The camp-robber had been winging back and forth through the forest and had flitted down to the spring for a bath. One of the two figures was standing erect, shaking his fist at the speeding form of Spread Horn,—a creature from the back of which the camp-robber had almost, if not quite, gathered vermin. The other was lying down, gazing moodily at an interesting-looking object that had oozed what had seemed to be dark blood on the pine needles. In form they resembled bears; yet he didn’t for an instant think that they were. They were not deer or cougar or even overgrown raccoons. He perched upon the limb to think it over.
Yet the camp-robber never spends a great deal of time in such a profitless occupation as thought. At once his instincts began to get busy inside of him. He was a born kleptomaniac, and he was simply fascinated by the number of bright and interesting things lying about the ashes of the dead fire. He began to have all manner of pleasing conjectures in regard to them. Like many gentlemen-of-fortune in the Parisian underworld he had a long ancestry of famous criminals; and now he remembered certain advice his mother had given him when he was a fledgling in the nest.
“If ever you find a camp of men,” one can imagine the old mother-bird chirping, as she flicked her tail here and there, “fly right down into it. You will have more fun than you ever had in your life before.”
These were men: no other supposition remained. The camp-robber squawked once, in enthusiasm, and sailed down to the ground beside the prone figure.
The result was rather astonishing. For the second at least Hugh Gaylord forgot the late tragedy to his last bottle of bourbon. A smile that was singularly winning and boyish played around his lips.
It was not quite Gaylord’s way to smile at such little things as this. It usually required a very keen jest from a clever comedian in a musical comedy to draw a smile from him. Strangest of all, he hadn’t been in the least in the humor for gaiety since the first day he had come to these stern, lonely mountains.
He watched the bird with growing astonishment. His surprise was really no less than that of the camp-robber on first beholding the two men. The bird hopped here and there among the camp supplies, scratched in the pine needles for crumbs, and then, with astounding cheek, began to peck holes in the soap. He had tasted many things in his months of foraging, but here was something the like of which he had never tasted before. The truth was that more than one camp, here and there through the forest, could not yield up such a treat as this. Many of the sparse visitors to the Upper Salmon mountains regarded the use of soap as they did Christmas,—something to celebrate once a year.
Hugh had not discerned the fleeting form of the elk in the thickets, and except for his guide, this bird was the first living thing he had seen since he had come to Smoky Land. It was not that the forest did not literally teem with life. The trouble lay in Hugh’s eyes. The living things of the great forest are always furtive and hidden, and they only yield their most priceless secrets to those who seek them.
A man never sees clearly when his brain is misted and blurred from the fumes of strong drink; besides, Hugh had not yet gone a half-mile from camp. He was a tenderfoot in the raw, and the forest creatures had been able to discern his heavy tread in plenty of time to get out of sight. He had been disgusted and annoyed by the discomforts of camp life, and he was eager to return to his own kind; his stock of liquor had been running low and without it he did not believe he could exist; he spoke loudly and his spirit was dead within him: and thus the forest had remained a closed book. His choice of a companion had not been particularly fortunate either. Pete had good blood in him, the blood of as brave and hardy a race as ever lived, but degeneracy was upon him and his people. He had been employed as Hugh’s guide, but he had found it much more convenient to stay in camp and drink Hugh’s whisky.
The Indian guide would have been a familiar type to any one of the hardy, farseeing frontiersmen that occasionally ranged through the forest, but Hugh himself would have wakened some wonder. He was still obviously a man of cities. He wore the outdoor clothes of a gentleman, which is but rarely the outdoor garb of the frontier. They were stained with dirt and their careful crease was destroyed; yet they marked him as a tenderfoot.