“And it is for M’sieur to choose?” he asked, blinking.
“Yes,” I agreed again—I let him fight it out his own way.
“Then—Mon Dieu! M’sieur Bob will choose the river. It is certain that M’sieur will there kill the great moose.”
Well, I had to send him off sulky and raging, and entirely uncomprehending. He simply couldn’t grasp why, when I had fairly drawn the choice, I should throw it away on such a thing as Shacky. I couldn’t put a glimmer of it into him, either.
At gray dawn, out of the underbrush there was a low call of “M’sieur!” repeated more than once before it got us up. We crawled shiveringly into our clothes by a smoky fire kicked together from last night’s logs; we had hot chocolate and not much else out in the open; and off we went, Shacky and his guide up the lake in a boat, and Josef and I through the woods that seemed to have a deathly stillness in them as if all the small wild creatures were sound asleep that make an underbuzz in the daytime.
A little cold light was leaking, up in the branches, but down where we walked it was dark—mostly I couldn’t see the plaques—blazes on the trees, plaques are. But you couldn’t fool Josef—he went straight from one to another as if it was a trodden portage. My! but he sure was in an ugly temper. Once when he whipped his axe out of his belt and clipped a branch in our way, I just knew he wished it was Shacky he was chopping at. The light brightened as we went, and before we got to Lac Monsieur, I could see the sights of my rifle. As we came to the lake, the tree-trunks stood black and sharp against a white wall of mist hanging solid on the water; above that the mountains showed black again, on the sunrise—only the sun wasn’t risen. The marsh-grasses were stiff with frost, and when you stepped the marsh was crisp. We walked to the east side to get a good watch; we settled ourselves, and the sun came up behind us as we sat shivering with cold. First it lit the tops of the mountains across, and then crawled down the trees and lay on the water in a band. The stiff grasses suddenly stood up white in masses, and then, as the sun hit them, the frost melted and they turned yellow. I wish I could tell how pretty it was and describe the feeling it gives you of the world’s being just made that morning expressly for you to play with.
We watched there till the light shone high and came shooting through the branches where we sat straddling two logs, and the minute it touched us it grew so warm we had to shed our sweaters—about seven o’clock, I think. And about then Josef got restless. He picked twigs, and he crawled about, and he kept looking at his big silver watch as if he had a train to catch. Finally, he took out his pipe and began feeling in his pockets for tobacco—the flies were chewing us by then. But I couldn’t have that—it’s a crime to smoke on a hunt, because the caribou have wonderful noses and scent things a long way off if the wind is to them.
“C’est bien dangereux,” I whispered.
Then Josef whispered back that this lake was no good—he didn’t think we’d see anything.
“What can we do about it?” I asked him. I didn’t agree, yet I trusted Josef’s judgment more than my own, and he knew it, blame him. He shrugged his shoulders.