“Don’t you begin to feel a little burning sensation?” asked Bluff anxiously.
“Well, now that you mention it, I believe I do, son. Keep rubbing harder than ever, please. Oh, if ever I get out of this scrape alive it’s going to be a lesson to me. I’ll sure turn over a new leaf, I promise you, and try to do the right thing from now on.”
“Glad to hear it, Mr. Nackerson,” said Jerry, impressed by what he believed to be the man’s sincerity.
Bluff did not feel so sanguine. Perhaps he remembered an old rhyme that he had heard long ago about the Evil One, and which ran to the effect that when Satan was sick he would be a saint; but that the desire faded out of his mind as soon as he was well again.
By degrees the man told them his feet were beginning to hurt him. They persisted in their labors until Bluff decided that the rubbing had gone on long enough.
“And now, what’s the next question?” asked Jerry.
“If you are meaning to try for your home camp,” Nackerson told them, as a pleading expression came into his face, “I hope you’ll let me go along. Don’t desert me here. You might as soon have left me to the wolves as abandon me now.”
“Do you think you could manage to hobble along with us?” asked Bluff.
“Sure I can; watch and see how well I’m able to walk,” the sportsman hastened to say.
He did the best he could, and if his gait was uncertain, the outdoor chums knew that he would walk better after he had become limbered up.