Appleton and Sheridan accepted without remonstrance the guide's prediction of a storm and retired to the "house," as the rooms in which the party was quartered had come to be known—not entirely unthankful for a day of rest.
The crew went into the timber, as usual; the guide retired to his bunk for a good snooze; and young Charlie Manton, tiring of listening to Daddy Dunnigan's yarns, prowled about the camp in search of amusement.
Entering the bunk-house, his attention was attracted by the loud snoring of Blood River Jack, and his eye fell upon the half-breed's rifle and cartridge-belt, which reposed upon the floor just beneath the edge of his bunk.
The boy crept close, his soft moccasins making no sound, until he was within reach of the gun, when he dropped to the floor and lifted it in his hands. For many minutes he sat upon the floor examining the rifle, turning it over and over.
At length he reached for the cartridge-belt, and buckling it about his waist, left the room as noiselessly as he had entered and, keeping the bunk-house in line with the window of the cook-shack, slipped unobserved into the timber.
Upon his hunting expeditions with the others, Charlie had not been allowed to carry a high-power rifle. It was a sore blow to his pride that his armament had consisted of a light, twenty-gauge shotgun, whose possibilities for slaughter were limited to rabbits, spruce-hens, and ptarmigan.
Farther and farther into the timber he went, avoiding the outreaching skidways and the sound of axes. Broad-webbed snow-shoe rabbits leaped from under foot and scurried away in the timber, and the whir of an occasional ptarmigan or spruce-hen passed unheeded.
He was after big game. He would show Uncle Appleton that he could handle a rifle; and maybe, if he killed a buck or a wolf or a bobcat, the next time he went with them he would be allowed to carry a man's-size weapon.
An hour's tramp carried him to the bank of the river at a point several miles below the camp, where he seated himself upon a rotten log.
"Blood River Jack just wanted to sleep to-day, so he told 'em it was going to storm," he soliloquized as he surveyed the narrow stretch of sky which appeared above the snow-covered ice of the river.