“Now you see what you can do with her,” the old man said, his eyes twinkling. “If that tin had been a moose’s forehead he’d be a dead moose, sure enough. Did the noise and the kick surprise you?”
“Yes, it did,” Larry admitted honestly; “but it won’t next time—it never will again. And I am going to kill just nine more moose with these cartridges.”
“That’s the way to talk,” said Martin, with frank admiration; “after a few more shots you’ll get used to the recoil, and pretty soon you won’t even feel it. But you musn’t expect to make nine more bull’s-eyes just yet.”
The old hunter went back to his work at the pile of plunder under the big canvas, and Larry fired his nine remaining rounds. Then he sought the old man again, but as Martin asked no question about the result of the shots, Larry did not volunteer any information. Presently Martin looked up from his work.
“I suppose you’ve cleaned the rifle now that you have finished practice for the morning?” he inquired.
Larry shook his head.
“Well that’s the very first thing to do, now, and always,” said the hunter.
It took quite a time for the boy to clean and oil the gun so that he felt it would pass inspection, and when he returned to Martin the old man was busy with an assortment of interesting looking parcels, placing them in separate piles. He was making notes on a piece of paper, while both the dogs were sniffing about the packages, greatly interested.
The old hunter sent Larry to bring two of the toboggans that he had saved from the yacht. They looked like ordinary toboggans to the boy, but Martin called his attention to some of their good points which he explained while he was packing them with what he called an “experimental load,” made up from the pile of parcels he had been sorting.
Each of the toboggans had fastened to its top a stout canvas bag, the bottom of which was just the size of the top of the sled. The sides of the bag were about four feet high, each bag forming, in effect, a canvas box fastened securely to the toboggan. Martin pointed out the advantages of such an arrangement in one terse sentence. “When that bag is tied up you can’t lose anything off your sled without losing the sled itself,” he said. “And if you had ever done much sledging,” he added, “you’d know what that means.”