Wilfred was quickly on the top of the stage, enjoying the prospect, for the atmosphere in Canada is so clear that the eye can distinguish objects a very long way off. He had plenty of amusement watching the great buzzards and hawks, which are never long out of sight. He had entered a region where birds abounded. There were cries in the air above and the drumming note of the prairie-hen in the grass below. There were gray clouds of huge white pelicans flapping heavily along, and faster-flying strings of small white birds, looking like rows of pearls waving in the morning air. A moving band, also of snowy white, crossing the blue water of a distant lakelet, puzzled him a while, until it rose with a flutter and scream, and proved itself another flock of northern geese on wing for the south, just pausing on its way to drink.
Presently Wilfred was aware that Pêtre was at the foot of the ladder talking earnestly to Forgill. An unpleasant tingling in his cheek told the subject of their conversation. He turned his back towards them, not choosing to hear the remarks they might be making upon his escapade of the morning, until old Pêtre—or Pête as he was usually called, for somehow the "r" slipped out of his name on the English lips around him—raised his voice, protesting, "You and I know well how the black mud by the reed pool sticks like glue. Now, I say, put him on the little brown pony, and take him with you."
"Follow the hunt!" cried Wilfred, overjoyed. "Oh, may I, Forgill?"
CHAPTER II.
HUNTING THE BUFFALO.
The cloudy morning ended in a brilliant noon. Wilfred was in ecstasies when he found himself mounted on the sagacious Brownie, who had followed them like a dog on the preceding evening.
Aunt Miriam had consented to Pête's proposal with a thankfulness which led the hunter, Hugh Bowkett, to remark, as Wilfred trotted beside him, "Come, you young scamp! so you are altogether beyond petticoat government, are you?"
"That is not true," retorted Wilfred, "for I was never out of her Majesty's dominion for a single hour in my life."
It was a chance hit, for Bowkett had been over the frontier more than once, wintering among the Yankee roughs on the other side of the border, a proceeding which is synonymous in the North-West Dominion with "getting out of the way."
Bowkett was a handsome fellow, and a first-rate shot, who could accomplish the difficult task of hunting the long-eared, cunning moose-deer as well as a born Red Indian. Wilfred looked up at him with secret admiration. Not so Forgill, who owned to Pête there was no dependence on these half-and-half characters. But without Bowkett's help there would be no meat for the winter; and since the master had decided the boy was to go with them, there was nothing more to be said.