“Because we were told that there wasn’t such a thing within fifty miles of this same place, except the little settlement where we got our pack mules,” the tall scout went on to say, convincingly.
“But that was a fence, all right,” Step Hen avowed. “I heard Allan say so; and I guess I know a fence when I see one.”
“Oh! well, don’t talk of a fence now, Step Hen. I think if you ask Thad, he’ll tell you some feller must a tried to hold out up here, and gave it up from sheer loneliness. Either that, or else the Injuns got him.”
“Injuns!” repeated Step Hen, apparently startled.
“Sure,” Giraffe went on, for he was a great tease.
“How about that, Thad?” and the other scout turned to the patrol leader; because it had long ago become second nature with the members of the Silver Fox Patrol to put all arguments up to him for settlement; and it was really remarkable how satisfied both sides usually seemed with his decisions, since they had absolute faith in Thad as a just judge.
“Well, I rather expect Giraffe is yarning a little when he says the man may have been wiped out by the Indians,” the scoutmaster replied, laughingly. “Fact is, the chances would be, some trappers come up here each season, and likely spent the whole winter reaping a harvest, returning in the Spring with their take. If we had time to look around, which we haven’t, I reckon we’d stumble on a concealed cabin somewhere in the thickest of the timber.”
“Wow! must be cold, all right, in winter. Talk about your zero, I guess the bottom drops out of the thermometer up here,” Giraffe ventured to say.
“No doubt it is cold, because we’re not a great distance from the border line of the British Northwest provinces. But then, these fur takers expect that. The further north you go the better the fur,” Thad remarked.
“That’s a well-known fact,” added Allan. “One trapper told me that the skin of a muskrat or a raccoon, taken away up in Canada, was worth three of the same captured down in Florida.”