"I shall show them that, though France is beaten, Jean Bevoir still lives," he told himself boastingly. "The trading-post on the Kinotah with its beautiful lands, shall still be mine—the Morrises shall never possess it!" Sometimes he spoke to his companions of these things, but they merely smiled at him, thinking that what he had in mind to do would prove impossible of accomplishment.
CHAPTER II
THE CABIN IN THE CLEARING
It was already four o'clock and the short winter day was drawing to a close. On every side of the two young hunters arose the almost trackless woods, with here and there a small opening, where the wind had swept the rocks clear of snow. Not a sound broke the stillness.
"Were we ever in this neighborhood before?" questioned Dave, after a silence of several minutes.
"Yes, I was up here three or four years ago," answered his cousin, who, as my old readers know, was a natural-born hunter and woodsman. "Got a deer right over yonder." And he pointed with his hand. "The one I hit plumb in the left eye."
"Oh, yes, I remember that," came from Dave. "It was a prime shot. Wish I could do as well sometime."
"You needn't complain, Dave. You've done better than lots of men around here. Some of 'em can't shoot anything at all. They are farmers and nothing else."
"Well, we'll all have to turn farmers sooner or later—after the best of the game is killed off."
"Has your father said anything about going out to his trading-post on the
Kinotah again?"