"I hope not," remarked Felix, with a shrug; "I'm just tired of ham and bacon for a steady diet, and ache to have a piece of venison between my teeth. So here's wishing you the best luck ever, Tom, which is saying a good word for myself, too."
When Tom shouldered his gun, and took one last look at the now cozy interior of the cabin, he smiled back at his chum.
"Let me tell you, Felix," he remarked, "it looks good to me already; and I just know we're going to have the best sort of time up here, if only we manage to keep the wolf from the door."
"I'll do all I can to assist," laughingly responded Felix, little dreaming how shortly circumstances, just then utterly unseen, would bring these words of his companion forcibly before his mind.
"If you feel like it, Felix, you might be cutting up that big limb that was torn off the tree in some storm; we can't have too big a pile of fire wood, against the coming of winter, you know; and once we get a string of traps to look after, the less time we have to spend in chopping wood, the better."
And with these words, followed by a cheery wave of his chum's hand, Tom strode off for his first side hunt. They really were in need of fresh meat. Some five days had passed since leaving home, and with three to feed part of the time, this had made a little hole in the stock of provisions brought along with them.
Tom had done a great deal of hunting, and was familiar with most of the tricks resorted to by those who are most successful in getting game. Of course he took occasion to notice the direction of the wind before leaving the cabin. It would be the height of folly to try and stalk a deer with the breeze blowing his scent directly to the delicate nostrils of his intended quarry, for the wary animal must detect his presence long before he could hope to get within gunshot, and as a consequence would be off "like a streak of greased lightning," as Tom himself put it.
As he went along, the boy kept his eyes about him, observing numerous things of a nature to interest a hunter and trapper. The sigh of the wind through the tree-tops was sweetest music in the ears of Tom Tucker; many a night had it lulled him to sleep when in the woods; or stealing softly over the grassy prairie, where the cattle grazed, it had carried with it the chirp of crickets and katydids and all the other familiar sounds of a summer night on the range.
Never a leaf came floating to the ground near him but that his quick eye sought it out instinctively. If some little squirrel rustled the leaves, his ear was on the alert, even as his eager finger touched the trigger of his gun, ready for a shot at a bounding black-tail deer.
So Tom went on for perhaps an hour.