“I trapped him. Last winter. He was a tremendous big feller,” said M’Graw, heaping a tin plate with johnnycake and pouring bacon grease over it. “There’s a small pack living up in the hills, and I’m likely to get more this winter. These heavy snows will no doubt be driving ’em down.”
“Oh! Wolves!” gasped the girl.
“They won’t bother you none,” said M’Graw. “Don’t go off by yourself, and if any of your party takes a long tramp, carry a gun. Like enough you’ll get a shot at something; but not wolves. They’re too sly.”
The conversation of the old backwoodsman was both illuminating and amusing. And his hunting trophies were vastly interesting, at least to Neale.
There was a big photograph on the wall of Ike and another man standing on either side of a fallen moose. The great, spoon-shaped horns of the creature were at least six feet across.
“You’ll see that head up over the main mantelpiece up to the Lodge,” said M’Graw. “That’s Mr. Birdsall. He an’ me shot that moose over the line in Canady. But we brought the head home.”
Over his own fireplace was a handsome head—that of a stag of the red deer.
“Got him,” Ike vouchsafed between bites, “down in the east swamp, ten year ago come Christmas. Ain’t been a bigger shot in this part of the country, I reckon, ’ceptin’ the ghost deer Tom Lawrence shot three winters ago over towards Ebettsville.”
“Ghost deer!” exclaimed Neale and Agnes together.
“What does that mean?” added the boy.