"He follow me!" insisted Pierre.
"Sure, I did!" George replied, trying to give the impression that the matter was rather a good joke on himself. "I heard you smashing through the bushes and I thought you were some kind of a wild animal, and so I followed you up. I got so far away from camp that I couldn't find my way back. Then I saw your light and came here."
"Where your gun?" demanded Pierre, pointing suspiciously to the boy's empty hands. "You no shoot without gun!"
George drew an automatic from his pocket and held it up in the firelight. Pierre eyed it enviously.
"We hunt with these things!" the boy said.
Pierre continued to regard the boy with suspicion, for a long time but he finally seated himself before the fire and began to grumble because Thede had not been more active in the preparations for supper.
"It's a wonder you wouldn't come home and get supper yourself once in a while!" exclaimed the boy, "You needn't think I came up here in the cold to wait on you, Old Hoss!" the lad added with a wink at George. "I didn't leave my happy home for any such menial service."
Pierre grumbled out a few sentences in mongrel French and proceeded to prepare a solitary meal. Thede winked at George and began cooking enough supper for both of them.
George was thinking fast while the boy was sweating before the scorching heat of the fire. He was wondering whether Thede had told him the exact truth concerning his connection with Pierre. He was wondering, too, whether the boy had told all he knew of the Little Brass God.
Here were two parties in the Northern wilderness in quest of the same thing! It occurred to the wondering boy that Pierre might have been sent into the Hudson Bay country in quest of the individual who had purchased the Little Brass God at the pawnbroker's shop.