“I’ll do the best I can,” the other replied, “but I don’t seem to have any feeling in my feet. If they were a couple of clubs they couldn’t be more useless to me.”
The boys helped him to some extent. Presently Nackerson was sitting in the snow, with Bluff and Jerry trying to get his leggings and foot coverings off so that they might rub the frozen feet with snow to draw out the frost.
“Where are your two friends?” suddenly asked Bluff, remembering that there were three hunters when he and his chum last saw them.
Bill Nackerson groaned.
“I was a fool, and deserve what I got,” he declared. “They wanted to make camp through the storm, and we quarreled. I said I’d stick it out here by the moose, and if the worst came, I’d have something to fall back on. So in the end they went away, and I started to make a shelter the best way I could.”
“Yes; I noticed that somebody had done that,” Bluff told him. “Then the wolves came, did they?”
“When I heard their howls getting closer all the time,” continued the man, “I knew what was going to happen. My rifle had stuck, so I couldn’t work the pump action. It was no better than a club. I started off to see if I could find you boys camping, or come across a bigger tree than the ones around where the moose was lying.”
He groaned again, as though the recollection gave him pain.
“We’re not hurting you, I hope?” asked Jerry; for at the time both were rubbing his feet with snow.
“Oh, no; I wish it did hurt,” replied Nackerson, “because then I’d know there was some life left in my feet. I climbed this tree when I knew the critters were not far away. And here I’ve had to stay ever since. I tried to move around and slap my arms, but my feet began to get numb in spite of me.”