As to Pete’s movements, he was equally in the dark, and when Chip told him what her friends here suspected, he merely grunted. As he seemed to wish to do his own cooking, Old Cy, having completed his task, offered him a partridge and a couple of trout fresh from the ice-house, also pork and potatoes, and left him to care for himself.
He became more sociable later, and when supper was over and the rest had, as usual, gathered on the piazza of the new cabin, he joined them.
And now came a recital from Ray of far more interest to these people than they suspected.
“I saw a bear over back of the ridge this afternoon,” he said, “or I don’t know but it was a wildcat. I’d just filled my pail with berries, when way up, close to the rocks, I saw something moving. I crouched down back of a bush, thinking it might be a bear, and if it was, I’d get a chance to see it nearer. I could only see the top of its back above the bushes, and once I saw its head, as if it was standing up. Then I didn’t see it for quite a spell, and then I caught sight of its back again, a good deal nearer, and then it went into one of the gullies in the hog-back. I didn’t wait to see if it came out, but cut for home.”
“Did this critter sorter wobble like a woodchuck runnin’?” put in Old Cy.
“No, it just crept along evenly,” answered Ray, “I’d see it when it would come out between the bushes.”
“’Twa’n’t a b’ar,” muttered Old Cy, and then, as if the unwisdom of waking suspicion in Angie’s mind occurred, he added hastily, “but mebbe ’twas a doe, walkin’ head down ’n’ feedin’.”
No further notice was taken of Ray’s adventure. The sight of deer everywhere about was a ten-times-daily occurrence, and Old Cy’s dismissal of the matter ended it.
His thoughts, however, were a different matter. Full well he knew it was no bear thus moving. A deer would never enter a crevasse, nor a wildcat or lynx ever leave the shelter of woods to wander in open sunlight.
“I’ll go over thar in the mornin’,” he said to himself; “I may git a chance to wing that varmint ’n’ end our worryin’.”