“How’re we goin’ to get this game all the way to camp?” demanded Giraffe.
“Camp?” echoed Davy Jones, beginning to look alarmed, as he contemplated the enormous bulk of the bull moose, and then imagined the lot of them tugging and straining every nerve to drag it over the intervening ground.
“Now, just you hold on, there, Davy; don’t begin to feel one of them cramp fits of your comin’ on, just because we have to work like pack horses,” Step Hen remarked.
“Ain’t never thinking of such a thing,” said Davy, stiffening up again. “You just think it’s funny, but if ever you got doubled up once, you’d feel for me.”
In times past the Jones boy had been subject to queer fits that took him all of a sudden, and doubled him up with a severe cramp. When he had one of these, he was utterly helpless. They had saved Davy more than a few whippings, in school and at home: and in this respect proved very accommodating cramps. But latterly the boys suspected Davy had really outgrown them; and that he was only threatened with a return of the disease whenever there seemed to be some hard work to be done. Possibly his active outdoor life, and that gymnastic desire on his part to do all manner of athletic stunts had helped get rid of the trouble.
“But after all,” declared Thad, “I don’t think anybody is dreaming of trying to carry, or drag the moose all the way to our camp. How about that, Eli?”
The older guide, upon being appealed to in this fashion, remarked that they would be foolish to think of such a thing.
“We kin cut it up right here in the mornin’,” he observed. “I guess yu boys’d like to try a steak from the ole bull; an’ we’ll tote sum o’ the meat along. An’ as fur the horns, I kin fix them all right. We’ll kerry ’em in one of the canoes, so’s ye kin show yer friends the kind o’ game we has up here in Maine.”
That suited Thad just right. He wanted those towering horns very much, and was only afraid there might be some objection to taking them along, for they must weigh quite heavily.
So after a while the whole party started back to the camp, where a fire was once more kindled, the night being cool, the guides felt the need of warmth, since they would have no cover over them as they slept.