“That you have,” was the general response. “We couldn’t tell any difference between your noise and the real thing.”
“But she wasn’t a patch on the bull-moose in appearance,” lamented Dol.
“No more she was, boy. Most female forest creatures ain’t so good-looking as the males! And that’s queer when you think of it, for the girls have the pull over us where beauty is concerned. We ain’t in it with ’em, so to speak.”
There was a big gale of laughter over Herb Real’s gallant admiration for the other sex, and the sigh which accompanied his expression of it. He joined in the mirth himself, though he walked off to make camp, muttering:—
“Sho! You city fellows think that because I’m a woodsman I never heard of love-making in my life.”
“Perhaps there is a little girl at some settlement waiting for a home to be fixed up out of guide’s fees,” retorted Cyrus.
And the three shouted again for no earthly reason, save that the stimulus of forest air and good circulation was driving the blood with fine pressure through their veins, and life seemed such a glorious, unfolding possession—full of a wonderful possible—that they must hold a sort of jubilee.
Herb, who perhaps in his lonely hours in the woods did cherish some vision such as Cyrus suggested, was so infected with their spirit, that, as he swung his axe with a giant’s stroke against a hemlock branch, he joined in with an explosive:—
“Hurrup! Hur-r-r-rup!”
This startled the trio like the bursting of a bomb, and trebled their excitement; for their guide, when abroad, had usually the cautious, well-controlled manner of the still-hunter, who never knows what chances may be lurking round him which he would ruin by an outcry.