“I was just going to explain, if you will let me see your map. As near as I can tell by looking at the lines of latitude on it, we must have been just about latitude fifty-five degrees at the place where we started yesterday. But we have been running north very strongly thirty or forty miles. While I can’t tell exactly where we are, I’m very positive that we are at this camp somewhere north of fifty-five degrees. In that case there is no law against our killing what we like, if we let the beaver alone; for of course, the buffalo are all gone from this country long ago.”
“Now, I wouldn’t have thought of that,” said Rob, “and I’m very glad that you have figured it out just that way. We agree with you that a fellow ought to keep the game laws even when he is away from the towns. In some of the States in the earlier days they used to have laws allowing a man to kill meat if he needed it, no matter what time of year. But people killed at all times, until there wasn’t much left to kill.”
“It ought to be a good hunting country here,” went on Alex, “for I don’t think many live here or hunt here.”
“Well,” said Rob, with a superior air, “we don’t much care for black bear. Grizzlies or bighorns—”
“Have you never killed a bighorn?”
“No, none of us ever has. They have plenty of them up in Alaska, and very good ones, and white sheep also, and white goats sometimes, and all sorts of bears and moose and things. We’ve never hunted very much except when we were on Kadiak Island. We can all shoot, though. And we’d like very much to make a hunt here. There isn’t any hurry, anyway.”
“S’pose you’ll got some of those sheep,” ventured Moise, “he’ll be best for eat of anything there is—no meat better in the world than those beeghorn.”
“Well,” said John, “why don’t we start out to get one? This looks like a good country, all right.”
“That suits me,” added Rob. “Jess, do you want to go along?”
Alex looked at Jesse before he answered, and saw that while he was tall for his age, he was rather thin and not so strong as the other boys, being somewhat younger.