She hurried away from the camp. Ten minutes passed and Stane still listened for her shot. Then it came, and sharp and clear on the heels of it came a cry of triumph. The injured man smiled with pleasure.
A few minutes later, when Helen returned, there was a gleeful look upon her face. "Got it!" she cried. "We'll have a change of diet today."
"You have still plenty of work before you," said Stane, after congratulating her. "The beast will need skinning and——"
"Ugh!" she interrupted with a little grimace. "I know, and that will be messy work for me, since I know nothing at all about it."
"It is an inevitable part of the work in trailing through the wilds," said Stane with a smile. "But I wish I could take the work over——"
"You can't," she interrupted cheerfully enough, "and if you could I am not sure I should let you now. I've an ambition to complete my wilderness education, and though I'm no butcher, I'll manage this piece of work somehow. You will have to give me instructions, and though I may botch the business, I'll save the meat. Now just give me a lecture in the art of skinning and cleaning and quartering."
As well as he could he gave her instructions, and armed with his long hunting knife, she presently departed. It was two hours before she returned, carrying with her a junk of meat wrapped in a portion of the skin. There was a humiliated look on her face.
"Ask me no questions," she cried with a little laugh of vexation. "I am down in the dust, but I've got most of the meat and that is the essential thing, though what we are going to do with all of it I don't know. We can't possibly eat it whilst it is fresh."
"We will dry, and smoke some of it, or turn it into pemmican."
"Pemmican!" As she echoed the word, her face brightened. "I have read of that," she laughed, "in novels and tales of adventure. It has a romantic sound."