dded his head and looked sagacious, as he said--

"D'ye know, lad, I don't mind if I go along with ye. It's true, I'm not
tired of them parts hereabouts--and if I wos to live till I couldn't
see, I don't think as ever I'd git tired o' the spot where my father
larned me to shoot an' my mother dandled me on her knee; but I've got a
fancy to see a little more o' the wurld--'specially the far-off parts o'
the Rocky Mountains, w'ere I've never bin yit; so I do b'lieve if ye wos
to try an' persuade me very hard I'd consent to go along with ye."

"Will you, though?" cried March eagerly (again, to his cost, forgetting
the rusty hinges).

"Ay, that will I, boy," replied the hunter; "an' now I think on it,
there's four as jolly trappers in Pine Point settlement at this here
moment as ever floored a grisly or fought an Injun. They're the real
sort of metal. None o' yer tearin', swearin', murderin' chaps, as
thinks the more they curse the bolder they are, an' the more Injuns they
kill the cliverer they are; but steady quiet fellers, as don't speak
much, but _does_ a powerful quantity; boys that know a deer from a
Blackfoot Injun, I guess; that goes to the mountains to trap and comes
back to sell their skins, an' w'en they've sold 'em, goes right off
agin, an' niver drinks."

"I know who you mean, I think; at least I know one of them," observed
March.

"No ye don't, do ye? Who?"

"Waller, the Yankee."

"That's one," said Bounce, nodding; "Big Waller, we calls him."

"I'm not sure that I can guess the others. Surely Tim Slater isn't
one?"

"No!" said Bounce, with an emphasis of tone and a peculiar twist of the
point of his nose that went far to stamp the individual named with a
character the reverse of noble. "Try agin."

"I can't guess."

"One's a French Canadian," said Bounce; "a little chap, with a red nose
an' a pair o' coal-black eyes, but as bold as a lion."

"I know him," interrupted March; "Gibault Noir--Black Gibault, as they
sometimes call him. Am I right?"

"Right, lad; that's two. Then there's Hawkswing, the Injun whose wife
and family were all murdered by a man of his own tribe, and who left his
people after that an' tuck to trappin' with the whites; that's three.
An' there's Redhand, the old trapper that's bin off and on between this
place and the Rocky Mountains for nigh fifty years, I believe."

"Oh, I know him well. He must be made of iron, I think, to go through
what he does at his time of