"Look!"
A bear was at his bath.
"Look!"
A blue heron was fishing in the shallows.
And a saucy kingfisher helped himself to a bite of the red haws stuck in Doby's cap, so much a part of the primeval vastness had they already become.
Once, as they stopped for dinner on the shore, the odor of frying bacon was so delicious to some of the forest creatures that they had a glimpse of a mother wolf bringing her whole whelp family to take a peep at those men creatures who sometimes left such savory scraps behind, and who were, upon a pinch, not such bad eating themselves.
"They like bacon cooked, but they would take me raw," and Doby was glad that he had a rifle of his very own.
In the silence of their forest night camp, whilst the two voyageurs slept with their feet to the fire and the harvest moon looked down upon them through the Indian-summer haze, Francis Vigo explained to the boy the nature of his errand.
"I am getting old," he said. "Time is too precious to waste in making money for myself. I must teach the Northwest the value of an honest currency, else all business will be ruined and our country fall into poverty."