Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/55

Rh ‘All right, you poor simps—think it ain’t smallpox, if you want to. But—me, I’m Connie Morgan, Regimental Number 4524, R. N. W. M. P. I’m paid to be right—an’ I am right! If you want to think this here defunk Injun is a nice ol’ lady that died in her bed of the pip—go to it! But, bein’ as this here is my case, I’ll work it out on the idee that he’s a starvin’ Injun that’s travelled a long distance, an’ has died of smallpox! ’Cause you was right in all your guesses—far as you went.’ Do you get me?”

“Sure, Dan, I see, now,” smiled the boy. “And I’ll not forget it, either. But you said I didn’t go far enough. What else do you see?”

Sergeant Dan looked thoughtful: “I see enough to tell me that you an’ me has stumbled onto some real work. An’ it’ll be work that’ll take us many a mile back from the big river. This here specimen is from beyond the mountains—he’s got deer-skin moccasins an’ a carcajo cap, an’ they ain’t neither deer nor carcajo in the land of the Rats an’ North Yukons. Besides that, he’s packin’ an H. B. blanket, an’ H. B. tea, an’ H. B. powder, so he must trade on the Mackenzie, or to the southward—an’ it’s the Mackenzie, ’cause he