“In the summer you kin see a tent now an’ then, it bein’ sum party as wants ter enjy the fishin’, which is prime,” Eli replied; “but they ain’t many folks as keer ’bout stickin’ out ther winters hyar. Ye’ll admit they must be sum cold, this far up, nigh the Canady border.”
“But there must be plenty of game hereabouts, I should guess,” Thad went on. “Because, in the first place it has a gamey look to me; and then again, you wouldn’t have agreed to come along with Jim here, unless you’d heard good accounts of the region around the Eagle Lakes.”
“Jest what I has, though I hain’t never be’n all over ’em myself,” returned Eli. “But Jim hyar, he was bawn an’ fetched up in this kentry; so what he doan’t know ’baout hit hain’t wuth knowin’, I guess, sir.”
It was about the middle of the afternoon that Jim declared they had reached the point where their tents should be pitched. Thad noticed that the guide made not the least attempt at trying to hide the camp; indeed, the tents could surely be seen in any direction out on the lake.
This gave him to understand that Jim was not “taking water;” he had come here to this danger ground with the main idea of meeting his irate father-in-law face to face, be the consequences what they might, because his wife had begged him to; and there was as yet no sign of Jim turning out to be what Giraffe called a “quitter.”
Everybody soon found plenty to do. The rest had enough pity for Giraffe not to enter any complaint because he seemed to shirk his share of the ordinary labor attending the starting of the camp. They knew he had his hands full in solving what promised to be one of the greatest puzzles he had ever tackled.
And so he was allowed to go off himself, and work his little saw monotonously right along. Now it was the cord that failed to hold; again something else went back on poor Giraffe. But he kept patiently at it, grimly determined; and even the most interested of the lot, Bumpus, with whom the fire builder had laid his little wager, could not but feel a touch of admiration and sympathy when he saw how the tall scout kept at his task as the afternoon slipped away.
When supper was announced Giraffe came in smiling.
“Got it?” demanded Bumpus, eagerly.
“Well, just as good as done,” was the cautious reply. “I’ve mastered a heap of little irritating troubles; and just now the coast seems to be clear. Next time, now, and you’ll see something doing.”