The man now got up, and the boys noticed—what had before escaped their attention—that he was quite lame. Using his gun to help support his body, he hobbled a little ways, and then turned back toward the boys, and said, in a kinder tone than before:
“Clinton, I want you to do me a little favor, if you will.”
“I will, with pleasure,” replied Clinton.
“I met with an accident this morning,” continued the gunner. “I’m taking a tramp after game, you see. I started last week, and am on my way to Moosehead Lake, all alone. I camp out nights, and have got a booth over yonder, where I slept last night. But this morning, as bad luck would have it, I fell from a tree and sprained my ankle, and it’s just as much as ever I can do, now, to hobble about. I’m afraid I shall be laid up here two or three days, if I don’t do something for it. If I could only get a little rum, or balm of Gilead, or pain-killer, or something of that sort, to bathe it with, I should be right down glad.”
“I guess mother has got something that would be good for your ankle,” said Clinton, anticipating the man’s request. “I’ll ask her, and if she has, I’ll bring it over to-morrow forenoon.”
“Couldn’t you get it yourself, without saying anything to her about it?” inquired the sportsman.
“No, I don’t think I could,—I don’t know anything about her medicines,” replied Clinton. “But if she has got anything that is good for a sprain, she would send you some, I’m certain of that.”
“But I don’t want her nor any body else to know that I’m here,” said the man.
Clinton did not know what to say to this. After a brief pause, in which the sportsman seemed in deep thought, he continued:
“The case is just this: I’m owing old Ben Brown a little money, and I can’t pay it now; but Ben is such an ugly old dog, that if he should hear that I’m around here, it would be just like him to have a writ out after me, or do some other rascally thing. You mustn’t tell a single soul that you saw me here. If you do, it might get to him. Do you understand?”