The party needed no second call. The mountain air had given them wolfish appetites and they made huge inroads on the trapper’s well-cooked dinner. With the exception of Andy, they ate and enjoyed the musquash; the meat being fine-grained and tender. John was visibly disappointed by Andy’s refusal to try this delicacy.
“Try it, ol’ timer,” he insisted, as he pushed the steaming pan across the table.
Andy made a wry face. “Don’t feel jest hungry to-night,” he mumbled.
Dinner finished, Donald pushed back his chair and lighted a cigarette. “John, that was a dandy meal, and your coffee sure is a nectar fit for the gods.”
The trapper was justly proud of his cooking. Donald’s praise brought a deeper tinge of colour to his bronzed face. He refilled the tin cups and they sat quietly smoking and sipping the fragrant coffee.
After the day in the open and the excellent meal it was pleasant to sit in the genial warmth of the cabin while the storm which had been gathering broke overhead and the incessant patter of rain sounded on the roof.
Between Andy and John there sprang up a comradeship based on the peculiar brotherhood which often exists between small men. Each found in the other traits that amused him.
“Comical little duck,” was John’s opinion of Andy.
“Strike me pink! He’s the funniest old geezer that I ever saw in me life,” Andy confided to Donald.
Together they washed the dishes and tidied up the room. When they had finished Andy dragged in his duffle-bag, rummaged through the contents, and produced a flask of rum. The trapper’s face brightened.
“I brought this for medicinal purposes,” stated Andy. “How are you feelin’, John?”
The mirth wrinkles around the trapper’s eyes deepened. “My misery is purty bad to-night, ol’ timer.”
Andy poured liberally into a tin cup. The pungent odour of rum filled the room. Old John sniffed the contents. “Whuff!” he yowled, “good licker!”
The old trapper, standing in the centre of the room, presented a figure wild and strange. His coat of buckskin was open at the throat to expose a hairy chest. His mane-like mass of wiry hair stood straight out and shook with every movement of his body. A veritable wild man of the woods he looked as he grasped the cup and held it up to his admiring gaze.