“What were you doing in this piece of woods,” Jimmy asked, “so far off the roads?”
“Just looking round for a chance to preempt land. I’m on my way down the river, really. The rest of my party are about fifty miles below, and I’d calculated to join ’em, but now I suppose I’m laid up here for weeks.”
“It’s too bad,” said Jimmy. “I was going down the river—going down on a flatboat, you know, with the fresh. Marion Royce is getting his ark ready. I was going with him.”
“And ain’t you goin’?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “I ain’t going. Marion says he don’t trust me.” He wondered at himself as he said it.
The stranger was silent. Jimmy went out to get water, carrying his loaded gun in case the wolves came back. They did not show themselves, however, and he returned with water, his gun, and a turkey frozen solid and covered with a light coat of snow.
“Found him in one of my traps,” he explained.
The stranger, who had moved over with Jimmy’s help to one of the bunks, looked on at the preparations for breakfast with interest varied by twinges of excruciating pain. He was a small man, much bearded, with very blue eyes as sharp as gimlets. At Marietta Jimmy would have instinctively avoided him. But the fact that he had saved the man from a horrible death, and that the stranger was helpless with his broken leg, somehow discounted his intuitions, and he tried to keep him entertained so that he would forget his suffering. He told of the way he lived weeks at a time at the cabin, and trapped and dressed skins, and it was natural that in the course of his narrative he should mention Uncle Amasa, who so often shared his retreat.
“Amasa?” exclaimed the stranger. “Amasa Claiborne?”
“That’s the one,—my grandfather.”