Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/236

 was covered with blood. Lander stirred up the fire, threw on some dry stalks and washed the blood away and found the marks of teeth. Thrusting a ramrod into the fire, he heated it and cauterized the wounds, and encouraged him.

"It's nothing. Skin barely broken. You'll be all right. Probably some kind of a rat."

Phinny knew better, but held his tongue. As the day broke he secretly studied the mountain man as if expecting to behold immediate symptoms of hydrophobia. Under Lander's cheerful encouragement Porker recovered his composure and affected to have no fears. Yet when he filled his pipe his big hands trembled, and more than once he sought to study his lacerated face in pools of water.

Their course lay up the Green, and they found the traveling easy with a broad trail left by Deschamps and his mules. The finding of several broken arrow-shafts told them it was a thoroughfare for the Indians. Porker examined the shafts and said they had weathered for at least one season.

Throughout the day Porker was normal in his bearing, but toward sundown he became silent, which was not characteristic of him. Once a