“I tell you there wasn’t a better bale of furs in the whole Green River country. I got some myself, trapping, and bought some from the Indians, and there wasn’t one pelt but was a beauty, but the brown bear skin was the best of all. Five hundred dollars I would ’a’ got for them, just that little bale, not a cent less—and when I come to myself again every hide and hair of them was gone!”
“And you can’t tell who took them?” questioned one of his audience.
“I can’t tell but I could guess right enough. I didn’t see nobody, only a billion or two stars when I was hit over the head in the dark, and that was all. There’s only one man around here who will do that kind of dirty work and he hails from Jasper Peak. That’s the kind of fur trading he likes to do, let some other man go through the snow and the cold, spending his good money, risking his life, tramping along his line of traps or from one Indian camp to another, wheedling the red rascals into selling their furs, and just as a fellow’s nearly home again, dreaming about the profit there’s going to be this time, here comes some one sneaking behind in the dark and the whole thing’s gone!”
“You was lucky he did not shoot you, Ole Peterson,” commented another friend. “He does not care much who he shoots, that Jake he doesn’t.”
“I would just like to meet up with him somewhere,” Peterson returned quickly. “A man can’t do nothing when they sneak up on him in the dark, but if I ever have the chance, why, I’ll just show him once. I wouldn’t have sold those furs for less than seven hundred dollars, I swear. And that bear skin, I tell you, was a prize.”
“Wass it so beeg?” asked an old Swede, sitting in the corner near Hugh.
“No, sir, it wasn’t big, but it was rare. Just a bear cub it was, but a cub that had turned out blond by some freak and surprised his old black mother some, I’ll be bound. Not the brown, even, that grizzly bears are, but a light, gold, yellow brown. The Indian who had it vowed he wouldn’t sell it, not for any price, but at last I got it away from him. And I’d like just to meet the fellow that stole it from me. Shooting would be too good, I’d—”
Miss Christina opened her window at this point and put an end to the fearful threats of Ole Peterson. Hugh received his mail almost the first of all, a short and very hasty note from his father, which did not say openly that they were about to embark but contained more than one veiled hint to that effect. He read it through three times, trying to make the most of the censored information it contained. Then, his attention caught by the complete silence that had fallen around him, he looked up to see what had happened.