Three of the cub’s classmates, coming to visit us in camp, were due now in two days.
Walter stared at him fixedly, and Bob’s wide eyes became attentive. He looked alarmed.
“You’re not going to give me away to the fellows, are you?”
Walter pulled his cap over his eyes, stuck his hands in his pockets, and regarded his young brother.
“I can’t say. I’d be glad to say, but I don’t feel that I can.”
“Look here, Walter,” begged Bob, “if you could curb yourself enough not to tell the fellows—maybe it’s asking too much, but Holy Ike, won’t they guy me! It’ll be a crime! It doesn’t seem as if I could have you do that form of torture.”
Walter grinned. “You look out, you young cuss. Be very gentle and thoughtful to your brother, or it’ll be worse for you. I owe you several. You’re doomed anyway, I think, but you’re doomed worse if you’re not careful.”
The next day, with heavy luggage of tents and pacquetons and game we made a slow way down the Poêle River toward the home camp. It was necessary, with so much butin, that the men should triple the portages. Walter, Bob, and I waited at the lower end of one for the last charge to be brought over. Around us lay the impedimenta of a hunting trip, mail-bags which were our trunks, tents, heavy bundles wrapped about with rope, and above the heap, towering darkly, low in the forest, where it had been carried with stateliness, was the sombre magnificence of Bob’s moose’s horns. A still-water stretched a shining band below us between walls of forest; in front was a pool, foam-flecked from the white rapids above.
The boy picked up a rod.
“There ought to be trout in that hole even if it is sunny. If I were a trout I’d—”