It was after dark, in a wild and gloomy spot, all shaded and strewn with trees and rocks, and the three men with their three horses were almost breathless from a difficult ascent which they had just made. The three men were Bill Blaze, who was speaking, Harry Winkle, who had spoken, and Pompey, who, the picture of contentment and fidelity, kept his place a little in the background.
"You are sure that we can do nothing more at present, and that we are in no danger of attack, ourselves? We might have been seen by some look-out or scout. I'm always on the side of prudent carefulness."
"Nary bit, I tell yer! Didn't I, Bill Blaze, put yer through? We didn't make no more show than a bob-tail rat. Ef thar war any extra dodge I didn't put on, jist tell me on it, an' I knock under. It warn't no use bein' so dog-goned careful, but havin' bin lit on in one camp, an' sarcumvented a leetle later, makes a feller draw his bead mighty fine. You've hed a lesson from Bill Blaze when that chap war doin' his purtiest, an' ef you hain't l'arned any thing you'd better sell yer claim an' go East; yer ain't wanted har."
"I suppose it's all right then. We can give our horses a chance to rest and graze; then a little food and sleep for ourselves; then to work. Pity that we must eat and sleep whether we will or no. What valuable time we have lost in procuring a chance to do the two."
"I ain't so much on the sleep; it's kinder nateral now to do without it; but, I never could see thet it was losin' time to take a good squar' meal o' buffler. I've seen the time, too, when I didn't think it war losin' time to gruge clean through a hind-quarter of a black-tailed buck. If ye'd gone across the Cimmerin river, an' got lost on the Ratone Mountings, ye mout hev thought yer war puttin' in the time purty well, guzzlin' down froze hackberries. As for roast coyote, that war a delicacy o' the season to smack yer lips over. Four pound er so wouldn't a-took yer appetite down to regulation pitch. Waugh!"
"Hackberries and prairie-wolf—rather a miserable diet, I should say. Have you tried it?"
"Hev I tried it? Yer right, I hev. That is, the hackberry part. Ther' war only one wolf to about seventy ov us, an' by the time I got my knife out it war all gone, so I stayed my innards a while smellin' on his bones. I found the derned cusses hed forgot to open his skull—an' them brains! Imagine it yerself; I never kin do 'em justice. Ef I could find a squaw as could dress up vittles to taste like 'em did, consarn my high-heeled top-knot, ef I wouldn't hook on! 'Pears to me I'd be almost willin' to go back to the settlements."
Blaze's enthusiasm, over that remembered meal of brains, amused Winkle vastly. It was not the words, but the manner of the man, that made him at times forget his anxiety, bringing to the surface feelings that had long been buried. There was over all the mixed quaintness and bluffness, moderation and braggadocio of the hunter, an irresistible appearance of honesty and trustworthiness that had won upon him in the moments following immediately their first meeting. As the man seemed to have but little to say of others, and all that he had said of himself might well be uttered by one who, swinging loose, years ago, from the restraints of civilization, had ever since, through hardships and dangers, through thick and thin, fire and water, relied for the most part upon himself—at the worst, we do not doubt without some cause, or shadow of cause. As Winkle had none, he felt inclined to trust. After a time arose a desire to confide.
The three men had been in camp for some time. They had talked some little, using, as in a country shadowed by danger becomes almost habitual, a guarded tone. There had been intervals of silence, too, when Winkle's mind thronged with exciting and troublous thoughts. These thoughts, rushing along tumultuously, and in an orderless throng, became too oppressive. They drove away sleep, banished hunger, brought weariness to rest, and made inaction work.
What all that foreboded he knew by experience. He was willing to brood, yet there was a limit he neither cared or dared to pass. Over and beyond the old troubles, which had well-nigh crazed his brain, he had found that at Back Load Trace, which had been startling at first, in fact appalling. When he first caught sight of the face of Edith Van Payne he was bewildered. Then he fancied that his mind had given way, or that he had seen a visitor from the other world. So fully convinced was he of this, that, when he had found Blaze in his camp he had been afraid or ashamed to question him as to his knowledge concerning the pale-faced girl who had flashed by him in the moonlight, or of her shadowy pursuer. It was only after he had heard a scream, seen her borne off, and had the aid of the evidence of Blaze's senses, that he came to admit that he was dealing with the stern natural instead of the appalling supernatural. During the hours of pursuit there had been but little time to ask questions, and indeed his mind, agitated by surrounding circumstances, suggested but few. Now, in the moments of inaction, scores arose.