Having reached the little pond, Strong gave him his boat, and promised to return and bring him into camp at six. Here and there trout were breaking through the smooth plane of water.
The Emperor took a bee-line over the wooded ridge to Robin Lake. There he spent an hour repairing his bark shanty and gathering balsam boughs for a bed. Stepping on a layer of spruce poles over which the boughs were to be spread, in a dark corner of the shanty, his foot went through and came down upon the nest of one of the most disagreeable creatures in the wilderness. He sprang away with an oath and fled into the open air. For a moment he expressed himself in a series of sharp reports, Then, picking up a long pole, he met the offenders leaving their retreat, and "mellered" them, as he explained to Sinth that evening.
"T-take that, Amos," he muttered, as he gave one of them another blow.
It should be borne in mind that he called every member of this malodorous tribe "Amos," because the meanest man he ever knew had borne that name.
He put his heel in the crotch of a fallen limb and drew his boot. Then he cautiously cut off the leg of his trousers at the knee, and, poking cloth and leather into a little hollow, buried them under black earth.
Slowly the "Emperor of the Woods" climbed a ridge on his way to Lost River camp, one leg bare to the knee. Walking, he thought of Annette. Lately misfortune had come between them, and now he seemed to be getting farther from the trail of happiness.
At a point on Balsam Hill he came into the main thoroughfare of the woodsmen which leads from Bear Mountain to Lost River camp. Where he could see far down the big trail, under arches of evergreen, he sat on a stump to rest. His bootless foot, now getting sore, rested on a giant toadstool.
Thus enthroned, the Emperor looked down at his foot and reconsidered the relative positions of himself and the Evil One. His faded crown of felt tilting over one ear, his rough, bearded face wet with perspiration, his patched trousers truncated over the right knee, below which foot and leg were uncovered, he was an emperor more distinguished for his appearance than his lineage.
He took out his old memorandum-book and made this note in it with a stub of a pencil:
"June the 27 Strong says one Amos in the bush is worth two in yer company an a pair of britches."