the boy startled the Ute, who still clutched his hair. An embryonic idea was finding birth in the drunken brain. In another moment it would have developed into a well-defined lust to kill.
With one sweeping gesture Dud lifted a frying-pan from the red-hot stove and clapped it against the rump of the jester. The redskin’s head hit the roof. His shriek of agony could have been heard half a mile. He clapped hands to the afflicted part and did a humped-up dance of woe. The carving-knife lay forgotten on the floor. It was quite certain that he would take no pleasure in sitting down for some few days.