“Good!” cried Phil; “and I’ll go with you.” Adam hesitated.
“I dunno about that,” he said. “If we was to meet a bear, you wouldn’t have any gun, and you might feel sort o’ helpless. I’d tell you to take the gun and go by yourself, but I guess I know more about the ways of these wild critters than you do.”
“I don’t want to go alone,” said Phil, “and I’m not afraid to go without a gun. There are two barrels there, and you can use one for me and one for yourself.”
“Very well,” said Adam, “you can come. This shot-gun isn’t the right thing to take along if we expect to meet bears, but I’ll put half a dozen buckshot into each barrel, and I guess that’ll do for anything we get a crack at.”
Phœnix would have been glad to go with Phil and Adam, but in that case Chap would have been left alone; and, besides, it would not do to make a bear-hunting party too large. So he got out his fishing-lines, and helped Chap pole the boat into deeper water, where they anchored her, and set comfortably to work to fish. The sport was not very exciting, for the large fish are only found in certain portions of the river, but the biting was lively, and the fish they hauled up were a good deal larger than those they used to catch at home.
Adam and Phil made their way slowly along a path which the former had taken to be a bear track. Sometimes they got through the underbrush quite easily, and then, again, it would be very difficult and unpleasant to push through the thorny shrubbery and under low-hanging branches of small trees.
“If we went on all-fours, like a bear,” said Adam, “it would be easy enough; but as we don’t, we’ve got to make the best of it.”
They made the best of it for some time, occasionally losing the track, and then, finding it again, or supposing they had found it, they would bravely press forward.
At last, to their great relief, they came to a place where the way was much more open; the bed of a very small stream, now dry, wound before them through the forest, and, as it was free from underbrush, it made a very convenient pathway.
There was nothing in the appearance of this dry bed to indicate that a bear had been in the habit of walking in it; but, as it made a very good passage through the forest for a man and a boy, Phil and Adam cheerfully took their way up the stream.