Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/231

 when a step was heard in the immediate front.

“Who is it?” cried Bub, bending forward, his rifle half raised.

“Abner! Don’t shoot,” cried the old man.

“All right, Mister Whitten. Advance and give the countersign,” humorously replied Bub.

“Where’s our friend?” murmured Stanley.

“Ye ought not to have any friends,” complained Abner. “What in sin possessed ye to keep in that hard wood growth fer? Didn’t ye know it was giving Nick a fine bead on ye, with the leaves only half out? Why didn’t ye dig into the spruce? I vum! If I’d know’d ye was so tarnation foolish I’d just kept on to the warden’s and e’t my supper. As fer Big Nick, I couldn’t find him.”

Stanley rose on his elbow and silently shook the old man’s hand, his eyes beaming his thanks.

“Ye can’t soft soap me that way,” gruffly informed Abner, still retaining his hand. “Bub knows I told him that I’d bet ye wouldn’t have enough sense to stay hid, but would come a mooning along and trying to git killed. Bub will remember what I said. I said ye’d be up to just such a fool trick and that we’d better camp with the warden, git our sleep and