“Has Akerley been back?” asked the other.
“Guess not. They didn’t say.”
“Well, I got something better to do than spend the winter cruisin’ these woods for a man you say is Major Akerley. A gent like that one would head for a big town, as I’ve told you before. If you don’t show me him or his machine inside the nex’ two weeks I’ll get out in earnest.”
“Keep yer shirt on! It was yer idee chasin’ him, wasn’t it? All we got to do is hang ’round here, out o’ sight o’ the old man and the girl, until he comes snoopin’ back.”
“Then he’d better come snoopin’ pretty darned quick or he won’t have the honor of bein’ arrested by me.”
They moved to a secluded and sheltered spot five miles to the eastward of the clearings and there went into camp. The snow filled in the tracks of their snowshoes and toboggan.
In the meantime, Mick Otter and Tom Akerley held on their way undisturbed, traveling in fair weather and remaining in camp in foul. Day after day they moved through a wilderness that showed neither smoke nor track of human occupation, nor any sign of man’s use save occasional primitive shelters, and small caches of provisions and mixed possessions, for which Mick Otter was responsible. This was Mick’s own stamping-ground, his country, the field of his more serious activities and (apart from what food he ate at Gaspard’s place) the source of his livelihood. Sometimes a whim drew him to the east or the west or the south, but this was the area of wilderness that knew him every year and had paid toll to him in good pelts for many years. He was familiar with every rise and dip and pond and brook of it; and when on the move he looked forward from each knoll and hill-top, as he gained it, with the clear picture already in his mind’s eye of what he was about to see; as a scholar foretastes familiar pleasures when turning the leaves of a beloved book.
Of late years, however, Mick’s trapping operations in this wilderness region of his own had been of a sketchy and indolent nature—had been just sufficient, in fact, to let other Maliseet trappers know that he was still in occupation.
He told this to Tom Akerley.
“But why?” asked Tom. “Aren’t furs worth more now then they ever were?”