“We’re bound for the same place.”
“Then camp with us to-night and to-morrow we’ll travel in company.”
The promise of a good supper was a very tempting one to the hungry boys, whose commissary would have been exhausted long ago if they had given their appetites full swing, and they knew that if they accepted the emigrant’s invitation their wants would be abundantly supplied. There was a coffee-pot on the coals, something that looked like biscuits in a pan beside the fire, and from one of the trees hung a joint of fresh meat, from which had been cut a sufficient number of steaks to fill a large frying-pan. The fact that the tin plates and cups that were scattered around were not as clean as some they had seen, and that the emigrant’s wife went about her domestic duties with a pipe in her mouth, did not take the sharp edge off their appetites, as it might have done a few months before. So they decided to remain. The old man took their bundles, accompanied them when they went out to picket their horses, asked them more questions than he would give them time to answer, and finally went back to camp to make sure that his wife had obeyed orders and added more steaks to those already in the pan.
Fred and Eugene, having picketed their own horses, went to assist Archie, the bay having suddenly taken it into his head that he would not allow himself to be staked out. The boys had a lively battle with him, and while it was going on, one of the hunters came out.
“Look a yer! who be you an’ what brought you yer?” he demanded.
Archie, who had quite as much on his hands as he could attend to, was not in just the right mood to answer such questions, especially when propounded, as this one was, with all the insolence the man could throw into his tones. He paid no attention to it until the man said, pointing his finger at him:
“You heard me, I reckon! What’s your name, an’ what brought you yer?”
“There, he’s safe enough,” said Fred, when he had driven down the iron picket-pin with the hatchet.
“We’ll not trust to that alone,” said Archie. “We’ll hobble him, too. Now, my friend, in reply to your question I have to say that I left all my cards at Fr’isco; but when I return there, as I expect to do in the course of a month or so, I will send you one, if you will be kind enough to give me your address.”