At my exclamation of wonder and admiration, Joe began eagerly to tell me the story of the rugs; but his wife stopped him.
"Better wait till after supper, Joe," she said.
Ah, that supper! The supreme physical pleasure of it lingers in my memory still. Moose soup with potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions from their garden in it; fresh grayling, caught in the fall and frozen; ruffed grouse pie; roast mountain sheep—the best meat that grows; omelet made of eggs laid that day; moose-nose cheese, delicately pickled; fine sour-dough bread with raspberry jam and currant jelly; pie made of fresh blueberries, the berries having been picked in the fall and preserved by the simple process of pouring water on them and letting them freeze. All of these viands, except the bread, being the products of Nina's labor or marksmanship, made them doubly sweet. Where else in the world could you get a meal like that—or the appetite to devour it all?
"Well," began Joe, when, sated, I lay back in the easy-chair curiously fashioned of moose horns, while the young couple washed the dishes, "I'm mighty proud of them rugs. They're Nina's, both of 'em, and I reckon there's no other girl in the world would of tackled the job she did, and got away with it. It scares me every time I think of it, and I don't know whether I'd oughter scold her or pet her up."
"Nonsense!" protested his wife; "you know you'd have done exactly as I did if you'd been here."
"Maybe I would," he retorted, "but I wouldn't of let you take that risk."
Five Kodiak Bears
The bear to the right is twice the size of a Grizzly