It was but a short distance to where the meat hung, and, before long, one of the hind quarters of the elk was on the ground. Hugh stopped in front of it and said, “Now, son, take hold of it and, when I get up, raise it, and we’ll pack it into camp.”
The load was too heavy for an ordinary man to carry a great distance, but this did not seem to trouble Hugh. He threw down the ham under a spreading pine tree, that stood not far from the tent, and then Jack and he removed the skin, and began the work of cutting the flesh into thin flakes, which they piled up on the flesh side of the hide that had been taken off the elk. They worked at this for some hours and before supper time had cut out all the meat of the elk.
“Now, son,” said Hugh, “go and get me a sling-rope and we’ll hoist this meat off the ground. If we leave it here, likely some animal will come around to-night and want to carry it off.”
“Well, Hugh, I don’t believe I can climb the tree,” said Jack; for the trunk was very large and without branches for twenty-five or thirty feet above his head.
“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t believe you can and, what’s more, we haven’t got any sling-rope that will reach from the ground to that lowest branch and back again. We’ll tie it up to that little tree that stands close to the tent. Of course, it won’t be safe there, but I reckon anything can’t get at it without our hearing it.”
He made a bundle of the meat, lashing it with a sling-rope.
“There,” he said, “that’s all right for the present, and we’ll put it up here in this spruce tree. Nothing can knock it down without its hitting the tent and waking us, but if we should want to dry it to-morrow, someone will have to stop here and look after it, if the others go off on the mountains. Now let’s have supper.”
Hugh and Jack washed their hands in the snow, built up the fire, and presently commenced to cook supper. After things were going well, Jack called out, “Get up, Joe, you’ve been asleep all day, while other people have been working. Supper is nearly ready.”
Joe grunted sleepily in response and, presently, his black shock of hair was seen poking out of the tent door.
“I must have been asleep,” he said.