“Did you kill him?” he asked, in awe-stricken tones.
“I reckon not,” replied Andy, casually. “He’s alive—in his own way.”
Young Dan chopped more brush for the fire and heaped it on, then removed his snowshoes and reclined beside his partner.
Andy Mace filled and lit his pipe and told his story. He had sat quiet all day and rubbed the last of the bear’s grease into his stiff knee. He had fallen asleep along about mid-afternoon and slept soundly for hours. Waking suddenly, for no particular reason that he knew of, he had found the camp in darkness except for the glow of the fallen fire on the hearth. He had built up the fires in a hurry and lighted the lantern; and he had just opened the door for a look at the weather, before concentrating his mind on the preparation of supper, when he heard a rifle shot. That shot had been followed quickly by three more. He had hung the lantern in the window then and scrambled into his outdoor things and hobbled off at the best pace he could manage, feeling quite sure that the shots were calls from Young Dan for help. Another had sounded before the door was shut behind him, and yet another before he had gone fifty yards into the woods. He had bored straight ahead, slap through everything except the actual trunks of the big trees, taking the rough with the smooth and the hard with the soft—and just how many times he had plunged into the snow with his face and swept it up with his whiskers he’d hate to try to remember. His ears had been plugged with snow most of the time, anyhow, and his stiff knee had received some violent shocks, but he had kept going, and after a while he had heard someone yelling. He had gone ahead more circumspectly after that, knowing that the voice did not belong to his partner; and before long he had found Jim Conley trying to light a fire and making a poor job of it.
“Why couldn’t he light it?” asked Young Dan.
“Well, every time he’d get it lit he’d fall down slam on top o’ the little flame an’ smother it out.”
“Was he that near froze?”
“That’s what I suspicioned, so I drug him off an’ sot him down an’ lit the bit o’ brush an’ bark for him. I cut some dead stuff, an’ some chunks o’ green wood, an’ built up a good fire; then I looked round an’ seen him settin’ back as comfortable as you please sucking away at a square-face. That riled me, Young Dan. That would rile a more peaceable man nor me—to see him draggin’ at that there bottle, an’ it more’n three-quarters empty already—an’ considerin’ how I’d nigh busted my leg off to find him, thinkin’ it was yerself shootin’ an’ hollerin’. Yes, I reckon even a deacon would of felt kinder sore. So I went up to him an’ grabbed the bottle an’ hove it away an’ bust it agin a tree; an’ up he come, spry’s a cat, an’ lammed me one on the shoulder that laid me flat; but up I come on one leg, quicker’n a wink, an’ finished him. I looked into his pack—an’ then I wisht I’d hit him harder.”
“Why? What’s in the bag?”
“Considerable baccy, and a pound o’ tea, an’ maybe as much as a whole pound o’ bacon, and a box o’ seegars, and a bran’ new razor an’ strop, an’ some ca’tridges, and a red weskit, an’ four more square-faces o’ gin. That’s what’s in his pack!”