"Weston must have left his shack and made a long trip behind it up the mountain and around over the summit to have come in on the Ledge; don’t you think so?" asked Ross. "He probably didn’t want to run any risk of being seen."
Leslie assented and went on with his story. He had gone to meet Weston with a demand as to Ross’s whereabouts and return.
"Don’t ye worry none about Doc," Weston declared heartily. "He’s fixin’ things fine over our way. Doc’s all right!"
"So he is," Leslie agreed, "and for that reason we want him right here, Uncle Jake and I!"
"Wall," Weston drawled good-naturedly, "he says the same about you even t’ wantin’ ye where he is now for a day."
"What do you mean?" Leslie asked.
The two had been walking back toward the shack and the frantic Weimer, and Weston did not explain until he had assured Uncle Jake of Ross’s safety and health, and was seated beside the stove.
"Not once while he was there," Leslie told Ross, "not even when he was eating dinner, did he take off his cap–merely pushed it back a little. Uncle Jake urged him to shed it, but he just grinned and said he had a bald spot on the top of his head, and had got into the habit of wearing his cap all the time to keep that spot warm. Said he guessed he wouldn’t ’bust into that habit now.’ I thought he was an odd Dick to get into such a habit, and with a fur cap, too, but it was all so plausible, Ross, everything he said was said with such an air of truth, that I didn’t once suspect."
"No more did I," confessed Ross.
"And then, of course, I was awfully interested in what he had to tell, and ask me to do. He told a clever lie, Ross. He said that you had brought down an elk with his gun and wanted me to come back with him and the sled you had made to help the McKenzies haul supplies, and help pack the venison over the mountains for our winter meat. It was all the more clever because I knew that meat was all we needed to make our winter’s supplies good. The story hit Uncle Jake in the right spot, too. He hurried up dinner for us to be gone before the big snow came. Weston thought we could reach his cabin that night and make it back again to-morrow morning with the elk meat. He said it would be a pretty good pull for the three of us, but as there was a good crust we could make it with that sled. Why, Doc, there wasn’t a suspicion of deceit in his manner. He said you had fixed his pard up all right and would leave some stuff for him, and so didn’t need to stay any longer. So I went up to the tool house and got the sled out and we started––"