“What is it?” cried Gunson.
I pointed upward to where, about fifty feet from the ground, the little Chinaman was perched in a great spruce fir, clinging tightly to one of the horizontal boughs, with his feet on another, and as he peered anxiously down, looking like a human squirrel on the watch for foes.
“Here, come down,” I cried. “It’s all right now. Come down.”
“Yes, come down, you little coward,” shouted Esau, who brightened up directly he found that some one had cut a worse figure than he. “I say,” he continued, with a forced laugh, “doesn’t he look comic up there?”
“Yes,” said Gunson, grimly, as he gazed fixedly at Esau, who turned uncomfortable directly, and made no remarks about Quong, as he walked to the foot of the tree, which was about a hundred yards away, and losing sight of its occupant now he was hidden by the intervening boughs.
“Come, Quong,” I said, “get down, or we shall leave you behind.”
“Gone?” he said in a weak voice.
“Yes; come along.”
He descended slowly, and stood before us shaking the grey moss and dead fir-needles from his blue cotton garment.
“Big blown beace,” he said. “Quong see him. Velly frighten.”