“Reindarnation!” was Bill’s near echo. “I might believe in it if I knew what it is, but not knowin’ I cannot say.”
Then Jack explained how some folks, including about four hundred million in India, believed that the souls of animals, when they died, passed on into the bodies of people. This was all easy enough for Jack to tell about but when Bill wanted to know what Jack meant by soul his partner had no small time telling him about it in a way that he could understand.
“It sounds reasonable,” declared Bill, “and I would believe in this reindarnation thing only these dogs are so much decenter than most people.”
“‘I’VE CONCLOODED THEY’VE GOT HUMAN BRAINS JUST THE SAME AS YOU AND ME.’”
And so they worked and talked and talked and worked and another month slipped by before they got their log cabin done. The way Bill could swing an ax made Jack envious and while building the cabin was the hardest of hard work, both of these youngsters got a lot of pleasure seeing it go up log by log. And when it was all done they were as proud of it as any millionaire who ever built a mansion on Fifth Avenue.
And furniture! They made mission furniture, table, chairs and all the accessories of home, the like of which no missionary in the heart of lightest Africa ever set eyes upon. And comfortable! With a rousing fire, ham and Alaska strawberries, coffee and biscuits that Jack made so well (I didn’t say so light) they were as comfortable as a husky after a double ration of dried fish, fast asleep under the snow.
“I’m thinkin’ we’ve got to get out and kill some fresh meat,” suggested Bill after a meal in which the spirit of Sing Nook was present, i.e., when the strawberries came on as usual.
“I thought you declared that Alaska strawberries were every whit as good as the spaghetti we used to get at The Black Cat back in New York, when we thought we were a couple of highflyers,” Jack laughed.
“Oh, for a dish of spaghetti,” sighed Bill, and then he came back with this statement: “Ilasker strawberries are all right but after you’ve et them for thirty or forty meals you get a lee-tle tired of them and pine for a young oyster, in a bowl of cracker soup, or a couple of fried eggs—one fried on one side and one on the other—or even a steak from a hoof of a panhandle longhorn.”