THE TIGER.
To carry our spoils down to our canoe, we had to make two trips; for the antlers alone were as much as one could take along at once. We had gone back after them and the hide.
“Too bad,” remarked Rod, “to leave all this flesh here to rot above ground.”
“I doubt if it be left to rot above ground,” said I. “There are too many hungry mouths about for that.”
“Right there,” said Rod; “and that makes me think we might use it to lure them, and to bait our traps with. Drag it out to the path, and set the traps round it.”
The idea seemed a good one. So we cut the remains of the carcass in two. Whole it was too heavy to be moved. Then, fastening some stout withes into them, we dragged the pieces, one after the other, out to the path, and left it at the place where the path entered the cranberry bushes. This done, we set the traps about it,—the remaining five,—and then went back to the canoe with the antlers and skin.
“Made a very fair thing of it, after all,” remarked Rod, as we floated with the current down to our camp. “Tell you what, old fellow, these steaks are not to be sneezed at. More than ordinary pot luck just at this time.”
It is needless to say that we fully satisfied our taste for venison that night, or that our breakfast next morning was merely a repetition of supper. Such things are to be expected in the wilderness. Suffice it to add, that we neither overate nor overslept, but were up betimes, and off to examine our traps considerably before sunrise. We did not go up in the canoe on the river, but walked along the bank through the woods.