"You forget musquash," added Max.
"Bah! I wanted to forget it," declared the other.
"Suppose we knock off talking for a while, Steve," suggested Max. "We're coming to one of the places he said we might find deer. And they've got pretty sharp ears, let me tell you right now."
"But you said we were always hunting up against the wind, so our scent wouldn't be carried to the game," Steve observed.
"That's true enough, Steve, but even then good deer hunters seldom talk above whispers when they expect to run across game. This is one of the times when we can apply that old maxim we used to write in our copy books at school."
"Sure, I remember it well," chuckled Steve, "'speech may be silver, but silence is gold.' I'm dumb, Max."
And for a wonder, not another word did Steve utter for over half an hour. As he was usually such a talkative fellow, this keeping still must have been in the line of great punishment to Steve.
But, then, there are times when the sporting instinct sways all else. And Steve understood that still hunting deer meant a padlock on the lips.
After all, disappointment awaited them.
They put in a solid hour looking over all the territory first mentioned by Trapper Jim, but without starting a single deer.