Free The Lawless West by Louis L’Amour Page B

with the preparation of the food.

Chapter 3
    A month had passed. The mountains were covered with a thick white crust that would bear the weight of a man. And behold a new Jack Trainor, whistling down the mountain trail! He was clad in a clumsy fur garment that obviously had been made for a bigger man than he. His appearance was that of a monster in a sagging skin. But he walked freely and easily on the far side of the trail, he entered the cabin, and he exhibited the duster of pelts that he had carried in.
    Big Joseph Bigot sat cross-legged on the floor, working over the last broken trap that he had stayed at home to repair that day. His practiced eye looked swiftly over the catch of the day, and he shook his head.
    “No more days like yesterday…but then, my friend, that is enough luck for one season, eh?”
    “Sure,” said Jack, smiling, “luck enough, I guess. And here’s another that I forgot to throw in with the rest.”
    And, so saying, he threw down a dark and shiningpelt, a fox skin, the fur of which was like blowing feathers, so soft and light was it. It brought a shout from Bigot. He plunged to his feet and seized the skin. He sprang to the door with it. He let the gray light fall upon it. Then he whirled and executed about the cabin a clumsy bear dance that threatened to wreck the place.
    “Ah,” he cried when he could speak, “ah, Jack, it is true, what I told you yesterday when we brought in the catch! You have beginner’s luck! If we keep on, we shall be rich. You hear? Rich!”
    Jack Trainor regarded his companion with a great deal of curiosity and even a trace of scorn. According to his own code, it was far better to conceal all traces of emotion. As for the bit of soft fur that he had taken from the trap, and that he now had shown, he had known that it was a particularly fine one to look at and to touch. But why it should bring such rejoicing from the trapper he could not imagine.
    “I dunno,” he said slowly, “but it looks to me like a pretty far cry from this here fur to being rich.”
    “Does it?” said Joseph Bigot. “Man alive, d’you know what that fur is?”
    “What?”
    “It’s blue fox! It’s the finest fur that a man can get. It’s what every trapper dreams about. If I told you that a thousand dollars would be…”
    “A thousand dollars,” gasped Jack, amazed.
    “I dunno what the market will be,” said Joseph Bigot, “but I know this one thing…that I’m going to write to the girl today and tell her that in the spring we can get married.” He cast up both of his long arms and shook his fists at the ceiling. “The time’s come!” he said. “I’ve waited twelve years, and now the time’s come!”
    Jack Trainor forgot about the fox skin and the price it might bring. Instead, he could think of nothing but the last statement of the big Canadian.
    “D’you mean to say that you’ve been engaged to the same girl for twelve years?” he breathed.
    Bigot laughed. “Twelve years I have waited,” he answered enigmatically. “First I wait for one, and then I wait for the other…twelve years altogether.”
    And he would say no more about it until they had cooked and eaten their supper and cleaned up the tins. After that, they sat around for the long, bleak evening. Outside, the freezing sap in the trees was bursting with loud reports from time to time, for the thermometer had dropped fully thirty degrees since midday. At midday it had been cold enough, a wind at ten below zero coursing over the summit and shrieking through the trees. That wind had the edges of icy knives to go through and through even the thickest furs, and the only way to keep from being frozen was to stir about. Now, at night, there was not a stir of the air. The big pale moon moved up a cloudless sky. The mountains, under its light, were either black with forest and shadow or glistening in strange blue-white. And the cold was so terrible that it needed no wind to drive it home.
    In the sides of the