“I say! What’s up?” questioned Tom, who was lying lazily on his back on a blanket-covered couch, staring at the flicker of the flames on the ceiling. “Getting ready for an expedition, Bert?”
“Well, I sort of feel it in my bones that I’ll get a bear to-morrow, or a deer anyhow, and I’m taking no chances,” was the answer.
“Going to get the game with your gun or your camera?” asked Jack.
“Both,” was the quick answer. “I’ll snapshot him first and pot him afterward.”
“If he lets you,” laughed George. “But I’d like to see any healthy bear stand for having Bert poke a camera in his face, and then shoot a slug of lead into him.”
“You watch my smoke—that’s all,” said Bert significantly, as he went on cleaning his gun.
“What’s the program for to-morrow?” asked Jack, who, like Tom, was doing nothing, and taking considerable pains at it.
“Well, I thought we’d go off on an all-day hunt again,” was the young host’s answer, for Tom was really in that position, it being on his invitation, through his father, that the boys had come to the hunting camp.
“That idea suits me,” responded Jack. “But take along more grub than we did last time. I was hungry before we got back.”
“Why don’t we shoot what we want to eat?” suggested George. “I never read of a party of hunters having to depend on canned stuff or the grocery when they were really good shots, as we are!” and he puffed himself up with pretended pride. “What’s the use taking a lot of grub along when you can shoot a partridge or two, and broil ’em over the coals of an open fire? Doesn’t that sound good?”