“It makes me feel wonderful strange--t’ think I’m goin’ in there,” remarked Andy presently, gazing away over the dark forest which receded to the northward over rolling hills, “and t’ think we’re t’ be gone till th’ break-up next spring, an’ won’t see Pop or Margaret or Doctor Joe for so long.”
“Not gettin’ sorry you’re goin’, now, be you?” grinned Indian Jake.
“No, I’m not gettin’ sorry. Not me! I’m wonderful glad t’ be goin’,” Andy asserted stoutly.
“Better not think about the folks and home too much, or you’ll be gettin’ homesick,” counseled Indian Jake.
“I’m not like t’ get homesick!” and Andy’s voice suggested that nothing in the world was less likely to happen.
“Ah, but you’ll have a sore trial, lads,” said Indian Jake. “Wait till we’re deep in th’ trails, and winter settles, and th’ wind cuts t’ th’ bone, and th’ shiftin’ snow blinds you, and th’ cold’s like t’ freeze your blood, and t’ have t’ fight it for your very life. _Then’s_ th’ time that you’ll be tried out for th’ stuff that’s in you--both of you. And you can’t rest then, for there’s fur t’ be got out of th’ traps, and there’s no one t’ get it but you, and you _got_ t’ get it. Then, lads, you’ll be thinkin’ of your warm snug home at The Jug, with its big stove, and your cozy nest of a bed. There’s no rest for the trapper that makes a good hunt, lads. ’Tis the man that rests when th’ storms blow wild and the cold settles bitter and fierce, that makes th’ poor hunt. ’Tis always so with work.”
“We’ll stick to un, and make th’ good hunt,” David declared stoutly.
“Aye, we’ll stick to un, and not be gettin’ homesick, either. We’ll have plenty o’ grit,” said Andy.
“That’s the way to talk, lads!” said Indian Jake heartily. “Stick to it, lads, and have grit a plenty, and you’ll make a good hunt.”
“But I was thinkin’ o’ what a wonderful big place ’tis in there,” and Andy was again gazing at the forest-clad hills.
“Pop says,” continued Andy, “that ’tis so big they’s no end to un.”
“Aye,” agreed Indian Jake, “no end to un.”
“And there’ll be nobody but just us in there,” and there was awe in Andy’s voice.
Snow was falling when they made camp that evening in the shelter of the forest on the lake shore, and cozy and snug the tent was with a roaring fire in the stove, and the wind swirling the snow outside, and moaning through the tree tops. Indian Jake had said little during the afternoon, but now as he fried a pan of pork by the light of a sputtering candle, while David and Andy laid the bed of fragrant spruce boughs, he volunteered the information that they would be in the Nascaupee River early in the morning.