Chapter 12

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We raised the river after three more days of backtracking and laying false trails. This gave Cut and me more time to practice his tongue, but it put horrendous carnal temptation in my way, which I resisted with uncommon strength.

The night we arrived at the nameless river, Cut and I sat beside a fire and practiced our language skills while Splitlip and Wild Red went about their own business. Cut’s argot was beginning to make sense to me now, and I found it less exacting than English. Cut was as hard a taskmaster as I, insisting on the correct pronunciation and not allowing laziness with the language. That would come later, as it always does when one grows comfortable with a tongue.