He got out his
pans and buffalo meat, and was dropping pieces of hardtack into the
spitting tallow when Susan addressed him in his own tongue, the patois
of the province of Quebec. He gave a joyous child's laugh and a
rattling fire of French followed, and then he must pick out for her the
daintiest morsel and gallantly present it on a tin plate, wiped clean
on the grass.
They ate first and then smoked and over the pipes engaged in the
bartering which was part of the plainsman's business. The strangers
were short of tobacco and the doctor's party wanted buffalo skins.
Fresh meat and bacon changed hands. David threw in a measure of corn
meal and the old man--they called him Joe--bid for it with a hind
quarter of antelope. Then, business over, they talked of themselves,
their work, the season's catch, and the life far away across the
mountains where the beaver streams are.
They had come from the distant Northwest, threaded with ice-cold rivers
and where lakes, sunk between rocky bulwarks, mirrored the whitened
peaks. There the three Tetons raised their giant heads and the hollows
were spread with a grassy carpet that ran up the slopes like a
stretched green cloth.
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