“I believe you hunters generally make a litter to carry your game home on, don’t you?” continued Oscar. “We do sometimes, when thar’s two fellers to tote it,” replied Big Thompson.
“Well, there are two of us here; but I never could carry one end of a litter with all those animals piled on it. The distance is too great and the load would be too heavy.”
“Yes, I reckon seven or eight hundred pounds would be a pretty good lift for a chap of your inches, an’ yer a mighty well put up sort of a boy, too. We’ll have to snake ’em thar.”
“That would never do,” returned Oscar, quickly. “It would spoil the skins to haul the game so far over the snow.”
233“They shan’t tech the snow at all. I’ll tell ye what I mean.”
Big Thompson gave the boy his rifle to hold, and, with the hatchet he always carried in his belt, cut down a small pine tree, which was to be used as a drag.
With the aid of this drag they succeeded, after infinite trouble, and two hours’ hard work, in transferring all the game from the plateau to the mouth of the gorge.
One of the big-horns was then placed on the drag and the guide started with it for the cabin, leaving Oscar to protect the rest from any hungry beast which might chance to pass that way.
The guide was obliged to make four trips between the gorge and the camp, and, as it was no easy work to haul the drag and its heavy burdens through the snow, two hours more were consumed, so that it was near the middle of the afternoon before Oscar saw his specimens safely housed.
After full justice had been done to the cutlets, which, under Big Thompson’s supervision, were cooked to perfection, Oscar set to work 234upon one of the sheep, while the guide sat by, smoking his pipe and watching all his movements with the keenest interest.
At midnight Oscar was tired enough to go to bed. He slept soundly until eight o’clock the next morning; and then awoke, to find that the fire had nearly gone out, that the breakfast that had been prepared for him was cold, and that the guide was missing.
“He’s gone out to set some of his traps,” said Oscar to himself, as he drew on his boots and went out to get an armful of wood from the pile in front of the cabin. “He told me last night that that was what he was going to do to-day. Well, I have three or four hours more of hard work before me; and, when it is done, I’ll take a stroll down the valley and see what I can find to shoot at.”
In a very few minutes the fire was burning brightly; and, after he had washed his hands and face, and brushed his hair in front of a small mirror that hung on the wall (he never neglected such little things as these simply because he was a hunter, and a hundred miles away from everybody except his guide), Oscar 235placed the coffee-pot and frying-pan on the coals, and laid the table for his breakfast.
He had brought with him a good many things in the way of supplies that Big Thompson had never seen in a hunter’s camp before, such as condensed milk, pressed tea, sugar, self-leavening flour, canned fruits, pickles, onions, beans, and desiccated potatoes.
It was just as easy, he thought, to live well, even in that remote region, as it was to keep himself neat in appearance; and he intended to do both.
Having eaten a hearty breakfast and set things in order in the cabin, Oscar resumed work upon his specimens; and, by twelve o’clock, the skins of the sheep, as well as those of the wolves, were packed snugly away in one corner, surmounted by the horns he intended to present to his friend, Sam Hynes.
This done, he buckled on his cartridge-belt, thrust a hatchet into it, and, taking his rifle down from its place over the door, set out for a hunt by himself.
Before deciding on his course, he stopped to see which way the wind was blowing. On 236glancing at the boughs of the evergreens behind the cabin, he observed that they hung motionless; there did not seem to be a breath of air stirring; but the boy, knowing that there is always more or less motion in the atmosphere, took a hunter’s way of finding out which direction the breeze came from.
This he did by moistening his finger in his mouth and holding it above his head. The back of his finger was toward the upper end of the valley; and, as it grew cold almost instantly, Oscar knew that what little wind there was, came from the mountains. He knew, too, that experienced hunters, while seeking for game, always travel against the wind; so, without further hesitation, he shouldered his rifle and started up the valley.
“The elk we saw on the day we arrived here went in this direction,” thought he, as he trudged along, keeping just in the edge of the timbers for concealment; “and who knows but I may be lucky enough to find them again? If I could get a fair shot at the old buck that carries those splendid antlers, I should have a prize indeed!”
237Oscar worked his way cautiously through the woods, stopping now and then behind a convenient tree to take a survey of the valley before him, but not a living thing could he see.
All the game-animals seemed to have taken themselves off to a safer neighborhood; but that some of them had recently been about there was made apparent to Oscar before he had gone two miles from the cabin.
All of a sudden, while his thoughts were wandering far away from the valley, across the snow-covered prairie to the little village of Eaton and the friends he had left there, he came upon the place where a couple of deer had passed the preceding night.
He knew there were two of them, a large and a small one, for he could see the prints made by their bodies in t............