"You take the right of the group, and I'll take the left," whispered Ande.
Simultaneously with the crack of their own guns another sounded from the midst of the willows that fringed the shore. There was a confused "Hank—Hank!" from the frightened birds as they rose in flight. A second later, a light canoe darted swiftly from the willows, and an aged hunter, its only occupant, gathered up the five or six birds that were slain, placed them in his canoe, and rapidly paddled up stream. All happened so quickly that the canoe with its aged occupant shot around a bend in the stream and disappeared from sight before Ande or his friend could say a word.
"Cool robbery! let's after him," said Ande, and suiting his action to the word, he pushed his horse into the stream and swum to the other side, followed by Dick. The trail was struck again on the other side and up the stream they went at as fast a gait as the many stumps and fallen trees would allow. Several times they crossed the stream by swimming their horses. Two miles up stream the creek valley widened and the stream, winding around the base of a hill, formed a loop or peninsula of some fifteen acres or so in extent. Here, in a small, grassy clearing, a rude cabin of unhewn logs greeted their vision. It was a one-storied affair pierced with loopholes, and had a small window in the end facing the stream. The roof of heavy hand-made clapboards, weighted down with poles, was green with age as also were the mossy logs of its walls. The door, a heavy affair of split timber, was ajar and near it on a wooden settle was the figure of the hunter, a man of some seventy years. The hair of his head and beard were snowy white, but his active frame belied his years. He was clad in leathern breeches, heavily fringed along the outer seams, and moccasins of the same tough material. A loose, woollen wamus, the product of the settlements, served in lieu of shirt and coat. His coonskin cap was beside him on the bench and he was busily engaged in plucking the captured birds. The sound of trotting horses aroused him from his work and he cast a keen, scrutinising, blue eye on the approaching invaders of his little domain.
"I say, sir, we'd like to know why you appropriated our birds," said Ande.
"Aye?" inquired the hunter.
Ande repeated the question.
"I shot these birds."
"Well, we shot some too and you seized them all."
"Ye did shoot some?"
"Yes, we did; we were on the road at the fording and fired at them."