第37章

The work went much quicker than he had anticipated, mainly because he could give his entire attention to it.Injin Charley attended to the commissary, with a delight in the process that removed it from the category of work.When it rained, an infrequent occurrence, the two hung Thorpe's rubber blankets before the opening of the driest shelter, and waited philosophically for the weather to clear.Injin Charley had finished the first canoe, and was now leisurely at work on another.Thorpe had filled his note-book with the class of statistics just described.He decided now to attempt an estimate of the timber.

For this he had really too little experience.He knew it, but determined to do his best.The weak point of his whole scheme lay in that it was going to be impossible for him to allow the prospective purchaser a chance of examining the pine.That difficulty Thorpe hoped to overcome by inspiring personal confidence in himself.If he failed to do so, he might return with a landlooker whom the investor trusted, and the two could re-enact the comedy of this summer.Thorpe hoped, however, to avoid the necessity.

It would be too dangerous.He set about a rough estimate of the timber.

Injin Charley intended evidently to work up a trade in buckskin during the coming winter.Although the skins were in poor condition at this time of the year, he tanned three more, and smoked them.In the day-time he looked the country over as carefully as did Thorpe.

But he ignored the pines, and paid attention only to the hardwood and the beds of little creeks.Injin Charley was in reality a trapper, and he intended to get many fine skins in this promising district.He worked on his tanning and his canoe-making late in the afternoon.

One evening just at sunset Thorpe was helping the Indian shape his craft.The loose sac of birch-bark sewed to the long beech oval was slung between two tripods.Injin Charley had fashioned a number of thin, flexible cedar strips of certain arbitrary lengths and widths.

Beginning with the smallest of these, Thorpe and his companion were catching one end under the beech oval, bending the strip bow-shape inside the sac, and catching again the other side of the oval.Thus the spring of the bent cedar, pressing against the inside of the birch-bark sac, distended it tightly.The cut of the sac and the length of the cedar strips gave to the canoe its graceful shape.

The two men bent there at their task, the dull glow of evening falling upon them.Behind them the knoll stood out in picturesque relief against the darker pine, the little shelters, the fire-places of green spruce, the blankets, the guns, a deer's carcass suspended by the feet from a cross pole, the drying buckskin on either side.

The river rushed by with a never-ending roar and turmoil.Through its shouting one perceived, as through a mist, the still lofty peace of evening.

A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, exclaimed with keen delight of the picturesque as his canoe shot around the bend into sight of it.

The canoe was large and powerful, but well filled.An Indian knelt in the stern; amidships was well laden with duffle of all descriptions;then the young fellow sat in the bow.He was a bright-faced, eager-eyed, curly-haired young fellow, all enthusiasm and fire.His figure was trim and clean, but rather slender; and his movements were quick but nervous.When he stepped carefully out on the flat rock to which his guide brought the canoe with a swirl of the paddle, one initiated would have seen that his clothes, while strong and serviceable, had been bought from a sporting catalogue.There was a trimness, a neatness, about them.

"This is a good place," he said to the guide, "we'll camp here."Then he turned up the steep bank without looking back.

"Hullo!" he called in a cheerful, unembarrassed fashion to Thorpe and Charley."How are you? Care if I camp here? What you making?

By Jove! I never saw a canoe made before.I'm going to watch you.

Keep right at it."

He sat on one of the outcropping boulders and took off his hat.

"Say! you've got a great place here! You here all summer? Hullo!

you've got a deer hanging up.Are there many of 'em around here?

I'd like to kill a deer first rate.I never have.It's sort of out of season now, isn't it?""We only kill the bucks," replied Thorpe.

"I like fishing, too," went on the boy; "are there any here? In the pool? John," he called to his guide, "bring me my fishing tackle."In a few moments he was whipping the pool with long, graceful drops of the fly.He proved to be adept.Thorpe and Injin Charley stopped work to watch him.At first the Indian's stolid countenance seemed a trifle doubtful.After a time it cleared.

"Good! he grunted.

"You do that well," Thorpe remarked."Is it difficult?""It takes practice," replied the boy."See that riffle?" He whipped the fly lightly within six inches of a little suction hole; a fish at once rose and struck.

The others had been little fellows and easily handled.At the end of fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a fine two-pounder.

"That must be fun," commented Thorpe."I never happened to get in with fly-fishing.I'd like to try it sometime.""Try it now!" urged the boy, enchanted that he could teach a woodsman anything.

"No," Thorpe declined, "not to-night, to-morrow perhaps."The other Indian had by now finished the erection of a tent, and had begun to cook supper over a little sheet-iron camp stove.

Thorpe and Charley could smell ham.

"You've got quite a pantry," remarked Thorpe.

"Won't you eat with me?" proffered the boy hospitably.

But Thorpe declined.He could, however, see canned goods, hard tack, and condensed milk.

In the course of the evening the boy approached the older man's camp, and, with a charming diffidence, asked permission to sit awhile at their fire.