“Wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d had it. Too far off. Let’s get on.”
Adrian lifted the pack and dropped it in disgust. “I can’t carry that load!”
Pierre was also disgusted—by the other’s ignorance and lack of endurance.
“What you don’t know about the woods beats all. Haven’t you seen anybody pack things before? I’ll show you. When there’s big game handy is no time to quarrel. If a pack’s too heavy, halve it. Watch and learn something.”
Pierre could be both swift and dexterous if he chose, and he rapidly unrolled and divided the contents of the cotton tent. Putting part into the blanket he retied the rest in the sheeting, and now neither bundle was a very severe tax.
“Whew! What’s the sense of that? It’s the same weight. How does halving it help?”
Pierre swung the canoe upon his head and directed:
“Catch hold them straps. Carry one a few rods. Drop it. Come back after the other. Carry that a ways beyond the first. Drop it. Get number one. All time lap over, beyond, over, beyond. So.”
With a stick he illustrated on the ground, and wasting no further time nor speech, clasped his gun the tighter under his arm and trotted forward again.
Adrian obeyed instructions, and though it seemed, at first, a waste to go back and forth along the carry as he had been directed, found that, in the end, he had accomplished his task with small fatigue or delay.