"My!" said Jack; "don't I wish we could. That would be fine."
"Put some more wood on the fire, son," said Hugh, "and I'll smoke my pipe, and then we'll go to bed."
Jack rose from his comfortable seat, and going over to where some cottonwood branches had been dragged together, brought two or three good-sized logs, and raking the fire together, threw them on. The dry wood blazed up with a cheerful flame that almost reached the branches of the pine tree beneath which their tent was pitched, and Hugh, after filling his pipe and lighting it by means of a twig thrust into the fire, sat back and declared that this was solid comfort.
"It's a bully good camping place, isn't it?" said Jack.
"First class," was the reply, "and we are going to have good weather and good country to camp and travel in all summer, except when we have thunderstorms. Of course, we have got to expect that, for there is lots of thunder and lightning in these mountains. We will get wet once in a while, but that's no great harm."
"No, indeed," said Jack, "getting wet is a part of the play."
"Tell me, Hugh," he added after a pause, "what other fur may we expect to see here?"
"Why, son," said Hugh, "there is mighty little that will be good now, except bears. As I told you at the ranch, any bears that we can kill before the first of July will be good prime skins, but right after that they begin to get sunburned and rusty, and begin to shed off, and then, the first thing we know, they are not worth skinning for about three months. Along in October they begin to get a pretty good coat again, though it is not so very long."
"Well," persisted Jack, "there is fur in the mountains here, I suppose."