“I really think he’s sleeping from exhaustion and fright now,” he told the others, after they had bundled their charge up snugly, and were sitting there before the glowing fire, with both Lub and X-Ray impatiently waiting to hear all about the remarkable occurrence; for it is not often that hunters start out after moose and return bearing a child that they have saved from being frozen to death.
By degrees the story was told, first how the two hunters managed to get close up on the cow moose so that Phil could take a couple of snapshots; and then later on when aiming to discover the beaver village how they had run upon the lad in the thicket, where he had gone to try and make a fire.
“Think of the little duffer having matches in his pocket, and believing he knew all about the job of making a fire, too,” said Ethan, as though he considered this the most remarkable feature of the whole thing.
The little toy gun had been carefully carried along with their own larger weapons and Phil held it up as he went on to say:
“And he was trying to find his deer just as much as we were, it seems like, from his having this ‘repeater’ in his possession. That’s why I think he must belong to a backwoodsman or a guide, because children in such families take to doing all these things like ducks do to water.”
“And,” continued Ethan, solemnly, “so far as we know there’s only one party up in this neighborhood who has kids of his own, because you remember Mr. McNab told us about him.”
“Gee! you mean that terrible Baylay, don’t you?” asked Lub, aghast, as he glanced apprehensively toward the place where the child was snuggled in his blanket, and then toward the adjacent woods.
“Yes, Ethan and myself have about come to the conclusion he must be a chip of the old block, a Baylay, afraid of nothing; though he did bite off more than he could chew when he started off on a hunt for big game in winter time, and found himself lost in the forest, with the snow half way up to his neck in places.”
They talked it all over, but no one could suggest any particular thing they could do, save to keep the boy in camp, and wait to see what would turn up.
It came time for them to think of getting supper. X-Ray generously offered to “spell” Lub, for he was afraid they were overdoing it in allowing the stout youth to fill the office of cook continually, and that he might suddenly rebel.