"Oh, I do several things. Just now I'm a gum hunter."
"A what?" chimed in Phil.
"Gum hunter," responded the old man briefly, as though that settled the question.
"I am afraid we don't know just what a gum hunter is," confessed Garry, speaking for his chums as well as himself.
"No, I 'spose you don't. Can't expect city boys to know a great deal anyway. Well, a gum hunter is just what it sounds like. I go through the woods getting spruce gum for the drug stores. Make a good living that way part of a year. Get a lot of druggists all way from Portland to Boston who won't buy spruce gum from anyone but me. They know I send 'em only the best. Understand what a gum hunter is now?"
"Thank you, yes," said Garry. "But you said you did other things. Mind telling us what they are? We are not inquisitive, only this is something new to us."
"Sure I don't mind. Sometimes I pick yarbs. There's a powerful lot of them in the woods, like sassafras root and checkerberry and things like that. I sell these to the same druggists that buy my gum. Then sometimes I guide parties. In the wintertime I trap. And sometimes in the spring, I work on the log drive on the river. There's lots of things a man can do to make a living in these woods, if he only knows enough. And it beats working in a store or something all hollow. You're never sick, and mainly you are your own boss, without anyone to tell you when to work and what to work at," concluded the old gum hunter.
For the benefit of our readers who may not be acquainted with Yankee dialect, yarbs is the native's way of saying herbs.
The boys were much interested in the old man's various occupations. They had no idea that a man could do so many different and profitable things in the wilds of the great forests.
"What you boys aim to do while you are camping?" inquired the newcomer, as he ate his late lunch. "You won't find a powerful lot of shooting as there ain't much now that the law is off. Course you can get some good fishing if you follow that brook that is fed by the spring you get your water from for about three miles. There's a place there where a couple of old trees lay across the brook, blown down in some big storm, I expect, and there are some noble trout there. If I had had time today, I'd have gone down there and caught a couple for my meal, instead of taking your bacon."