“Oh!” and Paul jumped. “Dan, I didn’t see you. You frightened me.”
Dan laughed.
“See what I’m gettin’,” and he held up seven fat ptarmigans.
“Oh, Dan, but that’s fine!” exclaimed Paul, handling the birds caressingly.
“Let’s put on a fire an’ have a snack,” said Dan. “Seems like I can’t walk no farther till I eats.”
Dan collected some small dry twigs and a handful of the dry moss which in northern forests collects beneath the limbs of spruce trees. With his foot he scraped the snow from a small area, baring the ground. In the center of this he placed the moss, arranged the sticks about it with much care, struck a match to the moss, and in an incredibly short time had a cheery fire blazing.
“Break some boughs for a seat, Paul, while I plucks th’ pa’tridges,” he suggested.
Two of the birds were quickly plucked and drawn, Dan placing the entrails carefully aside on clean snow. Then he cut two dead sticks a couple of feet in length, sharpened them at each end, impaled a ptarmigan on each, and stuck the other sharpened end of the sticks in the ground in such position that the birds were near enough to the fire to broil without burning.
“’Tis wonderful extravagant for each of us t’ be eatin’ a whole pa’tridge,” said he, as he sat down upon the seat of boughs Paul had provided, “but we ain’t been eatin’ much lately, an’ I finds myself gettin’ weak, an’ I’m thinkin’ we’ll be hungry yet after we eats un, for one pa’tridge with nothin’ t’ go with un ain’t much.”
“I feel as though I could eat both of them myself. I wonder if I’ll ever get enough to eat again,” said Paul. “I’ve been planning the things I’m going to eat when I get home.”