“Now, Young Rattlebrain,”—Garst took the calm tone of leadership,—“please consider that this is the first time you’ve camped out in Maine woods. You might find it fun to be snowed up in camp during a first fall, and to tramp homewards through a thawing slush. But your father wouldn’t relish its effects on your British constitution. And out here—once we’re well into November—there’s no knowing when the temperature may drop to zero with mighty short notice. I’ve often turned in at night, feeling as if I were on ‘India’s coral strands’ and woke up next morning thinking I had popped off in my sleep to ‘Greenland’s icy mountains.’ Herb Heal! you know what tricks a thermometer, if we had one, might play in our camp from this out; talk sense to these fellows.”
Herb, who had risen an hour before his charges, had already fetched fresh water, coaxed up the fire, and was busily mixing flapjacks for breakfast. His ears, however, had caught the drift of the talk.
“Guess Cyrus is right,” he said. “Seeing as it’s the first time you Britishers have slept off your spring mattresses, I’d say, light out for the city and steam-heat afore the snow comes. Oh! you needn’t get your mad up. I ain’t thinking you’d growl at being snowed in. I know better.
“By the great horn spoon! I b’lieve I’ll go right along to Greenville with you,” exclaimed the guide a minute later. “I might get a chance to pick up a bargain of a second-hand rifle there. And I guess you’d be mighty sick o’ your luck, Dol, if you had to lug them moose-antlers part o’ the way yerself. I ain’t stuck on carrying ’em either, if we can get a jumper.”
But there was a third reason, still more powerful than these two, why he should make a trip to the distant town, which stirred Herb’s mind while he stirred his cakes. His sturdy sense told him that it would be well he should put in an appearance when Cyrus made a statement before the Greenville coroner as to the cause and manner of Chris’s death.
“Now, you boys, we don’t want no fooling this blessed day,” he said, when breakfast was in order, and the campers were emptying for the second time their tin mugs of coffee. “There’s sport before us—tearing good sport. Whatever do you s’pose I come on this morning when I was cruising over the bog for water? Caribou-tracks! Caribou-tracks, as sure as there’s a caribou in Maine!
“Who’s for following ’em? We hain’t got much provisions left; and I guess a chunk of broiled caribou-steak about as big as a horse’s upper lip would cheer each of us up, and make us feel first-rate. What say, boys?”
“By all that’s glorious!” ejaculated Cyrus, his eyes striking light. “Caribou-signs! Of course we’ll follow them. A bit of fresh meat would be pretty acceptable, and a good view of a herd of caribou would be still more so—to me, at any rate. That would just about top off our exploring to a T.”
“We’ve got to be mighty spry, then,” said the woodsman, lurching to his feet, muscles swelling, and nostrils spreading like a sleuth-hound’s. “If you want caribou, you’ve got to take ’em while they’re around. Old hunters have a saying: ‘They’re here to-day, to-morrow nowhere.’ And that’s about the size of it.”
“Let’s start off this minute!” Dol jerked out the words while he bolted the last salt shreds of his pork. “Hurry up, you fellows! You’re as slow as snails. I’d eat the jolliest meal that was ever cooked in three minutes.”