“And ye say it wouldn’t’ve made any difference?”
“No. Not a bit.”
Hugh gave the leather sack of coin a kick with his moccasined toe. The sack broke open still farther and more dull old coins rolled out and scattered over the fort yard. The watching eyes of the two blue-clad guards over the gate opened white and wide at the sight of the spilling silver.
“I don’t want my own gravedigger’s money,” Hugh said. “I may have been a one-bite cannibal once, but not that! By the bull barley no.”
“Have it your own way, Hugh.”
“Ha!”
Then Hugh turned and he untied the hitching strap and got aboard Old Heyoka and kicked her in the ribs. “Hep-a, let’s make meat, ol’ skate.” The old mule was walking again before she opened a dull purple eye. Her tail switched and her big fluted tube ears flopped in rhythm with her slow stilting legs.
As the mule carried him out through the gate, Hugh called out over his shoulder, “Fitz, the next time you see Jim, tell the boy I’m givin’ him back his life too. He had it on loan to me, but now he can have it and do with it as he wants—turn tramp or turn king.”
And Hugh added to himself in a low mutter, as he cradled Old Bullthrower in an arm, “Turned tame, this child has. Passed through such a passel of things he don’t rightly recollect wrong from right no more.”
We boys.
O them haunt companyeros.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 34
