get down to business now, if you please, and make the romance
a fact, beautiful enough to send to the 'Times' or the New York
'Call'. Let's see, how would they put it in the Call?--'Extraordinary
Discovery--Herd of buffaloes found in the far North by an Englishman and
his Franco-Irish Party--Sport for the gods--Exodus of 'brules' to White
Valley!'--and so on, screeching to the end."

Shon laughed heartily. "The fun of the world is in the thing," he said;
"and a day it would be for a notch on a stick and a rasp of gin in the
throat. And if I get the sight of me eye on a buffalo-ruck, it's down on
me knees I'll go, and not for prayin' aither. Here's both hands up for a
start in the mornin'!"

Long before noon next day they were well on their way. Trafford could
not understand why Pierre was so reserved, and, when speaking, so
ironical. It was noticeable that the half-breed watched the Indian
closely, that he always rode behind him, that he never drank out of
the same cup. The leader set this down to the natural uncertainty of
Pierre's disposition. He had grown to like Pierre, as the latter had
come in course to respect him. Each was a man of value after his kind.
Each also had recognised in the other qualities of force and knowledge
having their generation in experiences which had become individuality,
subterranean and acute, under a cold surface. It was the mutual
recognition of these equivalents that led the two men to mutual trust,
only occasionally disturbed, as has been shown; though one was regarded
as the most fastidious man of his set in London, the fairest-minded
of friends, the most comfortable of companions; while the other was
an outlaw, a half-heathen, a lover of but one thing in this world, the
joyous god of Chance. Pierre was essentially a gamester. He would have
extracted satisfaction out of a death-sentence which was contingent on
the trumping of an ace. His only honour was the honour of the game.

Now, with all the swelling prairie sloping to the clear horizon, and the
breath of a large life in their nostrils, these two men were caught up
suddenly, as it were, by the throbbing soul of the North, so that the
subterranean life in them awoke and startled them. Trafford conceived
that tobacco was the charm with which to exorcise the spirits of the
past. Pierre let the game of sensations go on, knowing that they pay
themselves out in time. His scheme was the wiser. The other found that
fast riding and smok