Keeko laughed shortly. She failed to realize the thought prompting Marcel's evident delight.
"It would be greater if I didn't," she returned, with a rueful shake of the head.
"How's that?"
"Why it's days since our traps have shown us so much as a wolf track. And it's nearly a week since we took our last beaver. There's three months of the season left, and I'm needing a three-thousand-dollar trade with Lorson Harris at Seal Bay. Maybe you don't know what that means?"
"Maybe I do," Marcel laughed.
"You do?" Keeko was forced to a responsive laugh. "Yes. It means a whole lot," she went on. "And—I don't guess we've taken five hundred dollars yet—at his price. Last year I took three silver foxes, and a brace of jet black beauties that didn't set him squealing at fifty dollars each. No. They were jo-dandies," she sighed appreciatively. "But it hasn't been that way this season," she continued, with pathetic regret. "It seems like there isn't a single fox this side of the big north hills."
Marcel shook his head.
"But there is," he said very definitely.
"Is there?" Keeko shook her head. "Then I must have been looking the other way most all the time."
A reply hovered upon Marcel's lips. But he seemed to change his mind. He could not stand the obscuring of the sun of the girl's pretty eyes. He turned away, and laid his rifle aside. Then he sprawled his big body at the foot of an adjacent tree, and sat with his wide shoulders propped against it for support.