The latter put his hand to his ear and said, "What?" Strong repeated his query in a much louder voice.
"Fur ain't very thick," the stranger answered.
Strong perceived that the man was very deaf and also that he was devoted to one idea.
"B-big fam'ly," he shouted, as he began to push off.
The trapper, with his hand to his ear and still looking a bit doubtful, answered, "Ain't runnin' very big this year."
Thereafter the word "mushrats," in the vocabulary of Strong, stood for unworthy devotion to a single purpose.
Down-stream a little the ox took his place again at the bow of the boat-jumper. They struck off into thick woods reaching far and wide on the acres of Uncle Sam. A mile or so inland they came to Rainbow Trail, and thereafter followed it. Timber thieves had been cutting big pines and spruces and had left a slash on either side of the trail.
The travellers dipped down across the edge of a wide valley, and after climbing again were in the midst of burned ground on the top of a high ridge. Below them they could see Rainbow Lake and the undulating canopy of a great, two-storied forest reaching to hazy distances. Mighty towers of spruce and pine and hemlock rose into the sunlit, upper heavens.
It was growing dusk when, below them and well off the trail, they saw a column of smoke rising. They halted, and Strong stood gazing. The smoke grew in volume and he made off down the side of the ridge. He came in sight of the fire and stopped. Some one had fled through thickets of young spruce and Zeb was pursuing him.
Strong looked off in the gloomy forest and shouted a fierce oath at its invisible enemy.