“Come over here, Horse Face!” cried MacShane, when the empty glasses had been returned to the bar, “I figured you’d be here. One drink calls for another, an’ while you’re all bunched up handy, you’ll drink with me.” He nodded to McCarty. “Have the boys fill ’em up again,” he ordered, “an’ we’ll drink to the luck of the camp! I want Horse Face right here beside me so I can see that he gets a good sizeable noggin’, ’cause he’s sure got to make that old music box talk this night.” He paused and looked around: “All set?” he asked, “Here goes, then: ‘To the luck of the camp!’” And once more a mighty surge of sound filled the room: “To the luck of the camp!” Someone else wanted to buy, but MacShane laughingly shook his head: “Not too fast!” he cried, “We all have got a day or two yet, or a week for this here jollification, an’ we don’t want to get drunk to start off with, ’cause if we do we’ll have to either stay drunk or feel sick, an’ I don’t aim to do neither one. An’ besides, Christmas ain’t till tomorrow, anyhow.” A few ordered drinks, but for the most part the crowd, with the words of approbation on its lips, went back to its cards, and its dancing. MacShane joined the little group of sourdoughs, who still stood at the forward end of the bar: “How’s everything?” he asked, “How you all makin’ it?” The answers were unanimously optimistic, and Camillo Bill laughed: “But you ought to be’n here a while back an’ heard Old Man Gordon speak his piece.” The old Scotchman interrupted, stepping forward: “Ye’re Burr MacShane, I take it? I’ve crossed ye’re trail, but I never had the luck to meet up with ye.” MacShane laughed: “I’m Burr MacShane,” he answered, “an’ where was it you crossed my trail?” “It was two or three years back, an’ the trail was three or four years old, then--but still fresh.” Moosehide Charlie grinned: “That’s the way with Old Man Gordon,” he explained, “He mostly talks in riddles--when he ain’t prophysin’ some fool thing or other.” “’Tis no riddle at all, but clear as the spoken word to any man blessed wi’ better than a louse-sized brain. Ye’ll recollect an’ old Injun named Amos, that lives way up on the head of the Porcupine, where a little swift river piles down out of the Nahoni Mountains?” MacShane nodded: “Yes, I believe I do.” “Well, there’s where I crossed ye’re trail.” He turned to the others. “Amos broke through thin ice. A minute more an’ he’d of be’n caught by the suck of a rapids when MacShane went in after him. He went in all over, an’ it was thirty below, an’ no camp made!” Exclamations broke from the lips of the men of the North as their eyes sought MacShane’s face. MacShane laughed: “You don’t want to believe everything an Injun tells you. Mostly, they’re lyin’.” “This one wasn’t,” answered Gordon, with conviction. “An’ that’s what I meant by sayin’ yer trail is fresh yet on the Porcupine. An’ Injun never forgets.”