"Don't you think we'd better hold on to the best one?"
Now the Boy couldn't deny that the Colonel's was the better, but none the less he had a great affection for his own old 44 Marlin, and the Colonel shouldn't assume that he had the right to dictate. This attitude of the "wise elder" seemed out of place on the trail.
"A gun's a necessity. I haven't brought along any whim-whams."
"Who has?"
"Well, it wasn't me that went loadin' up at Anvik with fool thermometers and things."
"Thermometer! Why, it doesn't weigh—"
"Weighs something, and it's something to pack; frozen half the time, too. And when it isn't, what's the good of havin' it hammered into us how near we are to freezin' to death." But it annoyed him to think how very little in argument a thermometer weighed against a rifle.
They said no more that day about lightening the load, but with a double motive they made enormous inroads upon their provisions.
A morning came when the Colonel, packing hurriedly in the biting cold, forgot to shove his pardner's gun into its accustomed place.
The Boy, returning from trail-breaking to the river, kicked at the butt to draw attention to the omission. The Colonel flung down the end of the ice-coated rope he had lashed the load with, and, "Pack it yourself," says he.