“Pretty good, I guess. Come up and see,” advised the scaler. “The crew's right behind us.”
“I'll send up Charley,” drawled Thorpe, “I'm busy now makin' traps,” he waved his pipe, calling attention to the pine and rawhide dead-falls.
They chatted a few moments, practically and with an eye to the strict utility of things about them, as became woodsmen. Then two wagons creaked lurching by, followed by fifteen or twenty men. The last of these, evidently the foreman, was joined by the two scalers.
“What's that outfit?” he inquired with the sharpness of suspicion.
“Old Injin Charley—you remember, the old boy that tanned that buck for you down on Cedar Creek.”
“Yes, but the other fellow.”
“Oh, a hunter,” replied the scaler carelessly.
“Sure?”
The man laughed. “Couldn't be nothin' else,” he asserted with confidence. “Regular old backwoods mossback.”
At the same time Injin Charley was setting about the splitting of a cedar log.