“We was friends, wasn’t we, Bill?” he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity.  He himself began to chant.  The two were savages again.

“Well, we got to part, Bill.  This is Jim Bridger’s last Rendyvous.  I’ve rid around an’ said good-by to the mountings.  Why don’t we do it the way the big partisans allus done when the Rendyvous was over?  ’Twas old Mike Fink an’ his friend Carpenter begun hit, fifty year ago.  Keel-boat men on the river, they was.  There’s as good shots left to-day as then, an’ as good friends.  You an’ me has seed hit; we seed hit at the very last meetin’ o’ the Rocky Mountain Company men, before the families come.  An ’nary a man spilled the whiskey on his partner’s head.”

“That’s the truth,” assented Jackson.  “Though some I wouldn’t trust now.”

“Would ye trust me, Bill, like I do you, fer sake o’ the old times, when friends was friends?”

“Shore I would, no matter how come, Jim.  My hand’s stiddy as a rock, even though my shootin’ shoulder’s a leetle stiff from that Crow arrer.”

Each man held out his firing arm, steady as a bar.

“I kin still see the nail heads on the door, yan.  Kin ye, Bill?”

“Plain!  It’s a waste o’ likker, Jim, fer we’d both drill the cups.”

“Are ye a-skeered?”

“I told ye not.”

“Chardon!” roared Bridger to his clerk.  “You, Chardon, come here!”

The clerk obeyed, though he and others had been discreet about remaining visible as this bout of old-timers at their cups went on.  Liquor and gunpowder usually went together.

“Chardon, git ye two fresh tin cups an’ bring ’em here.  Bring a piece o’ charcoal to spot the cups.  We’re goin’ to shoot ’em off each other’s heads in the old way.  You know what I mean”

Chardon, trembling, brought the two tin cups, and Bridger with a burnt ember sought to mark plainly on each a black bull’s-eye.  Silence fell on the few observers, for all the emigrants had now gone and the open space before the rude trading building was vacant, although a few faces peered around corners.  At the door of the tallest tepee two native women sat, a young and an old, their blankets drawn across their eyes, accepting fate, and not daring to make a protest.

“How!” exclaimed Bridger as he filled both cups and put them on the ground.  “Have ye wiped yer bar’l?”

“Shore I have.  Let’s wipe agin.”

Each drew his ramrod from the pipes and attached the cleaning worm with its twist of tow, kept handy in belt pouch in muzzle-loading days.

“Clean as a whistle!” said Jackson, holding out the end of the rod.

“So’s mine, pardner.  Old Jim Bridger never disgraced hisself with a rifle.”

“Ner me,” commented Jackson.  “Hold a hair full, Jim, an’ cut nigh the top o’ the tin.  That’ll be safer fer my skelp, an’ hit’ll let less whisky out’n the hole.  We got to drink what’s left.  S’pose’n we have a snort now?”