"Oh! I just happened to wonder if he could have stolen the child from some one, and had now made up his mind that it was wicked, and she must be returned. But then, how could a father be tempted to steal his own child? I reckon that must have been a silly notion. Let's forget it."
"Like as not we'll never know," Ethan observed, a little provoked, it seemed, on account of not being able to solve the mystery that surrounded Mazie and her "daddy;" for Ethan above all things hated to give a puzzle up as beyond his power.
"Wait and see," the other advised him. "As it is now, he feels under some obligations to the lot of us, and may think we deserve to hear his story before we get him down to civilization again."
"Some obligation?" repeated Ethan. "Well, it's my honest opinion he owes you his life! If you hadn't found him when you did, he'd be dead right now. And then about that job of setting the bones in his leg, you did yourself proud there. It'd be a queer thing, and ungrateful in the bargain, if he said good-by, and never once opened up to explain things."
"It isn't going to bother me a bit," Phil told him.
"Now, is that a hint that I'm foolish to keep it on my mind?" asked Ethan.
"If the shoe fits, put it on," his chum told him. "But one thing sure, he'll never be able to walk on that leg by the time we expect to start home."
"Which I take it means we'll either have to carry him all the way down to the village on that stretcher, if it takes two days; or else one of us go after a team."
"Without any road up here," Phil explained, "it would be a hard job to get horses to the lake. And then the going would be so tough he'd suffer terribly. So as near as I can see it looks as if we'd have to work that stretcher again."
"Huh! I like that!" grunted Ethan, though he must have meant it in sarcasm, for his tone showed anything but enthusiasm. "We all congratulated ourselves on the way up here on the fact that we'd have it easy going out of the woods, because all that canned stuff and other grub would be devoured. And now by jinks! if we don't have to lug a man out. Whee!"