“I won’t tell Tom who them fellers is,” thought the wolfer as he neared his camp, “for if I do he’ll run off and jine ’em. Now whar is he, do ye reckon? He’s allers off when he’s wanted to hum.”
Tom, having completed his morning’s drudgery, had gone out to visit the baits he had scattered around the day before, and he did not come in until it was almost dark.
Lish waited and watched for him with no little impatience, constantly harassed by the fear that Tom would somehow discover that his brother was in the valley, in which case he knew that he would be obliged to pass the rest of the winter alone, doing all his own work about the camp, and catching all his own skins. Tom was too valuable an assistant to be given up, and the wolfer resolved to hold fast to him as long as he could.
Tom came in at last, staggering under the weight of his day’s catch, and was instantly put on his guard by the friendly greeting his partner extended to him.
The wolfer’s cordiality, however, was all assumed for the occasion. If Lish had acted out his feelings he would have abused Tom soundly for being so long absent from camp, and, in his rage, he might have done something even worse; but knowing that it would not be safe to say or do too much just then, he bottled up his wrath, to be held in reserve until some future occasion, and said cheerfully:
“Pard, ye’ve done fine; ye have so. An’ yer the green young feller that wanted me to show ye how to pizen wolves! Ye know more about the business now nor I do, an’ I’ve follered it a good many years. Now I reckon ye must be a trifle tired arter packin’ all them skins so fur, an’ if ye’ll cook the supper I’ll chop the wood.”
“What’s up, I wonder?” thought Tom, as he threw his hides down in one corner of the lean-to. “He don’t speak that way to me unless he wants me to do something for him. Well,” he added aloud, “where is it?”
“Whar’s what?” asked Lish.
“The deer, or whatever it was, that you shot. I heard the report of your gun.”
“So ye did; but I didn’t get him. I missed him.”