few spoken gutturals in their own language that brought the white flash
of acknowledgment from eyes and teeth. "They're glad to meet you, Smoke.
Set down an' dry your moccasins, an' I'll cook up some grub. I'm gettin'
the hang of the lingo pretty well, ain't I? You'll have to come to it,
for it looks as if we'll be with these folks a long time. They's another
white man here. Got caught six years ago. He's a Irishman they picked up
over Great Slave Lake way. Danny McCan is what he goes by. He's settled
down with a squaw. Got two kids already, but he'll skin out if ever the
chance opens up. See that low fire over there to the right? That's his
camp."

Apparently this was Smoke's appointed domicile, for his captors left him
and his dogs, and went on deeper into the big camp. While he attended to
his foot-gear and devoured strips of hot meat, Shorty cooked and talked.

"This is a sure peach of a pickle, Smoke--you listen to me. An' we got
to go some to get out. These is the real, blowed-in-the-glass, wild
Indians. They ain't white, but their chief is. He talks like a mouthful
of hot mush, an' if he ain't full-blood Scotch they ain't no such thing
as Scotch in the world. He's the hi-yu, skookum top-chief of the whole
caboodle. What he says goes. You want to get that from the start-off.
Danny McCan's been tryin' to get away from him for six years. Danny's
all right, but he ain't got go in him. He knows a way out--learned it on
huntin' trips--to the west of the way you an' me came. He ain't had the
nerve to tackle it by his lonely. But we can pull it off, the three of
us. Whiskers is the real goods, but he's mostly loco just the same."

"Who's Whiskers?" Smoke queried, pausing in the wolfing-down of a hot
strip of meat.

"Why, he's the top geezer. He's the Scotcher. He's gettin' old, an' he's
sure asleep now, but he'll see you to-morrow an' show you clear as print
what a measly shrimp you are on his stompin'-grounds. These grounds
belong to him. You got to get that into your noodle. They ain't never
been explored, nor nothin', an' they're hisn. An' he won't let you
forget it. He's got about twenty thousand square miles of huntin'
country here all his own. He's the white Indian, him an' the skirt. Huh!
Don't look at me that way. Wait till you see her. Some looker, an' all
white, like her dad--he's Whiskers. An' say, caribou! I've saw 'em.
A hundred thousan' of good running meat in the herd, an' ten thousan'
wolves an' cats