“Remember the feller’s singin’, Jim?”
The few men in the place had turned startled eyes as Murphy whined the doggerel ballad nasally. It was strange to them, but Banker shivered and shrank from the grinning bartender. 155
“Stop it, yuh darn fool! yuh gi’ me the creeps! W’at’s the matter with everything to-day? Everywhere I go some one starts gabblin’ about mines and French Pete an’ this all-fired—Louisiana! It’s a damn good thing there ain’t any more like him around here.”
“W’at’s that about mines—an’ French Pete? Yuh was the one that mentioned him.”
Banker leaned confidentially nearer. “Snake, d’yuh think old Ike Brandon didn’t know where the mine was?”
Snake regarded him contemptuously. “Yuh reckon Ike would have lived and died pore as a heifer after a hard winter if he’d a knowed? You’re loco, Jim: plumb, starin’, ravin’ loco!”
But Jim only leaned closer and dropped his voice until it was almost inaudible.
“Maybe so. But did you or any one else ever know what language them Bascos talks?”
“French, I reckon,” said Snake, indifferently.
“French, no, sir! Charlie Grandjean, that used to ride fer Perkins & Company was French and he told me once that they didn’t talk no French nor nothin’ like it. They talks their own lingo and there ain’t nobody but a Basco that knows this Basco talk.”