Page:London - Son of the Wolf, 1900.djvu/71

Rh Lon nodded.

"But you 'd better git a more likely calibre. Mine 'll rip holes through you the size of walnuts."

"Niver fear; it 's me own slugs smell their way with soft noses, an' they 'll spread like flapjacks against the coming out beyand. An' when 'll I have the pleasure of waitin' on ye? The water-hole 's a strikin' locality."

"'T ain't bad. Jest be there in an hour, and you won't set long on my coming."

Both men mittened and left the Post, their ears closed to the remonstrances of their comrades. It was such a little thing; yet with such men, little things, nourished by quick tempers and stubborn natures, soon blossomed into big things. Besides, the art of burning to bed-rock still lay in the womb of the future, and the men of Forty-Mile, shut in by the long Arctic winter, grew high-stomached with over-eating and enforced idleness, and became as irritable as do the bees in the fall of the year when the hives are overstocked with honey.

There was no law in the land. The Mounted Police was also a thing of the future. Each man measured an offense and