“Hold on, don’t rush over there till you get your guns!” advised Phil. “If the wolves are that brash up here, there may be more of the lot.”
McNab had thrown some small stuff on the fire so that the flames shot up, and in this way illuminated the vicinity. They could see a dusky figure sprawled out where the animal had been crouching and glaring at them with his terrible wolfish eyes.
So when Ethan and X-Ray had secured their rifles, with Phil they advanced to the spot where the victim of the shot had fallen. Phil was a trifle concerned himself, and anxious to make certain. If after all it turned out that he had shot a cur dog belonging to that terrible poacher and one-time logger Baylay, it was going to make them a tremendous amount of trouble.
He was speedily convinced, however, that there could be no doubt; and was also rejoiced to hear McNab declare:
“A fearsome sicht I ken, lads, and the largest wolf I ever saw in all my days in the bush. It was a braw shot ye made, Phil; it goed close between the eyes, and finished the beastie for a’. I tauld ye there was game worth the hunting up this way; if only ye may not have the misfortune to run across yon de’il o’ a Baylay and get his ill-will.”
They stretched the defunct wolf out, and Lub stared at his size, as well as his ferocious appearance, shuddering as he fancied what a time any one would have if attacked by a pack of such monsters.
“I expect I’ll let you fellows do most of the prowling while we’re up here,” he remarked, with the air of one who knew when he was well off. “I never did care very much for that sort, you know; and there will be plenty of things to employ my time around the camp, I guess.”
“Yes,” Phil told him with a smile, for he knew that Lub’s heart was not the most valiant in the world, “and the first chance we get to-morrow I mean to show you how to fish through the ice out there.”
“Oh! I’ve often read of that, Phil, and wished I could have a whack at it,” the fat chum exclaimed, rapturously; “please tell me how it’s done, won’t you? They have what they call tip-ups, I believe, that let them know every time a pickerel takes a bait.”
“It’s all as easy as falling off a log,” Phil went on to say. “You cut half a dozen holes in the ice some little distance apart. Then you drop your baited hook down, and fix a little contraption across the hole, connecting the line with the same. The idea is that when you get a fish his struggles tilts a stick, and lets you know about it. Sometimes one man ’tends dozens of holes, running this way and that as he sees he has a catch, to take the fish off, and rebait the hook.”