Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/354

 dying.” Then sharply, “Come, get yourself together. Brace up!”

“Stanley, you’re the better man of the two, even in the woods,” earnestly declared Bub, squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw. “You were nervous because it was new to you. You conquered that feeling. It was old to me and I pitied you; then I turn around and give way to it. I’m worse than a coward.”

“Honestly, Bub, I believe that if I’d started in to show the white feather you’d have been as you were this morning,” soothed Stanley. “When one’s down the other is up, it seems.”

“I had no business to lose my nerve,” bitterly cried Bub. “Come, let’s be moving. We’ll have to double to the east and leave no trail. If he picks up the traces where we quit the swamp he’ll believe we are striking dead ahead.”

The afternoon sun was now casting long shadows across every opening while the warm rays occasionally caressed their backs as they silently fled before it. Tattling crows overhead cawed derisively at the two bowed figures and seemed to take a malicious delight in keeping pace with them and calling out to other wild kin that here were fugitives.