“In a hurry to be a-goin’?  I’ll allow you’ll see some slim red devils, with feathers in their hair, slipping among the trees along the bank, and mebbe you’ll hear the ping which’s made when whistlin’ lead hits.  Perhaps you’ll want to be back here by termorrer sundown.”

“Not I,” said Joe, with his short, cool laugh.

The old frontiersman slowly finished his task of coiling up a rope of wet cowhide, and then, producing a dirty pipe, he took a live ember from the fire and placed it on the bowl.  He sucked slowly at the pipe-stem, and soon puffed out a great cloud of smoke.  Sitting on a log, he deliberately surveyed the robust shoulders and long, heavy limbs of the young man, with a keen appreciation of their symmetry and strength.  Agility, endurance and courage were more to a borderman than all else; a new-comer on the frontier was always “sized-up” with reference to these “points,” and respected in proportion to the measure in which he possessed them.

Old Jeff Lynn, riverman, hunter, frontiersman, puffed slowly at his pipe while he mused thus to himself:  “Mebbe I’m wrong in takin’ a likin’ to this youngster so sudden.  Mebbe it’s because I’m fond of his sunny-haired lass, an’ ag’in mebbe it’s because I’m gettin’ old an’ likes young folks better’n I onct did.  Anyway, I’m kinder thinkin, if this young feller gits worked out, say fer about twenty pounds less, he’ll lick a whole raft-load of wild-cats.”

Joe walked to and fro on the logs, ascertained how the raft was put together, and took a pull on the long, clumsy steering-oar.  At length he seated himself beside Lynn.  He was eager to ask questions; to know about the rafts, the river, the forest, the Indians—­everything in connection with this wild life; but already he had learned that questioning these frontiersmen is a sure means of closing their lips.

“Ever handle the long rifle?” asked Lynn, after a silence.

“Yes,” answered Joe, simply.

“Ever shoot anythin’?” the frontiersman questioned, when he had taken four or five puffs at his pipe.

“Squirrels.”

“Good practice, shootin’ squirrels,” observed Jeff, after another silence, long enough to allow Joe to talk if he was so inclined.  “Kin ye hit one—­say, a hundred yards?”

“Yes, but not every time in the head,” returned Joe.  There was an apologetic tone in his answer.

Another interval followed in which neither spoke.  Jeff was slowly pursuing his line of thought.  After Joe’s last remark he returned his pipe to his pocket and brought out a tobacco-pouch.  He tore off a large portion of the weed and thrust it into his mouth.  Then he held out the little buckskin sack to Joe.

“Hev’ a chaw,” he said.

To offer tobacco to anyone was absolutely a borderman’s guarantee of friendliness toward that person.

Jeff expectorated half a dozen times, each time coming a little nearer the stone he was aiming at, some five yards distant.  Possibly this was the borderman’s way of oiling up his conversational machinery.  At all events, he commenced to talk.