"No," he persisted, "I'll help as much as I can."
"Well," said Harry dryly, "if you want to go hunting it's a thing you'll have to learn."
The operations that followed were singularly unpleasant, and Frank felt a good deal less enthusiastic about hunting when he washed his hands and the sleeves of his jacket in the creek after they were over.
"I don't know if I'll eat any of that deer," he said.
"You'll get over it," Harry assured him with a smile. "Anyway, in my opinion deer meat isn't much of a delicacy. It's that stringy you could 'most make lariats of it, unless you keep it until it's bad."
Frank felt inclined later to agree with this statement, but in the meanwhile Harry got the deer, which he had not yet skinned, upon his shoulders with its fore legs pulled over in front of him, and they started back for the ranch. It was, however, some time before they could find a way out of the gulch, and then they only gained the summit by an arduous scramble. After that they found themselves in exceedingly thick bush, with nothing that Frank could see to guide them. There was probably not much light at any time down among those great trunks whose branches met and crossed high overhead, and what there was seemed to be getting dim.
"If we keep on going down we'll strike something by and by," urged Harry. "The slope's naturally toward the beach."
The first thing they struck was a remarkably steep hillside, up which they struggled, Frank now carrying the deer, which he found heavy enough before he reached the top. Then a narrow valley opened up before them, which did not seem to be what Harry had expected. There were one or two ponds in the bottom of it, and he gazed at them thoughtfully.
"We might get a duck," he mused. "They ought to be coming down from Alaska now. It's freezing up there."
They floundered down the declivity, and, though Frank would have preferred to push on straight for home, Harry insisted on creeping through the long harsh grass about the edge of the water. They tried one of the ponds with no result, but at last Harry dropped suddenly behind a tall clump of grass.