“I’ll tell ye some other time,” said the former quietly; “not now—not now. Come, lad, if ye mean to mount and ride wi’ me to-morrow, you’ll ha’ to eat heartier than that.”
“I’m doing my best. Did you say it was you that shot the moose deer, Mary?”
“Yes, it was me. Me go out to kill bird for make dinner, two days back, an’ see the moose in one place where hims no can escape but by one way—narrow way, tree feets, not more, wide. Hims look to me—me’s look to him. Then me climb up side of rocks so hims no touch me, but must pass below me quite near. Then me yell—horbuble yell!” (“Ha!” thought March, “music, sweetest music, that yell!”) “an’ hims run round in great fright!” (“Oh, the blockhead,” thought March)—“but see hims no can git away, so hims rush past me! Me shoot in back of hims head, an’ him drop.”
“Huzza!” shouted Dick, in such a bass roar that March involuntarily started. “Well done, lass; ye’ll make a splendid wife to a bold mountaineer.”
March could not believe his eyes, while he looked at the modest little creature who thus coolly related the way in which she slaughtered the moose; but he was bound to believe his ears, for Mary said she did the deed, and to suppose it possible that Mary could tell a falsehood was, in March’s opinion, more absurd than to suppose that the bright sun could change itself into melted butter! But Dick’s enthusiastic reference to Mary one day becoming the wife of a mountaineer startled him. He felt that, in the event of such a calamitous circumstance happening, she could no longer be his sister, and the thought made him first fierce, and then sulky.
“D’ye kill many mountain sheep here, Dick?” inquired March, when his ruffled temper had been smoothed down with another marrow-bone.
“Ay, lots of ’em.”
“What like are they close? I’ve never been nearer to ’em yet than a thousand yards or so—never within range.”
“They’re ’bout the size of a settlement sheep, an’ skin somethin’ like the red deer; ye’ve seen the red deer, of coorse, March?”
“Yes, often; shot ’em too.”