the squirt of a rattlesnake's tooth; you can't flood a memory with cognac.
I've tried it. For God's sake don't drink any more. What's the use? Smile
in the seesaw of the knives. You can only be killed once, and, believe me,
there's twice the fun in taking bad luck naked, as it were. Do you
remember the time you and I and Ned Bassett, the H.B. company's man,
struck the camp of bloods on the Gray Goose river? How the squaw lied and
said he was the trader that dropped their messenger in a hot spring, and
they began to peel Ned before our eyes? How he said as they drew the first
chip from his shoulder, 'Tell the company, boys, that it's according to
the motto on their flag, Pro Pelle Cutem--Skin For Skin?' How the woman
backed down, and he got off with a strip of his pelt gone? How the
medicine man took little bits of us and the red niggers, too, and put them
on the raw place and fixed him up again? Well, that's the way to do it,
and if you come up smiling every time you get your pound of flesh one way
or another. Play the game with a clear head and a little insolence,
Gladney, and you won't find the world so bad at its worst.

"So much for so much. Now for the commission you gave me. I'd rather it
had been anything else, for I think I'm the last man in the world for duty
where women are concerned. That reads queer, but you know what I mean. I
mean that women puzzle me, and I'm apt to take them too literally. If I
found your wife, and she wasn't as straightforward as you are, Jack
Gladney, I'd as like as not get things in a tangle. You know I thought it
would be better to let things sleep--resurrections are uncomfortable
things mostly. However, here I am to do what's possible. What have I done?
Nothing. I haven't found her yet. You didn't want me to advertise, and I
haven't. She hasn't been acting for a long time, and no one seems to know
exactly where she is. She was traveling abroad with some people called
Branscombes, and I'm going to send a letter through their agent. We shall
see.