Yet the foxes did not care to be shot by him; his patience and his strength almost gave out as week after week the cunning animals eluded his search and evaded his fire. It was the last week in December before he shot another, and that happy day two fell before him. It was not easy work at all. The long tramps through snow and rain, the treacherous windfalls, the cold winds and freezing mists, were not pleasant accompaniments; but they did not daunt him.
In the mean time the golden returns of their labor had come to mother and Mary Ann. Twenty-five dollars had been sent by Cousin Jakeway, and were carefully hidden away in a cracked tea-pot under the paper of nutmegs.
In January, Sam shot two more; but the first week in February, as he was standing on a high and icy rock watching for a big gray fox to leave her den, into which the hounds had tracked her by another entrance, where Pete was stationed, in a moment of careless excitement he leaned too far, slipped, and lay helpless at the foot of the rock, with his left leg doubled under him, just as the old fox darted out, actually brushing his cap as he lay senseless. Peter heard no report of the gun, and hastening to see why Sam had not fired, found that his leg was broken, and he badly bruised all over. Luckily it was not far to the shanty, and Pete, by aid of a long light hand-sled he used to fetch wood on, contrived to get the boy on his own bed, and restored to consciousness, before he went for the Doctor.
But Sam could not be moved. And as he lay there day after day his father wondered why he did not mend faster: he was low and feverish, could not sleep, and evidently fretted. Dr. Putnam thought he was homesick.
"He don't get well, Pete," he said to the old man, shaking his head. "I think he is fretting for home."
A sudden gleam lit the old fellow's dark eye, but he said nothing till the Doctor was gone; then he went in to Sam. "Ho! ho! I ketch you, mine boy! The Docteur he say you fret. I tink an' tink why; then I have idea. Oh, you one big fool, mine boy! You tink, 'I get not mine fader skins for coat.' Ho! ho! you tink old Pete forget dat leetle boy fetch tings so much time to him long ago? Pollidge, pill, sweet-stuff, tisane, soups? No, Pete remember. Dem fox-skin I shoot is for Sam, just so many as he want; all, if coat want all. Now you get well, sar, pretty quick, eh?"
Sam turned his face into the pillow and cried. Forgive him—he was weak; but he got well rapidly now, and when the next November came mother and Mary Ann and Sam made a solemn presentation of the long handsome fox-skin coat to Dr. Putnam. The Doctor looked at it with astonishment and genuine pleasure. It meant more to him than any of them knew, for he had already had one secretly endured pleuritic twinge. Then he put it on, and turning round and round, surveyed himself, and looked up with a smile.
"I can't be cold in this," he said, with a sort of thrill in his voice; "but there's something about it more warming than the fox-skins."