“Oh, is that so?” said Bluff jeeringly, though at the same time he took one backward step. “Well, I hope for his sake you can hold on a little while longer. I’d sure dislike to cripple any man, away up here so far away from a doctor; but if he jumps at us he’ll get his medicine right fast. And that’s straight goods, I’m telling you.”
“Come on, Bluff,” Jerry was saying, anxious to avoid trouble, yet not afraid; “perhaps we’d better be going, though I’ll always say that was our moose, and tell everybody what a thief did to us in the Big Woods.”
“Get away with you,” shouted Nackerson, “before I do you harm! I’d hate to lay a hand on a boy in anger; but you don’t want to rile me too much!”
“You didn’t hold back when you struck that poor relation of yours, Teddy, in the face, did you, Mr. Nackerson?” said Bluff boldly. “But we’re not afraid that you’ll bother trying the same on us. It makes considerable difference when a boy’s got a gun. If you ever laid a hand on me like you did Teddy, you’d live to be sorry for it.”
“Go—go!” snapped the man, now furiously angry, so that the others had to cling to him more tenaciously than ever for fear that he might break away, regardless of consequences.
“And as a last word,” added Bluff, “I want to tell you I’ve a hunch we’ll get that pair of moose horns yet, in spite of you,” with which he backed away from the scene of their triumph and defeat.
CHAPTER XXI—A CAMP IN THE SNOW
“I never hated to do anything so much in my life as break away from there and give up our moose!” Bluff told his comrade.
They had gone far enough back to lose sight of the three men in the swiftly driven snow that was now falling heavily.
“Me, too,” returned Jerry; “but that’s the way it happens sometimes. I only hope they find out they haven’t got a single match among ’em. Perhaps, then, if it keeps on getting colder, and the storm blows heavier and heavier, they’ll wish they hadn’t made us clear out.”