"Betteh keep inside, son. Yo' cain't do no good out theah. They cain't no game move in a thaw like this."
"Rabbits and ground squirrels and ptarmigan can," answered the boy.
"Yeh—but yo' cain't!"
"I'm not going far. I'm wet now, and I'm not going to give up without trying." Three hours later he stumbled again through the door, bearing proudly a bedraggled ptarmigan and a lean ground squirrel, each neatly beheaded by a bullet from his high-power rifle. As he dried his clothing beside the rusty stove, the boy dressed his game, carefully dividing the offal between old Boris, Mutt, and Slasher, and the dogs greedily devoured it to the last hair and feather.
"Every little bit helps," he smiled. "But it sure is a little bit of meat for such a lot of work. I bet I didn't get a quarter of a mile away."
For three days the wind held, the sun shone, and the snow melted. Streams forced their way to the river and the surface of the Kandik became a raging torrent—a river on top of a river! Each day Connie hunted faithfully, sometimes in vain, but generally his efforts were rewarded by a ptarmigan, or a brace of lank snowshoe rabbits or ground squirrels, lured from their holes by the feel of the false spring.
On the fourth night it turned cold, and in the morning the snow was crusted over sufficiently to support a man's weight on the rackets. The countless tiny rills that supplied the river were dried and the flood subsided and narrowed to the middle of the stream, while upon the edges the slush and anchor-ice froze rough and uneven.
Waseche Bill's injured leg was much swollen and caused him great pain, but he bore it unflinchingly and laughed and joked gaily. But Connie was not deceived, for from the little fan of wrinkles at the corners of the man's eyes, and the hard, drawn look about his mouth, the boy knew that his big partner suffered intensely even while his lips smiled and his words fell lightly in droll banter.