“Don’t, cub! You’ll ruin the hunting! Shut up, you long-legged devil! Stop raising Cain! Stop it!” Walter exhorted him.
Bob, with his arms around a tree and his legs prancing in time, thundered on.
We led between us to breakfast a raw-boned and short-haired lady of six feet, wreathed in a shamefaced grin, and wreathed in desperately little else. When the “Messieurs” so presented themselves it seemed likely during the first shock that there would be no breakfast, for our respectful guides were incapacitated.
We could not get used to him all day. All day, as we caught a glimpse of a short skirt skipping high in air, or vaulting logs with unladylike ease, we were seized with new spasms of mirth. But that night the cub lived down his costume. At four he went off with a body-guard of Blanc, prancing down the portage to Lac à la Poêle, the gray corduroy skirt glinting in and out of the forest. At seven there was talking heard from that direction—reckless talking and crackling of branches.
“What in thunder?” Walter inquired of space. “That can’t be Bob—he’d never be such a lunatic. He’ll scare everything in five miles. It sounds like Bob’s voice. What does it mean?”
“If we’d heard a shot I’d think he’d killed something,” I ventured.
“Too early—and we would have heard a shot, anyway.”
With that Bob broke through the woods. “Hear me fire?” he burst forth.
“No—what at? Where? When?” Questions hit him in groups.
“Only a muskrat. Nice easy shot, and I’ve never killed one—I thought I’d try it.”