When one piece was considered done, it was quickly eaten by a hungry hunter, and its place taken with a fresh supply.
So the good work went on. Both boys were ravenously hungry, and only small bits could be cooked this way at a time, so that it was pretty much a whole hour before they had fully satisfied their clamorous appetites. And although the meal had been eaten under the strangest conditions of any which he could remember, Step Hen was ready to declare he had enjoyed it immensely.
“But they’re gettin’ madder and madder all the while, just because we didn’t send ’em an invite to our little feast!” declared Step Hen. “Just listen to the critters yawp, would you, Thad? They’re buttin’ in closer and closer, a foot at a time. And honest now, I reckon there must be all the way from half a dozen to ten thousand of ’em around us.”
“That’s a pretty good and safe range,” laughed the patrol leader; “and I guess you’ve covered the ground, all right. There are surely half a dozen of ’em, and how many more I wouldn’t like to say, because I don’t know just how much noise one old wolf can kick up. But don’t they sing sweetly, though? Shall we be generous, and throw them out the balance of the venison, to show them how we like their song?”
“Well, I should say, not any,” returned Step Hen, after giving his companion a quick glance, as if to see whether he really meant it, or was only joking. “We had too much hard work getting our supply to throw it to the dogs. Let the lazy curs run along, and find some for themselves. Besides, it’s too good to think of wasting it. I want the rest of the fellers to taste our venison. Mine went glimmering, and I hope it half choked that villainous crowd. Anyway you vowed it was a whole lot tougher than this haunch; and there’s that comfort.”
But it was evident that if the hungry animals around heard this decision they refused to pay any attention to it; for instead of decreasing, the howls actually became louder and more insistent, until finally Thad picked up his gun.
“I begin to see that we’re going to have a little target practice after all, Step Hen,” he remarked, quietly. “When things get so bad that you can see the skulking beasts creeping about your camp, and even catch the glitter of their yellow eyes, it’s nearly time to begin to bowl a few of them over, so as to inform the rest that we’ve got a dead line marked around here.”
“You don’t say?” answered Step Hen, in an awed tone; “show me one, Thad, please. I’d just like to say I’d seen a wolf, really and truly, for once in my life, outside of a menagerie or a circus.”
“All right, then,” replied the other; “just follow the line of my finger, and I give you my word that skulking thing in the shadows is a real genuine, Canada wolf. I’m going to prove it to you in a minute or two, by taking a crack at him.”
“Oh! now there’s two of ’em, Thad, crossing each other’s trail. And see there, if that ain’t a third, and even a fourth. Why, I believe the woods are full of ’em!”