senseless to go back.

A week later he skulked into a wilderness hiding place on the Greybull, twenty miles from its junction with the Bighorn, and stood at the rickety door of a cabin even smaller than Kate’s. He heard a movement inside and knew that the man there was reaching for a gun.

"It’s me, Sam!," he called. "Open her up and let’s have hot biscuits and huckleberry syrup."

The door opened an inch and gray eyes peered out and bearded lips said, "Sam, be it you?"

28

SOME OF THE mountain men thought Hank Cady had been baptized in the wrong vat. Sam Minard was a reticent man, but compared to him, Hank was dumb. Bill had calculated that in a year’s time Hank uttered no more than a hundred words, of which ninety were some form of yes and no. No man had ever heard him talk about his childhood and his people, but there was a rumor that he had hated his mother, who had made a nursemaid of him, the oldest, and forced him to care for a dozen brothers and sisters. Bill said the only thing some kids remembered from their childhood was diapers. Unlike most of the mountain men, Hank had never taken a squaw and seemed to have no interest in women. He had a fierce brooding love of freedom, and freedom was what he had had since he came west.

After asking for and receiving one of Hank’s old pipes and filling it with twist and sucking a cloud of smoke into his lungs, Sam said, "How’s trapping around here?"

Hank gave him a queer look; it was not yet the season for trapping, so what could the man mean? "Tolabul," Hank said, meaning tolerable. He looked at Sam’s ride. "Hain’t yourn," he said.

"Lost mine," Sam said. The strong tobacco was making him feel ill.

Hank waited a full minute. Then he said: "Crows?"

Blackfeet, Sam said.

Hank looked again at the ride. "Whose thissen?"

"Kate’s, the woman on the Musselshell."

"Yer handguns too?"

"Every damned thing but my life."

"Mick’s bay?"

"Yeh."

"Whereabouts?"

"Not far from Three Forks."

Hank gave the matter some thought. Musta been Elk Horns, he said. He’d been snooping around down this way. When would the ronnyvoo be?

"When they all want it," Sam said. He wondered could Hank lend him a little baccy and a pipe till he got to Jim’s? Hank rolled over to a pile of stuff by a wall and dug in. He fetched out ten inches of twist and gravely handed it to Sam.

"And a pipe?" Sam said.

Hank again dug and came up with a corncob with a broken stem. He was a chewing man himself and smoked only the quids after he had chewed the juice out. Now, making a clumsy effort to be sociable, he emptied his mouth through the cabin door and filled another pipe with a broken stem. With their pipes burning the two men sat in firelight, rifles across their

laps.

"How wuz she?" asked Hank.

Sam had been wondering if Hank could lend him a robe and if he had extra traps. Hank had been thinking of vengeance. He saw that Sam was a lot thinner and he suspected that he had endured many indignities and hardships. His handsome gray eyes, wonderfully bright and keen, had been studying Sam all the way up his frame.

"Still alive," Sam said at last.

"What Elk Horns do?"

Sam removed the stem from his teeth and seemed to be trying to remember. Well now, he had been slapped around, by both hands and tomahawk; his face had been smeared with the stuff they coughed up from their throats; and he had been starved and frozen and told what the Crows would do with him.

"They figgered ta sell ya?"

Sam nodded. On finishing his pipe he said, "Got steaks, I’m the feller can cook um." Jist roast, Hank said. After almost a full minute of silence he added, "Had supper afore ye come."

Sam glanced at the man. Henry Cady was one to have on your side in a fight but he didn’t spend much time wondering what he could do for you. A cold hunk of anything would do, Sam said; in the morning he would find something. Were they still fat around here? If he went fur enough, Hank said. He put his pipe aside and filled his mouth with twist. A part of the brown juice he spat into the fire before him and a part of it he swallowed, It was his private opinion that tobacco juice was good for a man’s stomach and digestion. Bill said tobacco in his stummick gave him a hull bellyful of heartburn, and Powder River Charley said it gave him the droppins; Hank could find no words to express his scorn for such idiotisms. He now moved his bearded cheeks a little to slop the quid around in his mouth, his gray eyes looking without change into the tire. It was his way to suppose that if a man wanted food and there was any around he would find it. Sam did not mind. The smoking had appeased his hunger and he was ready for bed.

"How you fixed for buffler robes?" he asked, looking round the shack.

Hank ejected a noisy stream into the flames and wiped his tobacco-stained mouth with the tobacco-stained back of his hand. "Guess we’ll hafta sleep together," he said. After warming a spot of earth and securing the door on the inside with a stout leather thong they lay side by side on their backs, the ride of each just under the bedding at his side. They faced the door so that on sitting up they would be ready to fire. They both snored but that did not bother them; they slept deep, without worries or bad dreams. Hank said he hadn’t seen an Injun since October, or an Indian trail as far as he had gone; and becoming almost garrulous, he said the winter would be cold and the pelts good.

They were up at daylight, and Sam with clumsy tactfulness had suggested a batch of biscuits to go with their roast and coffee. Hank had merely inclined his head toward the pile of stuff by the wall. He left the cabin and before breakfast was ready brought in a beaver, from the tail of which Sam rendered out a cup of hot fat to use as butter. They ate biscuits dunked in beaver fat, elk roast, and coffee, and then sat back with their pipes. From the moment of rising Hank had said nothing; nobody could have told by his face or manner whether he was pleased with Sam’s presence or wanted him to be on his way. The fact, unknown to all but him, was that Henry Cady was a very lonely man who turned warm and happy all over inside when another trapper came to visit him; but there was never any change in his gruff way. He had Sam’s affinity to all things in nature; like him, he loved the valleys and mountains, the  skyline’s backbones, the vast black forests, the pure water and clean air and wide spaces. With gun and knife he would vanish into a mountain mass and spend days or weeks there, living on grouse and deer and wild fruits. Sam would slip up to watch a water ouzel dive deep to explore a pool’s bottom, or the downy baby-heads thrusting out all around the mallard mother, or a warbling vireo hang its clever pensile nest from a tree’s limb, and he would proclaim his presence with an explosion of life joy; whereas Hank would make no sound, and he might sit by a stream and watch the fish in the cold dark waters or an elk feeding in a clearing for hours with hardly a shift in his gaze. Hank would have been happy to have Sam stay with him all winter but Sam had no way of knowing that. After bringing in a couple of deer he looked south and said it was a long way to Bridger’s post but he guessed he’d better be off. It was, he reckoned, a hundred miles and more to Bill on the Hoback, another hundred to Lost-Skelp on upper Green River, and still a long way from there to Bridger’s. He needed horses, traps, bedding, weapons, tobacco, and the fixens.