"That's the idea," said Alex quietly. "You'll not be tenderfeet when you finish this trip."
"Her Onkle Deek, she'll tol' me something about those boy," said Moise, from the fireside. "She'll say she's good boy, all same like man."
Jesse looked at Moise gravely, but did not smile at his queer way of speech, for by this time they had become better acquainted with both their guides.
"What I'll tol' you?" said Moise again a little later. "Here comes cool breeze from the hill. Now those mosquito he'll hunt his home yas, heem! All right! We'll eat supper 'fore long."
Moise had put a pot of meat stew over the fire before he started back up the trail to bring in the canoe, when they first had come in with the packs. This he now finished cooking over the renewed fire, and by and by the odors arose so pleasantly that each boy sat waiting, his knife and fork on the tin plate in his lap. Alex, looking on, smiled quietly, but said nothing.
"Moise doesn't build a fire just the way I've been taught," said Rob, after a while.
"No," added John. "I was thinking of that, too."
"He's Injun, same as me," said Alex, smiling. "No white man can build a fire for an Injun. S'pose you ask me to put your hat on for you so you wouldn't need to touch it. I couldn't do that. You'd have to fix it a little yourself. Same way with Injun and his fire."
"He just throws the sticks together in a long heap and pushes the ends in when they burn through," said Jesse. "He didn't cut any wood at all."
Moise grinned at this, but ventured no more reply.
"You see," said Alex, "if you live all the time in the open you learn to do as little work as possible, because there is always so much to do that your life depends on that you don't want to waste any strength."
"It doesn't take a white man long to get into that habit," said Rob.
"Yes. Besides, there is another reason. An Injun has to make his living with his rifle. Chopping with an ax is a sound that frightens game more than any other. The bear and deer will just get up and leave when they hear you chopping. So when we come into camp we build our fire as small as possible, and without cutting any more wood than we are obliged to. You see, we'll be gone the next morning, perhaps, so we slip through as light as possible. A white man leaves a trail like a wagon-road, but you'd hardly know an Injun had been there. You soon get the habit when you have to live that way."