Young Dan found the distance between the fire and the place of his first tumble to be considerably less than he had feared. The fire burned in the center of a tiny dell; and beside it, on a mat of spruce boughs, sat Andy Mace.
“What’s the matter with you?” cried Young Dan. “What are you doing here—and why didn’t you stay home like you said you would?”
“I’m glad you come,” said the old man. “I cal’lated that’s what ye’d do. Well, I don’t blame ye a mite for feelin’ riled, Young Dan. But what else could I do?”
“What do you mean? You could have stopped home!”
“I clean forgot to tell ye. Look what’s layin’ t’other side the fire, Young Dan. So what else could I do but turn out an’ hunt about, when I heard him shootin’ off his rifle like a battle. And I thought all along it was yerself, until I found him.”
Young Dan stumbled around the fire and saw what the smoke had veiled from him—a big man lying prone on a blanket, flat on his back, with a lumpy sack partially sunk in the snow near his head. His snowshoes, axe and uncased rifle stood upright in a row several paces distant from the fire.
“What else was I to do?” asked Andy Mace. “And when I come up on him an’ seen it wasn’t you I couldn’t leave him to perish, could I now?”
“It’s Jim Conley,” said Young Dan. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Jim Conley, hey? That’s what I suspicioned. Well, pardner, he’s got more troubles nor one the matter with him; an’ what laid him there on his back the way ye see him now was a clout over the head I handed him with the butt o’ his own rifle.”
The youth’s bewilderment increased.