“It ain’t like as if Young Dan was nothin’ more’n my pardner,” continued Andy. “He’s like a brother to me; and his heart’s as right as his brains is smart.”
“That’s a’right,” said Pete Sabatis. “Go ahead an’ tell ’im.”
“This here’s a kinder personal story,” began Andy, settling back in his chair. “Twenty-four years ago this very winter, I was in the woods on Pyle’s Brook, over in the Tobique country, choppin’ for Howard Frazer. I was restless in them days; and I’ll bet there ain’t a block of woods ten mile square in all the Province I ain’t had a foot into, lumberin’ or huntin’ or trappin’ fur. Well, I knowed that country pretty nigh as well as I know the Oxbow—so I thought. I diskivered later as how I’d thought wrong. Pete Sabatis here was choppin’ for Frazer’s gang, too. That was a kinder onusual thing, even in them days—a full-blooded Injun working hard an’ honest with a crew of lumbermen. But Pete allus was one who could do a white man’s job as well as an Injun’s—an’ both a mite better’n any other Injun or white man could do it. I’d say the same even if he wasn’t right here a-listenin’ to me.
“Well, I didn’t have no better friend in that outfit nor this here Pete Sabatis, and it was the same with him—what ye might call visey versus, I reckon. But, mind ye, I didn’t know the first darned thing about Pete’s private life. He was a jolly feller, though never much of a talker an’ nothin’ at all of a laugher. But all of a suddent, along about January, he begun to study hard on somethin’ deep inside himself. He’d stop still as if he was frozen all of a suddent in the middle of choppin’ into the butt of a big tree, with his axe sunk to the eye in the yellow wood, an’ stare kinder across-eyed into himself, with a look on his face like he didn’t care much for what he seen. Of course I knowed he wasn’t sick, but I asked him if he was; an’ when he said as how he wasn’t, then I cal’lated his trouble was somethin’ I’d best not ask him any more questions about.
“So it went on for three days, maybe; an’ then one Saturday night, after supper, he asks me if I’ll make a trip with him next day.
“‘A trip?’ sez I. ‘What sort o’ trip?’
“‘Snowshoes,’ sez Pete.
“‘Sure, but how far?’ I sez.
“‘Quite a spell,’ he answers back. ‘A long ways an’ rough goin’, an’ trouble at the end of it.’
“Well, there’s plenty men who’d set back hard in their britchen when they’d hear a note like that—but not me, twenty-four year ago, nor to-day. We started eastward into the tall timber before sun-up that Sunday mornin’, with grub enough for two days maybe, and blankets, and our axes. Pete carried a muzzle-loader gun you could shoot bullets out of pretty straight up to seventy yards. It was a clear, cold day, without so much as a fan of wind abroad. It was Sunday, as I’ve told ye; an’ it felt like Sunday—kinder waitin’ an’ uncommon. Pete went slam through everything on a straight line all his own as fast as he could flop his racquets along, but it didn’t bother me none to keep up to him. He didn’t say a word. We halted and et about noon—but even then he wouldn’t talk.”