“You no hunter, no trapper. You look 'um tree, for make 'um lumber.”
The white had not begun as yet his explorations. He did not dare until the return of the logging crew or the passing of someone in authority at the up-river camp, for he wished first to establish in their minds the innocence of his intentions.
“What makes you think that, Charley?” he asked.
“You good man in woods,” replied Injin Charley sententiously, “I tell by way you look at him pine.”
“Charley,” said he, “why are you staying here with me?”
“Big frien',” replied the Indian promptly.
“Why are you my friend? What have I ever done for you?”
“You gottum chief's eye,” replied his companion with simplicity.
Thorpe looked at the Indian again. There seemed to be only one course.
“Yes, I'm a lumberman,” he confessed, “and I'm looking for pine. But, Charley, the men up the river must not know what I'm after.”
“They gettum pine,” interjected the Indian like a flash.
“Exactly,” replied Thorpe, surprised afresh at the other's perspicacity.
“Good!” ejaculated Injin Charley, and fell silent.
With this, the longest conversation the two had attempted in their peculiar acquaintance, Thorpe was forced to be content. He was, however, ill at ease over the incident. It added an element of uncertainty to an already precarious position.
Three days later he was intensely thankful the conversation had taken place.
After the noon meal he lay on his blanket under the hemlock shelter, smoking and lazily watching Injin Charley busy at the side of the trail. The Indian had terminated a long two days' search by toting from the forest a number of strips of the outer bark of white birch, in its green state pliable as cotton, thick as leather, and light as air. These he had cut into arbitrary patterns known only to himself, and was now sewing as a long shapeless sort of bag or sac to a slender beech-wood oval. Later it was to become a birch-bark canoe, and the beech-wood oval would be the gunwale.
So idly intent was Thorpe on this piece of construction that he did not notice the approach of two men from the down-stream side. They were short, alert men, plodding along with the knee-bent persistency of the woods-walker, dressed in broad hats, flannel shirts, coarse trousers tucked in high laced “cruisers “; and carrying each a bulging meal sack looped by a cord across the shoulders and chest. Both were armed with long slender scaler's rules. The first intimation Thorpe received of the presence of these two men was the sound of their voices addressing Injin Charley.