He rode me until we got to the romantic sugaring-off place in a belt of maple bush.
Then he jumped off, looked reflectively at the enormous black pot hanging on the crane in the stone fire place and said, "Big Chief says I must be sure to come here next spring when they tap the trees. I should love to see the sap running. He has a hundred trees of his own and maple syrup is going to be marketed at five dollars a gallon."
I was very much amused. My young master was getting to be quite a little man of business.
Suddenly he turned to me, "What is sweeter than maple syrup, Fetlar?"
Of course I could do nothing but neigh excitedly, and he exclaimed, "Mothers! Come on, let's find mine," and he dashed down a steep side trail leading to the Merry Tongue River.
I followed him, picking my way carefully over soggy mats of dead leaves and round by enormous rocks and fallen trees. Oh! the firewood going to waste in this forest.
Something made me put my head down whenever we came to damp and marshy ground. I didn't know why I did it, but Dallas exclaimed when he turned round and saw me, "That's a Shetland trick. Your little ancestors used to smell out, or perhaps I should say feel, the safe places when they went to the peat bogs with the crofters to get fuel."
This was very interesting. How glad I was that my young master had brains and that he had become such an expert young woodsman, for without being able to see far ahead on account of the dense growth of trees he just seemed to choose easily the best way to get round obstacles.
There was a trail here, but so faint that we kept losing it. Nothing daunted the boy, and when he could not get on with two feet he fell on his hands and, imitating me, scrambled over steep rock faces where he would often pull up by the roots some young baby tree he was clinging to.
As he fell backward or sideways his concern was more for the uprooted thing than himself.