“Deer! Your grandmother’s hat!” Chet said scornfully. “You fell on a calf—that’s what you fell on. Don’t you know a deer from a calf?”
“Calf?” repeated the chagrined Dig. “Where did it come from? There’s no ranch around here, is there?”
“This is what you were looking for,” laughed Chet. “It’s a maverick. It likely strayed from the last bunch of cattle that went over the trail we crossed. But how under the sun it managed to escape the coyotes and lions and bears is a mystery to me. Poor little fellow!”
“Come on!” exclaimed Dig. “We’ll drag him back to camp, and I’ll gentle him. We aren’t travelling very fast, Chet, and we can lead him to-morrow.”
“Well! I’d rather you tried it than that I should,” his chum said grimly, handing him the end of the rope. “Go to it, boy!”
CHAPTER XIII—“THE DOG SOLDIERS”
The maverick was not a happy addition to the camping party—not at first, at least. Dig tied him to a tree, giving him the length of the lariat to tangle himself up in; and he did just that.
Three times during supper Dig had to get up and unwind the rope to save the creature from choking himself to death. His plaintive “bla-att” might bring night-prowling beasts from the distant hills.
In fact, Chet could not easily figure out how the yearling had escaped becoming the prey of some flesh-eating brute ere this, save that the season was in his favour.
The bears had plenty of berries and other forest fruit. In the winter or in the early spring after his hibernation, Bruin would have stalked this maverick as cleverly as any wolf.