“What d’ye take me for, Giraffe?” he would exclaim, as he caught up with the waiting leader, and wiped the perspiration from his brow, despite the fact that the day was pretty cold. “You know I ain’t built on the same lines as you; and in a case of this kind, the one that c’n go faster just has to accommodate himself to the pace of the slow one. You’re the hare, and I’m like the poor old tortoise; but please remember that the turtle came in winner after all in the race. Not always to the swift, you know, does the race go. I may beat you out in the long run, with the endurance test. If I’ve got anything at all, it’s grit.”
“Yes, you will,” sneered Giraffe; but after the third stop he did moderate his speed considerably; perhaps he was beginning to get a little tired himself, and did not feel unwilling to draw in a peg or two.
At noon they ate a cold lunch, for they had come upon certain tracks that told Giraffe there had been an animal of some kind there–he wished he knew how to tell what species it belonged to, and just how long ago the tracks had been made.
“And mark me, Bumpus,” he said impressively, “I’m going to learn all those kind of things right away, as soon as I can take my mind off this pesky fire puzzle. I c’n see how handy it is to be able to read signs when you’re off huntin’. Why, when we start to follerin’ these here tracks, after we’ve eaten our grub, how on earth do we know whether they were made a week ago; or if some cow broke loose from a backwoods home up here, and wandered this way. A nice pair of chumps we’d be, wouldn’t we, if we went and shot up a pet cow, and had to pay damages? I reckon the boys’d never got over the joke.”
“That’s just what I was thinking myself, Giraffe,” agreed the other, as he sat down beside the tall scout on a fallen tree, and took out the lunch from his haversack, for he had carried it all morning, and Giraffe had let him, too; “if we’re going in for this scouting business, we ought to swallow the whole business. Now, as for learning things connected with the woods, where could you find any fellers better qualified to put us straight than we’ve got in Thad and Allan? What one don’t know, the other sure does. I’m bound to learn the game. Owning this dandy gun has given me a new idea. I used to say ‘oh! what’s the use of bothering, when you’ve got somebody else to do your thinking for you?’ But now I begin to see that you can’t always depend on others. Right here is a case in point.”
As their minds ran about in the same channel the two boys managed to get along splendidly. Their little differences of the past were, for the time being at least, quite forgotten; and they seemed drawn toward each other as two comrades should be.
But both began to complain because thus far neither of them had had occasion to make use of their gun. If this was a game country, why was it two such industrious hunters did not get a crack at something, whether a deer, a moose, or even a fox–anything would have been welcome as a change from the monotony.
Perhaps Giraffe would have been surprised if told that he and the puffing Bumpus made quite too much noise to prevent any wary and timid deer from staying within a quarter of a mile of them. And also that often they were doing their hunting “down the wind,” so that their scent at such times was carried to the nostrils of the suspicious game long before the hunters came in sight.
Finally they came across some partridges, and Bumpus managed to bag a couple with two shots from his new gun. He was greatly elated by the success attending his efforts, even though Giraffe did mention something about the birds insisting on remaining on the branch of that tree so long that they must either have been frozen there, or else wanted to commit suicide.
“Well, they came to the right place, then,” said Bumpus, sturdily, as he crammed new shells in his gun; “I’m the feller to help every partridge and deer pass over the divide, that feels like going. Bring on your game; now we’re going some!”