“Of course not,” returned Little Rifle, greatly surprised. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I have seen you before!”
CHAPTER IX.
NEW FRIENDS.
Little Rifle and Harry stood side by side on the margin of the stream down which the latter had made his frightful plunge, and from which he had been rescued by the daring young trapper.
“Yes,” repeated Harry, with a meaning laugh, “I have seen you before, if you haven’t seen me.”
“I am sure you are mistaken,” replied Little Rifle, embarrassed at his persistency. “I have lived among the mountains and woods ever since I can remember.”
“And that’s where I saw you,” added Harry, who seemed to recover his strength and spirits with remarkable celerity. “I wonder, now, whether you were not lying in the back part of a canoe, this morning, half-asleep, without suspecting that a big Blackfoot Indian was creeping up to you with his tomahawk in hand.”
And Harry laughed, as if he had just heard the funniest joke of his life.
A light began to break in upon the mind of Little Rifle. How could his new acquaintance know any thing of that incident, which neither himself nor Ruff Robsart had told to any one?
“You are the one who fired the gun that saved me!” he exclaimed, reaching out to take the hand of Harry.