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“I believe your judication is sound, Le-loo; stay where you be an’ if he hain’t a witch I’ll bet my front tooth agin the string of his moccasin that I’ll find the bridge, and I’ll swear by my grandmother’s hind leg that that little imp will pay for our sheep yit.” As Pete finished these remarks there was a sudden and astonishing change in his appearance.
After breakfasting on the remains of the kid, Big Pete arose and scanned the sky, the horizon and the mountain tops, and turning to me said, “Now, Le-loo, that Wild Hunter-b’ar-wolf man has fooled us by doubling on his trail an’ as it hain’t him we’re after now but the trail out of the mountains, I mean to go by sens-see-ation, but you must keep yer meat-trap shut and not speak, ’cause soon as I know I’m a man I hain’t got no more sense than a man.
Tenderfoot? Well, I should say so. No one but a short-horn from the East would keep his mouth open gulping in the frozen fog, filling his warm lungs with quarts of fine ice. I reckon it would be healthier to breathe pounded glass, fur it hain’t sharper nor half as cold. Why, Le-loo, tha’ be a dose of fever and lung inflammation in every mouthful of this frozen fog.”
Instead of “Tenderfoot,” Big Pete now called me “Le-loo,” which I understand is Chinook for wolf and I took so much pride in my promotion that I would not have changed clothes with the Prince of Wales; I gloried in my wild, unkempt appearance!
Big Pete looked at me solemnly for a while, ran over the cartridges in his belt and went through all those familiar unconscious motions which betokened danger ahead, and said, “Le-loo, you are a quare critter; you’re not afraid of all the werwolves, medicine ba’rs and ghosts in this world or the next, but tarnally afeared of live varmints like grizzly bars—one would think you had no religion, but, gosh all hemlock!
“Waugh, Le-loo! tha’s no witchcraft ’bout this ’cep the magic of common-sense; but we hain’t through with him yit!” By this time Pete had the end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength of its anchorage upon the opposite cliff.
Presently he cried, “Le-loo, tha’ pesky lad ha’ been over wha’ you be after sompen and he took it back tha’ again afore he made his jump! If you’re any good you’ll find what the lad was after.”
At last he desisted and ordered me to put on all my clothes. “Are you mad, Pete? Has the rarefied air of the mountains upset your brain? If not, will you kindly tell me what on earth all this means and why we are hiding in this gloomy hole?” I asked as soon as I got the breath back in my body. “Le-loo, you be a baby, and need a keeper to prevent you from committing susancide several times a day.
“Squat lower, Le-loo; arrows has been the death of many a man afore you,” whispered Big Pete in my ear, but even as he spoke another arrow sang over our crouching bodies, shaving the protecting rock so closely that their plumed tips brushed the dust on our backs. “Waugh! Good shootin’, by gum!
Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, “Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?” “He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw,” I answered enthusiastically. “Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an’ maybe ye hain’t; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain’t.”
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