"No, stupid. Didna I ask you to tell him that, dingoes or no dingoes, he is to come next week at the latest, to handle the colts?"
"Oh yes, dad, I won't forget. I expect he'll growl a bit, as he's mad on getting the dogs and the reward. He's quite cranky over it."
"He'll come richt enough if ye gie him my order."
The trapper's camp, as previously stated, was situated about eleven miles from the homestead. Four miles or so from home the track roughened, and became what is known as broken country, all hills and gullies, for the most part very rocky, and heavily wooded in places.
The boys' progress was but slow, owing to the nature of the ground, and it took them nearly three hours to reach the camp, which they found unoccupied. After cooeeing in vain for the absentee, they proceeded to light a fire in order to boil the billy, spreading the substantial lunch which Mrs. M'Intyre had furnished them.
"Bother old Nosey; wish he'd turn up!" exclaimed Sandy, when the boys had finished their repast. "We can't go till he comes. There'd be no end of a row if we went home without delivering the message."
"Oh, he'll be here before long," interjected Joe. "I vote we do a camp in the shade for an hour or two; it's hot enough to fry a steak."
This was good advice, and the boys made themselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted under the shade of the trees. So the hours passed without any sign of the trapper.
"Well, I declare," exclaimed Tom for the twentieth time in the course of the last hour, "it's too bad of Nosey. I'm full up of waitin' here with nothing to do. Can't you leave a message somehow for the ole cuss?"
"How is it to be done, Hawkins?"