"My word!" said Spoof. "Isn't that rather dangerous? But of course I know I'm a greenhorn yet, even though I am beginning to ripen in spots. That reminds me, I've had another letter from the Governor. He wants me to shoot him a young chinook."
"A chinook!"
"Yes. When I wrote him a recent treatise entitled 'An Incident in a Hay Field, or, How about a Cheque for a Hundred Pounds'—you will remember the time—I covered the ragged edge of my purpose with a dissertation upon the prairie climate. I told him that it consisted of a melange of everything from Naples at its best to Norway at its worst—from sleepy kittens purring in the sun to wild she-tigers raging through the jungle. From climate I moved to grass by easy stages, and from grass to hay, and from hay to our little conflagration, and from that to the matter of one hundred pounds. On the way I explained that this part of the country is not really in the chinook belt, although occasionally one came down this far. So now I am commissioned to shoot for the Governor a young chinook. He thinks the skin would look a bit of all right on the library floor, don't you know?"
"And of course you will shoot one?"
"A request from one's immediate paternal ancestor, accompanied by a draft for a hundred pounds, is not to be lightly disregarded. We may have another fire some day, and the price of wagons may go still higher."
"Let me think," said Jack, and for a few moments we remained silent to give his mind elbow-room.
"I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Has your Governor ever seen a badger?"
"Not likely, except possibly at the Zoo."
"We must take that chance. You must shoot a badger, Spoof, which we will formally christen a chinook, and send it to your Governor in time for Christmas."
"I think it's just wicked to do that," said Jean, whose sympathies were always with the under dog. "No doubt Mr.—Mr. Spoof, senior, is a delightful old gentleman, and it isn't fair. Fancy some one from America visiting him and Mr. Spoof goes showing off the chinook which his son shot on the banks of the Saskatchewan. 'Chinook nothing!' says the visitor. 'That's a badger, as common as rabbits, almost, and I would describe your son as another prairie animal, smaller than a badger, with two stripes down its back.'"