“I never knowed it to act so contrary before,” he said. “It’s still stiffer’n a ramrod, an’ I’ve rubbed nigh all my b’ar’s grease into it; an’ all the fault o’ that gum-heeled feller from Quebec I fit with over on the Tobique in the winter o’ eighteen-seventy. It’s nigh enough to rile a man’s temper, Young Dan.”
Young Dan was distressed.
“If it hurts you bad, just say the word and I’ll go clean out to Harlow and fetch in a doctor,” he offered.
“No!” exclaimed Andy. “It ain’t my knee hurts me, but it’s layin’ down on the job to-day, and maybe to-morrow, and leavin’ all the work to you. That’s what riles me.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the youth reassured him. “I am able and willing, and you’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now I’ll do a mile or two of the south line and be back in time to fry pancakes for supper.”
He was as good as his word; and, later, his pancakes proved to be as good as any his partner had ever mixed and fried. He told of his visit to the Conley cabin, and the old man agreed with him that it would be a real pleasure to hand Jim Conley just what he deserved. After supper, Young Dan read a complete story, in irregular fragments, and his partner talked a bookful.
CHAPTER VI
FISH FOR BAIT
Andy’s knee was worse next morning, but he did not say so. He admitted that it didn’t seem to be any more supple, spoke hopefully of another day’s rest and a little more bear’s grease as being all that it required, and again referred to the fight of fifty years ago in terms of regret and acrimony. The truth was that the old fellow had rheumatism; and he knew what it was; and he had felt it before, once or twice a year, in the very same place. Furthermore, the gritty old sportsman was too vain to admit the truth. Of course he had fought with a man from Quebec fifty years ago, in a lumber-camp on Tobique River, and twisted a knee in the heat of the encounter—but if you had put him on oath and asked him to lay a finger on the knee he had wrenched on that distant occasion, he couldn’t have done it.
“I hope you walloped that man from Quebec,” said Young Dan.