“A good huntin’ trip’ll fix him up, and September’s crawlin’ along to where they ought to be good moose-huntin’,” he remarked one evening. “He’s been workin’ like the old scortch, and he needs a leetle spell of play. A man what don’t play and holler onct in a while ain’t actin’ nacheral.”
“Why don’t he go?” said Swickey.
“I dunno. I tole him the moose ’ud be gettin’ frisky purty quick, and he wants to git a head fur Wallie. But he didn’t say nothin’. What’s wrong atween you and Dave, anyhow?”
“Me and Dave?” exclaimed Swickey, reverting to a favorite expression of her earlier days; “why, nothing.”
“Wal, Swickey, mebby they’s nothin’ jest wrong, but they’s suthin’ as ain’t jest right, or else I be gettin’ pow’ful fussy in my head.”
“Don’t worry about Dave, or me,” she replied, going to her father and sitting Indian fashion at his feet. “You need a rest, Pop; you’re older than Dave—and a hunting trip would be fine. I’d like to get a moose, too.”
“Wal, a huntin’ trip ain’t sech a snoozer of a rest, howcome it’s mighty nigh time I got shet of that eye-waterin’ railrud. I reckoned when we fust come to Lost Farm, we come to stay. It was purty then. Now it looks like the back yard of Beelzebub’s rightful home, with them piles of ties and rails and thet bridge up thar in the gorge, grinnin’ like a set of store teeth. Huntin’! Ya-s-s! I feel like huntin’ fur a new place to live, ’stead of killin’ moose what’s doin’ the same ’count of this here railrud.”
The old man arose and walked back and forth uneasily.
“Wal,” he said finally, “I’ll see what Dave says. You kin git your things ready ’nless you’d ruther go with jest me.”
“I don’t care,” replied Swickey.