He studied the ground. "There's nothing impossible on this earth.
Facts are hard dogs to down.--Jean," he called, "gather up the pelts!
It takes a man to trade well, but any fool can make fools drink!
Godefroy--give the knaves the rum--but mind yourselves," he warned,
"three parts rain-water!" Then facing me, "Take me to that bank!"
He followed without comment.
At the place of the camp-fire were marks of the struggle.
"The same boot-prints as on the sand! A small man," observed Radisson.
But when we came to the sloping bank, where the land fell sheer away to
a dry, pebbly reach, M. Radisson pulled a puzzled brow.
"They must have taken shelter from the rain. They must have been under
your feet."
"But where are their foot-marks?" I asked.
"Washed out by the rain," said he; but that was one of the untruths
with which a man who is ever telling untruths sometimes deceives
himself; for if the bank sheltered the intruders from the rain, it also
sheltered their foot-marks, and there was not a trace.
"All the same," said M. de Radisson, "we shall make these Indians our
friends by taking them back to the fort with us."
"Ramsay," he remarked on the way, "there's a game to play."
"So it seems."
"Hold yourself in," said he sententiously.
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