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Updated: June 3, 2025
"I treat 'em as they deserve," replied Mahooley sullenly. "If a girl don't get any of the good out of me, that's up to her." It was the first time one of these girls had been able to put him out of countenance. "Poor girls!" murmured Bela. He looked at her sharply again. The idea that a native girl might laugh at him, the trader, was a disconcerting one.
This was too much for Joe's self-control. A dull, bricky flush crept under his skin. "Put it over nothing!" he growled. "You come over to Bela's to-night if you want to see how I handle a cook!" "Who is the old guy camped beside Bela's shack?" asked the stranger. "Musq'oosis, a kind of medicine man of her tribe," answered Mahooley. "Is he her father?" "No; her father was a white man."
"Don't mak' stop," observed Musq'oosis, smiling. "I lak hear what fonny thoughts come in his head." Mahooley glanced at him narrowly, suspecting a double meaning. When the rumble of the last wagon died away in the distance, Mahooley said carelessly: "Well, Musq'oosis, you know the old saying: 'Two is company, three is none." Musq'oosis appeared not to have understood.
On the fourth day thereafter the long tedium of existence in the settlement began to be broken in earnest. Before they could digest the flavour of one event, something else happened. In the afternoon word came down to Stiffy and Mahooley that the bishop had arrived at the French Mission, bringing the sister of the company trader's wife under his care.
"How did you get it?" "Graves my friend," replied Musq'oosis with dignity. "We talk moch comin' up. He say I got good sense." The old man got up. "Sit down!" cried Mahooley. "I got as good horses as the company." "Want too much price, I t'ink," said Musq'oosis. "Let's talk it over. There's my black team, Sambo and Dinah."
They could not contain their mirth. "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" cried Mahooley. "This is the richest I ever heard! It will never be forgotten!" Sam went through with the meal, gritting his teeth, and crushing down the rage that bade fair to suffocate him. He disdained to challenge Jack's equivocal tale.
"Some time when the gang ain't around I'll show you I ain't all bad," he said ardently. Bela shrugged. Musq'oosis was in the shack again to-night. He sat on the floor in the corner beyond the fire-place. Neither Bela nor Mahooley paid any attention to him, but he missed nothing of their talk. By and by the group around the table moved to break up.
Graves's young men saved the Government their rations, but took it out in horse-flesh riding around the bay to sup at Bela's. The policemen spent their hours off duty and wages there. Stiffy and Mahooley fired their cook and went with the rest. The shack proved inadequate to hold them all, and Graves sent over a tent to be used as a kitchen annex.
"In other words, your room is preferred to your company." Musq'oosis did not budge from the position of the squatting idol. His face likewise was as bland and blank as an image's. "Oh, in plain English, get!" said Mahooley. "Go to your teepee," added Bela shortly. Musq'oosis sat fast. Mahooley jumped up in a rage. "This is a bit too thick! Get out before I throw you out!"
The laughter of one's friends is hard enough to bear sometimes, still, it may be borne with a grin; but when it rings with scarcely concealed hate it stings like whips. Sam was supposed to sit down at the table with them, but he would sooner have starved. The effort of holding himself in almost finished him. When finally he cleared away, Mahooley said: "Come on and tell us your side now."
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