“Thank you, no,” said Alex, sitting down and lighting his pipe. “We make our beds small when we have to carry them in the woods. We sleep well. We get used to it, you see.”
“Injun man she’ll been like dog,” grinned Moise, throwing down his own single blanket under a tree. “A dog she’ll sleep plenty, all right, an’ she’ll got no bed at all, what?”
“But won’t you come under the edge of the tent?” asked Rob.
“No, you’re to have the tent,” said Alex. “I’m under orders from your Uncle, who employed me. But you’re to make your own beds, and take care of them in making and breaking camp. That’s understood.”
“I’ll do that for those boy,” offered Moise.
“No,” said Alex, quietly, “my orders are they’re to do that for themselves. That’s what their Uncle said. They must learn how to do all these things.”
“Maybe we know now, a little bit,” ventured John, smiling.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Alex. “But now, just from a look at your bed, you’ve taken a great deal of time making your camp to-night. You’ve got a good many boughs. They took noise and took time to gather. We’ll see how simple a camp we can make after we get out on the trail. My word! We’ll have trouble enough to get anything to sleep on when we get in the lower Peace, where there’s only willows.”
“What do you do if it rains?” queried Jesse. “You haven’t got any tent over you, and it leaks through the trees.”