“He shot Oscar’s dog,” Hugh suddenly broke out. “He made it so that Oscar couldn’t go to war, he—he—Dick, does a man who can do such things deserve any help?”
“He has done worse things than any you know about,” returned Dick, “and I know now that he had a hand in that Indian Kaniska’s leaving us to starve in the woods; he has done every sort of thing, but—but—”
As if with one movement, they both looked up at Oscar’s snowshoes hanging on the wall.
“There is only one pair,” observed Hugh. “We can’t both go.”
“Then,” said Dick, and neither had occasion to tell the other that a final conclusion had been reached, “then we will have to draw straws. And it is very generous of me to give you even a chance, because I know I am better on snowshoes than you.”
“I have tried them in the Adirondacks,” Hugh replied. “I am not so clumsy with them as you seem to think. Well, straws it is. The longest one goes.”
They arranged the straws with great show of fairness and secrecy and drew.
“Oh, Hugh, you have all the luck!” exclaimed Dick in bitter disappointment as he gazed at his abbreviated straw and at Hugh’s irrepressible grin of satisfaction.
“It is really better,” was Hugh’s answer, in which he tried to keep the excited delight from his tone. “We have not either of us come through this last week feeling any too husky, but it has been harder on you because it was your second try at starving. If we weren’t both of us so well fed now, I think we would quarrel.”
“It isn’t fair,” cried Dick jealously. “After all, you ought to stay here. Some one must milk Hulda and I don’t know how.”