“O, you needn’t try to look so surprised,” exclaimed Bob. “I have always been afraid of you, and now I am satisfied that you can beat me. You are the best shot among the boys in this settlement.”
“Well, you needn’t say so before folks,” replied Lester, as soon as he had somewhat recovered himself.
“Yes, I will,” returned Bob. “I have heard some of the fellows say that they didn’t believe you ever killed any game in your life, and now I can tell them differently. Can you do it again?”
“I am afraid not,” answered Lester, with an air which said he could if he felt like it.
“I believe you can. The fellows around here have no business with you.”
Lester was entirely satisfied with this. He had won a reputation as a marksman, and he had won it very easily. Many a reputation has been made in the same way—by accident. With an assumption of indifference which he was very far from feeling he picked up the ducks as Bob paddled up to them, and fearing that his friend might ask him to try another shot, expressed a desire to be put on the island as soon as possible.
“I have got my hand in now,” said he, “and I wouldn’t turn my back on a grizzly.”
“There’s no bear on the island,” replied Bob, “but I wish there was, for I would like to see you shoot him.”
Although Lester was very proud of, and greatly encouraged by the chance shot he had just made, he could not echo his friend’s wish; and if he had had the faintest suspicion that there was a bear within half a mile of him, he could not have been hired to remain in the bayou. He knew nothing whatever of the habits of the animal, but Bob did, and his positive assurance that bears never “used” on the island now was the only thing that induced Lester to consent to visit it. Still his heart beat much faster than usual when they rounded the bend and came within sight of the leaning sycamore behind which Godfrey Evans had been partially concealed when Dan first discovered him. In a few minutes more Bob drove the bow of the canoe so deeply into the mud that the current could not carry it away, and the two boys jumped out on the bank.
“Don Gordon went over to Coldwater a year ago and brought back a bearskin which he showed to every body, with the story that he killed the bear who wore it,” said Bob, who never grew tired of saying hard things about the boy he hated. “I don’t believe it and never did. He has told all around the settlement that he was driven off this island by a bear a few days ago, and that he set a trap for him. I don’t believe that either; but we’ll just take a look around to satisfy ourselves, and then we’ll go back to the settlement and tell the truth about the matter. It is my opinion that Don is trying to make himself famous by telling big yarns; and if we can prove it, it will make him take a back seat, and it will put a feather in our caps besides. Now there used to be a path somewhere about here that led to the camp Godfrey Evans used to occupy while the Yanks were in this country, and I think I can find it.”