I sought out the doctor, soon learning from him that McDonough had paid him for his services. But this had not softened his opinion of the young fellow, though he had heard nothing against him, nor even any mention of his name; he repeated his formula that he had known McDonough’s kind all the way from Assiniboine to Lowell Barracks, whereupon I again called him “cynic,” and he retorted with “tenderfoot,” and thus amicably I left him for my postponed gossip with the post-trader. Him I found hospitable, but preoccupied, holding a long cigar unlighted between his taciturn lips. Each topic that I started soon died away: my Eastern news; my summer plans to ramble with Scipio across the Divide on Gros Ventre and Snake; the proposed extension of the Yellowstone Park--everything failed. “That was quite a company you had this afternoon,” I said, reaching the end of my resources. “Yes. Nice gentlemen. Yes.” And he rolled the long, unlighted cigar between his lips. “Cattlemen, I suppose?” “Cattlemen. Yes.” “Business all right, I hope?” “Well, no worse than usual.” Here again we came to an end, and I rose to go. “Seen your friend McDonough yet?” said he, still sitting. “Why, how do you know he’s a friend of mine?” “Says so every time he comes into the Post.” “Well, the doctor’s all wrong about him!” I exclaimed, and gave my views. The post-trader watched me in his tilted chair, with a half-whimsical smile, rolling his eternal cigar, and I finished with the story of the horse. Then the smile left his face. He got up slowly, and slowly took a number of turns round his office, pottered with some papers on his desk, and finally looked at me again. “Tell me if he does,” he said. “Offer the horse? I shall not remind him--and I should take it only as a loan.” “You tell me if he does,” repeated the post-trader, now smiling again, and so we parted. “I wonder what he didn’t say?” I thought as I proceeded to the hotel; for he had plainly pondered some remarks and decided upon silence. Between them, he and the doctor had driven me to a strong hope that McDonough would vindicate my opinion of him by making good his word. At breakfast next morning at the hotel one of the invariable characters at such breakfasts, an unshaven person in tattered overalls, with rope-scarred fists and grimy knuckles, to me unknown, asked:-- “Figure on meeting your friend McDonough?” “Not if he doesn’t figure on meeting me.” They all took quiet turns at looking at me until some one remarked:-- “He ain’t been in town lately.” “I’m glad his leg’s all right,” I said. “Oh, his leg’s all right.” The tone of this caused me to look at them. “Well, I hope he’s _all_ all-right!” Not immediately came the answer: “By latest reports he was enjoying good health.” Truly they were a hopeless people to get anything direct from. Indirectness is by some falsely supposed to be a property of only the highly civilized; but these latter merely put a brighter and harder polish on it.