“Say! what is your name?” demanded Dig, his curiosity getting the better of his courtesy.
“Never you mind,” responded the Indian boy sharply, and turned away again.
But Chet called after him: “Do think better of it, and go to see my father.” Then he let Hero have his impatient head and he and his chum went on their way.
That which rose out of this advice of Chet’s to the Indian lad could scarcely be foreseen by either of the boys; but it was of much importance.
The chums rode on, soon leaving the last of the scattered cabins behind them. They met timber wagons from the hills, but nothing else for the next hour. The lumbermen looked curiously at the chums’ weapons, for their guns were too heavy for an ordinary hunting expedition.
“What you goin’ out after?” one timberman drawled. “Grizzlies—or is there an Injun uprisin’?”
“We expect to bag a brace of humming-birds,” Dig told him gravely. “Have you seen any?”
“No; but I’ve heard ’em snorin’, sound asleep, in the tops of some of them cottonwoods,” was the reply. “But, say! They ain’t been a trace of Ole Ephraim in these hills, since Methuselah was put inter trousers.” “Ole Ephraim” was the nickname the old-time hunters and trappers gave to the grizzly bear.
“Nor I didn’t know of any redskins goin’ on the warpath. Has Blacksnake’s band of dog soldiers broke loose from the reservation?” pursued the man cheerfully. “Say! ’tain’t old Scarface and his fam’bly begun crow-hoppin’—has they? If so, we sure will have a tumble mas-a-cree.”
“That’s all right,” laughed Chet. “We’re going to bag all the game in the territory—you see.”